Italy

Thursday, 7 July 2022

9039 Although the express train from the Bologna airport to the city center does come every 7 minutes, there were so many people waiting to board the small cars that the wait time was actually 21 minutes or 28 minutes or more for some people. But it is a fast transport once you're aboard.

9047 The signage at Bologna Centrale train station is not very good: the place to leave baggage is straight ahead, and yet the sign doesn't mention it at all. I had to ask two separate workers about storage in order to find the place!

9051 The sculptures in the Park of Montagnola are surprisingly violent but kind of cool.

9071 They don't really have bologna meat in Bologna, Italy, but mortadella is very similar. If you're curious, mortadella must be all pork (along with spices), while bologna must have no white fat spots (which you can clearly see here, so this is mortadella).

9053 This is in Bologna, not Venice. The Finestrella (literally, "window") is just a nice spot where you can see the medieval Canale delle Moline. Like many European cities, there used to be many canals but are now very few.

9064 The story is that the Two Towers of Bologna were built as a contest between two families, but that may or may not be true. It's also thought that they inspired Minoru Yamasaki's design of the WTC, which immediately came to my mind when I saw the towers.

9066 These kind of covered sidewalks are everywhere in Bologna (I don't even remember what street is in the photo). There are some in Wroclaw and in many other cities, but somehow I felt that there were many more in Bologna.

9092 At the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna. This has become my first-day-in-a-new-country shirt. Even though I know life may not be good for some people in the world today, I still like the shirt tradition.

9097 Adjacent to the Fountain of Neptune is station for filling water bottles or washing hands. Restaurants in Italy do not provide free water, but I saw a small number of these kinds of fountains in both Bologna and Florence.

9100 Taking a train from Bologna to Firenze / Florence was very easy. For the non-metric folks, 209 kph is 130 mph. But it was a fairly smooth ride. (By the way, the only passenger train with this kind of speed in the US is Amtrak's Acela between DC and Boston.)

9113 "Machine Hallucinations - Renaissance Dreams" by Refik Anadol. Basically they gave a computer a bunch of art from the 1300-1600s and had it create this swirly video. The projection screen in the center of Palazzo Strozzi is 9 m (30 ft) high.

9107 The bright marble of the Baptistery of San Giovanni is stiking in any lighting, but it's especially impressive with the sun at this angle.

Friday, 8 July 2022

9143 Florence has multiple exhibits and museums about Leonardo Da Vinci; today I chose the one on Via del Castellaccio. This room in the museum definitely captures the ideal of a Da Vinci workshop.

9155 While the ground floor of the Da Vinci museum has 'Do Not Touch' signs everywhere, the basement is full of interactive models.

9156 Also in the basement are building blocks and puzzles, but for adults and for very young kids.

9134 Pizza in Italy is not necessarily better or worse than in other places, but it's quite delicious. It's often served as one single disk, so there is the added work of cutting it yourself.

9223 Here is another Fountain of Neptune, this time in Florence. I had planned to go to the nearby Uffizi art museum today, but there are so many sculptures around the city that I decided to just focus on those.

9219 The Loggia della Signoria, or Loggia dei Lanzi, was built in the 1370s as a place to hold public ceremonies. Over time more and more statues were moved to this location. For example, the lions were originally in Rome and were moved to Florence in 1554 (big) and 1787 (small ones).

9137 There are several bridges crossing the Arno, but Ponte Vecchio is by far the most interesting since it is lined with shop buildings. A bridge in the same location existed as early as 996 CE, although that one and its next incarnation were destroyed by floods.

9185 Usually I try to avoid getting other people in museum photos, but in this case I waited to take a photo of Santucci’s 1593 armillary sphere with a person nearby so that you can get a better sense of how huge it is. Just one of the hundreds of scientific instruments at the Museo Galileo.

9180 Close up view of the armillary sphere (I literally stuck my phone in past the first few rings).

9188 Three astrolabes (the disks) and some other nautical instruments. The bust in the background is of Amerigo Vespucci.

9191 This 1554 map by Lopo Homem is apparently the first one to ever label Argentina. It was part of a large collection of maps collected by Cosimo I de' Medici.

9196 In the center of this frame is the lens that Galileo Galilei looked through in 1610 when he became the first person to ever view the moons of Jupitur. The frame itself was designed by Galileo Vittorio Crosten in 1677. By the way, the Museo Galileo has relatively little signage, but their free app provides a lot of detail about the items.

9208 In addition to navigation and astronomy, the Museo Galileo has pieces related to many different scientific fields. This chemical cabinet was ordered by Grand Duke Peter Leopold, who was a great promoter of the sciences in the 1700s.

9212 151 years before Mendeleev's periodic table, Etienne-François Geoffroy developed this 1718 'table of affinities', which groups substances based on how easily they interacted with each other. (The alchemical symbols were the standard notation for checicals at the time; the alpahetic symbols were not instroduced until the 1810s.)

9199 I love a good brachistochrone track. (If you don't know what a brachistochrone is, look it up!) The straight track with holes has bells spaced so that they ring at equal time intervals.

Saturday, 9 July 2022

9244 On Saturday morning I took a train to Lucca, which is about 67 km (42 mi) west of Florence. In addition to some trainyards and smaller towns and stretches of nothingness, there were also several nice views of vineyards.

9247 The Lucca Suumer Festival is a yearly concert series since 1998 and draws some really big acts (the first two years alone included Bob Dylan, Elton John, the Backstreet Boys, and James Taylor) as well as many Italian artists. The 2022 lineup includes Alison Krauss, Justin Beiber, Celine Dion, and John Legend.

9252 The Church of San Michele in Foro is right in the center of Lucca. The distinctive front facade was built in the 1330s (with many parts replaced in the 1800s), while most of the main building is even older.

9260 The remains of San Davino Armeno, who died in Lucca in 1050, are displayed in San Michele in Foro behind glass (in the middle of this photo).

9261 It may be hard to tell from this photo that the "Roman Amphitheater" in Lucca is really very round.

9264 The Guinigi Tower is notable for having trees growing on the top. It was constructed in the 1300s by the Guinigi family, who also owned several other buildings in Lucca.

9284 Stairs inside the Guinigi Tower. It is actually a very short climb (only 5-6 minutes for me), and the lower parts of the tower have large windows, so there is nice airflow as you climb.

9274 The view from the top of the Guinigi Tower. You can see some leaves from the oak trees at the top of the photo, as well as the Roman Amphitheater below in the background.

9293 The Lucca Walls encircle the town, forming a 4.3 km (2.67 mi) loop. The bulwarks were built between the mid-1600s and early 1800s and are over 10 m (32 ft) high in places.

9303 The city of Pisa is a very short ride from Lucca. The famous Leaning Tower is actually just one of several buildings in the so-called Square of Miracles.

9384 At the time of their construction, the Pisa Cathedral was more noteworthy than its adjacent bell tower. Of course, the subsequent leaning of the tower has since made it much more famous.

9364 Inside the Pisa Baptistery.

9373 The Camposanto (built 1277) is the large rectangular cemetery next to the Baptistery and Cathedral. Although "camposanto" can generally be translated to "graveyard", the literal translation "holyland" comes from the fact that it was supposedly built around a shipment of soil from Jerusalem that was brought back to Pisa during the Third Crusade.

9370 The walls of the Camposanto are covered by large frescos, but these have deteriorated over time. This one is Buonamico Buffalmacco's Giudizio Universale e Inferno (literally, The Last Judgement and Hell), hence the giant Devil on the right.

9375 A view of the Cathedral from the Camposanto entrance. The northern transept is currently under rennovation.

9359 The interior of the Pisa Cathedral.

9363 Part of the side wall of the Pisa Cathedral.

9385 Pizza in Pisa 🍕😀

9320 Older decorations from interior and exterior of the Cathedral are now displayed at the Opera del Duomo Museum.

9334 These wooden paneling were part of kneelers in the Cathedral.

9330 I could not completely resist a "holding up the tower" photo, but I did it with the 1:25 scale model inside Opera del Duomo Museum.

9336 A view of the Tower from the Opera del Duomo Museum. From this angle you can really see the lean. By the way, the Tower actually leaned farthest (5.5°) in 1990. The Civic Tower in Pavia collapsed in 1989, and the Italian goverment closed the Leaning Tower of Pisa to the public in 1990 over fears of a similar collapse. Between 1993 and 2001, the tower was strengthened and somewhat stabalized, so it now leans only 3.97°.

9345 The word "sinopia" describes a reddish-brown color and also the layer of drawing directly on a wall that would be covered over by a fresco. The Sinope Museum displays several sinopie found in the Camposanto in the 1940s when the frescoes themselves were removed for restoration after being damaged by Allied bombs.

9389 Pisa has two train stations. I arrived from Lucca at San Rossore, and I decided to leave through Centrale so that I would talk through the town of Pisa and see more than just the area near the Leaning Tower. This is the entrance to the Pisa Botanical Gardens.

9393 The Church of Santa Maria della Spina is notable for having exquisite Gothic architecture. It's actually quite small, though—you can see it is shorter than the surrounding buildings.

9394 The mural Tuttomondo (English: All World) was painted by American artist Keith Haring in 1989. It is fairly close to the the Pisa Centrale train station.

Sunday, 10 July 2022

9414 On Sunday I stayed in Florence (I will be travelling again tomorrow). This is the from the Medici Museum, a small but nice museum. The bust is of Granduca Ferdinando I de' Medici, and the red portrait behind it is of Cardinale Leopold de' Medici.

9421 These engravings, which line a hallway near the beginning of the Medici Museum, are part of a series commissioned in the 1660s by Cardinale Leopold to the Flemish artist Adrian Haelwegh. They form the largest engraved genealogy of the Medici family.

9425 The Medici Museum mostly consists of portraits and relevant objects, but there is also this diorama of the 1440 Battle of Anghiari.

9400 I happened to be walking past the Basillica of San Lorenzo when serviced started on Sunday. The bell rang for several minutes.

9448 I'm sure the Da Vinci Museum had some inventions that the Interactive Museum does not, but since I'm going the Interactive second, it's easier to notice new things here that the first Da Vinci museum did not have. One such item is a paddle boat design from the late 1400s, which functions pretty much identically to modern paddle boats.

9439 The originals of Da Vinci's notebooks are mostly housed in other cities. Most are now named as different codices (the Codex Leicester, the Codex Forster, etc.), and the Interactive Museum labels many of its models with the codex and page number where the original drawing can be found. For example, the paddle boat was from Codex Atlanticus, Folio 945R.

9444 Ironically, the Interactive Museum has one room dedicated to Da Vinci's artwork (which is not, obviously, particularly interactive), while the other museum (at least half of which was look-but-don't-touch) did not show any of his paintings.

9434 Once nice thing about Florence—and, I would assume, most of Italy—is that there is good food everywhere. (This combination of bruschetta, lasagne, and more was fairly cheap for Italy, although it's still expensive compared to food in Poland.)

Monday, 11 July 2022

9457 For my trip to Sienna I decided to do a group bus tour. (None of the busses in this photo are actually the one I used because I arrive unnecessarily early.)

9478 On the way to Sienna we stopped in Monteriggioni, which is a very small town in Tuscany. This photo in a window shows an arial view of the whole town.

9479 You can walk along several parts of the fortified walls of Monteriggioni.

9544 The Piazza del Campo in the center of Sienna a semicricle with radial lines meeting in front of the Palazzo Pubblico—the Public Palace—and the Tower of Mangia. Since the 1500s there has been a yearly horse race in this very place. Each horse represents a different district of Sienna, as do the flags that you can see here.

9509 Inside the Palazzo Pubblico is the Civic Museum of Sienna. (The other half of the palace is still used as municipal offices.)

9516 This room in the Civic Museum contains frescoes by Spinello Aretino (1400s) and his son showing stories about Pope Alexander III (1100s), who was Sienese.

9523 A view of the Piazza del Campo from inside the Palazzo Pubblico.

9546 The Church of Saint Christopher. Although the vans are not ideal for the photo, I'm including it because there is also the column with a she-wolf, a symbol of Sienna because the town was supposedly founded by Senius and Aschius, twin sons of Remus (twins Romulus and Remus were nurtured by a she-wolf, so it is also a common symbol of Rome).

9574 (There was a lunch in Sienna, but I forgot to take any photos there.) After Sienna, we took the bus to the Poggio ai Laghi winery, which is actually near Monteriggioni as it along the way back towards Florence.

9566 Wine tasting at Poggio ai Laghi. Technically, it was a wine-and-oil tasing: three wines, one olive oil, and one truffle oil.

9556 At the Poggio ai Laghi winery. The background is a bit to blurry to see the grapes—and they were the same green as the leaves at this time—but they are there.

9606 The final stop was San Gimignano, which in medieval times was called the "town of a hundred towers", although techincally there were only 72. Today there are just 14 towers, most of which are still owned by local families.

9598 The main square in San Gimignano is the Piazza della Cisterna, so named because of the well in the center. There are two excellent gelato places in the square (I only went to one, but reports from other people on the bus were positive for both.)

9625 A museum called SanGimignano1300 has a miniature model of the town as it appeared in the 1300s.

9626 There is also a cut-away model of one of the towers (I don't know which one), showing how it was also used as a family house in medieval times.

Tuesday, 12 July 2022

9650 The Pitti Palace is the largest museum complex in Florence. It has several museums inside, and the Boboli Gardens are adjacent to the palace.

9663 The main museum within the Pitti Palace is the Palatine Gallery / Royal Apartments. In this photo, the circular paintings are some of the oldest in the museum. I forgot to record any information about the floral vase, but the marble statue in the back room is La Vittoria by Vincenzo Consani.

9672 Although the sign at the entrance labels this as "Napolean's bathroom", that's a bit misleading because it was not completed in time for him to ever use it (Ferdinand Ill Habsburg-Lorraine was in power by then).

9678 The doorway might look at first like one of those infinity-mirrors, but in fact there is just room after room after room each filled with paitinings from floor to ceiling (literally; see next photo). Here the painting over the door is by Paolo Veronese, and the large one on the left is Andrea del Sarto.

9675 The ceiling of the same room as the previous photo, the Sala dell'Iliade. In the 1600s this was a game room, used mostly for Trucco, but the ceiling was not painted until the 1810s, when Ferdinand III—who had recently returned from exile after the fall of Napolean—commissioned Luigi Sabatelli to do so.

9688 In addition to the painted ceilings, many rooms also have impressive scluptures along the top of the walls. There was debate in the 1500s about whether painting or sculpture was a superior art form, with some arguing that scultpure is preferable because you can see multiple angles of the subject. In response, Bronzino painted both sides of the canvas in the glass case, so as you walk around it you can see the subject—Braccio di Bartolo, a dwarf and court jester for Cosimo I—from both the front and the back.

9708 On the floor above the Palatine Gallery and Royal Apartments is the "Museum of Modern Art." That name is perhaps confusing because all its art is from the 1800s. Admittedly, that is modern compared to the artwork in the apartments. Here we see the sculpture La Ehma by Salvino Salvini and paintings by Guiseppe Bezzuoli (left) and Amos Cassioli (right).

9721 There is so much artwork in the Pitti Palace that is difficult to actually stop and appreciate much of it. But for some reason this one by Antonio Ciseri particularly caught my eye.

9733 Some of the works in the Museum of Modern Art do look considerably more modern than the portraits in the Royal Apartments. Here are works by Piero Bernardini (top), Baccio Maria Bacci (b. left), and Fillide Giorgi Levasti (b. right).

9718 By far my favorite scultpure I have seen in Italy and possibly anywhere. This is Primi Pasi (First Steps) by Adriano Cecioni in the mid 1800s. The painting on the side is by Silvestro Lega.

9765 The Palatine Gallery, Royal Apartments, and Museum of Modern Art are in the wing on the right. The Boboli Gardens (separate ticket) are in the center, and the Silver Museum (Museo Degli Argenti) is in the wing on the left. There is also a Costume Museum, but it is temporarilly closed.

9758 There are actual silver pieces in the Silver Museum, but I was more impressed by these ivory carvings. They were made by German and Flemish artists and taken by the Medici family as spoils from the 1644 Siege of Kolberg.

9748 There are no canvases hung on the walls of the Silver Museum. Instead, many rooms have giant frescos painted onto the walls themselves. This room is the Salone of Giovanni, whose frescos were begun in 1635 to celebrate the marriage of Ferdinando II and Vitoria Della Rovere.

9757 This photo does not have any sculptures or columns—those are only paintings. I honestly was not certain until I walked across the room and checked that the same part of the arm and face are visible the whole time.

9773 I spent a little over three hours at the Pitti Palace, and I still feel like I rushed through several parts. Once outside, I bought this lovely fruit cup. Note to self: I should eat more fruit.

9780 About 8 km (5 mi) from the Pitti Palace is the Piazzale Michelangelo, which I heard offers great views of Florence. Along the walk up the hill there is a large garden with over 350 different types of roses.

9783 The view from most of the way up the hill, with a convenient illustration labeling several buildings.

9792 The climb to Piazzale Michelangelo was more than I expected, but the view was definitely worth it!

9802 Piazzale Michelangelo was built in 1869, when Florence was the capital of Italy. Since 1873 the square has had bronze copies of some of Michelangelo's sculptures, including David. (This photo is not mine it; it is from italia.it. The lighting in my photo was not as good.)

9810 Previous versions of Jean Marie Clet Abraham's Common Man statue were removed from the Ponte alle Grazie in 2011 and 2013 for violating the cityscape, but last year it was reinstalled. The artist claims it should inspire hope and optimism, but to me it looks like it might encourage someone to jump off the bridge.

9814 After all the walking today—throughout the museums at up and down the hill to Piazzale Michelangelo—I had no difficulty finishing a giant pizza from Pizzeria da Michele (they are so big that they overhang the plates).

Wednesday, 13 July 2022

9816 Today is my last day in Florence. By the way, this was my hotel—I found it through AirBnB, but it is really a small hotel, not a person's home or apartment.

9818 It's interesting what restaurants in Europe label as "American". This place near my hotel had several bagel sandwhiches for breakfast, and their "American style" one had cream cheese, egg, and bacon all on a bagel. I don't think I've ever seen cream cheese (soft, not a slice of hard cheese) with an egg in the US. Anyway, it worked well enough once I split it into two open-face sandwhiches.

9825 This David is where the original was actually displayed from 1504 to 1873. Today the original is in the Galleria dell'Accademia, which I did not visit, but to me the original location seems like the best place to view the statue, even if it is a replica.

9836 Since I had to check out of my hotel and then take a train to Rome today, I did not visit any more museums this morning. Instead I just wandered around Florence, which is nice. I happened across this chocolate shop with a literal flowing chocolate wall.

9838 The main Florence train station, Firenze Santa Maria Novell, is much smaller than Bologna's, but that makes it much easier to navigate.

9845 Rome Termini station, on the other hand, is huge. I got a 48 hour metro/bus ticket from there, which was actually a bit difficult: some of the machines in this photo only accept card and some only accept cash. This is clearly labeled on the machines but not overhead or visible from a distance, so people often ended up in the wrong lines.

9854 The view from the absurdly extravagent hotel where my dad's conference is held. It is north of Vatican city, about 45 minutes from the center of Rome. But it is a nice hotel, so I spent the rest of the day relaxing there.

Thursday, 14 July 2022

9867 When walking—or, in this case, taking a bus—around Rome, you pass by so many impressive statues and buildings. When I took this photo I had no idea what it even was; having looked it up later, I believe it's the back of the Palace of Justice (if you look up photos of this building, you usually see it from the other side, which is actually not as nice, in my opinion).

9872 Since I went to the Fountain of Nepute in both Bologna and Florence, I figured I would check out Rome's. In Bologna that fountain is one of the main ones, but it Rome is relatively small. I still like it, though.

9875 In the same square (Piazza Navonna) as the Fountain of Neptune is the Fountain of the Four Rivers, which is much larger. You can also see an obelisk, of there are several in Rome. Some were moved from Egypt and some—like this one—were Roman copies of Egyptian columns.

9879 The Pantheon was probably constructed around 30 BCE. In 609 CE it became a Catholic church, and because the building has been in continual use, today it is one of the best-preserved of all ancient Roman buildings.

9881 This photo that I took inside the Pantheon might seem fake, but this really was exactly what it looked like! The large occulus (hole) at the top of the dome basically turns the interior of the Pantheon into a giant sundial.

9929 The roof of Santa Maria della Vittoria. This church is best known for having Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, which is incredible, but I decided to include the ceiling photo because I've seen pictures of the scultpure before.

9917 Also a church, this time the Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. Fun fact: the "cappuccino" drink and the "capuchin" monkey are both named after the Capuchin Monks (more specifically, after the brown color of their robes). This particular church is famous not for the high altar pictured here but rather...

9918 ...for the underground crypt or ossuary, which contains the remains of 4,000 friars buried between 1500 and 1870. This is definitely one of the creepiest things I've ever seen.

9893 Largo di Torre Argentina has the ruins of four Roman Republican temples as well as the Theater and Curia of Pompey, which is where Julius Caesar was assassinated.

9914 Not very much of the Circus Maximus still exists today, but in person you can get a sense for how rediculously big it was (only a small part is in this photo). When it was complete, it could hold over 150,000 spectators, making it the largest stadium ever. And I do mean ever—today the largest stadiums in the world hold "only" between 100,000 and 132,000.

Friday, 15 July 2022

9941 Walking to the Castel Sant'Angelo (which you can see the tip of on the right), Dad and I passed a nice view of the St. Angelo Bridge and the St. Peter's Basilica.

9942 The base of the Castel Sant'Angelo was originally built as the Mausoleum of Hadrian in the 130s CE. Since then it has been a fortress, a prison, a residence, a barracks, and (today) a museum.

9984 Here's a nice photo of me and my dad taken part-way up the Castel Sant'Angelo. In the background you can see St. Peter's Basilica again.

0001 The view from a different part of Castel Sant'Angelo. Here you can see how it was used as a miliary base.

9997 You might think this was from a royal palace or art museum, but in fact it is inside Castel Sant'Angelo. It was decorated in the 1500s as part of the conversion of the castel from a fortress to a papal residence. This was where Pope Paul III would entertain guests.

0004 This is not related to the Castel; this is another Da Vinci Museum. Unlike the two I went to in Florence, this one has a much stronger focus on his painting. Even so, the entrance does shows some inventions.

0015 Reproductions of several Da Vinci artworks. The one on the far left is not a painting but a preparatory sketch (these were usually done before actual portraits). The subject—whose name I do not remember—saw Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (on the right) and requested a similar portrait of herself by Da Vinci. However, he never got arround to actually painting one; all we have are the preperatory sketches.

0005 For three centures this work, Annunciation, was attributed to Domenico Ghirlandaio. Only when it was moved to the Uffizi gallery in the 1860s did art experts determine that it was painted by Da Vinci around 1475 (this was when Da Vinci was quite young).

9939 It's hard to overstate how many museums, ancient buildings, and fountains are in Rome. Without even planning to you can easily walk past several remarkable structures. In this case, it is the Temple of Adrian from 145 CE.

Saturday, 16 July 2022

0023 Capitoline Museum.

0030 Dad in front of fragments of a collosal statue of Constantine.

0031 The Captioline Museum is huge, and the audioguide was a tablet that was a bit unwieldly. The tablet did not have an easy map feature, but it did have some cool things like AR (augmented reality) to give more info when pointing the camera at certain works.

0033 Hall of the Horatii and the Curiatii inside the Captioline Museum.

0040 Statue of Marcus Aurelius on horseback. On the left, another collosal Constantine.

0062 The Capitoline is another one of those museums where you could spend a whole entire day and still have more to see. This Room of Philosphers is in the second (and smaller) building of the museum, which we only went through briefly.

9901 The outside the Colosseum, originally named just "the Amphitheater" and then the Flavian Amphitheater. The modern name Colosseum refers not to the fact that the building itself is large but rather to the fact that it used to be next to a collosal statue of Nero.

0083 Inside the Colosseum. Very neat.

0087 Here you can clearly see the undeground section of the Colloseum, which in the building's prime would have been completely covered by the wooden floor. Gladiators and animals would be held in the network of tunnels and cages there before events began.

0091 Another I-just-happened-to-walk-past-this building. This is the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument (or Vittoriano), built to honor the first king of unified Italy. After all the walking I had already done today, I did not even try to go up its three tiers of steps.

Sunday, 17 July 2022

0111 You can look down into the Roman Forum from the street for free, so I was skeptical that walking among the ruins would be anything new. But it definitely feels different down here. (The ticket to the Colloseum includes a one-time entrance to this area, by the way.)

0118 A fragment of the Temple of Vesta on the left, with Santa Maria Antiqua on the right. In the background is Palatine Hill; the next photo was taken from the overlook you can see at the top.

0141 The ticketed area includes the Imperial Forum, Roman Forum, Farnese Gardens (behind me), and Palatine Hill (far right and behind me). It's really huge.

0137 Created in the 1550s, the Farnese Gardens atop the Paltine Hill were the first private botanical gardens in Europe, although the current gardens are very different from the original design. By the way, the Farnese family owned tons of property in Renaissance Italy and have their name attached to several squares, palaces, etc.

0188 The Great Synagogue of Rome does not look like a usual Jewish temple, either outside (here) or inside (next photo). The pillars outside are quintessentially Roman, although there is Hebrew above the middle door: ברוך אתה בבואך וברוך אתה בצאתך Blessed are you when you enter and blessed are you when you leave.

0176 The inside of the Great Synagogue has many features more typical of churches—in fact, the room's footprint is a cross! This is because the synagogue was built shortly after Italian Jews were granted citizenship, and the Jews at that time wanted to prove that they were equal to the Christian citizens.

0183 A display of Torah covers from the Jewish Museum adjacent to the synagogue.

0192 Ruins of the Stadium of Domitian, which is literally underneath the Piazza Navona (the stadium was above ground when it was constructed, but that was around 80 CE).

Monday, 18 July 2022

0226 Leaving Rome for Naples today.

0239 The National Archaeological Museum of Naples, or MANN, is as much an art museum as it is an archaeological museum. In addition to the many scultpures and ancient artwork, there are painted ceilings and some huge canvases on the walls high up.

0253 I think of still-life paintings as being popular mostly around 1500-1700 CE, but apparently they were also popular BCE. There are also several large frescos, which I didn't take as many pictures of.

0260 The MANN has a 1:100 model of Pompeii made in the 1870s and updated in the 1910s.

0241 These both depict Perseus freeing Andromeda. The larger one is (a replica of one) from Pompeii around 20-45 CE, while the smaller one is from Herculaneum 45-79 CE.

0266 There is also a marble floor transplanted from Pompeii, and you need to wear cloth booties in order to enter this part of the museum.

0269 Personally, I think the mosaic columns—made with glass paste and marble inlay—are much more beautiful than the classical white columns. The works on the walls here are also mosaics, collected from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

0291 The two busts here are of Caracalla, Roman emperor from 198 to 217. The waving man has the head of Marcus Aurelius, but this was actually attached by modern workers; they original identity of the body is unknown. There were a few mixed-statues like this at the MANN.

0296 I couldn't find a card indicating the sculptor or subject, but this was too cool a picture not to include. I believe she's holding a theater mask, not a severed head.

0304 Plenty of Florentine and Roman restaurants had seafood, but I decided to wait until Naples to try some since, in theory, it should be better so close to the sea. Ristorante a Figlia d'O Luciano is a place that Dad and I would have walked past without a second thought if I hadn't looked it up ahead of time and read reviews; it was delicious.

Tuesday, 19 July 2022

0306 On all the streets in Naples, people and cars and motorcycles seem to go wherever they want. This picture shows a relatively clear street, but frequently cars would go down crowded streets too, forcing the people to the edges.

0324 On a train to Pompeii. There were many signs in Naples for buses charging many times the price of a train ticket for basically the same journey.

0352 The Casa degli Amanti, or House of Lovers, is one of the only two-story ruins in Pompeii. Most second stories and even roofs were destroyed by falling debris. The name in this case comes from an inscription of a poem found inside.

0344 These are not actually remains but rather plaster casts made by pouring liquid into the mould created when the organic remains decomposed. They were made in the 1860s by Giuseppe Fiorelli.

0368 A mensa ponderaria, or measuring table. This was used to check the volume of goods for sales.

0377 The Antiquarium is a modern museum within Pompeii. The original version was set up by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1873, and it has been redesigned a few times since then.

0228 Dad and I actually walked past the Naples Cathedral, also called San Gennaro or Santa Maria Assunta, yesterday (when this picture was taken) and admired it from the outside, but today it was open, so we went inside (next photo).

0386 The interior of the Naples Cathedral is much more impressive than the outside, and bigger than we realized too, ...

0384 ... with a painted ceiling, of course. This dome was painted by Domenichino in the 1630s, although the church's construction began more than 300 years earlier.

Wednesday, 20 July 2022

0391 Dad returned to the US this morning. I haven't had a day of pure relaxation during this trip, so I decided to just be lazy at the hotel for the whole day.

Thursday, 21 July 2022

0401 Downtown Naples has very little beachfront. Most of the coast is commercial or industrial. But there is the Mappatella Beach.

0413 Mappatella Beach. Swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea, which is part of the Mediterranean.

0426 The Piazza del Plebiscito is commonly shown on pamphlets or slideshows about Naples.

0436 The Umberto I shopping center was built in the 1880s and named after the king of Italy at that time.

0396 Although it looks confusingly like a pride flag (whose rainbow design originates with Gilbert Baker in 1978), these peace flags were actually used in Italy starting in 1961. Their popularity increased in 2002 as a protest against the Iraq War. I saw a bunch of these in Florence especially, and some in other cities too.

Friday, 22 July 2022

0454 There are a number of underground exhibits in Naples, showing parts of the old city that modern Naples was built on top of. This is from the "La Neapolis Sotterrata" museum.

0450 Underground ruins of a bakery, with an oven and shelves.

0446 Connected to Sotterrata is the Chapter Hall, built during the 1200s. The wall paintings were added in the early 1600s and show members of the Fratrum Minorum Conventurum.

0470 One Italian cuisine I had yet to sample was meatballs. Now I can check that off the list. Delicious, of course.

0476 Time to go! Hopefully I will return to Italy on another trip (maybe to northen cities like Milan or Venice).