Tag Archives: Architecture
Frómista, Spain: The Infamous Blue Traveling Poncho Camino de Santiago special edition
Never has before has Frómista, Spain seen a sexier pilgrim until the day I sauntered into to town with my handsome gentlemen companion, wearing seven shirts and a coat and a poncho. First ever documented sighting of Wife of Bath wearing The Infamous Blue Travelling Poncho. San Martín: brace yourselves because this is one of my all […]
My wish list for 2015: tolerance, cultural-crossbreeding and a comfortable bra
My neighborhood was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti this week. It would be wrong and upsetting for this to happen to a Jewish community anywhere, but these are my neighbors; the people I sit next to on the bus, share a library and grocery store with, whose cute kids I play peekaboo with on the train platform. I am […]
Mosaics in the Cathedral of Monreale
We’ve already established that I suck at history, and while we’re on the topic of embarrassing self-disclosures, I confess I didn’t realize until recently that Normans were French. Here’s what I do know about Normans (other than that they all seem to have been named William): they built some gorgeous Romanesque buildings. In Sicily, once […]
Corpus Christi Catholic Church: grand architecture, Bavarian stained glass and a chance to say WOW! like true Americans
We set out from home on a rainy Saturday morning with our dorky matching backpacks and a thermos of bean soup bound for Bronzeville. Our first stop on Chicago Architecture Foundation’s’ Open House Chicago itinerary was Corpus Christi Catholic Church. Normally HOB and I tried to hold back on the gape-mouthed WOW! exclamations when travelling in […]
First Church of Deliverance in Chicago: an electrifying encounter in lime green
We walked around the corner onto S. Wabash, clutching a map from Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Open House Chicago, and OH HECK YESSSSSSSSS, there was this delightful architectural surprise: a Streamline Moderne church! With it’s twin towers of terra cotta and glass block, the First Church of Deliverance nods to traditional church structure, but don’t be deceived–there’s nothing traditional […]
Pienza: all Renaissance towns should have a bird that talks like a refrigerator
During a fascinating period of the Italian Renaissance, humanist scholars and architects set out to create the ideal city. Surprisingly, one of these urban planners was a pope–Pope Pious II. Pius II (formerly known as Enea Silvio Piccolomini) transformed his home town, Cosignano, into a miniature urban Renaissance Utopia. He hired the architect Rossellino to […]
Farnsworth House: when modernism calls, take the bus to Plano
Living in Chicago, I am fortunate to see the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe almost every day. I love to slip around behind the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments and look out to the sun shining off the waves of Lake Michigan through the glass plaza. HOB gets off the train early most mornings […]
The next time you’re in Vézelay tell the people with the elephant ears I said hi
We were all alone in Vézelay’s Sainte-Marie-Madeleine Abbey, the light was fading, darker, darker…and then we climbed down into the crypt. No, not actually a horror story ending, but in fact the ending to a perfect day, a day we spent from sunup to sundown in and around one of the world’s greatest Romanesque churches. Vézelay […]
Built to oppress: fascist architecture in Italy
While wandering about Naples, we took a detour from munching street food and dodging vespas to oggle fascist architecture. HOB and I groaned and giggled at the aggressively symmetrical fascist post office and then decided to go in–why not? We really did need stamps. On entry a machine instructed us to take a number. We […]
