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Brunelleschi’s Dome and Such

I spent last Friday in Florence. I had been there before, about 12 years ago, and it hadn't changed much since my last visit. Victoria decided to give me a break from Juliette, and she wanted to have a reastful day herself, so I took the train journey there alone.

I was worried that Florence would be packed; being one of the major tourist centers in Italy, but the crowds weren’t too bad. You knew that there were other people there, but it wasn't a mob scene, except around the Palazzo della Signoria and the Pointe Veccio, the two favorite package tour destinations... I spent most of my day in the Uffizi, looking at the Giottos, Leonardos, and especially Botticellis, the Uffizi having the majority of his authenticated works. Inside the Uffizi, the tour groups washed in and out through the rooms like waves, speaking in Russian, English, Spanish, Italian, and other languages. Fortunately was able to admire their many masterpieces in the relative quiet between the tides.

Afterwards, I walked over to the Duomo (cathedral), Santa Maria del Fiore. There had been a heavy rain while I was in the museum, which somewhat thinned out the crowds. The Doumo had, among other things, Brunelleschi’s famous dome. Filippo Brunelleschi, the renaissance architect, had designed the largest dome built since the Roman Empire for Florence's cathedral. In fact, the plans are still preserved at the Uffizi. Legend has it that once it was completed, the builders refused to take down the scaffolding, certain that the massive dome would collapse. So old Brunelleschi had to pull down the scoffolding himself, confident that it would stand (this is just one of the many conversational gems that I picked up from years of art history classes). At any rate, I can vouch for the fact that it is still standing today, high above the city of Florence.

Earlier in the trip, my mother had told me that I shold look for the statue of Brunelleschi in front of a building next to the Duomo. I hunted around and found it across the piazza from the Duomo. It was in front of a hotel, I believe. There he was in larger-than-life glory, squinting up at his dome as he checked a measurment in a document lying on his lap, eternally re-checking his work on the legendary dome.

Back in the USA

Well, I'm back now... and pretty jetlagged. But I still have some more things I want to post about, so I'm going to keep going for another week or so. So please keep checking in for updates.

Italy in a day

Rimini is also surrounded by a variety of theme parks. Since this particular trip was for Juliette, Victoria and I gave her the choice of going to a theme park or the beach. All during lunch, she was going back and forth about where she wanted to go. In the end she couldn’t make up her mind, but we wound up going to the beach, as it was getting late and the parks all had admission fees.

However, we wound up missing the final train back to Bologna, and had to spend the night in a hotel near the station. Juliette declared it the most beautiful hotel she had ever seen, while we thought of it as “adequate”. However, at least they served a decent breakfast in the morning.

The next day, Victoria and I thought “what the hell”, and decided to go to one of the theme parks, “Italy in Miniature”. The main attraction of this park is a collection, in 1:50^th scale, of about 250 landmarks from all over Italy. Florence, Rome, Assisi, Sienna, Naples, Sicily… all within an easy walk. It sounds cheesy, and it was, but in a fun kind of way. What I took from this display was that I would never get to see all the sights of Italy in this lifetime, but now I can at least claim to have done so.

We also had a gondola tour of the grand canal of Venice … at 1:5 scale. In fact, this was vastly cheaper and less crowded than the actual thing. And, as it turned out, Juliette enjoyed this tour more than the actual thing as well… I’m sure Umberto Eco would have something to say about that.

Rimini

Now I'm back in the north, where the atmosphere is less Roman Empire and more Renaissance. The people look more fashionable and prosperous, and the pace of life is faster, though still notably slower than in the USA. Victoria commented that she had never before seen so many well-dressed people, all riding around on bicycles!

A few days ago, we visited Rimini, a beach town not far fom Bolognia. The description in our Lonely Planet guidebook didn’t encourage a visit, but Juliette really wanted to go to the beach, so we went. It actually turned out to be a rather nice place to spend a day or two, at least during the off-season. I chalk it up to Lonely Planet’s reverse snobbery… for example; they are constantly disparaging the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna because it contains so much meat.

 

Rimini has a pleasant medieval town square, many seaside restaurants and bars, and wide, tree-lined avenues punctuated by traffic circles with large marble fountains in the centers. Tourists (including my family) pose for photos in front of the Hotel Grand, a relic from a bygone era of elegance. Picturesque fishing boats fill the canal leading to the sea. The streets are filled with holidaymakers on the ubiquitous Vespa. The amount of bare flesh on the beach is witness to the fact that Italy doesn't suffer under the same yoke of puritan history as does the US. Amid the crowd, we watch old men in Speedos play Bacci in a court dug out of the sand. If nothing else, this trip gave us a chance to see how the Italians spend their holidays.

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Centola

Last Saturday, I was still in Campania, and I visited Centola, where my family originated, and about which I've heard so many legends. I went there with Ernesto, a second cousin of my mother (I think, its hard to keep the family tree straight). I was staying with his family in Agropoli, the nearest city to Centola. Ernesto was thin and nervous, but good-natured and intelligent. He spoke in halting English… however, much better than my cave-man Italian, I have to admit. He and his sister showed me around Agropoli on the first day and refused to let me pay for anything.

From Agropoli, we drove down the coast of the Mediterranean, past mountains, steep cliffs descending to the blue Adriatic, and crumbling Norman castles perched high on mountaintops. I commented to Ernesto that I’d read many of the events in the Odyssey took place in this region, and Ernesto told me that Polynoru (sp?), the seaward part of Centola, was named after a member of Ulysses’s crew who was supposed to have died there. Eventually, we turned off the highway and on to the dusty side-road that leads to Centola.

Centola itself is made up of an old town steep on a hill, grey stone buildings from the early Middle-Ages, crowded closely together and piled one on top of the other. They surround a small square with a bell tower and a church. Spreading out from the old town are many more modern (post-war) buildings from the classic Mediterranean mold, with red tile roofs and stucco walls in cream and ochre. My grandfather had left Centola during the depression before WWII, when the old town was all that there was to it, and the south of Italy was in grinding poverty.

Shortly before he died a few years ago, I interviewed my grandfather, and he had told me that, as a child, his biggest excitement was to run down the hill from his house and get a drink from the fountain at the bottom - clearly, there weren't many entertainment options in Centola back then. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to contact anyone from my grandfather's side of the family, Ernesto and his family being from my Grandmother’s. However, I was able to find the house where he grew up - which I recognized from old photos - and the legendary fountain at the bottom of the hill.

Later, I dozed as Ernesto drove me back to Agropoli through the winding foothills of Campania. In my waking moments, I wondered how my daughter, with all her dolls, toys, and videos, would be in a world where the biggest excitement was to run down the hill to have a drink of water.

Villa of the Mystery

I'm getting a little behind on these posts! Last Friday (June 24th), I visited Pompeii, where I've dreamed of going for many years. The site itself is huge, most of a city that had had thousands of inhabitants... too much to take in in the three or four hours that I had there. I didn't get to see the amphitheater where Pink Floyd filmed their concert, or the brothel, but I did see the site I was most interested in, the Villa of the Mystery, located in what had once been a suburb of the ancient Roman city.

When I got there, the Villa was nearly empty, just a handful of tourists, a caretaker, a friedly but scruffy-looking cat and a spotted dog. In fact, Pompeii is full of semi-wild dogs, ironic, since it also has the world's first "beware of the dog" sign (Caviet Canem, I think). However, this dog and the caretaker seemed to know each other, so I wasn’t too worried.

The Villa was one of the most intact buildings that I visited. Much of the roof and even many of the original wall paintings were still there. What I really wanted to see, though, was the fresco showing the rite of Dyonosis, probably the most famous artifact of Pompeii.

So I searched around and was about to give up when I finally saw a couple of tourists, Russian, I think, peering through a modern wooden shutter installed in one of the walls. I looked through as well, and there was the mural that I remember so well from Art History Class, The boy reading the ritual, the satyrs, Silenus pouring wine, the bride cowering in fear and then danciing in a frenzy, and finally transformed into a priestess. The god Dionysius presiding over it all. Most of the characters in this drama unchanged in the two thousand or so years since the fresco was painted. It amazed me that this of all the decoarations was not removed and mostly undamaged; one of the most valuable documents of the Roman mystery cults.

Heading South

Last Friday, I headed down to Southern Italy. The atmosphere of the south is very different from the north... everything seems louder, brighter; more chaotic... the clocks run slower and more erratically. The people are aggressive, demonstrative, hospitible. Suddenly, you know you are in the Mediterranian. Almost as soon as I got off the train in Naples, I felt like I was in a completely different country from Bologna.

I took a regional train, the “Circumvesuviana” heading to Pompeii from Naples. The final destination was Salerno. It was so crowded I could barely move, and hot. About half the people on board were tourists, the other half locals. The train rattled and shook like it was about to fall apart. Everyone was shouting and gesturing while trying to stay on their feet. I tried to be inconspicuous, glad I didn’t have a heavy backpack.

A local man and his family were shouting at a couple from the Midwest USA... I had met them earlier. He was saying something about not being able to get to Salerno on this train. A couple of the other locals on the train joined in on the conversation, seemingly discussing the plight of the two Americans, as much as I could make out. However, none of the tourists on the train spoke enough Italian, and none of the locals spoke enough English, so communication between the two factions was impossible. The American couple asked me what was going on... I shrugged: "People here have strongly-held views," I offered, unhelpfully.

Later, after getting off, I heard that there might or might not have been a strike that kept the train from stopping at Salerno. I made it to Pompeii ok, however, I never did find out how the couple made out.

Ferrara...biker's paradise

Today, we visited Ferrara, which was once one of the most powerful cities of renaissance Italy, but is now a small, laid-back town with an ancient historical center and, as it turns out, a haven for bicycles. The streets were filled with bicyclists of every age… perhaps you can get an idea from the photo above… We were surprised to see fathers with one toddler behind, one on the handlebars, fashionably-dressed young women in capris, and old men on rusting antiques. Bikes everywhere! Juliette pointed to a mother bicycling with her young daughter on the seat behind and said: “I want to do that, mommy.” However, Victoria knew Baltimore is not nearly as bicycle-friendly a town (we knew a visiting professor from Quebec who was struck by a hit and run driver and put in a coma). So, she was non-committal.

Tomorrow, I’m heading to the small southern town where my family originated. I won’t have web access for a while, but I should have some stories to tell when I get back.

For Matt L

For Matt, if you're reading... Here's authentic tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce!

Juliette & Gelato

Juliette (age 5) woke me up this morning by jumping into my bed and telling me (actually shouting to me) about gelato: “Wake up daddy; we have to get some Gelato.” She informed me: “in Italy, gelato is good for you, and you have to eat it every day.” Later, we made it to Piazza Nettuno, one of the central squares in the old city. We ate gelato in a café across from the Palazzo Civico, watched over by the god Neptune from atop a tall renaissance fountain. Victoria asked Julie if the gelato was as good as what she had had in Baltimore. “More gooder,” she said, “I always wanted to come here for Gelato!”

Arrival in Bologna

We came in yesterday (Monday) and we were pretty beat after the all night flight with almost no sleep. We met my parents at the apartment that they are renting, which my mother described as “quirky”. It has a great kitchen, and Juliette loves the loft bed, which she describes as “the funnest bed ever.”

We weren’t able to do much, we just ate some pre-made food my mother had bought and took a short walk to the pharmacy for Victoria’s cold. Luckily, the pharmacist spoke pretty good English.

Bologna seems like a good town to spend a few days. It is famous for its porticoes and red brick buildings. It is not at all touristy and a bit down-at-the-heels in parts, which adds personality. It hosts one of the oldest universities in Europe, which is testified by the graffiti scrawled everywhere. In the next few days, we’ll get over the jetlag and start exploring a little more.

Since you asked

In fact, I did the drawing from the last post, not Juliette. But, since you asked, here's a drawing that she did for the sake of comparison.

Nothing to say yet..

I don't have anything to say yet, but here's a picture of my daughter that I drew on my Nook.