Florence - Modern Art

You might assume Florence is stuck in the Renaissance, and that's mostly true.  The Ufizzi ends in the 16th century.  But there is some cheeky modern art slipped in here and there, plus, I would argue, one  colossal eyesore. 

The monk has a friend. 

At first we thought the art installation above was a real man with face paint.  But he is actually made of wax and superimposed over the statue of a monk.  Next to him is a wax man staring down at his cell phone. Great public art right next to the Palazzo Vecchio and Ufizzi Galleries.  But in the same square is another colossal art installation... 

Not sure what it is, but it's big. 

Imagine chunks of clay stacked in a pile and then covered with duck tape.  Enlarge to enormous proportions several stories high.  Then you will have a good idea of what this piece by Urs Fischer looks like.  It was unveiled in Piazza dell Signoria the Friday of our visit, on September 22, 2017. The local news gushed that  Fischer was "one of the world's greatest artists" (alongside whom? Michelangelo? Da Vinci? Raphael?) and the above sculpture is a "monumental work" that provides a "provocative contrast" between ancient and contemporary art.  See article here.  I agree, it does provide a "provocative contrast" based on the double takes I saw of people passing by in the square.   

Addendum: All of the modern art installations in this piazza turned out to be all by Fischer.  It's just I like some better than others.

Rome - Random Ruins - NOT

Roman temples in the middle of Rome

Important Addendum: Today while touring the Colosseum and Forum with our guide Rosella, we were informed that the "random ruin" we had stumbled upon and pictured above, is less random than we had thought.  In fact, this is the site of the Ides of March.  This is where Brutus and 24 co-conspirators stabbed Caesar to death on March 15 in the year 44.  The actual location of the assassination is under the street in front of me in the photo!  Rosella, with resigned exasperation, told us the Italian government had not managed to finish the excavations.

Another interruption to my travelogue.  We happened across this ongoing excavation while returning from a  trip to the Vatican.  It's the site of four ancient Roman temples that were excavated starting in the 1940s up through 2013. The project is called Largo Argentina, but has nothing to do with the South American country.  The rather cryptic sign board informed me the site once contained a palace owned by a Giovanni Burcardo, a native "Argentoratum," and hence the name. These temples sat under a block of buildings from the Middle Ages that had been demolished.  Mussolini himself interceded on behalf of the architect when they were discovered. So now here they are, amidst the every day hustle of Rome.  The site is fenced off for humans, but a clutter of feral cats was making themselves at home, sunning themselves on the grass between marble columns.  [Additional addendum: Rosella told us a nice old Italian lady takes care of the cats.]

Italian trains

High speed trains at Roma Termini station

I interrupt this travelogue to discuss Italian trains.  We took a series of trains today from Rome to Pompeii, so I feel free to comment.  We started with the pricier leg of the trip, from Rome to Naples, on the Frecciarossia.  This engineering jewel goes up to 300 km an hour (186 mph), and has cushy assigned seats. 

Classy, comfortable interior of Italy's high speed trains.

Before you depart, you can also fortify yourself with an espresso from the self-serve machine.

No time for the caffe? The caffe is dispensed to you. 

 In under ninety minutes, we were in Napoli (Naples).  Then it was time for the local train, specifically the Circumvesuviana.  It's best feature is the price, at just 2 Euros each way.  The cars and stations are covered in graffiti (though I would argue, highly artistic graffiti) and you are cheek to jowl with a mass of humanity. 

Local train station.  Sometimes graffiti covered the station name too.

At least the car windows were open.

One empty seat!  A modern day miracle. 

Florence - A Day of Museums: Ufizzi, Accademia, Museo Dell'Opera

Bronzino's portrait of Lucretia Panchiatichi, ca 1541  

Florence is like the greatest hits of museums.  This makes sense, as it also the birthplace of the Renaissance.  We covered three world class museums in a single day, using our handy Firenze Card.  (As an aside, we managed to exchange our voucher for the Firenze Card next to the Duomo, and were nearly overwhelmed with the crowds.  But the Duomo is another post entirely.)

Cheeky modern art sidles up to ancient art, just outside Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi

After another scrumptious hotel breakfast, we fought the crowds past the Duomo to the Ufizzi, where we had wisely decided on a guided tour.  Even at 8:40 a.m., when we met up with our tour guide Viola, the place was swamped. The Uffizi, which means "offices," contains some of the most important and famous artwork in the world today, but started out as administrative offices for the ruling family of Florence, the de Medicis.  Their palace was just next door.  As you enter the Ufizzi, at the top of an exhausting set of stairs, are a roomful of busts of the great Medicis.  They made up in smarts and philanthropy what they lacked in looks.

One of the less alluring Medicis.  (photo from Rick Steves' blog)

The Ufizzi is in chronological order, so you start in the 13th century and work your way up to the 16th century.  (If you're looking for modern art, this is not the place.) Our guide Viola, a native Florentine with an art history degree, started us with some Madonnas from 1280 to 1310.  Seven hundred years ago, "perspective" was not part of a painting.  Most Madonnas looked like they would slide off the chair they were sitting on, baby Jesus looked very old and wrinkled, the angels were all carbon copies of each other, and the sky was gold, not blue.  (And that gold really is gold.)  Giotto became famous in the early 1300s for doing something new.  The sky was still gold, but there was some depth and perspective. Mary looked tenderly at a baby Jesus that looked more like a baby, and all the angels had personalities.  The artistic revolution continued as we looked at paintings by Lippi, Bronzino, Botticelli, da Vinci, Titian, Michelangelo and Caravaggio.  (The Ufizzi has the only painting created by Michelangelo; all the rest of his art is sculpture and fresco.)

Steven and Betsy and some famous statue in the background

Midday saw us in line for the Accademia, expressly built to house Michelangelo's David. The masterpiece had stood outside for 400 years, but the elements were damaging the marble.  So out of the rain and sun it came, to reside in Florence's second most popular museum.  It's specifically popular because it houses the David, but it also contains unfinished works by Michelangelo, priceless 13th and 14th century paintings, and antique instruments.  Most tourists just give those a passing glance.  Others have described the creation of the David much better than I ever could (see here, including 10 minute video - in Italian!).

Steven stands next to the Gates of Paradise, giving you a sense of scale. 

We then made our way to Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.  This is a quieter museum next to the Duomo, but contains several masterpieces, including one of Michelangelo's last sculptures, La Pieta, and an earthy St. John the Baptist by Donatello.  Both were magnificent, but I found Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" held my attention the longest. The doors are 17 feet tall and weigh three tons. This is the third set of doors that originally graced the Battistero (baptistery) building next to the Duomo.  Once a person was baptized in the baptistery, they would exit through the Porta del Paradiso.  It took Ghiberti 27 years to complete these gates, after he had already spent 21 years working on his first set of doors! 

Detail from the center panel. Ghiberti is on the left. 

The doors depict stories of the Old Testament, with each panel telling multiple stories about the patriarchs in the Old Testament. It is difficult to convey the detail of these castings in a photo, especially now that the original is behind glass.  Suffice it to say that Ghiberti was working with bronze, a material at that time was far more expensive than marble and far more difficult to work with.  It was Michelangelo himself who dubbed them "Gates of Paradise."

Abraham panel.  The binding of Isaac is in the upper right. 

To conclude this post on museums, I couldn't help but include some gore.  Artemisia Gentileschi painted this one, of Judith slaying Holofernes.  Gentileschi was a very successful female Baroque painter who followed Caraveggio in style. 

My head is covering up the spurting blood. 

 

     

Venice - Ca D'oro

The best part of Ca D'oro are the views on to the Grand Canal.

As I may have mentioned, Venice has it's own dialect.  In Venice, "ca" is short for "casa" and signifies a grand residence, inevitably located on the Grand Canal.  We visited one of these grand residences, Ca D'oro, or House of Gold, before we headed off to Florence.  We lingered over breakfast while rain fell outside.  With no break in the rain in sight, we headed out with hood and umbrella.  We discovered that Venice is still charming in the rain and no one seems too bothered by a little precipitation.

View from your own personal dock on the Grand Canal.

We arrived at Ca D'oro, which is now a museum and the site of a vaporetto (ferry) stop, to discover that half the exhibit was under repair.  That suited us, as we had to catch a train to Florence soon enough.  The casa dates from the 15th century and still has strong Gothic lines, but has been restored and modernized over the years. It was donated to the city in 1916.  Though I had initially thought the building was sinking faster than the rest of Venice, the ground floor contains a private dock to the Grand Canal, which I suppose explains why it is underwater.  In the old days, once you docked your gondola, you were ushered into a beautiful patio inlaid with mosaics, and then upstairs to a fine collection of sculpture, paintings, tapestries, and pottery. 

One of the many religious paintings at Ca D'oro.
And yes, all that gold is real.

 

Venice - Jewish ghetto

Steven stands in Campo di Ghetto Nuovo

The term "ghetto" is the poorly translated word for geto, which means "foundry" in Venetian. It was in Venice that the term "ghetto" first became affiliated with Jews.  From the 1516 until Napoleon removed the gates to the ghetto in 1797, Venetian Jews were required to live in a small portion of the city.  They could exit the ghetto during the day, but had to return at night. Guards stationed around the canals made sure they stayed in the ghetto at night.   

We arrived in the Jewish ghetto just as it started to rain, via Calle Gheto Novissimo, a small street that takes you over a smaller bridge into Campo di Ghetto Nuovo.  The campo was a large, irregular shaped square.  On this Monday, an observant Jew and three little boys played ball in the corner. They are likely Jews from the Chabad congregation that has resettled in the area. (I saw in a Wall Street Journal article recently that Judaism is experiencing a small revival in Italy.  However, in Venice, the number of remaining Jews numbered just 450 as of 2016.  And of course, they can now live anywhere they want in the city. )

One of Venice's five synagogues. 

We ducked into the Museo Ebraico, and signed up for a tour.  This is the only way you can see three of the five synagogues located into the ghetto.  The remaining two continue to be used on a regular basis.  A portly elderly gentleman with a strong Venetian accent took us through the three synagogues, all located on second floors.  Each was used by different immigrant groups, including French Jews who spoke a creole dialect of French and Hebrew. The men in our group were asked to don kippot as we entered each synagogue, as a sign of respect.  The predominant color scheme was gold and red, the colors of the city.  Each temple had five windows, representing the five books of the Torah.  But otherwise, each had it's own personality.

Steven stands near Venice's tallest building, back right, 12 stories high. 

And while you would think that Venetian Jews were oppressed, our guide told us Venice was much more tolerant than other cities and drew in more Jews.  Jews were limited to earning their living by banking and doctoring.  And right next to a modern pet food store is the remnants of the Red Bank. There was also the Green Bank and the Black Bank.  Today, all the banks are closed, though Judaica stores and two kosher restaurants remain.  The ghetto also contains the tallest building in Venice, topping out at 12 stories.  When you can't build out, you have to build up. 

After our tour guide locked the door of the last synagogue, he wished us all a L'Shana Tovah, a good new year.  The Jewish New Year officially begins this week.     

Venice - A hearse in the canal

Can you spot the hearse in this photo?  Hint: it's in the foreground.
Venice's hospital is visible on the right. 

A Venetian is never far from a boat.  And in fact, A Venetian's last journey is on a boat, as the cemetery is on an island too.  Steven and I spied this hearse next to the city hospital, as part of an unconventional walking tour of the city, put on by Free Walking Tours of Venice.  (Yes, the walk is absolutely free, but a cash donation at the end is highly encouraged.)  These tours skip the usual stuff and go right for the unusual.

Romana, our guide, in front of the world's most beautiful city hospital. 

Romana, our guide, came to Venice by way of Lithuania, stayed, and married a Venetian.  Now her full time job is as a professional guide.  We weaved in and out of alleys and over bridges and through oddly shaped squares (campi),  learning about platform shoes and backsplash guards and plague masks and how to order a spritzer, among other important facts. We ended our tour near this magnificent hospital, formerly a school named after St. Mark.  It was converted into a military hospital by the Austrians, who kept a clutter of cats in the inner courtyard to consume the rats.  (There was a law that stray cats could not be fed in Venice, to keep them mousing.  Watering cats was permitted however, and small depressions next to cistern spigots in the squares were intended for cat hydration. I should add that I saw only one cat during my stay in Venice, and he looked quite well fed.)

Romana explaining how houses in Venice are repurposed.

Since Venice became a UNESCO world heritage site more than a dozen years ago, you can't really build anything new in Venice, with a few exceptions.  So grand old homes on the Grand Canal become hotels and museums, and schools became hospitals, and this stately old house became a day care program for mentally disabled adults. (We didn't guess that one.)  You'll note that this repurposed house has a house number, as does practically every door in Venice.  But that's a new convention, imposed by Austrians and Germans and French who invaded Venice.  All were appalled at the lack of both house numbers and street names.  Venice hadn't bothered with all that for centuries.  But now every street corner, alley, underground passage and bridge has a freshly scrubbed sign.  I would argue that you can generally get where you want to go.

A gondelier points out where Marco Polo used to live.
Behind him is where Casanova used to live. 

  The great lover Casanova and the great explorer Marco Polo lived a couple blocks from each other in Venice, though several centuries apart.  Romana took us to a little patio next to the foundations of the house Marco Polo lived in after his 25-year journey to the Orient. The "house" of Marco Polo is now a theater, but that doesn't prevent gondoliers from pointing it out as they pass.  What they don't mention is the house behind them is where Giacoma Casanova lived for a time. 

Spriter and snack after the tour. 

 


 

Venice - In pursuit of the narrowest street

I have not found the narrowest street in Venice - yet.  It is purported to be Calleta Varisco, a mere 21 inches wide.  You have to turn sideways to pass on that street!  However, I have done my own testing down the calles of Venice.  There are dozens of street narrow enough that a person can touch both walls at the same time.  See my experimentation below.

Too wide!

Still too wide!

Just right!  (Calle Correr)

Venice - Bridge of Sighs

If Steven was a prisoner, this would be his last view of Venice.

Right next to one of the largest and grandest rooms in all of Europe, where the doges presided, is a back entrance to a number of prison cells.  Prisoners crossed the "Bridge of Sighs" either to a cell or the gallows.  As they crossed the bridge, they had their last view of Venice.  On the day we visited, the sun was shining and the views were wonderful.  We fully understood why this passage has been named the bridge of sighs.

View of Venice from the Bridge of Sighs

Venice - Palazzo Ducale

Betsy tries out the audio guide in the courtyard of Palazzo Ducale 

After we finished our wanderings of the San Polo district, we decided to keep going, following the ubiquitous signs to the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark's Square.  As we did so, the crowds increased to epic proportions.  We were entering the tourist zone. Massive cruise ships and day tours only have time for this section of Venice.

Betsy in front of Basilica San Marco

When you enter the piazza, you are surrounded by tour guides holding up umbrellas and kiosks full of totsches and selfie sticks.  We paused here to admire St. Mark's Basilica, crowned by the symbol of Venice, a lion with a book.  (How wonderful that symbol is -- power and intellect joined.) Then, as we were politely told not to sit on the steps along the square by a Venetian volunteer, we decided we should visit the Palazzo Ducale, the palace and headquarters of the doges, the leaders of  the Venetian Republic for over a thousand years until Napoleon took over.

From C.E. 697 to 1797, the Venetian Republic was governed by doges (dukes), the longest sustained republic anywhere in the world. The doges were elected to their posts, though the process was as complicated as becoming the next pope.  Each doge had to pay his own expenses, so by necessity was always wealthy.  Initially, the doge had great power, but over time, it was more of a ceremonial post.  Nonetheless, the doges are commemorated everywhere in Venice, but most so in the doge's palace.

Some Venetian Censors. 

The palace is like our White House.  Inside its enormous rooms, the business of running Venice transpired. Various councils sat in ornate and enormous chambers, including a chamber of censors, established in 1517.  These censors were actually described as "moral consultants,"  who suppressed electoral fraud.  As there were only two censors at any given time, they could only wield so much power.  Nonetheless, they have their own chamber and their own portraits.

The immense Salai dei Consigli, one of the largest rooms in Europe.

The largest room, and in fact one of the largest rooms in all of Europe, was the chamber where the doge presided, the Sala dei Consigli.  This is a room that makes you gasp when you enter.  It's not just the paintings on every surface but the floor, but the size that overwhelms.  Up to 2,000 counselors would meet with the doge every Sunday to air their grievances, while the doge sat on his dais on one end of the room.  As they complained, they were surrounded by a swirl of paintings depicting Venice's triumphs over the centuries.  In addition, a ribbon of portraits of the 76 doges circles the room, except for one doge.  His face has been obliterated with black paint.  This doge was accused of treason and beheaded.     

Steven in front of assorted Venetian triumphs. 
Note portraits of doges just below the ceiling. 

 Word to the wise: we started our visit at 4 p.m., after the crowds had departed.

Venice - Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa Dei Frari

Basilica of Santa Maria Glorios dei Frari

I'm told it's good to wander in Venice.  So we did.  Our hotel is in the San Polo sistiere (district), so we wandered around San Polo, down its fondamenta* and a few of its calle* and crossed some ponte* and ducked under some sotoportego,* while we admired all the rios.*  And while we were doing all that we came across one of the main attractions of this neighborhood, the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.  It is certainly not as showy as the big headlining Basilica di San Marco, but it is full of surprises.  I guess that shouldn't be surprising, because this church has been around in some form since 1231, when Franciscan monks (friars) first built a convent and church on the land, and a lot can happen in eight hundred years. The present basilica was dedicated in 1492, the same year Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Monument dedicated to Doge Giovanni Pesaro.
He's on the second level, backed by red marble. 

The friar's basilica is best known for its centerpiece of the ascension of Mary, painted by perhaps Venice's most famous painter, Titian, and completed in 1518.  (Titian later died of the plague and is buried in this basilica, with his own grand mausoleum.)  This painting is worthy of pages of prose as the "most precious jewel" of this basilica.  What I was not expecting were all the tributes to the Venetian doges (dukes) that intersperse the images of Mary and Jesus.  Some of that is explained by money.  The doges had a lot of it, and commissioned fabulous altar pieces and monuments.  For example, Doge Giovanni Pesaro spent 12,000 ducats on his monument.  I'm not sure how much that amounted to in 1665, when his monument was dedicated, but I read that it was twice what he gave to the Venetian republic to fight off the Turks.  He is pictured addressing his audience, above two dragons, held up by four suffering Moorish slaves.

*
fondamenta = streets bordering the canals
calle = alley (calleta = extremely narrow alley)
ponte = bridge
sotoportego = underpass connecting alleys, streets and squares, usually created by removing the ground floor of houses
rio = small canal 
(All street names in Venice are in Venetian, now considered a dialect of Italian, but for hundreds of years considered the "lingua franca" of trade, especially in the Mediterranean.) 

Roach science

Samuel, left, confers with his fellow scientists regarding  roach RNA extraction.

I'm interrupting my Italian travelogue to let your know that our house has been invaded by roaches. Luckily, it's not what you think. Our roaches are purely for science, and are contained in bins from which they cannot escape and in which they nibble on fruits and vegetables and roach chow and lead the good life, until they make their final donation for science.

Why the exotic roaches? Samuel and two of his high school friends have concocted an unusual senior project. They hope to determine the RNA sequence of the Costa Rican Yellow Roach.  Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, no one has done that before.  If it works, they hope to publish a paper about it.

How does one extract DNA from a roach?  I am not sure, but I can tell you it doesn't end well for the roach.  You can see the budding scientists in their lab coats working with a donated RNA extraction kit at a certain unnamed lab. The extracted tissue will be sent off to a lab for analysis and then they just wait for the results.  

In the meantime, Samuel and his friends are staying busy with their own nonprofit company, ActivOutreach.  (You're never too young to form your own public benefit corporation, especially if Dad can sign the papers.)  In case you're worried that Samuel is overextending himself, he assures me he is going to slack off majorily his last semester of high school.    

Italian three course meal

Our (unoriginal) route.  Source: Rick Steves website

In two short weeks, Steven and I will celebrate our 25th anniversary in Italy.  Our last expedition without the kids was a 15th anniversary visit to Amsterdam.  But the kids were smaller then, and our youngest is just shy of 18 now.  We will depart unfettered.

I bought a thick travel book on Italy some months ago and found that I wanted to visit every small footprint of land in Italy.  I think that was a combination of the excellence of the guidebook and the richness of the country that is Italy.  It was tough but we finally settled on the "grand tour" of Italy, which consists of its three most visited cities: Rome, Florence and Venice.  We now have several guidebooks on Italy, but I am discovering my favorite is the recent Moon book (published April 2017) called, appropriately enough, Rome, Florence &Venice by Alexei J. Cohen.  Cohen, an American, now lives on the outskirts of Rome with his Italian wife, and writes with tight but beautiful precision about the three cities.