Pienza and San Gimignano

First stop, the hilltop town of Pienza. Here in the piazza, the town’s church.

Barrel vaults!

The piazza in Pienza is actually a trapezoid, which...

...opens up onto this beautiful view of the Tuscan countryside.

I saw an open door in the town municipal building. I went in, climbed a couple of stairs and found myself in the town council room and managed to open a window.

Stop 2 of the first day was the famous town of towers San Gimignano.

Here in one of the churches in town with both a classical greek façade and gothic basilica apse juxtaposed next to each other. The fact that I recognized this as strange is a testament to art history class!

I just thought this picture was cool. It’s springtime in Italy and that means time to prune the olive trees. However, because of the natural oils, the branches don’t decompose quickly, so burning is the popular option.

I’ll be coming back to San Gimignano with my parents in June, so more pictures to come at that point.

Hans and Teresa's Visit

Hans and Teresa of Oakland were my second visitors while living here in Viterbo. They had four fantastic days of sightseeing, food and fantastic weather. They were troopers in joining two "Chenventures" to Bomarzo and Orvieto. And because they flew across the pond, they make the blog. That should be INCENTIVE enough to come and see the sites of Italy. Most of these pictures are courtesy of Hans.

Hans, Teresa and myself lounging around at Parco di Mostri in Bomarzo.

Sticking my hand into a "Bocca della Verita" fortune telling machine.

I got 8/9 in Life, 6/9 in Love, 4/9 in Luck, 9/9 in Health and 4/9 in Sex.

Partially because I'm a geek and wanted to test to see if the machine was consistent, I tried again. But part of me wanted some higher scores in Love and Sex. The second time around, 7/9 in Life, 4/9 in Love (OUCH), 8/9 in Luck, 8/9 in Health and 4/9 in Sex (DOUBLE OUCH).

Here we are sitting and waiting for the bus after having missed the one we wanted to take (and having been kicked out of Parco di Mostri for climbing on the sculptures). So we killed time by playing "SOLO", the Italian version of "UNO" at a local cafe. The Italian version has one card that has everyone pass their hand to the person on their left. Another card allows you to switch hands with another player. BRILLIANT!

Each morning, Hans and Teresa joined me for coffee at Bagolino's. This is picture with Massimo is proof that I got behind the counter for the first time EVER.

Here we are at the top of the "Torre del Moro" in Orvieto. That's the famous Duomo in the background.

I rarely have so many pictures of myself on the blog, but thanks to Hans, this is myself and Steve C. kissing a stuffed boar!

Hans was a BIG fan of the pizzas from "Il Monastero", so we had takeout on the night before they left. Thanks for a great visit, Hans and Teresa!

Ostia Antica

Ok, this post starts with an interpretation contest/quiz. Ran across this sign on a pizzeria in Rome. What do you think they are advertising? Post your thoughts in the comments section.

So, Ostia Antica, where is it and what's it's importance. Ostia was ancient Rome's port city on the sea at the mouth of the Tiber river. Unlike Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were resort towns and preserved in an instant by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, Ostia was a working town that more represented real life in the Roman Republic/Empire. Founded in the 4th Century BCE, it reached around 75,000 inhabitants in the 2nd Century AD. It was hit with barbarian invasions and malaria in the 5th Century AD and abandoned. Over the course of time, the silt from the Tiber covered Ostia as the Tiber built up its delta. The mouth of the river now stands 2km from the remains of ancient Ostia. Because it was covered up for so many centuries, it remains remarkably well preserved.

You can see the locations of the ancient course of the Tiber and the location of the sea in relation to the present course of the Tiber.

As you enter into the modern day Ostia site, before you enter through the ancient walls, you walk through the necropoli of Ostia.

The Roman's were great urban planners. Most cities, based on military camp plans contained two intersecting roads, one of them the Decumanus. Here in Ostia, the Decumanus is the longer of the two and runs East-West.

This is a bath complex, which contains a cold room (frigidarium), pool room (tepidarium) and a hot room (caldarium). Notice, how the archeologists have prevented further erosion of the site by capping everything with cement.

Many of the beautiful mosaics remain.

The other main road, is called the Cardo.

Here at the intersection of the Cardo and Decumanus is the back side of the Capitolium, which fronts onto the town Forum.

Near the intersection of the two is also the Ostia Teatro. The difference between Greek theaters and Roman theaters is that the Romans built a backdrop, the remains of which you see as the low running wall at the rear of the stage. The Greeks left the natural scenery be the backdrop.

From atop a building along the Cardo, here's a view of the Tiber today.

As mentioned earlier, Ostia was a real functioning town with back streets, houses, apartments and markets.

Here we see a house with walls painted in what is called "First Style", which consists mostly of rectangular panels. Although many of the houses are fenced off.....

That didn't stop us from climbing in. It was so much fun to be inside these ruins and to walk in the footsteps of the "everyday" ancients.

In the neighborhoods, there are remnants like this millstone.

And, here's a bar on the ground floor of a home.

Here's the bar from the loft of the home. And yes, of course, we were not supposed to be inside.

Here's an oven that still has the marble facing, which is what probably covered most of the buildings here.

The mosaic in a palestra (gym). Must be motivation/ideal for all who worked out there.

Another mosaic in the palestra. Perhaps an early precursor to the Statue of Liberty?

If you had the chance to climb atop a Corinthian capital, wouldn't you do it too?

My First Art Auction

Foreground left, Roberto and bald head right front, Alessandro

So, my wood restoration teachers invited me to an art auction held in Rome. No reason for me not to go, so it was in the car and off to Rome on a Monday evening. Typically Italian, the auction started at 9PM. There were about 60 people and 200 items were auctioned off. Roberto and Alessandro, being furniture guys, were only interested in bureaus, side tables, etc. Things moved at a fast clip. The auctioneer would start bidding and the piece would be sold or returned to the store room in 30 seconds or less. The item that sold for the largest amount? Two small paintings for 5,500 Euro. It was a bidding war between a person in the room and a guy bidding by proxy through a guy on the phone. Very artsy!

I know that Roberto, the more "sane" of the two purchased one table for 650 Euro. But, I'm not sure how many pink purchase slips Alessandro had at the end of the night. I've been to Alessandro's house and asked him where he was going to put all the stuff. His typically Italian response? "I don't worry about that now, live in the moment!"

Rome's Tate Modern -- Centrale Montemartini

It's a beautiful day in central Italy and I'm done with a morning swim, puttering around online and find out that part of the famed Capitoline Museum is housed in a separate part of town in what used to be an old electric plant. What's a boy to do but hop on the train and go see it. So, the story goes, in short, that in 1912, the Montemartini power plant was built outside the walls south of the Ostiense station, an industrial area very few tourists ever see. It was Rome's first power station and through the early 1960's it generated a significant portion of the electricity for the city. After that it was decommissioned and abandoned. In the 1990's when the main section of the Capitoline complex was being renovated, the idea came to turn this power plant into an exhibition space. For those of you who have been to the Tate Modern in London, same idea, EXCEPT, here in Rome, they left the big machines and those are a stunning juxtaposition with the excavated artifacts of Republican and Rome of the Early Empire.

Entering off Via Ostiense, here's the facade of the former Montemartini Power Plant.

The first thing you see as you leave the entrance is this 5th Century BC statue of Aphrodite with a part of the power plant machinery as a backdrop.

As the home to pieces from early Rome, lower floor houses many of the smaller items. Here is the "Togaed Barbarini" (we studied it in Art History). It shows a male of status and wealth holding portraits of his father and grandfather. Only the wealthy class were able to make portraits of ancestors.

An younger portrait of Augustus, shown in a more serene and gentle pose of "classical beauty".

Augustus, as I have mentioned before, was a GREAT administrator. Here was the map of how he divided Rome into different regions, each of which was run by publicly elected ministers.

In each region, an "augustuslares" (as shown) was erected. Augustus Lares means the "Genius of Augustus"

Here's Augustus' right-hand man, and probable best friend, Marcus Agrippa.

With their many victories and incorporation of foreign lands into the Empire, luxuries, such as this fish mosaic, were part of the beauty and high life of living in Rome.

Going up one flight, one enters into the main machine room (diesel) of the Montemartini.

It's an AMAZING juxtaposition of the beauty of art from the Roman Empire and what is essentially industrial machinery as art itself.

In a second room, the backdrop is the old steam generator, which was turned into electricity.

A kore, wearing a peplos, with a control panel in the background.

After Augustus and Hadrian, my third favorite Roman Emperor is probably Caracalla, even though he wasn't a great one, I like his scowl.

It's the contrast of the white marble and the black machinery that is an amazing visual combination.