Pompeii and final post

We finish our adventure in Italy with a run down to Naples to go to the National Museum and see Pompeii.  As you may recall from history class Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption in 64AD and smothered the city of Pompeii.  It was sudden and catastrophic.  2000 people died.  Smothered by volcanic ash either trying to escaped or trying to hide.  And thus they remained for 1500 years.  The city disappeared for 150 decades.  In the 15th century it was rediscovered and we have been excavating it ever since.  About 2/3 has been unearthed and by doing so we have for the first and only time been able to peer into ancient life as it was, unchanged and unmolested for, now, 2000 years.

Our visit to the National Museum in Naples was important since that is where they removed most of the artifacts, the few that one sees in Pompeii itself are reproductions or in very poor condition.  What is also a hallmark of Pompeii are the actual people that lived there were discovered by the void they left in the volcanic ash.  Archeologists poured these with plaster and the people were “rediscovered”.  Indeed, the result was a combination of plaster, bones and jewelry!  Only two individuals are on display, others can be found on the internet.  What does one conclude by looking at ancient life as it was lived 2000 years ago?  Little has changed in life.  People have always been poor or wealthy, healthy or sick, rich or poor, privileged or not, lucky….. or not.

Pompeii, with Mr. Vesuvius in the background. Before it blew, the western flank, on the right was its extent, and it was about twice as high.

  

Men’s gymnasium with the different pools from hot to cold, heated flooring, the works.

 

A typical courtyard.  They have replanted many of the vegetation growing in 64AD.   Determined by pollen, seeds and leaf and branch impressions.

They had about the same number of brothels as they did bakeries. Over one hundred of each.  I guess that is about right for a city of 20,000!  This is a bed with stone pillow, the scenes depicted about each chamber was a “menu”. 

    

Other victims were found huddled under stair ways with their boxes of gold and jewelry.

OK, here is a picture of a bakery as well.  On the right are the mills to grind the grain to flour, on the left the oven for baking.

Finally, the amphitheater.  Any good Roman city has one.  This one is smaller, seats for around 5000.  Some of the original marble, but also, they have rebuilt it so they can use it for concerts today!

The Roman Colosseum, Forum and the Pantheon

Catholic history yesterday, Roman today.  Most of what we saw today was built around 2000 years ago.  Rome was in its heyday from 0AD to 200AD, after building for 500 years and before decaying for 300 years.  After the collapse of the Empire, we enter the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, then the Renaissance as we picked it up in Florence a couple of days ago.

I will let the pictures do the talking.  We put in long days of walking and discovering, then a couple of hours going through photos and trying to write a somewhat accurate and coherent blog.  Nights are short, then we do it all over again!  Needless to say, the Colosseum was even more than we expected.  To realize where we stood was where 50,000 at a time would gather to watch what has been estimated to be, in total, 500,000 people and 1,00,000 animals die for entertainment is sobering.

    

Left, Constantine built this arch in 312AS to commemorate the new Roman religion—Christianity. Right, a few of the marble seats were reconstructed on the far end of the Collosseum.  After Rome’s fall, the Collosseum was stripped of all its marble and iron brackets holding the marble on.  Two earthquakes collapsed a good share of it as well.  Indeed, only around 1/3 of it remains.

The Roman Forum was only rediscovered in the 15th century.  It had all but silted in for the last 1000 years, but that indeed saved many of the huge buildings and temples that hadn’t been ransacked or destroyed as the Roman Empire collapsed.  We were told that Rome had over 30,000 gods.  Plenty of opportunity for temples.  Also, as emperors came and went, more buildings were built, either to house them or to honor them.  Also, as the Roman Empire grew, successful campaigns were celebrated with Arches.  It goes on and on, then you do this for almost 1000 years and things get real busy.  How the archeologists unpack all of this information is beyond me.

    

Left, this arch commemorates the defeat of Jerusalem and the Jews in 64AD.  Note, in the middle of the arch, the Menorah symbolizing the destruction of the Jews.  The Diaspora followed; the Jews did not have a country again for almost 2000 years. Right, this was a Roman temple, but when it was unearthed, they build a Catholic church on the inside!

The Pantheon is to architecture as the Sistine Chapel ceiling is to art. Here is a building built so perfectly by the Romans around 0AD; it has remained unchanged, undamaged and in use ever since.  No building ever built, or ever will be built can and will claim this honor.  Their understanding of construction engineering and the use of concrete was amazing.  What we saw in the interior of the Pantheon is essentially what the Romans viewed after it was built.  All anyone has done to it is give it a good scrubbing every few hundred years.

    

Ah, finally.  In addition to all the tourists, (as I mentioned before, we are seeing probably 1/10th of the summer crowds), there are still people selling pashmina’s umbrellas, postcards, refrigerator magnets, etc.  But, also you see the street performers.  These guys tore the house down, huge crowd around them, everyone taking pictures and tossing coins in their basket.  They weren’t moving and the lower guy wasn’t sweating. What do you think?

St. Peter’s Basilica and The Sistine Chapel

A long day touring Catholicism.  It all started with Constantine when Christianity became the state religion in Rome. What you were martyred for a hundred years before, now was enforced with equal enthusiasm. The first Basilica was built in the 4th century of which parts were incorporated in the current church. It continued to grow in size and importance until today it is the largest Catholic church and is filled with hundreds of works of art. It and the Vatican  Museum are on par with the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Louvre in Paris.  Rather then bore you with history, here are some views.  Its size is overwhelming, no doubt the same feeling felt by the 15th century worshippers when 40,000 would have Mass.

Front to back is the length of two football fields!

The dome was designed by Michelangelo.  He died long before it was finished, the dome alone took 100 years to build!

To help with a size perspective:  The Altar is 7 stories high, and the letters on the upper wall are 7 feet high.

Michelangelo’s famous Pieta.  Now behind bullet proof glass after it was attacked by a crazy man with a hammer.  This was his commission after he finished David, he was still in his early thirties!

This sort of sculpture was everywhere!  Unbelievable.

After touring through the Vatican Museum, with cameras, we were ushered into the Sistine Chapel( no cameras).  Perhaps you have heard the story of Michelangelo’s painting of the ceiling and the subsequent modern rehabilitation.  I won’t go into details here, just go to Wikipedia for a quick review.  This is where I got this picture of one half of the ceiling, now cleaned so we can see it as Michelangelo intended for it to be seen.  Another incredible moment to view what some have said is the “most important work of art created by a human being in all of history”.

Michelangelo's David and Climbing to the top of the Duomo Dome

Our highlights today are the title.  We have learned how Florence is laid out, so with map in hand we can fine everything we want to look at.  One is only 20 minutes walking distance away from everything.  David  was arguably Michelangelo’s best loved work, or at least his most recognizable.   He was only 26 years old when he started the sculpture; it took him four years.  His method of sculpture was unique.  Other artists, made a replica in plaster, then used that as a model, or they would mark the marble first and throughout the process to direct their sculpting.  Not Michelangelo.  He took a virgin piece of marble and “released what God had buried”.  He created as he went.  Frequently he would attack a project for days on end with no sleep, then he would ignore it for weeks, before starting up in a frenzy.

David is 17 feet high and was intended for the roof of the Florence Cathedral, due to its weight and appeal, it was placed in front of Palazzo della Signoria where the sculptures we photographed yesterday are. However, they moved it into the Accademia Gallery, where it is today in 1873 for protection from the elements.  Again, no cameras allowed in the Gallery, also, again, hardly any visitors on February 1st, so we could take our time and really appreciate Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

The other highlight was the climb to the top of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.  463 steps to the top.  Not only was the view of Florence incredible, but to see the artwork in the dome close-up was probably a once in a lifetime experience.

Our view was from just above the red tiles on the dome.

Between the two layers of the dome.

This view hasn’t changed in 500 years!

 

Finally, this last picture is a real close-up!  The face is around 10 feet wide, the dome has hundreds, if not thousands of these figures.  It is hard to imagine what time and energy it took to do these frescoes.  And, we will learn more when we go to the Sistine Chapel in Rome tomorrow!

Florence—Uffizi Gallery and the Duomo

Another night train, got to the Florence train station around 8:30, with map and hand and a little help, we found our hotel to settle in for the night.  Two days in Florence to celebrate the art of the Renaissance.  Without taking you back to art history class in college, the Bubonic Plague wiped out half of Florence’s population in the 1350’s, the Renaissance commenced in 1401 and, in Florence, at least, debatably lasted around 100 years.  It led Europe out of the Middle Ages as a for-runner to our modern world.

When you talk Renaissance, you think art, and that is what the next two days are about. We started at the Uffizi Gallery, arguably the greatest collection of Italian Paintings anywhere featuring da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Botticelli.  (art history class was nothing like this)  My favorite was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.  Because it is off-season, we could stand and contemplate this masterpiece for as long as we wanted.  Stunning.   No photography in the museum, these are from Wikipedia.

We are using Rick Steve’s Audio Guide’s on my iPhone, he is great at taking us through museums that are overwhelming on their own.  He walked us the the Uffizi.  Another stunner is Michelangelo's The Holy Family.  His only surviving easel painting.  The depth and color was amazing.

Outside of the Uffizi Gallery is the Piazza della Signoria, a large Piazza with my reproductions of famous sculptures from all over.  This isn’t low brow art.  Reproductions have been commissioned for centuries to keep the originals protected and out of the weather. Examples below:

    

Perseus with the head of Medusa, and Rape of the Sabine Women

We finished the day at the Duomo, or the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.  It was started around 1300 and finished 100 years later, but with no dome.  The technology wasn’t in place in Florence at the time.  It took another architect and era for the dome to be finished by Filippo Brunelleschi.  He fashioned it after the Pantheon in Rome built by the Romans in 126AD.   Unfortunately the formula for concrete, that the Romans used, had been long forgotten, so wood and bricks made do.  Additionally, the final marble clad wasn’t installed until the mid 1800’s.  Bricks till then.  They chose to use white, pink and green marble.  We thought it looked nice, however, in art circles it is nicknamed the “Pajama Cathedral”!

    

Finally, another highlight were the brass doors on the “Baptistery” across from the Duomo.  They were cast by Lorenzo Ghiberti, and reviewed by Michelangelo, who said they were the “Gates of Paradise”.    Ghiberti used mathematical laws to create the illusion of receding distance.  Spectacular. Below are two of the ten Biblical vignettes on the double doors.

    

Venice in a day

Took the night train from Milan to Venice for an 8:30pm arrival.  Our hotel was easy to find, just minutes from the Piazza San Marco, the centerpiece of Venetian history and culture.  “blocks” are small, “streets” are smaller.  Blocks are the width of buildings built 4-500 years ago.  Streets are the width of the horse and push carts of the same era, 4-6 feet wide.  We felt we were in a time machine.

Because we saw so much, I will include photos of the highlights.  In background, Venice was the “center of the cultural and trade world” for around three hundred years from the 16th through the 18th centuries.  All trade in Europe and the Middle East passed through Venice.  The merchant’s decadence and wealth were profound..  It is laced together by 400 bridges and 2,000 alley ways. However, its population has halved in the last 30 years though as the city is sinking slowly in the muck it was originally built on 1500 years ago.  With weight and global warming, the city continues to disappear, many of the palaces built by merchants 500 years ago, which are now hotels and apartments; the first floor has been abandoned to the sea.  Below, the highlights in no particular order:

    

On the left, the world’s first “digital” clock dating from the Renaissance.  It is 11:05am. It changes every 5 minutes. On the right, a typical alley way.

    

On the left, a typical gondola, there are now 500, in Venice’s heyday, there were 100,000!  On the right, a view of the Piazza San Marco, one of the biggest in Europe, the length of two football fields!

    

The Campinale.  This is fairly modern, built in 1902 to replace the ancient once that collapsed.  It rings hourly 24/7!  On the right is the Grand Canal.  Where all the merchants lived and traded.   Spectacular.

    

The Rialto Bridge, this one was built in 1588, the third in this location.  It is probably the most photographed landmark in Venice.  On the right is the Basilica di San Marco.  Built in the 11th century to replace an earlier church. It has a distinct Eastern-style architecture underlining Venice’s connection with the Byzantium.  It’s interior is primarily gold mosaics.  A trophy chest from the booty returned by the sea captains during Venice’s heyday.

It was cold!  How cold was it?  32 degrees with 100% humidity.  Many layers to stay warm.  Moderate number of tourists, primarily from Asian countries.  We can’t imagine what it is like in the summer.  Gridlock.