Tag Archives: Architecture
Chasing the sunset in the Valley of the Temples, Agrigento
We arrived at the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, Southern Sicily, near opening time, and were still walking around late afternoon when a heavy rain drove us under a temporary shelter. We waited it out reading a history of the Temples. When the rain cleared we said, why not one more picnic at the Temple of Concord? […]
In which we visit the caves of Matera
We got on the bus in Naples and departed six hours later in another millennium. Matera, in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy, has been continually occupied by humans since Paleolithic times. We were there to see the Sassi di Matera, cave dwellings and churches that people have been living in for over 9000 years.When […]
Bramante’s Tempietto gets a visit from the Infamous Blue Traveling Poncho
This modestly-scaled building in Rome, the Tempietto, is the monument of Italian High Renaissance. Donato Bramante created his “little temple” in 1502 after a lifetime of studying Roman ruins and the architectural writings of the classical author Vitruvius. Bramante followed a strict classical ratio of proportions, where height equals width in the lower and upper sections. The Tempietto feels rather […]
Cutural tourism at home–great practice, no jet lag
One of the best ways to be a great traveler is to practice–like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get. Yeah, I know, you don’t have a trust fund or infinite amounts of vacation time, so you can’t just fly over to Europe whenever you feel like it. But you can […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 