Villa Farnese in Caprarola

This 16th century palace built by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (future Pope Paul III) was originally conceived as a fortified castle. His grandson decided to turn it into a country estate for the family. The palazzo was bequeathed to the Duke of Parma and subsequently to the King of Spain while that country ruled the Italian Peninsula. Now it is open to the public and one of the holdings of the Italian government.

The front of the Villa Farnese in Caprarola a 30 minute bus ride from Viterbo. It is built in the shape of a pentagon!

A sundial on the front wall of the palazzo. The students and I were unable to decipher how it really worked.

The courtyard is not built in a pentagonal shape, but in a circle.

Here in the guard's room (the modern day entrance), there is a fresco of the town of Caprarola. As you can see the palazzo is built at the top of town.

This is the room that has the has the five arched windows of the front facade. It is known as the Hercules Room. The highlight is the fountain on the West wall.

The second (main floor) is divided into two five room "apartment", one the winter and the other the summer. Here is the Aurora (bedroom) room of the summer apartment. This is the fresco on the ceiling one would wake up to each morning. You can see "night" coming in on a dark chariot and "light" coming in on a chariot with white horses.

The palazzo has extensive gardens. Here's a view of the garden house with the moon rising as dusk settled in. You can see the day was gorgeous.

The gardens were surrounded by a group of caryatids.

Here are a couple of the more humorous ones.

I have to include this picture of the students playing foosball. We had some time before the bus came and we took over the table and played for an hour. From left Myles H. of California, Steve C. of Minnesota and Lisa A. of Pennsylvania.

The final two photos are some of my favorites from the day.

SYA Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, the quintessential American holiday is something the students wanted to celebrate and share with their host families. Therefore, turkey, cranberry sauce and a load of desserts were consumed by one and all.

There was a prize to the family that brought the best turkey. This was the winner. I think some Italian mother has a sense of humor!

My advisee Penny B. of Texas made this amazing bread pudding. I was manning the dessert section of the table for awhile and forced it "Italian mother style" on the mother's themselves. A taste of their own medicine. They, however, loved it and took slices back to their husbands.

The prize for best/most original dessert goes to......

The Fabi family, who created the American flag cake as shown in the foreground.

Myself and Raffaele G. who is my language partner. I go over once a week or two and we talk English and Italian. He's an Italian Air Force mechanic and so he's a tough teacher. I don't get away with anything!

First Viterbo Visitor

Audrey H! It was great visit and thanks to Audrey for the great food and company.

Audrey's borlati beans is to die for. What a revelation! Hopefully I can make it myself sometime soon.

Tuscan kale! I have a mountain of leftovers in my refrigerator.

Yvonne, her daughter and Audrey. The main course was a mushroom risotto.

Torino Museum of the History of Cinema

The "Mole" is the tallest building in central Torino. Originally built in the mid-1800's as a Jewish synagogue, but in time it has taken on other functions and is now home to the History of Cinema.

A cutaway of the Mole. There is an elevator that rises through the center of the building to an observation deck at the top of the dome.

Here in the central atrium area, clips of historical movies, mostly Italian are shown. The best part of the museum was the early history and what "motion" picture was at it's genesis. Stuff as basic as moving shadows were revolutionary at one time.

The seats to watch the movies were incredibly comfortable and had stereo speakers near your ears.

You can see the elevator in silhouette as it ascends (or descends) to the observation deck.

This was the only time we saw the sun!

Torino with the foothills leading to the Alps. The trees that we see line the Po River.

La Stampa

La Stampa is the third largest newspaper in Italy. It's an independent "il giornale" published in Torino. But this post is about the journey of me getting to see how La Stampa is printed, not much about the paper itself. It's the journey, not the destination as they say.

Yvonne M. (teacher of Art History) and myself "pre La Stampa"

This is a story of boy pisses off girl because he's clueless about the workings of the female mind. Shahana S. when you read this you'll be rolling on the floor laughing. So it starts with the fact that the visit to La Stampa was scheduled for 10PM at night. My colleague Santo was unsure whether or not, because of bus driver work rules, we were going to be able to actually go. In the afternoon, before we all broke out for free time, Santo said things didn't look good. Therefore, Yvonne proposed that we go out to the symphony. I jumped at the chance, gave her my money to get tickets, and we went our separate ways and agreed to meet up at 19:45. I'm in the hotel lobby a couple minutes early and it turns out that the La Stampa tour is on. I turn around to tell Yvonne that the tour is on and I didn't fully couch how I really felt because she immediately took the tickets and turned around. I told her I wanted to go, but she knew I wanted to go to the newspaper. My ticket was now in the hands of a student and they walked out of the hotel together. I got to go to the newspaper, but I wasn't quite sure if I was going to be let back into Art History the following week.

The paper uses 63 of these rolls each and every night to print the paper. That's about 30 kilometers.

These pictures taken on the sly, as I wasn't supposed to snap photos.

And Yvonne and I did make up the next day. In fact, she wasn't really that angry. She is a great actress though, because I was truly scared I had really pissed her off. I'll be going to Art History class this week.

Museo di Egizio

One of the finest collection of Egyptian artifacts are in Torino, housed at the Museo di Egizio. Students in Ancient History are starting to study the Egyptians and Art History students have already studied a bit of Egyptian Art and Architecture.

If we're talking Egyptian Art, we're most likely talking about funerary art and architecture. Here is the model of an Egyptian tomb. I always have to remember that there was no electricity then and so all of wall painting was done by torchlight.

The body of an Egyptian of about 30 years old. Found in the grave were items to take into the afterlife.

A wooden coffin that survives to this day. If you look closely, you can see my reflection in the glass. That's the part I think is really cool.

A replica of what might be found in an Egyptian tomb. The rowers represent those who would take the deceased to the afterlife.

The eyes on the coffin were painted to allow the deceased to see "beyond" into the afterlife.

The Temple of Ellesiya was built to pacify the Nubians (residents of modern day Sudan). It was given to the Italian people by the Egyptian government in thanks for the Italian effort in helping relocate historic artifacts when the Aswan High Dam was built.

Inside the Temple of Ellesiya

The Stele of Maia and Hamet shows the couple in the top register praising Osiris and Hather. The couples nine children are shown in the lower registers. As an Art History student I am getting better at "reading" the art, but still, I need it to be explained to me. It's not intuitive for me.

Two students of Greek getting down on the ground to try and test out their new skills in reading marble inscribed with hieroglyphics and Ancient Greek.

Mummies!

These tools were supposedly used to pick out brain matter through the nostrils, of the the deceased of course.

This scene depicts a judgment of the deceased. Here Maat, the goddess of harmony and justice puts the heart of the deceased on the scales to judge whether or not to allow the deceased into the afterlife. The beast sits and waits for orders from Maat to eat the deceased's body if condemned.

The baboon was the Lunar God and a representation of the Sciences.

King Sety II. Notice the traditional striding canon you see with all Egyptian statues. Left leg forward and arms down at the sides. It's a pose; it doesn't convey motion.

This is Sekmet because she wears the sun disk attribute. With her "fire" she vanquished the enemies of Egypt.

King Ramses II has the attribute of the sceptre.

Kings that united Upper and Lower Egypt had this inscription of the papyrus and lotus, which were the symbols of each part of Egypt.

The mirrors create an effect of an infinite number of sphinxes. The hall of mirrors here at the Museo di Egizio was installed by a Hollywood film artist in anticipation of the 2006 Winter Olympics. The installation was such a hit, the Museo has retained it.