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.