Bologna

We were really looking forward to Bologna. Chris and Tim have sung its praises and by and large we weren't disappointed. After we arrived we went straight to the main piazza, where this building greeted us.

It is the unfinished main cathedral (maybe). Here you can easily see what I mentioned in earlier posts about the underlying structure of a building versus its facade. We read/heard conflicting stories about this structure. It is different from other cathedrals in that its orientation is north/south rather than the traditional east/west. It is not the cathedral of Bologna, even though it occupies the center of the city. We took a walking tour of Bologna to get our bearings and the guide told us that the city's intention was to build the largest church in the world--even larger than St. Peter's in Rome. When the pope got wind of this, he made the city stop building--thus the unfinished look. The building wasn't consecrated as a church until the 20th century. Add that to the improper orientation and it's hard to figure out exactly what the city had in mind.

Bologna (and the whole of Emilia-Romagna) is a culinary paradise. This the home of parmesan cheese, Parma ham, basalmic vinegar and a host of other famous Italian eats. We learned very quickly that Americans don't know beans about ham. Most of us think of prosciutto as a special kind of Italian ham, but proscuitto simply means "ham." What we buy as prosciutto here is actually prosciutto crudo or cured raw ham. Cooked ham, like we eat on sandwiches is prosciutto cotto. Both are better in Italy than anywhere else. Parmesan cheese is also different in Italy. What we get in the green cardboard container to sprinkle on spaghetti is what has gotten too old for anything else.

There are whole streets in Bologna dedicated to food. Here are some typical shots. Fruit, meat, cheese and ham. Add some pasta and wine and you have all the food groups you need.

 

While Bologna wasn't as pretty or as architecturally interesting as Florence, there were a lot of nice shots of the city. Here are just a few I picked out. 

 

According to our guide, this guy is an economics student at the University of Bologna. We thought he was early to a Halloween party.

Susan really proved her mettle in Bologna. There is a really famous church just outside town on a hill that overlooks the city. We were told that the views were fabulous. We set out by city bus to see for ourselves. Unfortunately Craig misread the shuttle bus schedule and we arrived an hour and a half after the last bus of the morning and two hours before the next one. We decided to walk. After all, Chris and Tim walked up (the long way) why shouldn't we be able to manage the direct route? The answer--30 extra years. Actually we made it in good shape, just before the shuttle bus arrived. We rode down. Here's a picture of Susan on this long march, showing only a fraction of the flatter portion of the climb. Talk about a vanishing point!

The views were spectacular.

The inside of the church was pretty neat, too. Here is what the floor looked like.

One of the most interesting churches we saw on the trip was Santo Stefano in Bologna. It is actually four to seven separate churches melded together on the same site. the oldest dates from the 8th century (but it is built on top of a 4th century pagan temple). You can actually see some of the archeological work as you go through the church. It's like a rabbit warren inside, but very beautiful. Unfortunately, photos were not allowed inside (and I hadn't yet adopted the Italian practice of simply ignoring the prohibition). Here are some exterior shots and shot of a very pretty little courtyard in the middle of all the churches.

From Bologna, we took a day trip to Modena and Parma. I didn't really take any noteworthy pictures in either town, but the trip was very enjoyable. We went to Modena with the express purpose of buying some basalmic vinegar for me and Tim. After comparing notes, it turns out that we ended up in the same store that they visited when they were last in Modena. It is run by a little old guy who apparently deals frequently with American tourists looking to purchase basalmic vinegar. He sells two kinds--"salad" and "no salad." The no salad kind is the prime version that is eaten on cheese, beef and, believe it or not, on ice cream. We were looking for the "no salad" kind and he had just the thing for us. We haven't tried it on ice cream yet. We'll see how it goes with Blue Bell homemade vanilla.

Next up: Amazing Venice.

Hill Towns of Tuscany

Part of the plan for our trip to Italy was to take some side trips out of the major cities we visited. From Florence we particularly wanted to get out to San Gimignano and Sienna. We found a bus tour that hit those two cities and also Piensa and Montepulciano, plus a winery tasting visit. If that sounds like a lot for one day, it turns out it was.

Tuscany is dotted with hill towns. Here is one closer to Florence that I shot before the weather turned overcast.

The Tuscan countryside is very pretty with lots of farms, vineyards, olive groves, etc.

San Gimignano is also called the "tower city" because it once was the site of a medieval tower building competition. Every wealthy family tried to outdo its neighbor by building a more impressive tower house. Most of them are gone now, but there is still an impressive collection remaining. There was a lot of nice architecture in the town. Here are a few samples.

 

We didn't get nearly as much time in San Gimignano as we would have liked--there were a lot of interesting shops and cafes--because of some troublesome traveling companions. It would be a nice place to make a return visit. A pity it is so hard to get to.

The next stop was Sienna (made famous in the last James Bond movie). We had a local guide there, so we were able to get a bit more flavor of the city. Sienna is a very old town--it predates Rome--and has interesting traditions. Sienna is made up of 17 distinct neighborhoods. They are towns within the town and very competitive. The competition is at its highest during the summer when the city is the site of two horse races around the central piazza, which in Sienna is called the Campo. As you move through the city, you can tell when you pass from one neighborhood to another by the decorations and the flags. The picture below left is of a street corner where two neighborhoods meet. The one on the right is the display of the flags of all 17 neighborhoods in the piazza in front of the cathedral.

The streets in Sienna tended to be very steep and usually narrow, but also picturesque.

Remember the building supports from Florence? Sienna has similar features, except that they fill a dual purpose. Sienna (as well as a number of of other Tuscan towns) was rife with rivalry between warring factions and always threatened by outsiders (remember the Medici?). The supports in the picture below also served as passageways between allied houses when it was too dangerous to use the streets.

We thought that the Cathedral in Sienna was very pretty. We saw only the outside, because we didn't have time to go in. Plus we were there just after lunch and a lot of places close down for about three hours beginning at noon.

Our next stop after Sienna was Piensa. Along the way, we passed a famous grove of cedars that is often seen on postcards of Tuscany. Turns out my camera takes decent pictures from a bus going 80kph.

Piensa is known for producing popes. The church has a carving that everyone who has seen "Angels and Demons" will recognize--the crossed keys of the papacy.

Piensa might have been the prettiest of all the towns we visited in Tuscany. The problem was that it was clogged with tourists. The lower floor of every building on the main street was turned into shops. I still managed some nice shots.

Our last stop was Montepulciano. It was not a good "last stop." Montepulciano has the steepest streets of any town we visited during our trip. It is known mainly for the wine produced nearby, which is regarded as one of the world's great red wines. The winery we visited wasn't that impressive, although the wines were decent. Here are some shots of the city, including a nice urban garden.

There were flowers everywhere in Italy and that made for some nice shots of stone walls with color.

On the way back, we were treated to this sunset.

Next up: Bologna.

Florence

It hasn't been easy getting started with a blog about our trip to Italy. I took so many pictures that it's hard to figure out what to post. These are pictures of Florence, our first stop in Italy. I think it was my favorite stop, although I liked the whole trip very much and some things turned out to be a surprise. I'm going to narrate our visit and point out some things we liked and try to give a flavor of what we saw.

Speaking of favorites, one of mine is gelato--the only frozen treat that might be better than Blue Bell ice cream. This is what it looks like first thing in the morning:

One of the first things we saw in Florence was a carousel in the Piazza della Republica. Where else but Italy would you see a merry-go-round with naked women on it?

A key thing to know about Florence is that it was ruled for centuries by one family: the Medici. You see their crest everywhere in Florence. The six balls make it instantly recognizable. Because the Medici also conquered most of the area surrounding Florence, you also see it in a lot of other cities, too.

One of the most famous sights in Florence is the Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge in Florence (through an agreement between the German defenders and the Allies) that wasn't destroyed during WWII. It started out like all the other bridges in Florence as a simple river crossing, but people expanded it by cantilevering shops out over the sides of the bridge. That's why it looks like it's enclosed. It is, in fact, enclosed but that's only part of the reason why. If you look at the top of the bridge, you can see a series of windows across its length . If you look at the bottom right of the photo, you can see what looks like a long narrow roof. Both features are part of a two kilometer long passageway created for the Medici so they could go from their palace on the south side of the river to their offices in the Uffizi on the north side without having to mix with the common folk. The passage even goes through a church, so they could attend services in the morning on their way to work. Before the passage was built, the shops on the bridge made up the town fish market. The Medicis didn't like the smell, so they moved the fish market out and the goldsmiths in. The second photo is of the goldsmiths' shops all locked down. We toured the bridge on a holiday, so they were closed.

I've got a lot of architectural shots that will come later, but this is an interesting one because it is common to all of the medieval towns of northern Italy. The truth of the matter is that the whole place is about to topple over. In a lot of the narrow alleys in Florence, Bologna and Venice, you see supports to keep the buildings from falling over on one another. There are also a lot of iron rods that go all the way through the buildings to keep the walls from falling down. The leaning Tower of Pisa is not an anomaly.

A picture of the most famous resident of Florence.

Actually this is only a copy that occupies the sculpture's original site in front of the City Hall. The original was moved to the Academia some time ago and photography is not allowed there.

The next series of pictures are of the Duomo (Florence's cathedral) and its immediate surroundings. This was the first of the big, famous churches we saw and we were really impressed. However, every town has its cathedral and each of them seems to have at least one outstanding feature. 

The picture below is a detail from the bronze doors on the Baptistry, which faces the Duomo. These doors and the earlier ones on the other sides are the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti, who won the job over a much more famous artist (Fillipo Brunelleschi). The doors pictured here are from 1425 and were described by Michelangelo as worthy of being the "gates to paradise." Most people mark the beginning of the Renaissance from the date Ghiberti was given the commission to build the doors for the Baptistry.

 When Brunelleschi lost the contest to build the doors for the Baptistry, he decamped for Rome to study architecture and came up with a way to finish the dome of the Duomo, a feat that would be a challenge for modern engineers.

A view of the Florence skyline from Piazza Michelangelo on the south side of the river. The Duomo dominates the city.

Here's picture of the nice lady who agreed to tour Italy with me. She was great company. 

Susan thinks I'm fixated on doors. I don't understand why she says that. Here are the only two shots of doors I took during our trip. I think they are very pretty.

Everywhere you look in Florence, there's interesting architecture. Here's one of my favorite shots. It has buildings from both pre- and post-Renaissance.

In some places you get to look behind the buildings to see how they were constructed. If you look closely at this church, you can see on the right side what the building first looked like--unfinished brick. In the front you can see what it looks like after a facade was added. Some buildings never received their facade. The Duomo went for centuries without a permanent facade on the front due to lack of money and arguments over what it should look like. There are many buildings in Florence where the facade is from a completely different period from the rest of the building.

Here are some random shots of things that I thought were pretty or interesting:

Some stained glass.

For you fellow foodies, a fruit market.

The medieval merchants used symbols to indicate what they sold. Here's the one for the woolen merchants (a sheep):

Next up: the Tuscan hill towns. To be continued.