BOXES 155-156: NW Italy.

Milan Cathedral is riotously Gothic--a joy to behold from every angle, and there are certainly plenty of angles, especially considering that the roof is walkable for closer viewing of many of those spires. It was on the steps of the Cathedral that my friend Max and I planned to meet--I'd taken the train down from Zurich, where I'd been visiting Heinz (see previous post) and Max had been elsewhere in Italy and was taking a train to Milan as well. Remarkably, in an age before cell phones, with our last contact having been in the States before we left on our separate trips, we did meet on the steps exactly as planned.

Our more long-range plan was to rent a car and drive to Bordeaux via Provence and Perigord, then to go on to London to see our friend Dede. But first we intended to spend a few days in Milan. The Cathedral fills one side of a very grand piazza; just to its left is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the famous shopping arcade opened in 1877. Here are two more photos I took that day from the piazza:

The Galleria was certainly a cathedral of commerce--maybe the grandest of all shopping centers. You could enjoy a cup of coffee at one of its "outdoor" cafes under the great dome in the center while watching the passers-by.

That evening we found ourselves walking through Milan's celebrated fashion district as we sought out our guidebook's recommendation for a good risotto alla Milanese. In 1984 it was still unusual to see the edgy kind of dress-shop window you see in the photo on the right. The next day a fruit stand seemed equally worthy of having its picture taken:

That day we went back to the Cathedral for a walk on the roof:

I took quite a few photos of the slender spires:

While Max and I were looking around, we heard loud, boisterous voices coming from the entrance to the roof area. They sounded very different from the "refined," almost staid voices of the Milanese we had been hearing, and in fact, as I sensed from having been in Sicily the summer before, they were Sicilian. Chatting with them in my very limited Italian, I learned they were a church group visiting from Catania:

At one point they lined up for a group photo:

And they very kindly invited me to join them while Max took a picture:

Later that day, or the next morning, we spent time at the Sforza Castle, once the stronghold of a major Milanese family but now a major art museum:

My only other Milan photo is this poorly focused shot of part of the city's canal district, formerly working class and at that time beginning to gentrify with art galleries and restaurants. We rented our car in Milan--where, by the way, the driving was as polite and orderly as the Milanese themselves--quite a contrast with Naples the previous summer. We headed south to Pavia, an important university town and for that reason a fun place to stay overnight. We visited Pavia's much more austere cathedral:

. . . and took note of the medieval watchtowers that were still preserved in Pavia, as well as another historic church, San Michele Maggiore:

Pavia has its own fortress/family palace/art museum, the Visconti Castle:

And here are two more Pavia landmarks, the bell tower of Santa Maria del Carmine and the Palazzo Broletto:

That evening we saw the film Koyaanisqatsi with a student audience at a local theatre. The next morning, we visited the most dazzling sight of the region, Pavia's Certosa or Charterhouse--a monastery of the Carthusian Order. (Since it's in the countryside north of the city, i.e., back toward Milan, I would have thought we would have stopped there the day before, but the numbers on the slide box tell me differently.) The dominant Visconti family of Milan had had the monastery built, over the course of the whole 15th Century. The poplar-lined drive to the Certosa gateway was impressive in itself:

But the facade of the church was really stunning:

Here's a closer view:

As for the interior ceilings, I was able to lay my camera on the floor to get these photos in decent focus:

Here are two shots of the church from the attached cloister:

In the opposite direction the architecture is more simple, even severe, for the cells of the monks:

Here are three more photos I took on the grounds of the Certosa:

From Pavia we continued south toward what is called the Italian Riviera--the stretch of Mediterranean coastline from west of Genoa to the French border. For whatever reason, probably to avoid the higher cost of coastal hotels, we stayed overnight in a town in the hills some miles beyond the sea, maybe Ortovero or Onzo; we stayed two nights in order to have a whole day exploring the coast. Luckily, the hotel had an excellent restaurant: the first night I remember the gnocchi, practically swimming in the best pesto imaginable (after all, the sauce was native to this region), and the second night the gnocchi in equally good gorgonzola sauce. My next photo, taken from a seat at a cafe, could be in this town at breakfast but more likely at lunch in a Riviera town: in any case, the building opposite was a great backdrop:

I'm sorry to say I can't identify the locations of the next photos either, except to say that they were taken near the coast:

I especially like the next photo, wherever I took it, because it shows a mix of an aristocratic castle and gardens with regular folks having a picnic in a grassy parking lot:

I did take one photo of the coast itself--I think this is the town of Alassio.

We spent much of the day on beaches, though we also followed the recommendation of my guidebook (Let's Go: Italy) to check out some untouristy villages just inland from the coast. The next two shots--of a town on a high hill and a patchwork of gardens going up a slope--were taken as we drove or walked to one of those villages.

The village in the next two photos is Dolcedo, notable for its church spire and medieval bridge over a ravine:

The next morning we began our drive westward into France, taking an autoroute to our next stop, Aix-en-Provence, on which I'll report in my next post.