Category Italy
Palmanova: a Renaissance ideal city should have a public bathroom
I love love love love love an ideal city so—duh!—I went to Palmanovo while I was in northeast Italy. The best way to understand the layout of Palmanova would be from above. Here’s the next best way: a map. Why this shape? Apparently, back in 1593, folks in this area were pretty concerned about invasion […]
The Loch Ness Ostrich of Aquileia is a UNESCO Site
In early days of Christianity, right after the edict of Milan in 315, the mosaic artists of the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Aquileia faced a challenge: they wanted to depict a whale on the floor of the basilica. The problem was, none of them had actually seen a whale in real life. So […]
Janky (but lovable) spolia in Trieste’s San Giusto cathedral
There’s an architectural term—spolia—which basically means “janky combination of material scavenged from various historical periods”. A perfect place to see spolia in action is the Cathedral of San Giusto in Trieste, Italy. If you look at it from the perspective of early Christian builders, it makes sense. Your religion is new and you’ve got to […]
The answer is Udine
Complaining about overtourism is a thing now. This is annoying and lacks self-reflection because—duh—did you think being a tourist was only okay for you and not other people? I mean, I get it because within the past year I’ve been to both Florence and Barcelona and those are some well trodden destinations but even in […]
The Ravishing Madonnas of Emilia-Romagna
There’s a big slice of the pie chart in my brain dedicated to hilarious renditions of the Virgin and Child. While I saw plenty of these in my recent trip to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, I ended up being astonished by the knockout gorgeous Madonnas instead. There’s a charming (free!) museum in Bologna called […]
A Time for Despair: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ in Bologna
What does despair look like? In 1463, Niccolò dell’Arca’s answer was this: The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ is tucked into a side chapel inside the Church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. The terracotta figures are life sized and, while no one is sure of the original arrangement, they were clearly meant to […]
The grape harvest sculpture in Ferrara is better than a costume history textbook
One of my many failed careers was theatrical costume design. While my design skills may not have been noteworthy, I excelled at costume research, pouring through art history books for artworks made at the same time period as the setting of the play I was designing. I could have used a costume history book—textbooks with […]
Picnic at the Cathedral of Modena
When we arrived off our flight from Chicago, we planned to take a short train ride and spend the night in nearby Modena. We bought train tickets from a machine in the Bologna station but we couldn’t find the right departure track because it wasn’t posted on the electronic board, so I asked a station […]
Venice is not ideal for picnics or Parkinson’s
When I booked our trip to Italy, I had a choice to fly out of either Milan or Venice for the same amount of frequent flyer miles. As a smaller and car-free city, Venice seemed like the best option for HOB, who has Parkinson’s Disease. We had visited Venice one other time, and that was […]
Teatro all’Antica, Sabbioneta: ideal city as theater
Vespasiano I Gonzaga had a lot going on for him; he was a duke, he had an awesome name, and if this statue of him is realistic, he was a total hottie. But was he satisfied? Nuh uh—Duke Hottie Gonzaga wanted his very own ideal city, so in the mid 1500’s he commissioned Sabbioneta. Sabbioneta […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 