My Perugia Travel Diary continue… June 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Aquarium, Art Gallery, Asia, China, Coliseum, Denmark, Destination, Dolphinarium, Egypt, England, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Gymnasium, Iceland, Istanbul, Italy, Library, Memorial, Morocco, Museum, Norway, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Poland, Restaurant, Round The World, The Nile , add a commentMass cremation pits containing ashes and charred bones indicate that he feared a plague, but Carthaginian skeletons with all their teeth have been disinterred as well as the tombs, yielding cataphracts as well as bones, of thirty Carthaginian nobles.
Spello, the most appealing of the Umbrian hill towns, is still enclosed by Roman walls with five gates, the main one bearing the legend “Splendidissima Colonic Julia Hispellum” over the arch. According to Spellan tradition, a phallus carved in the inner wall of the Porta Urbica does not celebrate Orlando’s (Roland’s) amatory prowess but the range and perfect arc of his actus mingendi. Spello is noted for its restaurants and truffled cooking, its steep, winding, and narrow streets—all one-way only—its Roman towers and amphitheater. A Vocabolaro del Dialetto Spellano, compiled by NicolettaUgoccioni and published here last year, contains, at a thumb-through guess, 20,000 words in current usage—by a population of only 6,800. (more…)
The Royal Palace STOCKHOLM: One of the finest examples of French taste outside France Part 2 April 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : France, Paris, Poland, Russia, Sweden , 4commentsTessin had been much impressed by Italian late-renaissance and baroque buildings during his European tour, and the exterior of his new palace bears witness to this admiration, for it is in rather a severe style, obviously much influenced by such buildings as Caprarola and the Pitti Palace. This severity is relieved by pompous entrances in the south and west facades and should have been further softened by a series of statues which were to have been placed along the top of the otherwise quite uncompromising skyline. By the time the building was ready to receive these statues, however, Charles XI was dead and the dashing young Charles XII was on the throne. (more…)
The Wawel Castle Carcow: The centre of splendid historical and cultural tradition continue… April 22, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Poland , add a commentBerrecci, Francesco’s successor, was an extremely gifted architect, and was commissioned by King Sigismund to build a commemorative chapel next to the cathedral. This chapel, built between 1517 and 1533, is the finest work by Italians outside Italy itself. Simultaneously, Berrecci was not only supervising the building of the castle loggias but was also actively directing all the work in progress. Surrounds, of several dozen doors and windows, both inside and out, were made in his workshop, and are extremely original and finely executed ; the gothic motifs of the local stone-cutters intermingled with the purely renaissance ornament, and the result was a series of architectural decorations whose rhythm and unity bore the imprint of Berrecci’s modern Italian spirit. (more…)
The Wawel Castle Carcow: The centre of splendid historical and cultural tradition April 22, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, Hungary, Italy, Poland , add a commentThe Vistula, the main Artery of Poland, has two moments of glory in its long meandering course, when it flows through the country’s two capitals : through Cracow, the old capital, and then, flowing on northward in a great curve, through Warsaw, the present-day capital, two hundred miles away as the crow flies. In Cracow, the waters of the Vistula move slowly past the foot of the Wawel, the great rocky hill that overlooks the city and surrounding countryside, and from which rise the majestic walls of the fortifications, the proud outline of the cathedral with its soaring bell-tower and the massive form, lightened by its large windows, of the royal castle, where the kings of Poland used to live.
Cracovia totius Poloniae urbs celeberrima (` Cracow the most famous city of all Poland ‘) was the description of a chronicler. And it is still true, for the old capital has had an eventful history, in which the Wawel castle has frequently had a vital part to play. As a fortified hill, the Wawel itself had occupied a position of the first importance from the very earliest times. Towards the end of the first millenium, during the formation of the Polish state (whose first capital was not, however, Cracow), the dwelling-place of the local prince was built on the Wawel, first in wood and later, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, in masonry. (more…)
BAROQUE April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Europe, France, Greece, Hungary, London, Poland, Russia , add a commentWhile Europe celebrated the dawn of the 17th century with a new Baroque architecture that was to survive for 200 years, Jones followed his mentors, Alberti and Palladio, to Rome, where he studied neoclassical buildings in the company of his patron, the Earl of Arundel. His return to England led to an extraordinary paradox. While Europe had moved from the austerity of Bramante’s classicism, through the French “Fontainebleau style“, to the decorated sensuality of Baroque architecture, England emerged from a stone, timber and brickwork craft tradition to embrace an apparently revolutionary style, which, under Jones’s hand, returned the Renaissance to the rigour and scholarship of the early period.
From 1618 until his death in 1652, Inigo Jones dominated architecture, and he left to the Stuart period of English history a new tradition of classicism or Palladianism, which challenged the Dutch-influenced brick and stone style and established a platform on which Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) continued to build. After a distinguished career at Oxford University as Professor of Astronomy, Wren was appointed surveyor- general of the King’s Works. He was influenced by the French Baroque, a style that is evident in many of his great buildings, especially those designed after the devastations of the Great Fire of London in 1666. (more…)
