Over the Alps

We left Florence, passed through Milan, then up and over a pass in the Alps to Switzerland. And entered a different world. I had never before understood the extent of this mountain range nor the role it has played in differentiating the cultures of Europe. This trip has given me a new appreciation of these mountains.

We rode to Basel. On the subsequent day, we had lunch with our friends, Marco and Ann Ferroni, whom we had not seen for several decades. Wonderful lunch. Great friends. We had much to catch up on in the two hours we spent together.

Spent the afternoon noting the austere, plain facades of buildings in its old town along the Rhine...




and, then, at a contemporary art museum along the waterfront, under the guise of saying I thought it was "performance art," photographed a workman getting the walls ready for a new exhibit...but isn't so much of our lives and our work "performance art" anyway?






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Location:On train to Frankfort

Wow

Yes, "wow" is what I said to myself as I rounded a corner in Florence off the Via Roma. It was the "Duomo," Santa Maria del Fiore"...the most famous of its many churches. And, though, I had read about it...just finishing a book on the building of its dome by Brunelleschi (author Ross King, subtitled "How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture")...I was unprepared for the sight.

It was not so much the dome as



the incredible use of the three colors of marble: green, red and white...the white coming from the same quarry where Michelangelo got the stone for his David...



I had never seen anything so ornamented on this scale before...




Nor do I expect I will after...



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Location:Florence

Out of the garden

We had an apartment on the other side of a 14th century church with a famous fresco containing a scene from the "expulsion from the garden." The times for viewing were somewhat irregular, as was our wandering in the city, so we did not get to see it.

But in a narrow street just off the piazza had a modified copy, dealing the with gradual expulsion of cars from the central city.




How sad. And, yet, it is happening all over the world as people pour into the cities...limiting the access of cars to city centers...replacing them with pedestrian streets and efficient public transport.

Gotta keep one's sense of humor about it.

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Location:Florence

Troy again

So one of the first stops on this trip was Troy...the site of Homer's great story...and I wondered why people went there...what is it that causes us to want to connect with a pile of stones? The chance to be photographed with a wooden horse?







But then in Denmark at cousin Erik's museum was a painting of the death of Petrokolus, an important scene in Homer's story of the Trojan war.

Petrokolus was the partner of Achilles and his death led Achilles to reenter the war against Troy and to kill Hector, Troy's principle warrior. But Achilles, in turn, was then killed. You know, the old Achilles' heel. His mother was a goddess and when he was a baby, she dipped him in the waters of immortality. But she held him by his heel which remained mortal. An arrow to that heel, after he avenged the death of Petrokolus, killed him.



And, then, in Florence, the same scene...the death of Petrokolus...now in marble in the loggia just across from the statue of David...




So perhaps these stories follow us in our lives in different forms. Perhaps it is that that is what our lives are...stories. Almost all of which become lost, but some endure over time and space and help to shape what we consider to be human. At least "in the west", though, judging by the large number of Asian tourists maybe for more of humanity than that.

Location:Troy, Turkey and Falster, Denmark and Florence

David

OK, well what can you say about a statue?




A lot, I guess, when it is Michelangelo's David...a symbol of the emergence of art from the Middle Ages...into a classic mode when being just what we are as human beings was ok...heroic, yes, but just a guy looking to take out the Big Guy (in this case Goliath).

Of course, this version in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence's town hall) is a copy...the real one being inside protected from air and other forms of pollution. But in this same plaza in Florence is a host of other statues...like the REAL Cellini's version of Perseus's cutting off the head of the Medusa...whoosh, was that a blow...









Boy, did that hurt....

And the Rape of the Sabine Women...



It's all there...in the same public square...which is what makes this city so unique. Florence does not just have museums. Florence, like Venice, is a museum that people live and work in. And around each corner is another collection of the art and architecture that has come to define much of what we call western civilization.

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Location:Florence

Urban fashion

Two aspects of Florence surprised me. On the first morning after walking across the Arno from our apartment, I found myself on a narrow street lined with small, high fashion shops...all elegant in design. Each one had only a few items on display. I suppose a buyer trusts the name on the glass door that these few items will aid in presenting oneself to the world as a person of taste.











Well tailored clothing, fine leather bags, soft materials. Italians seem to have a much more formal version of "the public self" than I am used to, but, then, I realize that if I lived in Italy, I would dress a lot better than I am doing on this trip.

And the second thing was the intense urbanity of the city, the narrow streets blocked in by the huge, rough-cut stones of the palazzos. On the street level, the shops are carved out of these palace blocks...except where the palace is still the home of a noble family (I think Italy still maintains noble titles if not royal ones...but now they probably live in New York).










But this kind of intense urbanity is itself the result of these noble families coming down from their towers and castles in the countryside in the 13the century. They came into a new form of living together...but still felt the need, and it was a real need, to defend themselves against neighboring families.

So they built these urban palaces as huge fortresses (not really palaces as we think of places like Versailles or Windsor Castle) behind whose thick walls they were safe. Only narrow public spaces, the streets, separated them. They mixed in the plazas and in the churches (though they sponsored different churches as extensions of their family's wealth), but most of all in the city's administrative buildings...even after the Medici's took power.

In these settings these families achieved a new form of urban culture: becoming patrons of the arts...again as an extension of their wealth. Art as an extension of power. Well, perhaps, not that different from a multimillion dollar apartment in a high New York tower overlooking Central Park, an apartment filled with "great art." Our palazzos now are just higher in the sky.

Location:On the train to Milan

Maria

So she is everywhere: in the names of the churches: Santa Maria de
Fiore, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Maria Novella,







She is on small niches on street corners....



On plates....



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and everywhere in art... everywhere...




And, so, yes...Maria is the inheritress of Isis and Aphrodite and Athena...the pre-Christian goddesses honored and worshipped throughout the Near Eastern Empires and the Roman world...but Mary is also an approachable virgin goddess. So much more sympathetic than God the Father and Son who, after all, are going to send a large number of us to Hell.




I can see how lighting a candle, asking for a favor or thanking her for a good outcome, can be a moment of respite in an uncertain world. I understand now a bit better....just by seeing the constant repetition of her image (both with and without the bambino) and her presence...how she is both the Queen of Heaven and someone whom one knows.

She plays that role that in many evangelical traditions is played by Jesus...being "a friend," someone whom one can know...yet, I must admit that if I had to choose (which, of course, I don't), I would go with Mary. In all this art, in all these churches, she is, well, simply beautiful.

Location:Florence

War

I wandered into a naval museum on a hill off the port of Split. It shared space with a school inside the high walls of an old fort. Perhaps built by the Venetians or the Ottomans who contested for control of the Adriatic for hundreds of years.

The museum had a variety of rusting munitions in addition to a few ships: anti aircraft machine guns, mines to protect a harbor or blow up a ship, torpedos...set on a terrace above a church built within the fortifications.







And, later, in one of the city's museums, I came across some early engravings of battles in this area...identifying the positions of Turk and Venetian forces...




as they fought for control of the city...




And then along one of the walls a series of pikes used way before the time of machine guns and mines...







And what was gained, what was lost...Croatia is an interesting spot of consider these weapons...the battles have gone on for so very long and continue so close to the present date.

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Location:Split, Hvratska

Diocletian's palace

So in the Croatian town of Split is a palace built by Diocletian in the 3rd century for his retirement...coming back to the place of his birth after ruling the empire for decades...he must have been tired. As were the slaves who built it if they had not died from exhaustion.




In the 7th century, new arrivals began to settle in the palace, carving shelters out of its rooms, walls, temples, and very stones. Over time this process accelerated...the palace walks became streets...


the outer walls formed back walls of houses and places for ships to unload their cargoes.




A process which continues...wash is hung out along the walkways of these same outer wall....
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shops take over former doorways with clear glass to display their wares...


but perhaps the most symbolic of these transformations has been the conversion of the mausoleum of Diocletian into a cathedral, honoring the relics of Saint Doimus and Anastasius, some of the many thousands who were prosecuted by the emperor's anti-Christian edicts.



So it is "Sic gloria transit mundi" even for Diocletian.

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Location:Split, Hvratski

Ephesus

Well this turned out to be an "all day" tour again. Yet now Charlotte and I knew to take our time...read the guide book (don't try to listen to the guide)...take in the sights of the site...catch up with what you saw later on Wikipedia if the English guidebook is poorly translated...



Take time to see what visually strikes you...this Medusa, for example, who from the roadway (and these roadways are still paved in the original Roman marble) looks like she is happy with her new perm instead of having snakes for hair...




and this lone column in the woods beyond...just a small portion of this site has been excavated...leaving one to speculate on what might be underneath...




But, then, it is back to the crowds..




and finding the bus (number 53 out of hundreds...but the folks from the travel agency were there to help)...




And back on the bus, there is a reminder: we are in Turkey (with the ever present Ataturk...who took that name meaning Father of the Turks after they won their war of independence); we are at Ephesus, a Biblical city (as in Paul's letter to the Ephesians who were, after all, the folks living here then); and we are having a fragment of an experience in Turkey which is, well, a great country.

Location:On the Ha-day (Jade)

Free Time

But, then, along with mass tourism comes "free time." So I wandered down the broad street that runs beneath the Akropolis and came to the new Akropolis Museum, built to house the marble reliefs that once were placed just beneath the roof of the temple to Athena.

The marbles were "stolen" claim the Greeks by Lord Elgin and are now in the British Museum. The Greeks have asked for their return since they gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. The British have always refused. When the last request was made, the Brits said the Greeks did not have a museum that was "good enough" to exhibit them. Hence this new museum. The Brits have continued to refuse to return them.



What a magnificent building...the plaza is built out over ruins (well everywhere there are ruins) on columns in such a way that the archeologists can continue their work...some of it beneath glass floors that allow visitors to watch their work as it moves (ever so slowly) along.


Inside are video displays of what the carved marbles look like....and a whole floor is built around the outline of Athena's temple with copies where the originals (when the Brits finally agree) will go.
When the Greeks last asked for their return, the British told them "No" because they did not have a museum sufficient to house them. And this is the result...a structure which is built...on the third floor...to the precise specifications of the temple with niches for all the marbles...the one still in London are in bright white because they are copies...but the ones he left behind are in the



So come on, Great Britain, get with the program. No better place in the world than this to display these marbles...




And after the viewing seeing "the marbles that Elgin stole" to sit out on the spectacular cafe and contemplate how this place is part of one's own cultural heritage...and so is the wine that one is drinking.



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Location:On the Ha-day (Jade)