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Cinque Terre

Posted by Jen Italy, Travel

Apr 252013

Day 28 – Cinque Terre

Daily Wrap-Up

One Word

Barb: Precipitous

Mike: Washout

Jen: Landslides

Two Words

Barb: Sea views

Mike: Barnacle towns

Jen: Michelangelo’s marble

Three or Four Words

Barb: Miles of marble

Mike: Brake and clutch workout

Jen: Cinque Terrible autostrade tolls

One Sentence

Barb: The GPS giveth, and the GPS taketh away, but in the end, the GPS gets you home.

Mike: It was cool to see giant blocks of raw marble from ancient quarries patiently waiting to be turned into the next David…or suburban McMansion countertop.

Jen: Trails closed, roads closed, pea soup fog—I’m still glad we went.

Time’s up: It’s now or never—or not for the foreseeable future anyway.

We were waiting and hoping for a good-weather day to visit Cinque Terre, but that day has not come, and we are out of days. We could go back to Florence and take refuge from the rain in museums and churches, but I voted to go to Cinque Terre despite the weather. Weather is fickle; we can’t know for certain how the day will evolve, and I’d really like to see whatever I can of the area, so I was willing to take my chances. Barb, Mike, or both agreed.

“Suckers!” said Rain and Fog with glee.

The autostrade took us past Carrara, an area renowned for its marble quarries. Three hundred or more quarries around here date back to Roman times, making this one of the oldest industrial sites in continuous use in the world. The rock for what became Michelangelo’s David is from here, and Michelangelo had a house here.

We were able to see some quarries from the highway, as well as market-ready marble blocks stacked in piles like lumber at Home Depot.

White and beige marble blocks outside a warehouse.

Market-ready marble blocks from the Carrara area. See the two colors, white and ecru? There was some red elsewhere, too. Note: This picture was taken at about 60 miles per hour.

If I were to return to Italy, I think I’d add Carrara to my list of places to visit. Rumor has it at least some of the quarries allow visitors, and there’s a Museo Civico del Marmo, marble museum. As you know, colorful rocks are one of my favorite parts of the churches we’re visiting.

Thin marble slabs ready to be worked into…something.

Somewhere in the sizable industrial area we passed through, we got lost, just getting from one autostrade to the next, I believe, which is ridiculous because these major highways should be well signed and well known to the GPS. However, the GPS screen showed us humming along, and then it went blank. At times like that, I think it needs a cartoon face with a confused expression and a hand scratching its head. We drove down narrow roads between warehouses and empty lots, occasionally passing a semi, the driver of which was no doubt wondering what the heck we were doing there. The GPS would come back to life with a new plan. We’d follow, and it would suddenly go blank again. I thought I heard it say “dang!” once. It’s not the GPS’s fault: It’s Italy. We know this. We’ve seen the nonsense that is Italy’s roads and signs and way of doing things.

We kept driving and waiting for the GPS to come up with a new idea. It always did. One idea, however, pushed the boundary of believable. It told us to go left up ahead, but there didn’t appear to be a left turn option. After driving past a…we’ll call it a single lane road, but that’s overstating it…it said we’d gone too far. It wanted us to take that single lane to the left which led into a hole in a wall. No, really, it did. It was rather like a walking path that entered a tunnel beneath a road.

We’ve been on major highways that haven’t registered on the GPS, but this hole in the wall is in the system. When our eyes were dry enough to focus again, we did what the GPS wanted. Here, you can see for yourself. (It takes less than two minutes.) Note the major thoroughfare we’re on at the start of the video.

We eventually made it to Riomaggiore, the first town of the Cinque Terre, which means “five land” or five villages. My sense is that these villages may be even less accessible than those on the Amalfi Coast. They were originally only accessible by sea, and there is still no road that links all five villages. To complicate matters more, the severe winter weather has caused landslides in the area, closing what roads and trails there are.

Nonetheless, Riomaggiore is one of the two most accessible-by-road villages and thus better able to handle tourists, but I did not care for the way they handled me. We were tricked, by means of tiny crowded roads and no signs, into an expensive parking garage with an out-of-service WC (water closet, otherwise known as a toilet) and had to walk through a terribly stinky tunnel to get to the center of town. Even allowing for the gray, drizzly day and it being not quite the tourist season yet, this was not a fine how-do-you-do.

We got the info we were after: The Via dell’Amore (Lover’s Lane) trail that connects Riomaggiore to Manarola was still closed. It is supposed to reopen in the next couple of days, according to the website, so we hoped maybe it was passable. Not so. So we left. Take that, Riomaggiore.

Spring has sprung in Corniglia.

We continued on the narrow, twisty, turny, in-the-fog, Amalfi-like road to Corniglia, the middle village. Thankfully, this road doesn’t get the traffic the Amalfi road does. We wouldn’t be driving it if it did. There were signs warning us that this was, indeed, a two-lane road. Those signs are important because the width of the road might make you think otherwise. It reminded me of Outback roads in Australia—single lane, and when you meet an oncoming car, both cars move to their respective shoulders, so both have two wheels on the road. That works in Australia, but here on the Cinque Terre road, there is no shoulder on either side, just a rock wall on one side and a drop off the other.

When we dropped below the fog, we had views of terraced hills with miles upon miles of human-made rock walls. Lots and lots of grapes grow here.

Vineyard terraces near Corniglia.

Parking was easy and free in Corniglia, so I liked it immediately. The village is a cluster of medieval (I presume) buildings huddled together on the coast. A few are painted bright colors, another point in its favor. The buildings were mostly boring rectangles rather than a mish-mosh of crazy shapes, and they looked a bit slummy, but the interior maze of narrow passageways was tidy and welcoming.

A colorful cluster of buildings on the coast.

The village of Corniglia.

Narrow passageway with stairs to residence.

Here we are, rats in a maze again. Love these passageways!

The town has a small patio overlooking the Mediterranean. Cacti and flowers flow down the cliff toward the water.

The view from the village patio.

We passed a teeny-tiny shop selling knit items (no skeins of wool). The back wall, some three or four steps away from the front wall, was half natural rock from the cliff. It was a tiny, adorable space. I wonder how many homes in these buildings also have natural rock walls.

Look at that back wall. The white is painted plaster, and the gray below it, on which garments are hung, is natural rock.

We attempted to continue on to Cinque Terre #5, Monterosso al Mare, but the road that was open got sketchy (mud, rocks, downed trees), and we had no desire to attempt the road that was closed; although, according to the locals it’s only “officially” closed, suggesting we could give it a go if we were so inclined.

And this was a decent section.

We didn’t get to see Cinque Terre at its best, but I’m glad we went anyway.

Firenze Finale

Posted by Jen Italy, Travel

Apr 242013

Day 27 – Firenze

Daily Wrap-Up

One Word

Barb: Traffic

Mike: David

Jen: Arte

Two Words

Barb: Miniature stories

Mike: Art aplenty

Jen: Jester motif

Three or Four Words

Barb: Freed from the stone

Mike: Looking for St. Sebastian

Jen: Rock hard abs

One Sentence

Barb: Fresco cycles, medieval ivory carvings, carved capitals, illuminations: the graphic novels of the time.

Mike: News flash: I am not a people person.

Jen: Coup de toes must be the norm in Italy.

Today we returned to Florence to make use of our Friends of the Uffizi cards. We’ve not been visiting museums as much as we thought we would, and there was an important one we didn’t want to miss: the Galleria dell’Accademia, so we headed there first.

Our magic Friends card didn’t work precisely as we had hoped—we still had to wait in line, and in doing so were forced to breathe secondhand smoke, much from Accademia employees—but our wait was significantly shorter than it would have been without the magic Friends card.

Inside, the sea of Accademia visitors flowed directly to Michelangelo’s David. Picture-taking is no longer permitted in the Accademia. It once was because Barb has pictures of David from a previous visit. Though plenty of people flouted the rule, we did not, so you are on your own to find an image if you want one. I can offer you images of replicas and a joke.

David at Dusk: A replica of Michelangelo’s David at Piazzale Michelangelo, the parking lot above Florence where we parked each time we visited. I loved the view from here and the walk down and up.

A Brief History of David

The project began as a commission for a statue for the roofline of the Santa Maria del Fiore (yes, that’s Il Duomo). Agostino di Duccio, who may or may not have been working under Donatello’s instruction, began the sculpture of David but didn’t get very far before he left the project for reasons no longer known. Ten years later Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to take up where Agostino had left off, but that didn’t work out, either, and the stone was left neglected, out in the elements, for twenty-five years.

Now, a big piece of marble like that is a costly thing, so the powers that be—that would be the Operai—determined something needed to be done with that marble. Michelangelo, just twenty-six years old, convinced them he should be the one to do that something. On Monday, September 13, 1501, he started work on David. He completed it between January and June in 1504. I wonder if he would think it was finished, and then a few days later decide something needed tweaked or polished.

As the statue neared completion, the Operai had to decide what to do with it: It was clear that the massive size of the piece would prevent it from being installed on any roofline. After much deliberation, it was installed next to the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence’s town hall), where it stood for over 300 years before being granted a cushy retirement in the Accademia. Instead of representing a religious prophet, this David came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties. I find that interesting. I like it.

David at Dark: A replica of Michelangelo’s David in Piazzale Michelangelo.

My View of David

I noted the extra-large hands, particularly the right one, the veins in the hand, the tendons in the neck, the furrowed brow, and other details observed and discussed by others. My favorite view was from the right side (David’s left), looking at his face and expression. People discuss the look they see on his face, in his eyes. Barb sees at least a hint of arrogance in those eyes. I see a hint of fear and trepidation, perhaps confusion or uncertainty.

Part of me thinks it’s fun to “read into” the statue, to give it a story: Some people claim that this is David before he slayed Goliath because had it been afterward, he would have been portrayed with Goliath’s head, as was done in earlier representations. As if that were a rule. I didn’t know this story until after I’d seen the statue, but it fits with the feeling I saw in David’s eyes, so I can get on board this idea.

Giving the statue such a story is all well and good provided we don’t lose sight of the fact that we’re making it up. While I think it’s valid that viewers bring their own perspective and understanding to a statue, painting, work of literature, etc., I think the artist’s story for the piece trumps all viewers’ stories. It’s always bothered me when a reviewer insists his/her ideas about a book or movie or whatever are right, particularly when the author/artist doesn’t address the idea or (let’s be honest) when I don’t agree. And I think these reviews are sometimes (often?) taken too seriously, given too much weight or value, often in the name of education. I wonder what story Michelangelo gave David. Is there any record of this?

On the back of the statue are itty-bitty wires and bits of paper marking cracks in the marble and sensing tiny vibrations and changes in the material. The health of David is being carefully monitored so interventions can be initiated before serious problems arise. This is an elite statue being given elite healthcare. There are other fine statues out there, statues that are, arguably, as good as this one, but they have not been given this elite status and treatment. Why? Dumb luck, I say.

Somewhere along the line Michelangelo and his work were plucked from the artist soup and given a spotlight, not unlike today’s celebrities. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve the attention and credit—I’m a fan—but for every celebrity we know, I wonder who else might be similarly worthy of our attention but not getting it because s/he never got out of the soup. Part of why you and I know David is because it has been singled out by others, promoted, and protected. Maybe there was once an even better sculpture that didn’t have extra large hands made by someone else, but we don’t know about it because it was left out in the weather and deteriorated. So while I enjoy David, I want to also give a nod to unknown sculptures and sculptors.

Naked male mannequin in Venice shop window.

You’ve seen the David, now see the Ken. Okay, it’s really just a naked mannequin in a store window in Venice, but it stood like that for a couple of days, as though it were on display like David. Lexi and I laughed when Barb dubbed it “The Ken.”

Beyond David

The hall leading up to David contains Michelangelo’s Quattro Prigioni, the Four Prisoners, sculpted between 1521 and 1523. They were intended to decorate the tomb of Pope Julius II, and I’m very curious as to why Michelangelo chose this theme for the Pope. Does anyone else think it an odd choice for a pope’s tomb?

Nonetheless, I love the sculptures, probably more than David. The statues appear incomplete. Whether they are or aren’t is up for debate, I understand, but I want to think they are exactly as Michelangelo intended, i.e., that they are as complete as he wanted them to be. As they are, these prisoners are struggling to free themselves from the rock. They’re imprisoned in the rock.

Michelangelo, like many sculptors, thought there were figures inside the rocks, and he just removed what wasn’t supposed to be there. He didn’t choose what was there; he merely exposed it. So this concept of prisoners trying to escape the rocks seems like something he would have tried to convey. Mind you, I don’t cotton to this concept. I mean, he set out to sculpt David; he didn’t just start chiseling and discover David there. But I think I understand the feeling that is at the root of this concept, so I won’t quibble. Much.

Now, sure, someone could sculpt four figures and call them Quattro Prigioni, but how much more interesting it is to have them crawling out of the rocks. It’s this idea behind the sculptures that I especially like, and why I like these more than David. The idea behind David is pretty straightforward and, well, you know…not so interesting.

Pugi and Spedale degli Innocenti

From the Accademia, we went to a bakery called “Pugi” for frittelle di riso (rice fritters), but, sigh, they only make those on the weekend. Or that’s what I think the woman said; she said it in Italian. We got some schiacciata instead (focaccia with olive oil and salt on top). It wasn’t as good as the schiacciata we got with Lexi from the Mercato Centrale, but it was far from bad.

We had lunch looking across the piazza at Spedale degli Innocenti. This “hospital” (spedale) opened in 1444 and was the first orphanage in Europe. There was a sort of lazy susan outside where mothers could anonymously place their babies, spin them inside, ring a bell, and have the child admitted to the orphanage. What a kind and generous service. Really. I think part of the building is still an orphanage today, but part is being renovated as a museum. Maybe it’s an effort to raise money for the orphanage. Or maybe I’m making all that up.

Brunelleschi designed the building, but apparently it didn’t make much of an impression on us because none of us took any pictures of it. Mike did take a picture of the rather frightening fountain statue in the piazza, though. Do you suppose they were trying to scare the children in the orphanage?

Scowling, winged, monkey-like sea creatures.

The fountain in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata outside Spedale degli Innocenti.

Santa Maria Novella

Next on the agenda was the church of Santa Maria Novella, one of Barb’s favorite places in Florence.

The black-and-white facade of Santa Maria Novella. No wonder it’s one of Barb’s favorites. There are plenty of patterns and designs to keep me interested, too.

The altar is a sort of cathedral inside a cathedral.

An altar that looks like a miniature cathedral.

The altar is a miniature cathedral. Cool! The details are spectacular. And look at the wall-to-wall-to-ceiling frescoes behind the altar.

The Rest

We did another lap around Il Duomo, dawdling in front of Ghiberti’s 21-years-in-the-making bronze baptistry doors (well, replicas of them), identifying the stories depicted by each panel and noting details. Nope, that didn’t annoy the many people who also wanted to see the doors.

Mike was pretty museumed out by now, and I was, too (Barb’s museum appetite is seemingly insatiable), but I pushed to see a bit of the Bargello, which has “Italy’s finest collection of Renaissance sculpture,” because this was the Firenze Finale. We meandered through several rooms of sculptures and a room of ivory miniatures, another of Barb’s favorite things.

When the Bargello kicked us (and everyone else) out, we made our way to Lexi’s gelateria (the one near her apartment) and celebrated another long day of walking and sightseeing. It’s good gelato.

San Galgano e Siena

Posted by Jen Italy, Travel

Apr 232013

Day 26 – San Galgano e Siena

Daily Wrap-Up

One Word

Barb: Outsized

Mike: Views

Jen: Gullible

Two Words

Barb: Beehive church

Mike: Winding roads

Jen: Pear ravioli

Three or Four Words

Barb: Sword in the stone

Mike: Another fabulous tower view

Jen: Saint Catherine’s head

One Sentence

Barb: Siena’s a great town—too bad a million other people think so too.

Mike: What a shock it was to go from the pastoral peace of San Galgano to the madness of Midday Siena.

Jen: Italy must be hollow after extracting so much stone for 2,000 years.

Our day began with a lovely country drive to San Galgano.

Galgano (1148-81) was a knight who renounced war and the material world and turned to God, becoming a hermit and living in a hut on a hill in a remote area. In declaring his intent to give up fighting in wars, he struck his sword against a rock, and the rock “swallowed” the sword. Galgano saw this as a sign of God’s approval.

A humble, beehive-shaped chapel was built here where Galgano lived in his hut, and in this church is Galgano’s sword, still stuck in the rock.

The exterior of the chapel at Montesiepi

San Galgano: The Chapel at Montesiepi. See the stripes on the outside of the circular part of the building? These are repeated inside. It’s lovely!

The embedded sword under a plexiglass dome.

San Galgano’s sword embedded in a rock, on display in the chapel in Montesiepi under a plexiglass dome.

In 1218, Cistercian monks built an abbey in the valley below the hill where this chapel stands.The monks avoided contact with the outside world, devoting themselves to prayer, poverty, and hard work, cutting and selling wood from the surrounding forest. Their hard work and frugal living led to unexpected wealth which led to corruption and the decline and eventual dissolution of the abbey. The building now stands in ruins.

Abbey ruins and the chapel in the background.

The abbey ruins stand in the foreground with the chapel at Montesiepi in the background on the hill where Galgano lived as a hermit.

The back of the Abbey.

We left our peaceful morning in the country there in the country where it belongs and entered the mayhem that is midday in the city of Siena.

Dear Siena,
Build a *%$#*! parking garage already!

I’m afraid I did not make the mental shift required to fully appreciate what Siena has to offer. The traffic, lame signage, and the need to circle the square half a dozen times as if we were in the Indy 500 rather than merely looking for an open parking space did not help me want to tolerate the crowds we had to contend with on foot. Once again, hats off to Barb for her even temper and speedy processing of city stimuli. She whipped our car into a just-vacated parking space before Mike or I registered it as a parking space, let alone an empty parking space.

We headed straight for the Palazzo Pubblico in the Piazza del Campo. This Gothic town hall has the second-highest medieval tower ever built in Italy, Torre del Mangia.

The Palazzo Pubblico (town hall) in Siena.

Nothing like a bird’s-eye view from a tall tower to put things in perspective, right? So what do you say we climb it? Signs were poor and information lacking, but we found a line and stood in it. It worked.

Looking up the tower stairs at Torre del Mangia in Siena. I love this picture.

The views from the top were, as we have all come to expect, grand.

Siena from the top of Torre del Mangia. See the long wall out there?

Huh. Maybe all those nobles in San Gimignano built towers so they could have views like this. Maybe the towers weren’t for safety at all.

The tops of Siena's Duomo and campanile.

Siena’s Duomo as seen from the Torre del Mangia.

Siena’s Duomo, built between 1136 and 1382, was the next stop. It is a fine cathedral, but after rival Florence built Il Duomo, the people of Siena decided their cathedral was too small. It was, after all, smaller than Brunelleschi’s Duomo, and that simply wouldn’t do. They decided to alter their cathedral, adding a new ginormous nave that would outsize Il Duomo. One of the long walls and the facade were built, and then the plague of 1348 hit, halving Siena’s population and devastating the economy. The project ended there, and Il Duomo in Florence outsizes Siena’s still-fine cathedral.

Siena’s perfectly respectable, not at all inadequate Duomo.

Barb and I studied and contemplated exterior details while Mike took pictures. The details were stunning in their number and quality. I saw nothing to criticize, yet I recognized that I didn’t love this exterior the way I loved others. These delightful carvings just weren’t registering as high on my Wow scale.

Exquisite details on the exterior of Siena’s Duomo. There’s lots to love here.

When I shared this with Mike he immediately said, “Well, you know why, don’t you?”

I confess I didn’t.

“There’s no color; it’s all white.”

I do believe he hit the nail on the head. So you see, medieval Sienese people, it’s not size that’s lacking, it’s color.

But that is only on the outside. There is plenty of color on the inside, particularly in the frescoes in the Piccolomini Library that tell the story of Pope Pius II’s life. Here is where we found Lexi’s “sassy cherubs,” images that tickled her no end when she visited with her class earlier this year. She posted a picture of these very cherubs on her own blog. They are sassy, aren’t they? And they are all over this room, always in sassy poses.

Sassy cherubs in the Piccolomini Library in Siena’s Duomo.

The cathedral was stripey with a heavenly blue ceiling dotted with gold stars.

Striped pillars and a blue, starry ceiling.

Vibrant stripes and a blue ceiling with gold stars create a colorful backdrop for paintings, carvings, and statues.

The last stop on our way back to the car was San Domenico, the church where St. Catherine’s head is preserved and displayed. We saw her foot in Venice and thought it was fitting to make an effort to see her head, too.

The austere exterior of San Domenico in Siena.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside (sorry, no mummified saint’s head for you), but I suspect this church’s reason for the rule is unique: Unlike every other church we’ve seen in Italy, including tiny ones with nothing to boast about but perhaps a single painting, the interior of this church is just plain ugly. In addition to being boring, the architecture is sloppy and off. Two arches are set on the left two-thirds of a wall. The third arch is…what?…missing? Did they run out of money? Time? That can’t possibly be a design choice. Why aren’t the two arches centered or spaced evenly somehow? A circular window is centered in the wall but looks random in relation to the arches.

The decorations are all over the map in terms of style, a little baroque here, a little something else there. There is either too much decoration or too little, take your pick. Poor Saint Catherine. She deserves better.

Next stop: Florence. We had a date to meet Lexi for dinner. Finally, we went out to dinner! We expected to eat out more than we’ve been doing, but it’s never convenient, and it’s never a priority. However, Lexi was introduced to a restaurant when she first arrived, and she wanted to share it with us. We needed the motivation and direction she provided.

We ordered several dishes from each of the course menus—antipasti, primi, secondi—and shared. The highlight was, as Lexi promised, the pear ravioli. Mmmmmmm! Sweet mashed pear mixture inside the ravioli, topped with a gorgonzola sauce. Delish!

Lexi and I also shared some smoked swordfish that was thinly sliced and cold, like lunch meat. It was part of a salad with arugula and pine nuts. Not what I expected, but yummy. Mike and Barb each got a pork dish, and Mike got a mountain of spaghetti carbonara.

For desert, we went to the gelateria near Lexi’s apartment to confirm that it does, in fact, provide top-shelf gelato. It does.

I failed to get pictures of the food, but we got some nice shots of nighttime Florence. We’re not out much at night, so it was especially nice to walk about after dark.

Il Duomo and the Arno River illuminated at night

Nighttime Florence.

Monteriggioni e San Gimignano

Posted by Jen Italy, Travel

Apr 222013

Day 25 – Monteriggioni e San Gimignano

Daily Wrap-Up

One Word

Barb: Walls

Mike: Looming

Jen: Fog

Two Words

Barb: Medieval stones

Mike: Serendipitous drive

Jen: Award-winning gelato

Three or Four Words

Barb: Another cool scenic drive

Mike: Hill town skyscrapers

Jen: Step in time

One Sentence

Barb: Love those Collegiata fresco cycles.

Mike: I think there may be more towers in San Gimignano than there are representations of the Madonna and child.

Jen: The road between San Gimignano and 439D beats the heck out of the autostrade.

It’s back to hilltowns today, another of my favorite things here in Italy.

Monteriggioni

Monteriggioni, built in 1203 to guard Siena’s northern border, is the poster child for hilltowns, often photographed from the air, perhaps because it fits easily into a frame while showing enough details to make the image interesting and inviting. It’s a teeny-tiny place with all of three roads. We walked them all plus an informal path outside the wall. We might have walked on top of the wall, but this adventure is closed on Tuesdays, which is when we happened to be there. Once again, we find the unpredictable closing days/times inconvenient.

A Google image search for “Monteriggioni” returned this. Five of the top six images are aerial shots.

Some interesting tidbits I noted about the town are as follows:

Dante compared the towers on the wall here to the titans guarding hell.
The church we popped into had music playing. I wish more churches had music playing while we visited.
It seems to be an artist community. Among other things, there was a hand loom workshop and a shoemaker.
There is a large green swath between interior buildings and the wall, and this provides lovely, productive garden space for residents. I’m surprised more hilltowns don’t have a green space between the wall and interior buildings.

Stairs with pots of flowers and greenery on every step.

Stairway to Home in Monteriggioni.

Tiny ridges in the cobblestone road divert water to the outer edges.

Look how they divert water on the sloped entrance. Pretty and practical.

San Gimignano

San Gimignano is famous for its towers. Not towers that line the protective walls or towers on a grand castle but private towers built hither and thither through the town by noble families for personal protection, perhaps from rival noble families within town walls; I’m not sure. There used to be many more than the thirteen that remain today.

We were waiting and hoping for a sunny, blue-sky day, but we’re running out of days. I have to say, I rather like the way the towers loom in the fog, playing hide-and-seek.

Towers loom in the fog in San Gimignano.

We visited the Collegiata, an 11th-century church with wall-to-wall-to-ceiling frescoes of the Old Testament and Jesus’ life. I was pleased with how many of the stories I could identify—I’ve come a long way! And there was a giant painting of Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows.

Sebastian’s story goes something like this: He was serving in the guard under Diocletian, who was anti-Christian. Sebastian, however, was a stalwart Christian, and he went about encouraging and supporting other Christians, performing miracles, and making new Christians.

As you might guess, this displeased Diocletian when he found out about it. He ordered Sebastian taken out in a field, tied to a tree, and shot with arrows.

Soldiers executed the order and left Sebastian for dead.

But Sebastian did not die. Irene of Rome (also destined to become a saint) went to bury his body and found he was still alive, so she took him home and healed him.

You might think Sebastian would have learned something from the arrow incident, but apparently not. Sebastian later stood on a step and harangued Diocletian as he passed by. This time, Diocletian had Sebastian clubbed to death, and it took. The end.

I found one! This is from our day in Lucca, but it’s a painting with Saints Rocco and Sebastian. Rocco, he’s the guy with his robe up and pants down; Sebastian is the guy holding the arrow. More often than not, Sebastian has arrows piercing him, but I haven’t found such an image in our collection. We weren’t allowed to take pics in the Collegiata today.

Despite the cold temperature, we were compelled to get gelato because we discovered a shop in the Piazza della Cisterna that is owned by a Gelato World Champion. I am not making this up. How Barb and Mike missed this in the guide books is beyond me, but it seemed to surprise them as much as it surprised me.

I had caramel and passionfruit—a dreadful combination but individually delicious. I will not argue with their World Champion status. The Pisa gelato is a close second, and Lexi’s shop is a respectable third in my ranking to date.

Stuffed wild boars adorn the doorway of a shop in San Gimignano.

I don’ t have any World Champion Gelato pictures, but I do have these nice close-ups of stuffed cinghiales. We saw live ones a few nights ago, and I can connect these to the gelato theme by saying we’re making pigs of ourselves by indulging in daily gelato. See? It works.

Pisa

Posted by Jen Italy, Travel

Apr 202013

Day 24 – Pisa

Daily Wrap-Up

One Word

Barb: Gelatolicious!

Mike: Oops!

Jen: Enna-me! (“Look at me” in baby-Brett speak.)

Two Words

Barb: Treed avenues

Mike: Forecast schmorecast

Jen: Wonky perspective

Three or Four Words

Barb: Out of whack

Mike: Cliched, disruptive posing

Jen: Campanile or campa-lean-eh?

One Sentence

Barb: Despite the crowds, there’s something singularly beautiful about Pisa’s Campo dei Miracoli.

Mike: You drive through the cluttered, nondescript outskirts of a small city, past billboards and gas stations, park along an old, bumpy, buckled road, get out and look up, and there’s the actual Leaning Tower of Pisa, about which you’ve heard and read so much.

Jen: We might have saved 1.20 euros and a trip to the car if we could read the parking signs.

“The Leaning Tower of Pisa.” That’s a descriptive name, no? I mean, you know what you’re going to see when you visit the site, right? And we’ve all heard about the leaning tower. So I thought I knew what I was in for. I was wrong. I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting it to lean that much, and I hadn’t really considered the tower (campanile) as part of a baptistry/cathedral/campanile whole. It’s a lovely white marble medieval ensemble set in a green grassy field.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa and the cathedral at Campo dei Miracoli.

Tower construction began in 1173, and the base began to sink while the second level was being built. The problem? A measly three-meter-thick foundation set into unstable silty soil. Construction stopped for nearly a century while Pisa battled Genoa, Lucca, and Florence.

In 1272, with architects and builders a hundred years wiser and more experienced and the ground 100 years more settled, construction resumed. Upper floors were built with one side taller than the other to compensate for the lean. Because of this, the tower is actually curved, but this is very hard to discern. I could imagine I noticed it, but I’m not sure I believe me. Twelve years later, construction was again halted when Genoa defeated Pisa. I’m not sure when construction started again, but the tower is said to have been completed in 1350.

In 1964, the Italian government sought international help to prevent the still-sinking tower from toppling. However, they wanted to retain the tilt because it was vital in drawing tourists to Pisa. An international group of engineers, mathematicians, and historians convened to brainstorm ideas for stabilizing the tower.

After more than two decades of study, deliberation, and thumb-twiddling, the tower was closed to the public in 1990 and corrective reconstruction began. Upon reopening in 2001, experts declared the tower would remain stable for the next 300 years. In 2008, after more reconstruction (ahem), experts declared the tower would remain stable for the next 200 years. I’ll leave it up to you whether you want to believe them or not. I’m skeptical.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Does anyone else think “birthday cake” when looking at this? It’s the layers and the lean, I imagine. (The secret about my more-often-than-not lopsided cakes is out, I guess.)

Today was some sort of civic holiday in Pisa. There was a small parade of people dressed in medieval garb playing trumpets and drums, marching about the piazza and into the cathedral, and performing some sort of ceremony. We never learned what the occasion was, probably because we did everything we could to avoid the crowd gathered around the festivities.

We did climb the tower (taking our chances) for a wonderful bird’s-eye view of Pisa and the surrounding area. Climbing the tilted tower was an exercise in wonky perspective. On one side, you go downhill while climbing uphill, and on the uphill side, the uphill stairs are especially steep. The stairs are worn in different places (on the outer edge, on the inner edge) according to where one is in the lean. Hundreds of years of being climbed by millions of tourists mean the steps are quite worn. Galileo is said to have climbed these very steps, even to have dropped some objects from the top as part of his experiments on the velocity of falling objects.

Check out the picture below—and appreciate it because I got very dizzy taking three of these images while climbing. Notice how the step is worn under Mike’s foot, then notice how the steps above and below him are worn. As Mike’s going up, the steps are worn more and more to the outside because that’s the direction of the lean. On the opposite side of the spiral, the stairs are worn on the inner edge. Neat, eh?

The wear on the steps shows the tilt of the tower.

Of course, the view from the top was spectacular. I appreciate how the powers that be keep visitors off the grass so the white marble buildings have a vivid and lush contrasting base. The red roof tiles have been removed from most of the baptistry and cathedral. I wonder if they plan to replace them. I vote yes, replace them. I like how they also contrast with the white marble.

Campo dei Miracoli, green grass around the cathedral and baptistry.

The green, green grass in the Campo dei Miracoli. That’s the cathedral and the baptistry and the city beyond.

You can see a tiny bit of the civic ceremony on the left side of this photo of the city of Pisa.

The city of Pisa.

The circular baptistry—the largest baptistry in Italy—is said to have perfect acoustics, and every hour the park service plays a recording of some tones to prove the truth of this claim. We heard them. They sounded good to me. As always, what I liked best were some colorful mosaics.

Mosaic floor pattern in the Pisa baptistry

Part of the baptistry floor. I love this crazy pattern. Um…can we call it a pattern?

Then there is the cathedral which by all accounts gets short shrift. It has every right to be grumpy—it was supposed to be the star attraction—but it remains quietly cheerful and beautiful, not at all resentful.

The cathedral at Campo dei Miracoli in Pisa.

The interior had lovely and interesting paintings, patterns, stories, mosaics, carvings, statues, and more.

Inside the duomo at Pisa.

We were inspired to try some proprietor-made gelato at a nearby shop and discovered it to be some of the best we’ve had to date. Mike initially passed on the treat, but he was persuaded to get some after Barb and I raved about it.

We ventured a short way into the city to see Santa Maria della Spina, which sits all by itself along the Arno River. It reminded us of Charles Dickens’ description of Scrooge’s apartment building in A Christmas Carol:

They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.

This little church had clearly gotten lost while playing hide-and-seek. It was closed, and judging from the puddle we saw on the floor when we peeked through a window, I suspect it’s not currently in use.

Santa Maria della Spina sits alone by the Arno River. All the other buildings are on the opposite side of the road.

Lucca

Posted by Jen Italy, Travel

Apr 192013

Day 23 – Lucca

Daily Wrap-Up

One Word

Barb: Romanesque

Mike: Ramparts

Jen: Bicycles

Two Words

Barb: Exuberant facades

Mike: Tree-topped tower

Jen: Palm olives

Three or Four Words

Barb: Leisurely day in Lucca

Mike: Park on a wall

Jen: Cozy, bright, roof-top gardens

One Sentence

Barb: These bird’s-eye views out over cities from towers and domes sure are fun.

Mike: Sure, large tour groups in small streets are bad, but we can make them worse: Put the people on bikes so they go faster and take up more space!

Jen: Pastries after breakfast + biscuits after lunch + a gelato snack + cookies after dinner = a yummy day.

Torre dei Guinigi in Lucca

Ahhh. We slept in…but were still up by 7:00 a.m. One gets used to getting up early. The forecast wasn’t great for the day, so we decided to stay in Lucca and get to know our host town. This way, if it started to rain, we could dash back to our comfy, dry home. (Mike’s positive attitude and good humor are made of sugar and dissolve in rain.) It’s also Palm Sunday, and many things aren’t open on Sundays, let alone a special Sunday.

Our first stop was Torre dei Guinigi, the tree-topped tower just a few steps down the via from our flat. The kid selling tickets politely grinned at my effort to speak Italian, so I liked him right off the bat. Few people were out and about, so we had to share the small tower top with just a handful of people, none of whom stayed very long.

The view of Lucca from tree-topped Torre dei Guinigi.

We got our bearings and enjoyed the view at our leisure.

Looking down on Via Santa Andrea from Torre dei Guinigi

Our street: Via Santa Andrea. People walk it and cars drive it.

One of the things I pay particular attention to when we have these bird’s-eye views is the rooftop gardens, some of the only (relatively) private, green, open-sky places in these close quarters, little oases of fresh air and nature. It’s barely spring, so flowers aren’t blooming, but many have green things growing and are decked out in cozy garden furniture.

If we were to return to Italy for an extended stay, I would try very hard to find a top-floor flat with a rooftop garden/terrace.

A cozy, open-sky rooftop garden in Lucca.

We enjoyed a walking tour of Lucca that was outlined in one of our guide books. One of my favorite points of interest was San Michele in Foro, St. Michael’s church which was built between the 11th and 14th centuries on the site of an old Roman forum (“in Foro”). It’s described as “Pisan-Romanesque,” but I barely know what makes something “Romanesque”, and I have no idea what “Pisan” indicates. I can tell you, though, that the facade has three tiers of twisted or carved pillars, all of which are different, and the majority of symbols and decorations are pagan rather than Christian. Delightful!

Wide angle view of San Michele in Foro with its campanile

The Piazza San Michele is small. It was hard to get enough distance from the church to get a wide angle shot of the entire church with its campanile.

San Michele in Foro. All of these pillars are different; the details are wonderful. That’s winged St. Michael on top.

Two pillars and some details on San Michele.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the details on San Michele. See the carved spiral pillar? The animal motifs? And this is just a tiny section of the facade.

We saw the house in which Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924), composer of La Boheme and other operas, was born, and we visited several other churches. We popped into what turned out to be a Russian Orthodox church where something like baptisms seemed to be taking place. Members knelt in front of the minister, and he draped his sash over their heads. We got gelato in the Anfiteatro Romano which is now the Piazza del Mercato. I’m curious about the spelling: instead of “amphitheatro” it’s “anfiteatro.” As the name indicates, this used to be a Roman amphitheater, but then it was filled with slum housing until a ruler ordered the area cleared out in 1830. The oval shape and original purpose, which had been forgotten, was then rediscovered, and the arena was made a shopping area.

Anfiteatro Romano, Piazza del Mercato. Once a Roman amphitheater, this is now an oval-shaped square ringed with shops.

We ended our Lucca tour with a walk along the ramparts. It was a nice, calm, relaxing day, still loaded with exploration and discovery.

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