Old stuff, REALLY old stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim and I made a list of things that we still wanted to see in and around Florence. We didn’t want to be in Florence on our last day and realize that there were still six museums still to see but we couldn’t do anything because we had to pack and get everything ready to leave. The list was pretty short. We had been pretty good about making sure we got out every weekend and did something in the area.

Among other things, there were couple of churches on the list. We went to one of the churches and then realized that they were all starting to blend together. Yeah, we have pictures and I’ve been captioning the photos in iPhoto, so in a year I’ll actually know what they are, but really, how many Annunciation of Mary’s can you look at and really appreciate? So we struck the rest of the museums off the list and focused on the rest of it.

The one place that was left was the Fiesole Archeological Park. Fiesole is a small town up on a hill overlooking Florence. The Park is in the guide book, but Rick doesn’t have too many great things to say about it. He implies that it’s overpriced and because few of the signs are in English, not worth the trip. We had run through most everything else in the book and like looking at old things so wanted to give it a try. To get to Fiesole, you take the bus. We just missed one and had to wait for the next.

What’s better when you are waiting than a nice gelato?

Frutti di Bosco is Jim’s favorite. This was pretty good with chunks of berries mixed in. My favorite is Lemon and Strawberry, mixed. YUM!! But when you are done with your gelato, you might need these:

Thankfully, before we could make that impulse buy, the bus to Fiesole showed up. Off to the Archeological Park. Rick, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of it. After four months of churches and other religious sites, this was a nice break.

The ancient Romans LOVED Fiesole. It catches the nice cooling breezes during the summer and has wonderful views of the countryside. The whole area is littered with ruins and it seems like every time they dig they unearth more ruins.

Fiesole is the site of one of the best preserved Roman Amphitheaters. They still use it for performances today. They had a stage set up for performances later in the month.

I couldn’t get over the shape it was in! The seats were all smooth and able to be used. I’ve seen other theaters like this where they have to lay wood over the seating areas because the stones are so broken up. The stairs were all usable and safe.

You know those crazy Romans though:

A play isn’t a play unless someone is throwing up!

There are other well preserved ruins in the park too.

I just liked these columns. I don’t know what they were part of.

There was a huge excavation of Roman Baths:

The three arches were very cool. I’m amazed that they stayed up for 1700 years.

The tower is the bell tower that is associated with the cathedral in Fiesole.

There is also an Etruscan/Roman temple that has been uncovered:

Part of the structure dates to the Etruscans and the rest to the Romans. It seems like the Romans used a lot of the Etruscan buildings when they were constructing temples and their houses. Everything is mingled together and it’s hard to tell the different between the two sometimes. (At least for me. I’m sure historians have it all straight in their head.)

There were several stone-lined pits in the ground:

Jim and I think they were graves. They are about the right size for the people of the time. But there wasn’t a lot of information available, either in Italian or English. In the picture of the temple, you can see the guide that tell you what each of the structures are. That was in Italian, English and Braille… Yeah, I don’t get that last part. There was a brief description in Italian that gave some context of the site, but we didn’t spend too much time trying to figure it all out. It was a beautiful day and just nice to walk around and soak in the sights.

The park also included a museum that showed artifacts that had been dug up in the area. I was really amazed at the size of the of the museum. It was enormous. The building had been built around some of the ruins on the site.

There was even a little spring running through the building! I thought it was very cool how they tried to respect the land and the culture of the site. The building was not situated in a rectangular layout. It would have been very easy to get lost in there!

They had an exhibition of one of the graves that was found in 1989. They brought everything to the museum and set it up like they had found it.

The blue glass at the bottom was found in the grave along with the skeleton. It was still intact. There was a very pretty decoration of white swirling along the drinking edge. It was amazing to think that it was over a 1000 years old.

They had a large collection of pottery that had been donated by a local Professor about 20 years ago. One of the panels was discussing how they had analyzed the glazes used on the pottery:

FTIR!! Bonus points to anyone who can name the functional groups in the glaze!

We really enjoyed the visit to the park and would recommend it to people who are tired of looking at churches, walking past art and getting jostled by a million other tourists. There were only about six other people at the park at the same time we were there. If the lack of information bothered you, there were books available in the gift shop that had some explanations of specific items. We didn’t mind just walking through and admiring the artifacts though. Who really takes the time and reads all that stuff anyway?

Vanessa and Lisa take Florence by storm!!

My friend Lisa was here last week. We had a good time. You saw a little of Lisa in Venice already. Poor Lisa, when we got back to Florence, I made her do a lot of sight seeing by herself while I went to the lab. But I did take a day off and go to the Uffizi with her.

Before we could get into the Uffizi, we had to wait. I made reservations, which was nice. It cost 4 euro extra, but I hate to wait in lines. We got there about 30 minutes before our reservation and the guard made us go away. So we wandered around for a bit. The Uffizi looks out onto a courtyard with replicas of some of the statuary in the museum.

On one the buildings, we saw a banner that I’m not sure is approved by the government:

This was right around the time that the Olympic torch was in Paris. There’s a guy up there talking on a cell phone and I kept waiting for the Polizi to rush out there and arrest him, but no dice. A week later it’s still hanging from the window, so maybe it is government approved.

Even with pictures that took all of about 5 minutes so Lisa and I had to find some other way to amuse ourselves. We hiked over to the market. Lo and behold, the Porcellina only had about 5 people standing around it. When we first got there, there were some ladies looking up his snout:

It’s just a statue people. He won’t bite you. I’ve since come to find out that if you put a coin in his mouth and let it drop through the grate underneath without stopping, you’ll get your wish. None of these ladies got their wish that day.

Lisa and I both had to rub his snoot. Legend says that if you do it will ensure your return to Florence!

The Uffizi - very crowded, lots of “Annunciation of Mary”s. And they all looked the same. You couldn’t take pictures inside the museum (which was probably a good thing). Plus the lighting was bad. Most of the paintings were covered with glass or plexiglass. I vaguely remember a few years ago when someone tried to throw something at them? I can’t remember.

OK - A complete aside right here. I went to Google (I LOVE the internet) to try to find out what story I was thinking of with the Uffizi and terrorism. I put those two words in and one of the entries that came up was from “The World Almanac for Kids”. Guess what the entry was? Terrorism. (Click for the actual entry.) I don’t know, does that seem like the kind of entry that you want in a Kid’s Almanac? I mean, you don’t want to shield them from everything but COME ON. Anyway. Back to your regularly scheduled pictures.

With the coverings on the paintings, you had to back up and move around and try to get a view that would let you see the painting without a reflection. Plus the tour guides. But I’ve already ranted about them. (See his eyes? Looks drunk doesn’t he?)

One place that you could take pictures was the cafe on the top floor. It overlooks the courtyard. The view was nice. It would have been better if you could have stood on the ledge next to the railings.

Watch out, I’m being arty again!!

We had been in the museum about two hours and were pretty darn tired. It was time to move on.

We had lunch and then went to Santa Croce Museum. Lots of cool people buried there. One of my favorites:

Enrico Fermi!! He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938. (Click for Nobel Prize goodness!!) I love the Nobel Prize. October in my favorite month of the year. Other famous scientists in Santa Croce:

Marconi - inventor of the radio. And:

Galileo Galilei. I could have shown you a generic picture of his tomb, which is nice and everything, but I like this one. You can see some of the restorations done in the church. In the top part, you can see the sinopias, and underneath it, the restored paintings. I’m not sure, but I think that some of the frescoes were painted over when the big tombs were put in. You can see the beige behind the tomb and the uncovered painting on the right. I wonder if it was on purpose, but it looks like Galileo is gazing up at Christ on the cross…

Other people buried there:

A Capponi (our friend the count is Count Capponi). And there’s some dude there named Michelangelo Buonerati. Who’s heard of him? Psht….

There’s also this monument, of someone who I really don’t know:

(Check out the mad photoshopping skills!!) Obviously, the yellow circle is important. In 1966, the Arno flooded. There was 16 ft of water in many of the squares, including the one in front of Santa Croce. The water in the church came up to the point indicated by the plaque (which I’ve circled in yellow). A lot of damage was done and they are still restoring some of the paintings.

Lots of religious paintings throughout the church, but only a couple caught my eye:

Look at the table cloth!! It doesn’t come through in this photo especially but across the church, the first thing you notice is the white of the table cloth. But what I love: It has creases. The painter was trying to be so realistic and included the fold marks. He he.

Here’s another one. Note especially the places pointed out by arrows.

I can’t paint. At all. Just look at the pathetic arrows I made in photoshop. But the guys with the hat (blue arrow) has no neck. He gave it all to the woman on the right (yellow arrow).

This one is cool:

The demon in the upper left looks like he has cartoon eyes. The rest of the painting is very renaissance and holy, but that upper left corner looks like something out of Disney. (When I compress the photos for posting on the web, some of the color contrast is lost. I can show you the original photo… But you have to look at all of the other ones too.)

There are some major restorations going on in the church so there is scaffolding everywhere. I don’t have any good photos of the interior, but as I was looking around, I noticed something:

Are those stairs up there? Let’s get a closer look:

They are!! And a door? Do you think that is an office or where Rapunzel lives? Do you think the railing is original or something added later?

My name is Lucca…

One of the problems with waiting so long to post photos, is that I completely forget what they are. Just a warning.

Jim and I went to Lucca… the last weekend in March I think. It is another one of the Tuscan hill towns. Think hill, think town surrounded by wall. It was very nice. Our second favorite town that we have visited so far. Ferrara is number one, Lucca is number two.

We didn’t plan to stay the whole day. We were going to go, see the stuff in the city, have lunch, walk around the town on the wall and then take the train home. Be home by 4 or 5PM, no problem. We left pretty early. It was either the 9AM train or the 11AM train. I cajoled and Jim agreed that the 9AM made more sense. We got there by 10:30AM and made our way into the old city center. No pictures of the outside of the walls, but I can understand why the town was never attacked. The walls were massive.

Anyway, we were only interested in seeing a couple of the churches, especially the one with the excavations underneath it and maybe climbing one of the towers. I think this first picture is from the church with the excavations, but ya know. I really don’t remember.

It’s a pretty altar:

Yeah, who knows. Maybe a relic in there? I gotta start posting these pictures sooner.

I am obsessed with ceilings. This was one of the domes:

It was just so beautiful. The yellows were so warm and inviting. But at this point, we’ve seen a lot of churches. We didn’t hang out that much up top. Under this church… San Giovanni Church, according to the guide book… they have excavated out the entire ground floor.

About 6-8 foot under the floor of the church, there are ruins of the original church and pagan sites that the church is sitting on. It was pretty well marked and fun to look at.

There were mosaics on the floor everywhere. Jim wanted a picture with one of them. The sign got in my way but I couldn’t move it in time. This poor guy was so patient waiting for me to stop taking pictures. Thank you random guy.

This is my favorite mosaic. You probably can’t see the tag, but it is from the second century. That’s almost 2000 years ago! I would totally have this in my bathroom too. I think it is just timeless.

Again, you probably can’t see this next one too well, but this is graffiti on the walls from the original building. There was a great big horse and some words that I’m sure were the equivalent of “I WUZ HIR” and “FOR A GOOD TIME, HOLLER AT HERA”.

Some of the ruins they had identified as work places. We are standing by the metal working and pottery firing ovens. Notice that I don’t have my jacket on!! While it was cool under the church, it was a very nice day out. I love the shirt that I am wearing, but once I get back to the states, I’ll probably burn it.

In one part of the church, they had removed the floor so you could see down into the excavations. It was cool. I think the big white thing in the bottom right hand corner is the “original” baptistry from one of the older incarnations of the church.

I

There was an arts and crafts fair going on in Lucca the day that we were there. It was similar to ones you see in the US. Some tables had the usual crap (I remember a few of them from a fair in Florence) and some had some really gorgeous stuff. For some reason, I didn’t have the camera out as much on this trip as I usually do. Strange.

Another church that we saw was the one at Piazza San Michele. I can’t find the name of the church anywhere so we’ll just call it “the Church at Piazza San Michele”. This was typical of the churches in Lucca. The facade is Pisan, with every column being decorated in a different manner.

High a above it all is the archangel Michael, with bronze wings that look like they are ready to flap and him fly away. With a view of the back of Michael:

You can see that maybe at one time his wings did move. In fact the priests would sneak up behind him and flap his wings to fool the gullible villagers when they need some scarin’. This is another good example of how all of the churches are decorated with these fancy facades. The church proper is made of the brown brick and then gussied up with the white marble. This one looks like it got some extensions in front…

That’s all for now. I’ll post the rest of the Lucca pictures later!

If I see another “Annunciation of Mary”, so help me…

Today Lisa and I went museum hopping. Actually, we only went two places; the Uffizi and Santa Croce. But if I see another painting of Mary, I think I might scream. (No photos right now. No pictures allowed in the Uffizi and I’ll post the Santa Croce pictures later. IN ORDER THAT WE DID STUFF. I’m about two weeks behind at this point.)

The Uffizi was nice. Crowded but nice. Everyone raves about how wonderful it is and there are a lot of great paintings in there but the success of the museum has made it not very fun to go to. The first couple of rooms that you get to were SO crowded with tour groups (jr high age children mostly). The kids were OK, not too loud or anything like that, but there were SO many of them.

I’d be looking at a painting and then all of a sudden, I would be totally overrun with people and a tour guide quickly running through the highlights of the painting and what you were supposed to see. Sometimes English, sometimes Italian, sometimes German. It was fun to eavesdrop on the tours but they really didn’t give you much time to look.

“Here’s a painting of Bacchus, you remember we were talking about Bacchus. Do you see the look in his eyes? Looks drunk doesn’t he. See the bubbles in the wine? Let’s go.” And they were off. I was still busy checking out the glass with the wine in it.

Santa Croce was fun. A lot more crowded than when Jim and I went back in February. It was FREEZING in the church. We were poking around when all of a sudden they announce 30 minutes ’til closing. We hurried the rest of the tour.

Working on posts for Lucca right now. I’ll try to get the first part up tonight, but if not, then Saturday.

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah! Ferrara!

After the harrowing experience on the stairs in the tower of the castle, I was ready to see something pretty dammit! No more ugly stone walls and boring information about the Estes family. (It wasn’t really boring. I just needed that for comedic effect.)

When we go to museums that are housed in old palazzos, spend more time looking up than I do looking anywhere else. The ceilings are usually covered with these amazing frescos. (I always think of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapels. Lying on his back, paint dripping in his hair.) Well, the people in Ferrara thought of me and my neck. They had mirrors set up so you could admire to your heart’s content!

Pretty darn cool. In fact, they inspired me to create my own art:

So sue me. I thought it was pretty creative at the time!

We headed over to the chemistry department after our tour of the castle. Carlo was busy with business related to being the Chair of the Department…. Nah, he was getting interviewed by the paper and had to have his picture taken. Really!

Instead, we went to lunch with Maria Rampi, another professor at the University of Ferrara and a friend of ours. We walked to her house, taking the long scenic route along the walls.

Her directions were funny. “Walk along the wall until you get to the old chopper house, then take a left.” Chopper house? OH!! Where they cut peoples… heads… off… Eww….

Originally we were going to have lunch at her house, in her garden. Which was fine with me. Because this is her backyard:

Her house is an old vacation house from the 18th century:

She has sculptures placed around the backyard. It was Spring, and warm and there were kitties. I was THIS CLOSE to asking her if I could stay. You can see the old cemetery from her back yard too:

She said she doesn’t mind living next to the cemetery because when the angels sound their horns, she’ll at least know what is going on. Instead of lunch in her backyard, she took us to this AMAZING restaurant just down the street from her house. I would have passed it by and not given it a second look. It is called La Provvidenza. The mayor of Ferrara was having lunch there that day too!

Maria is probably still amazed that I don’t weigh as much as a house. I can’t remember the last time I ate that much food. Maria and started with the buffet; it was a mixed antipasti buffet. Grilled veggies, cheese, dried tomatoes, pretty much everything Italian. Maria stopped there. Jim and I then had pasta. I had an AMAZING pumpkin stuffed tortellini. It is the regional specialty of Ferrara. I know why. Wow. Jim had a baked macaroni pie thingy. He said it was good. Maria then ordered a plate of misto frito - mixed fried stuff. I would eat anything fried. And I think I did that day. I probably ate half of that plate. Fried orange slices. Fried cheese, fried spinach stuff, fried meat, fried bananas… All of it dusted with powdered sugar. Plus we shared a bottle of prosecco with lunch. Then we had coffee. Maria tried to get us to have gelatto but I just laughed.

Maria had to work and so we made our way back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and head out of town. I saw this sign on our way back to the hotel:

It was another reminder that we are no longer in Kansas, Toto.

We also stopped by the cathedral in Ferrara before heading out. It was quite beautiful. Since we’ve been in Italy, we’ve seen many different churches. I have to say that is was very beautiful but I don’t remember anything that really made it stand out from all of the others!

The altar:

One of the naves:

The door leading in:

I take that back - what set this one apart was that it was a functioning church. We actually were going to tour it before the amazing lunch with Maria (well, heading to the department) but when we went in, they were having a children’s mass. Kids were signing, priests were priesting and there was general religiosity going on. We left. It’s one thing to gawk at a church, it’s a whole ‘nuther thing to stare while God might be there, watching.

We went back after lunch and the festivities were over, but I did see people in confession. It was the old timey confessionals. Priest on one side of the partition and the sinner on the other side, both for the world to see. I was going to take a picture, but thought better of it.