BOX 225: Bologna and Orvieto.

You're thinking this scene must be somewhere in Italy, but where exactly? Well, the statue is of Neptune standing atop the Fontana del Nettuno in the Piazza Nettuno in front of the Palazzo Re Enzo in the city of Bologna. Anne and I were there in the summer of 2001 on the first leg of a trip that took us also to Tuscany, Rome and Milan.

Our trip had two main purposes: we were joining a group of friends in renting a villa in the seaside town of Ansedonia, in the southwestern corner of Tuscany; and we were checking out the hotel and other details of our next campus trip, to be based in Siena in January 2002. It was also Anne's first trip to Italy, and we wanted to see as much as we could within about three weeks' time. Our flight was to and from Milan, and our itinerary included Bologna, Orvieto, Ansedonia, Siena and its environs, Rome and finally some time in Milan. I ended up taking a lot of slide photos on this trip, so in today's post I'll show just Bologna and Orvieto.

After landing in Milan we went immediately to the main train station and thence to Bologna--a city I'd never visited but one with a great reputation for architecture and cuisine. Probably the first thing any visitor notices upon arrival in the city center is the number of porticoes (portici) --in fact, Bologna has more of these covered walkways than any city in the world (24 miles' worth in the historic center alone).

Medieval watchtowers are another unmissable feature of Bologna. Most vanished long ago, but the one in the next photo, standing beyond another set of porticos on the Via Rizzoli, is over 300 feet tall:

Though you can't see it in the photo, there is actually a shorter second tower behind it, leaning at quite an angle. You'll have to look here at a professional photo to see the two towers separate from one another; the picture I took, below, along with one of the base of the shorter tower, doesn't make the separation as clear.

Here's one more shot of the higher tower, followed by one of Anne on a Bologna street:

The churches of Bologna are also of great interest, most notably the Basilica of San Petronio on the Piazza Maggiore:

San Petronio is enormous (only a small part of its length is seen here) and the history of its construction is long and complicated; but what is most striking about its facade is that the upper half is unfinished, while the lower half is magnificently overlaid in marble. Next is a side view from the church porch, with partial views of other buildings on the square: the Notaries' Palace and, with the clock tower, the City Hall (aka Palazzo d'Accursio):

The marble reliefs surrounding the Great Door of the basilica were created by Jacobo della Quercia around 1430. I took one photo of a vertical set of five panels showing the story of Adam and Eve:

Around the corner from the Piazza Maggiore is the Neptune Fountain shown at the top of this post. Here's a slide showing more of the fountain:

One more statue I photographed is of Hercules in a courtyard of of the Palazzo Poggi, part of the University of Bologna. I like this photo, partly for the colors, partly for the contrasting poses of Hercules and the two students.

And here are two more churches of note: San Donato and San Stefano (I'll spare you the tour-guide details):

I have only one other photo of Bologna--not a good one, but I'll include it to share a memory. When we looked out of our hotel window on our first evening in Bologna we had no view of the city but did see a perfect bowl of fruit sitting on a table in a window below us.

I have no photos for one of our most memorable experiences in Bologna, seeing Aida at the historic (1763) Teatro Comunale. I don't especially recall the food we tried, except for having the city's signature dish, tagliatelli alla bolognese.

From Bologna we took another train (possibly two) to get to Orvieto, in Umbria. Our plan was to meet up with friends: Jim and Jean Tobin, who were arriving directly by train from Milan, and Heinz, my Swiss friend from Zurich, who was driving down in his 1970s Datsun. (Followers of these posts will have met them many times--Heinz from my New York days and visits to Switzerland, the Tobins in Sheboygan when I moved there and on campus trips to Canterbury and Bruges.) After spending some time in Orvieto we would drive a couple of hours southwestward to Ansedonia, where we'd meet up with six others (coming up from Rome) and all stay at the large house we'd rented for a week.

Orvieto had been one of my favorite Italian towns ever since I stopped there in 1983 (see BOXES 142-143), and I was eager to revisit it with Anne. It did not disappoint. We stayed at the Hotel Corso, in a light and airy room--and spent a bit of time on the second-floor terrace. I see that Anne took a photo of me on the terrace, while I took one of her standing outside our window:

We enjoyed seeing the flowers in windows as we walked along the narrow streets:

But the most dazzling feature of Orvieto is the facade of its great cathedral:

As in '83 I found it hard to take a photo of the whole facade at once (the piazza it faces is a narrow rectangle), but tried to capture portions of it:

The striped stonework running through the exterior and interior was as striking as ever -- here are two photos from different times of day:

As in '83 I was unable without a tripod to get any clearly focused views of the interior:

And as for the view of the Umbrian countryside over a parapet in back of the cathedral, it was as wonderful as I'd remembered it from '83. My slides can't capture the whole panorama or the sheer variety of shades of green:

I took one pic of Anne against this background:

I have only two other Orvieto photos, the first showing the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo:

And finally, just after leaving town on the way to Ansedonia, we had this view of most of the city, with the cathedral standing above it on the far right:

A second slide shows more of the whole city, standing like an urban island amidst the Umbrian 'sea':

No doubt a 'slide show' of travels (old-school or, like this one, digital) can seem a bit dry and detached, especially when there are few pics of people and lots of factual detail, as in today's post. But I hope I've conveyed something of the thrills we had in seeing the sights/sites pictured above. Next time I'll report on places where we stopped on the road to Ansedonia, and then our week there.