24 Thursday Sep 2015
Orvieto, which a colleague (in history) once called his favorite place in Italy, sits on a plateau of soft volcanic rock. Into this inviting material, apparently, the natives dug a labyrinth of caves and tunnels. This Orvieto Underground, next only to the one in Atlanta, held a treasure trove of historical and archaeological information. Truly a city steeped in the past. We’re holding great expectations.
24 Thursday Sep 2015
Posted in Travel
Festival of Art mapping done this morning without braving a threatening sky, so I have been searching the net for the Spoleto section of Goethe’s Italian Travels. Turns out, I am quickly coming to believe, his remarks come down to a solitary paragraph, though one celebrated for its importance to Goethe’s developing aesthetic:
I climbed Spoleto, and was on the aqueduct, which is also a bridge from one mountain to another. Through all their centuries, the ten brick arches which reach across the valley have stood there so quietly, and the water still flows in every corner of Spoleto. I have now seen three works by the ancients; they all have the same great meaning, a second nature serving civic ends. That is how they built, and there they are: the amphitheater, the temple, and the aqueduct. Only now do I feel how justified my hatred of all willful things was, the winter barracks on the Weissenstein, for example, a nothing around nothing, a monstrous layer of icing. It is the same with a thousand other things. They are now all as if stillborn, for whatever does not have a true inner existence has no life, and cannot be great, and cannot become great.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, tr. Andrew Shields)
Until we get back to Ponte delle Torri, this photo gallery provides a host of views.
23 Wednesday Sep 2015
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized
23 Wednesday Sep 2015
Posted in Travel
As Dylan once sang, no need of a weather vane.
23 Wednesday Sep 2015
Posted in Travel
What looked at first like decline has often turned out to be change.
Two stores immediately come to mind: both closed when we came.
Now turns out, in both cases, they were just undergoing renovation.
Fruitta e verdua upfit is done; l’alimentari yet awaits transformation.
<With the photos a work in progress (and regress), I make do with links.>
20 Sunday Sep 2015
Art in the city, they take seriously here. It is forever showing up, juxtaposed, in public places (like the modern sculpture that stands in the Palazzo Comunale; or the competing time pieces that are affixed below the palace tower).
On any given day, the theme can be extended inside. In anticipation of “Arte in Citta,” modern paintings are displayed on the second floor of a much older place.
When you walk in and start upstairs, the two murals compete for your attention. When you move from room to room, you don’t know where to fix your gaze: on the bold, modernist colors and shapes or on more common household furniture. So very different, in effect, than those gilded frames on museum walls.
20 Sunday Sep 2015
Not far from TeBrow, site of many an outdoor cappuccino, appears what seems to be (to my untrained eye) a fresco. It is, at the very least, painted on a wall. And from the state of its disrepair, I can imagine it was executed on a freshly laid, or wet, plaster. But what is it doing outside in the first place? (And why, once again, is a window sneaking a peek into the corner of it?) All very lovely, all questions aside.
20 Sunday Sep 2015
At the near end of the street, the steps begin to climb beside the wall.
Since we are always out too late in the morning, we wisely turn away.
Straight up isn’t exactly our idea of the best way to tackle the Cyclops
(which the historical marker explains in a lesson for yet another day).
20 Sunday Sep 2015
Two sides to this story: the one, it be Roman.
The other, she be roaming too close to the sign
with that beckoning word (setting sail) in Italian.
18 Friday Sep 2015
Two tourists walk into a square. (There is no punch line to follow.)
All Spoleto stands before them, with Rebecca and I trailing behind.
They stop, momentarily, in front of Chiesa di S. Gregorio Maggiore.
Nothing about the little church imposes its will upon their innocence.
Reluctant to impose, we too pass on without passing on our prejudice.
(Though truth be told, Spoleto ranks it in their Short Trekking Top 10.)
And who knows? Maybe they came back, after all, to gaze in wonder.
As have we, as we always do, when in search of solemn peace and quiet.
May these images ease the burden of not imposing (about the unimposing.)
Saved for a later shoot: the darker, smaller spot of a previous incarnation.
