The Belly of the Beatle

Today we took a day long trip to three pieces of modern architecture. The first was the Parco Della Musica by Renzo Piano. The design consists of three separate auditoriums which each have different acoustical qualities. The three pods are often compared to beatles, due to their shape. The roof is made of lead panels, and the interiors range from wood to brick. The coolest part of the structures could be seen by climbing up the fire escapes. Once you did it felt as if you were in a whale's belly.



The next stop was the Adreatine monument which commemorates a site where 340 Italians were murdered by the Germans during the occupation. Afterwards the Germans bombed the caves in a few spots to make it look like an accident. The monument incorporates the caves themselves and you enter in and see where the bodies were interred. The architects preserved the holes where the bombs came through the caves.


Finally we ended with Richard Meir's Jubilee Church, which is way on the outskirts of the city. The building was okay, but looked terrible in the context of what was around it. In Meir fashion the building was all white, and felt completely separate from the surroundings. As you can see from the photos below the idea behind the building was a boat...

Rome Does Gothic

Today I visited the only Gothic looking church in Rome, it was a nice change from all the Baroque churches we've been seeing.


I also thought I'd throw in a picture of the only gas station I've seen here, which happens to be right near the church above.


and finally on the way home, I stumbled upon a movie set. Everyone was in period dress, and they had a bunch of old cars and buses.

Faking It

Today I stopped into Saint Ignatius. It was a very strange church in terms of the ceiling. The main ceiling was a great example of perspective, and made the space feel as if it went a lot higher than it did. The window at the bottom of the picture is where the ceiling ends.


Then there was the dome over the center space. Most churches have a giant dome with a cupola at the top which lets in light. This church at first glance appeared no different, that is while you were standing towards the back in the center of the aisle. As you approached the front, however, it turns out that the dome doesn't exist. It is painted on in false perspective, so it looks really twisted from any other angle.


In the front of the church there is a giant model. It is not of any one particular church, but was apparently supposed to represent all the Jesuit churches around the world uniting into one giant Jesuit church. I'm not entirely sure about the details because it was all in Italian. There is a large circular church in the center surrounded by a bunch of small miniature churches. Each miniature church corresponds to a different country.

Fascism In Rome

Today we took a trip to Citta Universita, which is a university complex designed by the fascist government. It was planned by Marcello Piacentini, he designed the main administration building/library and then selected young italian architects to do the others. Most of the buildings were nothing to write home about but there were some gorgeous fire escapes. Here are some of the highlights:

Thanksgiving Rome Style

Yesterday we had a huge thanksgiving meal, it was quite the spread. There was tons of turkey, stuffing, yams, mashed potatoes, all kinds of salad and lots and lots of pie. I started the morning with a trip to Saint Peter's since I had missed the Pietra the first time I went. Its a sculpture by Michelangelo which depicts Mary holding the body of Jesus. The details are supposed to be incredible, but they don't let you close enough to really examine it.


Afterwards I helped make a couple apple pies for dinner that night. I had never made an apple pie before, but I think they turned out well. Both were gone by the end of dinner. I also made some creamed corn for the occasion, since its not thanksgiving without creamed corn. During dinner they played a slide-show complied from all of our pictures. By the end of the night everyone was in a food coma.


Due to the massive amounts of food eaten, a few of us decided to go on an evening walking tour of Rome. The first stop was the pantheon, although we got distracted by San Ivo along the way.

Eventually we made it to the Pantheon, but it had closed about 1/2 hour before, so we hung out in the portico for a bit before making our way to the Trevi fountain.


We accidentally overshot the Trevi and ended up at the Spanish Steps, so we had to backtrack a bit. I have to say the Trevi is much better at night, because during the day there are tons of people. It was still crowded at night but you could actually move around and get to the front of the fountain. We all threw coins in behind our backs like good tourists so technically we should all return to Rome now.

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

Vienna may have been my favorite European city so far. Although the weather could have colored my opinion somewhat. Thursday night Brianne and I took an overnight train from Rome. Its a 13 hour ride but went by pretty quickly. When we crossed the border though, things got a little interesting. A guy who was in our compartment got taken by the boarder policemen, they weren't speaking english so we couldn't really tell what was going on. They had scanned his passport and looked at some other form he had, then took him and his bag with them. To make it weirder one of the officers then took a flashlight and looked under the seats for who knows what. It was a little crazy.

The next morning around 9:00 we got into Vienna and this is what we saw:

there was about 4-6 inches on the ground already and it was still snowing. I was super excited because I was hoping it would snow. We were a little cold though, since Rome is about 60 degrees right now and Vienna was probably 30. Our trip basically consisted of us walking around for an hour or so until we got too cold and then going inside a building.

Our first build was the Stephansdom which is a gothic cathedral. Its the first European Gothic church I've seen (Rome really doesn't have any). The stained glass was beautiful. Even though it was dark and snowy outside the inside of the church was full of light (and it wasn't electrically lit).


Next we strolled a bit more and got somewhat lost looking for an Adolf Loos building. Throughout the trip we ended up going the wrong way down this same street on about 3 separate occasions. Eventually we ended up where we needed to go and ran into the Hapsburg palace along the way. It was a rather large complex and is known as the labyrinth, because all the different pieces were built up over time.


We walked through the grounds towards the museum quartier, to look at some Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele works, and we were getting cold. As you can see in the picture below I have 2 hats on.


After the museum we got a room for the night in a hostel. We ended up with the last open room. We then hiked over to the other side of the city to see the Schoenbrunn Palace. There was a giant tree in front when we got there.


We went particularly to see the greenhouses,which are the largest in Europe. It was breathtaking in person. I think the combination of the snow and the time of day also added to the beauty of the building.


Afterwards we headed back to the city and into a nice warm pub. Turns out they brew their own beer and we had a hearty Viennese meal. I hadn't realize how much I missed eating potatoes. We took a stroll after dinner and walked towards the town hall. We had seen it in the distance earlier and wanted to check it out. Waiting for us was the best surprise ever, a christmas market! It was closed for the night, but we decided to come back the next day. The building was set up as a giant advent calender, the windows all had numbers in them.


The next morning we woke up and headed towards the Secession Building, it was slightly warmer since it was sunny out, but still very cold. We went inside to see Beethoven's Frieze by Klimt, and to check out the spaces, like good architecture students.


Then it was off to the Christmas Market. We ended up spending a good two hours there. We had hot Viennesse beverages (the cappuccino was classic, it was a latte with some whipped cream on it, but so good). And we ate and ate and ate. There were a bunch of pastry stands and we got a cinnamon pastry and some toffee peanuts, which were incredible.


Then Brianne and I walked down to the Danube...or so we thought. We knew there was a river and just kind of assumed it was the Danube, since it was murky and brown. Well we realized when we were on the train that in fact we only made it to the Danube Canal...oops. So here is a picture of a murky brown canal in Vienna.

Vienna Waits for You

off to Vienna until Sunday morning!

Third Times a Charm

Today we went to the Tempietto for class, which is the third time I've been. Its just a small little temple, so there isn't too much to see. But I tried to get a few new sketches in. It is up on the Gianicolo, which has a great view of the city. It was beautiful up there today, so I didn't mind seeing the Tempietto again.


Before the Tempietto we went to Santa Maria della Pace. It was my first time there. It is a small church which is notable because legend has it someone threw a rock at a painting of the Virgin Mary, and the painting bled. Since then it considered a pilgrimage site. There is also a cloister, designed by Bramante (who also did the Tempietto). It was partially covered by a temporary exhibit, which was basically a glass-like tent in the center of the space.


The sunset walking home the other night was incredible....

Why David, What Big Feet You Have!

After Vicenza, Bridget and I headed to Venice. We woke up early and hopped an 8:30 train. We got into the city around 9:00 and made our way across the Rialto Bridge towards San Marco Square. Half of the roads in Venice dead end, so even though we were trying to take the route not marked by signs, it was pretty hard. We ended up on the street below, which was incredibly thin.


We made it to San Marco and did a quick sketch. There were a bunch of tourists standing among the hoards of pidgeons and taking pictures of the pidgeons landing on their arms and heads. It was gross. And at some point during the day I got pooped on, luckily it was on the leg, and I figured chances are it was sometime when we were around the birds. We then walked a little behind the square and went to a museum which was partially designed by Carlo Scarpa. He designed the exhibit rooms so that if the canals flooded you could still walk in the spaces. We weren't technically allowed to take photos, but Bridget and I snuck our cameras in and were able to take a few shots.


After about 2 hours of sketching (we had to make the 6 euro entry fee worth it) we headed to find a mask, Bridget wanted to get one for her godmother. We looked in several incredible mask stores, I couldn't believe how intricate some of the masks were. My favorite ones were scroll cut metal, but they were over 100 euro which was not worth it to me.


After Bridget found a mask, we went and looked for Cannoli. A few days ago I realized I hadn't had one since I had been in Italy. The ones we found in Venice were delicious. After the dessert, we wandered town a bit more, somewhat successfully getting lost, and then we hopped a train to Florence.


Oh and for all you 24 fans, Venice has a Hotel Bauer.


We got into Florence around 9:30 at night and settled into our Hostel around 10. The next morning we got up early, got some cappuccino and made our way to the David (which for some reason I kept calling micheal). We waited in line for about 20 minutes but then didn't end up going in the museum because it was too expensive and there was no student discount. He is right in the beginning of the museum though, so we could see him through the lobby. And man is he huge. We walked over to the Duomo and there was surprisingly no line to get in, so we began our ascent right away.


It was remarkable to be inside the Duomo and once we got to the top Bridget and I hung out for about an hour and a half sketching. And then we ate some potato chips and they were delicious.


On the way down Bridget noticed this beauty of a mural on the inside of the Dome, which yes is a church.


We wandered around Florence for the rest of the afternoon and sketched a bit on a bridge. In the main Piazza they have a replica of David which stands were the original used to be.

We walked a bit more and then headed back to Rome. The only tickets on the next train were first class and so we went back in style. We even got free coffee and peanuts and very nice cushy seats.


Once we were back in Rome we ended up going to get sushi which was delicious. We were both so tired we just lazed around all night.

nuns:223 priests:111

Northern Italy anyone?

The northern trip started the same as the southern trip at 8:00 in the morning. We drove about 3 1/2 hours before hitting our first stop, the Chiesa del Autostrada. It was a church constructed in the 60s to commemorate the workers who died building Rome's autostrada. We were only there about and hour and a half, and the time went fast. The inside was really hard to draw, so sketching took up a lot of my time. As you can see from the picture below, the church is literally right off the highway.


After the autostrada we headed 2 hours or so to Modena to see Aldo Rossi's cemetary. We spent some time sketching there, it is a very modern cemetary, and was designed to be a city. The graves are actually like the catacombs in that they are open squares that are then filled and sealed with a stone. It was freezing there though, and by the time we left it was nice to be back on the warm bus.



That night around 6, we got to Mantua which is where we were staying for the night. Our hotel was in the center of town, and our room looked out over the main piazza. Strangely Mantua is slightly a dead town at night which is unusual for italy. A group of us went to dinner and I got some pumpkin ravioli, it was regular ravioli with a spicy pumpkin filling, yum!


The next morning we went to two Palazzo's in Mantua. The first was the Ducale Palace, it had a hall of mirrors, and a bunch of painted cielings. There was also an art exhibit going on in another part of the palace, and there was one room called an ambient space, and you walked in and it was completely black. I dragged two other people from the class in with me because i was afraid to go alone, and we ended up finding a slightly secret space. There were all of these interlocking basement rooms with low vaulted cielings, at one point we ended up in some kind of mechanical room. The spaces more interesting then the art exhibit, so I'm glad I found them.


The next palazzo was the Palazzo del Te, which was a pleasure palace of the same family who built the Palazzo Ducale. It has a lot of famously painted cielings, one of which is the Hall of Giants. The room was painted to look like an earthquake was occuring. I wandered upstairs to an art gallery space, and then ended up stumbling upon an exhibit space that was built over the front entrance. The floor was built up because the vaulting below is exposed.

After the Palazzo del Te I wandered back towards the hotel, stopping in San Sebastiano, which is a church by Alberti. It was designed in the round, and has a WWII memorial underneath (which is not original to the church). One of my favorite things was the chairs, which had small crosses on the back.


The next morning we headed to Verona to see the Castelvecchio. The Castelvecchio was an old palace which was turned into an art museum by Carlo Scarpa. It is extremely well know amoung architects because of Scarpa's attention to detail. I tried to spend most of my time sketching, although I couldn't resist taking a few pictures.

Then a few of us wandered Verona to look at the outside of another Scarpa building, which was slightly underwhelming. Then we had to get back to the bus for the next leg of our trip.

The next stop was the Villa Rotunda, a country Villa for a former Priest. It was designed by Palladio, who is well known for his Villas. It was designed to be symmetrical on all four sides, with a dome in the center. We couldn't go inside because the inside closes after October 15th. The outside is still amazing though.


Then we settled into our hotel in Vicenza, which is about 1/2 hour away from Venice. A group of us went to dinner, and I had some pumpkin risotto. The next morning we came down for breakfast and it was a huge spread. In Mantua we had only gotten rolls and coffee. In Vicenza though there was fruit, cereal, croissants, cappucino, fruit juice, pastries, it was incredible. It was a good start for the next day which involved an 1.5 hour ride out to the Brion Cemetary, another Scarpa work. It was done for the Brion family, although more for the mother and father of the family. There are only two graves in the complex, which also includes a chapel and a variety of structures and water features. It was a beautiful place, Scarpa liked it so much he asked to be buried there.

That afternoon we went to the Teatro Olimpico which was a theater designed in perspective. There are seven streets that converge onto the center of the stage. From the seats you can see down the streets, which were built as a temporary set but have never been removed.


That night we got dinner in Vicenza, it was one of the best meals I've had. I started with pumpkin soup (a common theme in my norhtern meals) and then pasta with scallops and mussels. It was so delicious and it was only about 11 euro. Brianne, Bridget and I went back to the hotel and ended up watching some strange italian music videos, which are really one of a kind. We went to bed a little early because Bridget and I had to get up early to leave for Venice the next morning.