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
