Spring Break in Tuscany

Flying back to England after five days in Tuscany, my first thoughts about how to describe this adventure are of time and space. If the past couple months have been a lesson in the presence of the past—weekly doses of palaces, castles, colleges, and museums that celebrate times before the U.S. was a country—the last five days have been a master class in an even earlier time. Consistently we were walking streets and visiting buildings that predated Columbus finding America. What was considered old in England is likely a Renaissance remodeling job of a Roman or even Etruscan building here in Tuscany. A church near where we stayed describes a 1604 painting as modern, and I suppose it was compared to the medieval frescoes of a couple hundred years earlier painted on the adjoining walls.

Tuscany is a very distinctive space, made all the more clearly distinctive when driving from the flat farm lands near Rome. From artichoke plants to huge rosemary bushes, to olive groves, to hillsides of vines, Tuscany’s rolling hills and agricultural setting is also very much a cultural one. The hill towns make clear why an Italian “nation” has always been such a challenge. While they share an agriculture, each town stands on its own with distinct pasts and presents. Sienna and Firenze (I have to find out why the English—and Americans—use the name Florence) were the big kids in the neighborhood and a number of other town’s fortunes were dependent upon them, but others carved (literally) their own place.  I suppose one could say something similar about certain regions of the U.S. and elsewhere, but it is striking here.

            We stayed half way between Florence and Sienna in a modest not-hill town, Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, at an old house converted into seven apartments. Actually we were in the converted barn. The views outside our place were spectacular. We took dozens of landscape pictures during our time in Tuscany, but it will take a better camera (and photographer) to capture the scene and atmosphere.

        The first hill town we visited was Sienna, the widely acknowledged best of the bunch. The piazza and duomo (cathedral) are justly famous—really beautiful buildings—and a nice essay could be written comparing this setting with Brugge.  

"PiazzadelCampoSiena" by Massimo Catarinella -

where's the car?

The narrow, medieval streets are a maze, and that was unfortunately literally true for us, as we were completely lost when we left the city center and headed for our car, which we had so confidently parked near a school whose name we didn’t write down and of course forgot. (That 50-word sentence is an attempt to capture our meandering ways.) We couldn’t ask anyone how to get to our car, because we didn’t know where it was. As we walked down one narrow lane after another, we would remember a window or door or sign and feel momentary elation until we realized we had (or had not) since taken a turn that put us in unknown alley. The weather wasn’t awful, but it was drizzling, and by the time we did find the car, we were miserably wet.

        We learned our lessons on a trip to San Gimignano and Volterra. We wrote down in detail our starting places and took pictures of the parking space with what we thought were distinctive backgrounds. That the towns were considerably smaller, with generally straight (if still narrow) streets, helped considerably. Both of these hill towns have wonderful settings. San Gimignano is distinctive because of its fourteen towers (once upon a time there were seventy). They dominate the town from afar and within the walls. The piazza has a medieval well in its center and two gelato shops along the side (one with a line of American school kids, the other with Italians school kids, but we still managed to secure a cone and cup of the rich treat).

well in the piazza, with two of the towers

 

The duomo’s walls are covered with magnificent 14^th century frescos telling Bible stories—we were impressed with how much of our Catholic schooling we could recall in recognizing the tales. The details of the faces and the clothes are so remarkable given that the artist was working with wet plaster and had to finish the work before it hardened. It is also remarkable how preserved this art is six hundred years later. 

One chapel in the duomo is devoted to Saint Fina, the saint of gillyflowers, who was grievously ill and paralyzed at age ten, and for the next five years lay on a wooden plank (legend is that she fused to the wood) until Saint Gregory the Great appeared in a vision and announced she would die in three months on his feast day, March 12th. His prophesy came true, and when the townspeople removed her body from the plank the church bells rang out on their own and gillyflowers—known as Saint Fina’s violets—burst into bloom on the plank. It became a shrine, and the sick who visited it were cured.

       No point in trying to make a clever or even smooth transition from that story. The next hill town, Volterra, we approached on a road that wound across the hills so that we saw it from afar on three sides before reaching it.  Outside the medieval walls are ruins of a Roman amphitheater. Nearby, part of the walls and fortress are a state prison. It was a weird juxtaposition; we wondered what conditions were like inside the prison. At least they probably aren’t waiting to meet with lions or bears on stage.

The town has an Etruscan museum that honors its pre-Roman past; a Basilica that is probably the earliest church we will ever see, a peaceful walled park, and a piazza with a palace. We thoroughly enjoyed this place. It just didn’t have any stories to top the previous one.

Approaching Volterra

medieval basilica

         Firenze is just about the complete opposite of the hill towns. It is a massive modern city in the valley along the Arno. We were stuck in traffic, surrounded by a swarm of motorcycles and scooters. As city workers blocked traffic to cut down some shoes on a wire across the street, they were met with a cacophony of horns and gestures. What a show for us tourists! But Florence does share an early Renaissance past with its region, and the major sites there are almost unbelievably major.  Dominating them all, is the massive duomo with its Brunelleschi dome (largest brick dome ever) and Giotto’s bell tower next to it.

 

It is awe inspiring—as was its intention. Interestingly to us, the wall paintings and sculpture inside the cathedral were not as remarkable as many other churches in Tuscany. But the art on the dome, which gave us instant headaches as we strained to view it, is magnificent. I would love to lie on the floor and look up, but I’d be quickly trampled—and this is the off season for tourists. Probably the second biggest attraction is the Market, with its leather goods and many tourist items (don’t worry we aren’t coming home with plastic bell towers for you). The actual Mercato Centrale is filled with food stalls celebrating the modern abundance of this area (and the rest of the world). We stopped for slices of pizza and glasses of chianti—when in Florence…

Speaking of food (now this is a transition),we learned how to make pasta in various forms from Vilma of Pasta Fresca in our town. I admit to some skepticism at first, but was completely won over by Vilma’s style, energy, and good humor; she was a perfect match for Kate. We made three kinds of ravioli as well spaghetti, farfalle (bowties) and penne. The recipes and techniques had been handed down from grandmother to mother to our teacher, who had been running the pasta shop for twenty-two years. We ate our hard work for lunch, and it was delicious with a bottle of chianti and Vilma’s sauce. We currently have great determination to put our lesson to use—beware if we stick to our resolution!

In the midst of all this ancient settings and traditions, we went to a very modern winery for a tour and tasting. The Antinori family has been making wine since the 12^th Century, and it is clear they plan hundreds of years more, given the massive, futuristic facility they opened in 2011.   The vats are huge and the caves have row upon row of barrels. Antinori has become a very large enterprise with multiple sites and various wines, but this shrine is mostly devoted to chianti. 

 

We visited other towns and sites, but I’ve run out of stories and leave you with some more pictures and captions:

	Carousel in Florence piazza
Butcher shop in Greve in Chiani--his brothers are all hanging from the ceiling inside
Rosemary Bush & Olive Tree	Olive Jars at Antinori Winery

            A final note to travellers: Our Alitalia flight home was cross listed with Etihad (UAE) Airways so beware when booking--no Chianti or Peroni on the way to London. On the other hand at least it flew, not like the hundreds of other flights cancelled because of a strike.

Brugge, Belgium

        On the train from Brussels to Brugge, a woman sitting across from us remarked that “Brugge is a dead city.” She went on to explain it was only a shrine to the past for tourists and had no life of its own.  We had a momentary fear that we were on our way to a European Busch Gardens—had the town we so loved about thirty-five years ago lost its soul and vitality?  Upon arriving, we took a bus across town to the house where we were staying--while we recognized some of the “sights,” we were more struck by the energy of the people riding the bus with us. If the town was dead, it wasn’t populated by zombies. This sense that the people of Brugge were alive and vital was repeated when we met our host Sophie and was reinforced countless times as we met people over the next few days (especially a very gracious woman when I dumped a chocolate display onto the floor of her shop).

          On the other hand, the town at times felt like it had more tourists than citizens, as every corner seemed to be a wonderful photo op populated with someone trying to read the town map or project a selfie stick. I easily snapped more pictures over this visit that any other three-day span. It’s not just the Markt and Burg, the two main squares about a block apart from each other, it is all the beautiful lanes, canals, churches, and homes at each turn of the corner. So much of this city's great medieval past has survived.

        I will admit the Markt had a slight Disneyland feel despite the buildings being almost 300 years old. Two sides of the square are shops and cafes that we were consistently told to avoid, though the buildings were still historical and charming. A third side, once the Provincial Court, had the “Historium” movie and a faux brewery. On the south side, The Belfort, built in the 13^th Century, rises not only above the square but much of the town (we passed on the opportunity to climb 366 steps to see the view from the tower).  In the middle of the square, a statue honors town heroes Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninc, though it is hard to see midst the horse-drawn carriages, tour buses, and Segues waiting for tourists. In one sense, the place is still pretty much a market.

 

Markt square

Belfort

        The Burg, however, still had some gravitas with the Basilica of Holy Blood dominating the square. The Basilica has a fine neo-Gothic upper church, but the real treasure is a small Romanesque lower church. Next to it are the gothic Town Hall (Stadhuis) and the Palace of the Liberty, all still working buildings though open to tourists.  The cobble-stoned square is smaller and quieter.

Burg square

stadhuis and basilica

 

Brugge is marketed as the “Venice of the North,” a mixed blessing, given that the Italian city is sinking literally and figuratively. The canals are picturesque and plentiful, and it is not hard to imagine them as the trade routes in town and to the sea. At the end of one is where shipping arrived and a man-powered crane operated. Now it is replaced by a welcoming statue of Jan Van Eyck (essentially the patron painter of Brugge), the toll house for taxes on the imported goods, and a 15th-century Burgher’s Lodge, a former meeting place of well-to-do Brugge's burghers and foreign merchants.

         Architecture dominates Brugge. But the art is impressive as well, though not on the same scale.  We visited only a couple of museums, notably the Groeninge Museum, which houses some prize Flemish primitives, including works by Van Eyck, Memling, and Claesens. Included in the price of admission was the Arentshuis next door, which housed work by Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956), a prolific, British artist born in Bruges. The exhibit was one of those wonderful surprises; he worked in a range of media (mostly engravings and paintings), designed furniture, tapestries and rugs, as well as murals such as those at the Rockefeller Center in NYC. 

 

After that we found the Church of our Lady in order to view Michaelangelo’s Madonna and Child (we looked for it the previous day, but ended in another church). After deciding two other statues of mother and child in the church couldn’t be Michelangelo’s, we found the real thing (what fine critical eyes we are developing).

Art and architecture even dominated our housing: Our hosts are an architect and the director of the Academie of Art (Filip) and a painter (Sophie). They have restored a 1775 house along a canal (we were staying in their second house next door). Brugge is a world heritage site, so there are strict rules about modifying the facade of buildings. The insides, however,  are completely redone in a modern minimalist design and filled with paintings and sculpture by them and their friends. On Saturday before we left, we stopped by the Acadamie, and witnessed scores of young children pouring out of the building carrying various pieces of art they had created. The arts continue to live and thrive in Brugge.

         Of course, Brugge is also noted for its chocolates, beer, and linen (further expressions of artistic sensibility?). We spent a good deal of time sampling two of the three. I was amused the first time I saw a chocolate shop next to a beer store, thinking isn’t this special and a great photo, but by the time I’d snapped about the tenth such pairing as we wandered the streets, I realized it wasn’t so special (though still amusing).  I suppose you want the story I mentioned above about my spilling chocolate—not gonna do it.

chocolate shop, beer store, chocolate shop--heaven on earth?

      There are many more places in Brugge worth writing about—and photos—but frankly I’m running out of time before our next adventure. Take a look at one of the online photos sites to see more Brugge beauty.

       As we rode the Eurostar, back to England, the world power 100 years ago, after visiting a world power of about 300 years ago, I mused about the passing of time (one of the themes of Flemish paintings) and how these places, while moving off center stage, preserved their past and remained creative. Maybe a good lesson for the U.S. in the coming century.

Portsmouth Naval Museum

Alas, gentle reader, I’ve fallen behind in my posting. I’ve been trying to write about our museum and gallery experiences in Oxford and London, but the task is challenging. The buildings and holdings are so varied and impressive—and the photos so few.

So, I am setting that story aside and moving on to write about our trip to Portsmouth Saturday. We traveled with a group of students and were not expecting much—a naval museum of three old warships. We were pleasantly surprised. It is a wonderful museum, really well organized and informative. And the ships and the stories were captivating.

Portsmouth is still a large base for the Royal Navy and an active harbor for ferries, cruise ships, and commercial vessels. We went on a harbor cruise, passing by various navy ships, including a “stealth” destroyer (in the picture, a Brittany ferry is pulling out of the harbor past it).

The harbor—or harbour —was dug out by Napoleonic war prisoners. A huge undertaking, and the boat tour passed by Rat Island, officially Burrows Island, a tidal island where the dead prisoners were tossed and the rats feasted. One hundred plus years later it was the home for the carrier pigeons that flew messages back and forth to occupied France.

The Dockyards and Naval Museum consist of at least a dozen buildings and three big, old warships from different periods. For the earliest, the Mary Rose, it is really the remains, which are housed in a very modern, beautifully designed building. The Mary Rose was a prize possession of Henry VIII (yes, it’s always about Henry) that unexpectedly sank, but settled in a bed of silt that kept the ship remarkably intact until it was recovered in 1982 after an elaborate naval archeological project. The museum displays a huge assortment of everyday objects—from shoes to medical instruments to bones—that were preserved. Much of the ship is intact as well and kept in a special atmosphere-controlled chamber, with many windows from which you can see the remains of decks, hull, and masts. It was fascinating, and our time seeing it was too short. http://www.maryrose.org/discover-our-collection/story-of-the-ship/

 

Next to the Mary Rose Museum is the HMS Victory, the oldest commissioned warship still operating, well only technically operating since it is in drydock and I can’t imagine it sailing. Still, it is the flagship of the Second Sea Lord and used for various ceremonial occasions—e.g., the Queen awarding medals. The Victory is famous for being the flagship of Admiral Nelson’s during the Napoleonic wars.  Lord Nelson was a heroic figure, who had risen through the ranks and had lost and eye and arm in previous battles. He was also short and vain--just the right adversary for Napoleon. He was killed on board the Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar, which fortunately ended with a decisive victory for the British and a rout of the French and allied Spanish fleet. Nelson lived long enough to hear the news. His body was then pickled in a barrel of brandy so that he could be brought home and  buried in St Paul's Cathedral. The Victory is convincing evidence of why the British ruled the waves during the era of sail. The ship has been in Portsmouth harbor since 1812—good thing it was there then rather than the Baltimore harbor, otherwise we might not now be singing that “banner might wave.” The Victory might have blown it to bits. 

We took a tour of the Victory and learned much about sea life two hundred years ago. Not for the claustrophobic, but impressive in how well space was used. The officers each had their own room, but one brought new meaning to the idea of having a gun by your bedside.

 

 

The differences in the lives between the officers and the sailors were revealed in all sorts of ways.  The officers had rooms, small as they were, while the men had little hammocks in tight rows. The officers had a dining room with crystal and silver, the sailors ate off square wooden plates wherever they were (eating “three square meals a day” comes from this). The officers had uniforms, the sailors wore whatever clothes they had. There were few officers and hundreds of men; order was strict and discipline brutal.

HMS Warrior Captain's Quarters

HMS Victory Admiral's Quarters

The third ship was the HMS Warrior, an armor-plated, iron-hulled warship launched in 1860. It was a technological breakthrough, a game changer that "never fired a shot in anger," partly because the U.K. was not fully-engaged in wars at the time, but mostly because no other ship was so foolhardy as to challenge it. Its combination of armament, wrought iron hull, steam and sail power made other warships obsolete. However, in a time of technological change that reminds us of our own, it was obsolete in about ten years with the development of mast-less steam ships. It was illuminating to see it next to the Victory. Only about fifty years separate these ships—they are very alike in some ways especially reflecting life at sea and the culture of the Navy, and very different in their size (relatively short and stubby vs long and sleek) and their lethal firepower. With the Victory, the idea was to get close to the enemy ship and board her. With the Warrior, you just blew the other ship apart from afar. No comment about warfare today.