BOXES 80-81: Italian towns

Guidebook(s?) in hand, I'm standing on a hill above Florence during my 1973 trip to Europe.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had been in Rome for a few days with American friends, including an art historian from Columbia, Mark Zucker, who was in Italy for the summer with his girlfriend at the time, Alison, researching Italian Renaissance painting. They were getting ready to leave Rome for a driving trip to Venice, in which they planning to stop in various art-rich towns along the way: Spoleto, Assisi, Perugia, Gubbio, Ravenna and Padua. When they invited me to go along with them, I hated the thought of leaving Rome sooner than planned, but how could I say no to an opportunity like that? Besides the appeal of the cities themselves, Mark was an ideal tour guide for Italian art: knowledgeable, articulate and enthusiastic. So it was off on the road to Spoleto in Umbria. The terrain became ever more mountainous and beautiful:

Spoleto's famous music festival was not on, but the Duomo was certainly worth visiting, (Unfortunately, the facade looks a bit washed out because my simple camera couldn't handle the bright sunlight.)

The fortress standing above Spoleto, as you see in the above photo, was impressive too, though we didn't stop there. We were now heading to Assisi, home of St Francis and the fabulous frescoes in the Basilica of St Francis. Here's a view of the city in the evening, as we were leaving:

And here is a closer view of the city earlier in the day:

The entrance to the upper level of the Basilica is especially beautiful because of the rose window and the gothic doorway:

Equally handsome is the facade of St Clare's church nearby:

Here, by the way, are Mark and Alison in Assisi, on a wall overlooking the Umbrian countryside:

And myself on a side street:

After Assisi we stayed overnight in Perugia, another town incredibly rich in art and architecture, of which my slides give only a few glimpses. Three major structures can be seen in the photo below: the Palazzo dei Priori (town hall) to the left; the Fontana Maggiore (Great Fountain) in the center distance; and behind it, the south wall of the Cathedral.

Here is a closer view of the fountain, from the 1270s, built to receive water from an aqueduct to the high city:

And here is the facade of the Oratorio di San Bernardino. If you look below the pediment you can see the ancient Latin name for Perugia chiseled into the stone, plus the date: "Augusta Perusia 1460." The sculptor Agostino di Duccio created this elegant marble facade and the fantastically beautiful images to the sides of the entranceways. My photo shows, in the right panel, angels playing lute and tamborine:

Older than any of the above is another site in Perugia: the Etruscan Gate (Arco Etrusco) leading to the upper city. It was built in the 3rd Centrury BC and reinforced by the Romans:

After Perugia we visited Gubbio, stretching up a steep hillside. The afternoon was, as in Spoleto, especially bright and sunny, so my three photos look somewhat washed out:

Our next stop (where we stayed overnight) was Ravenna on the Adriatic coast, famed for its great Byzantine mosaics. As usual, my camera couldn't register the interiors; my only record of the visit is a shot of the bell tower (9th or 10th Century) of the Sant'Apollinare Church.

The last town I visited with Mark and Alison was Padua, best known for the Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel. But my photos are of the Basilica of St Anthony of Padua, which has plenty of art treasures of its own.

As Mark and Alison went on to Venice, I took a train to Florence, which I had planned to visit after Rome. I confess that I didn't enjoy the city as much as I did Rome (maybe because it couldn't accommodate crowds of summer tourists as well as more spacious Rome, and the shopkeepers seemed much less friendly). Still, who would not be stunned by the first sight of the Duomo? Blinkered by the city's high, narrow streets, you encounter it suddenly as you walk around a corner.

Like all the tourists I snapped pictures of the bronze panels by Lorenzo Ghiberti on the doors of the adjoining Baptistery. My two photos show Old Testament scenes on the "Gates of Paradise" door (mid-1400s): the story of Joseph on the left, the other of Joshua:

I feel just a little apologetic about my choice of subject for the Florence photos, since most of them are standard views of the ultra-famous landmarks, like the Ponte Vecchio over the River Arno:

. . . and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, overlooking the Signoria Square. The second of these photos, with the Duomo in the background, was taken from a window of the Uffizi Art Gallery.

The most famous view of the Florentine skyline is surely that from the piazza of the San Miniato Church, on the other side of the Arno. I was there at sunset:

Here is San Miniato itself:

I took several photos that evening as the light faded, including one from just inside the door of San Miniato:

One photo I can't identify (I seem to have taken it that same evening) is of a sharp-cornered building:

The next day I got into a conversation with an American tourist at the hotel where I was staying, and we decided to go to an outdoor concert that evening in Fiesole, the small town high on a hill on the outskirts of Florence. He took the photo of me at the top of this post. In the shots below, the first looks down upon Florence, the second upon the town of Fiesole:

One other place I visited while in Florence was the Boboli Palace, across the Arno. The palace itself houses a major art museum, while the extensive gardens, which rise above the back of the palace on a very steep hillside, provide great views of the city:

From Florence I went on to Southern France, as I'll report in the next post.