Ambitious attempt: CASERTA June 15, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, Spain, USA , add a commentThe royal palace of Caserta, which lies about 15 miles north of Naples, probably represents the most ambitious attempt to rival Versailles. Appropriately enough it was begun by one of Louis XIV’s great-grandsons, Charles III, who founded the Neapolitan Bourbon dynasty. Born in 1716, Charles was the son of Philip V of Spain and his second wife Elizabeth Farnese. Since he was not in the direct line of succession to the Spanish throne, his ambitious mother contrived to have him made Duke of Parma and Piacenza in 1731. Three years later, during the confusion brought by the War of Polish Succession, she dispatched a Spanish army to appropriate the kingdom of Naples for her son. (more…)
River Thames bank: Historic royal palace of Hampton Court June 1, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Europe, Jerusalem, London, Museum, Spain , 4commentsThe historic royal palace of Hampton Court stands on the north bank of the River Thames about 11 miles west of Charing Cross in London. This large complex is in fact two palaces in one, for as one moves eastwards from the west front the Tudor wings built in the time of Henry VIII yield to later work designed by Sir Christopher Wren for William and Mary. These two halves represent two distinct and important periods in the history of English architecture—the late medieval Perpendicular style tinged with Renaissance elements and the English Baroque affected by French and Italian influence. Yet overall unity is preserved by the use of warm-toned brickwork and the more-or-less symmetrical balancing of successive low wings. (more…)
Fontainebleau: The Golden Portal of Gilles Le Breton May 31, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Europe, France, Paris, Spain, USA , add a commentThe Golden Portal of Gilles Le Breton, which bears the date of 1528 on one of the capitals. Although the rules accepted for the classical orders have been carefully observed, the piecemeal arrangement of the parts is typical of the early French Renaissance.
The vast, rambling palace of Fontainebleau was a favourite resort of the rulers of France from the 12th century until the end of the monarchy in 1870. It reached the height of its glory in the middle of this long period—in the early 16th century—when Francis I assembled a brilliant team of artists and decorators to enlarge and embellish the palace. Later additions, though they sometimes entailed the demolition of earlier parts, were nonetheless marked by a conservative spirit opposed to any fundamental reorganisation. (more…)
Caserta: The monumental scale of a palace executed for the Bourbons May 15, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Destination, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, Spain, USA , add a commentThe Palace at Caserta was designed as the central feature of a vast landscape; it was to have been the goal of an avenue of plane trees some sixteen miles long leading directly from Naples to the royal residence, a straight line which would have been extended a further two miles by the great ribbon garden behind the house. Although the avenue scarcely runs beyond the confines of the town and although the glass and concrete blocks of recent years rise cliff-like in the neighbouring streets and countryside, the palace still dwarfs everything in the whole wide plain between Monte Virgo and the sea. (more…)
Aranjuez: Philip II’s leafy palace on the banks of the River Tagus May 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Airlines, Art Gallery, Austria, Beach Resorts, Destination, Europe, Granada, Gymnasium, Hotels, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Portugal, Restaurant, Spain, Sunblock, Travel Gear, Travelling Bag, USA , add a commentAranjuez, at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama rivers, about thirty miles south of Madrid, is the most celebrated of the rare oases which break the arid monotony of most of Spain. The air resounds with the noise of rushing water, the trees are the finest in southern Europe and the nightingales (which were Philip II’s chief regret during three years’ absence in Portugal) are as renowned as the strawberries and asparagus from its market-gardens.
In the Middle Ages the land belonged to the knights of Santiago, whose Grand Master, Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, erected a castle there in 1387. When Ferdinand and Isabella merged the Grand Mastership in the Crown, the property passed with it. Charles V converted the building into a hunting-lodge, which Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera, the architects of the Escorial, replaced by a palace for Philip II. (more…)
The Escorial: Nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation May 9, 2008
Posted by dodo in : England, Italy, New York, Spain, USA , add a commentThe first sight of the Escorial is breath-taking, whether seen from the mountains against the rocky outcrops and stunted willows of the plain, or from a rise in the Madrid road, reddish- brown against the bleak Guadarramas. A distant view-point is needed to appreciate its merits of mass and proportion, as well as the subtle variety of the roof-line: the dome and two bell- towers of the church at the centre, the slender spires of the towers at each corner and the pedimented elevation above two rows of engaged columns over the principal door. Approaching closer, these qualities tend to be forgotten in face of the oppressive monotony of the walls, on which the plain windows scarcely project, renouncing even the ornament of light and shade. (more…)
Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style May 8, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Bank Note, Beach Resorts, Brazil, Denmark, England, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lisbon, London, Memorial, Museum, Portugal, Restaurant, Spain, Sweden, Travellers Cheque , add a commentThe palace of QUELUZ, near Lisbon, is elegantly rustic in a way that is very characteristic of Portuguese life and manners. It has a seductive grace, for its muted beauty grows on the beholder gradually, until at length the splendours of a more conventionally royal building seem almost vulgar in comparison.
The rose-pink colour-washed facade is cunningly designed with two low semi-circular wings springing out from a small central block. The southern side ends in a black onion dome above the chapel, and goes on at right angles in a series of dependent buildings of different sizes. The northern wing now contains a luxury restaurant in the original kitchens of the palace. (more…)
Schönbrunn : The palace which symbolizes the peak of Viennese maturity May 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, France, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Spain , add a commentSchönbrunnis perhaps the most exalted monument ever to be erected to that famous national characteristic of the Austrians — their Gemütlichkeit, or easy-going cosiness. For over 200 years, together with the Hofburg in the city centre, this palace in the western suburbs of Vienna was the main seat of the Hapsburg dynasty, and thus the centre of all the Austrian history that the world remembers. Yet, unlike its great architectural and political rivals, Versailles and Potsdam, it remained also a home. Despite its size (there are no fewer than 1,441 rooms in the building), and the sumptuousness of its galleries and state apartments, something of this domestic aura clings even to the untenanted palace of today. (more…)
ROCOCO April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Australia, Austria, Brazil, England, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Hotels, India, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, The Nile, USA, Wellington , add a commentAfter the great days of Baroque, the High Renaissance, led by Bernini and Borromini, and followed variously by Mansart and le Vau in France, Fischer von Erlach and von Hildebrandt in Austria, Zimmerman in Germany, Churriguera in Spain, and Wren,Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh in England, and before a period of Revivalism, France emerged from the reign of Henri IV (reigned 1589-1610) to establish a wealthy bourgeoisie under the political patronage of high taste in the salons of country chateau and hotels. In the next century, during the transitional period from Louis XIV (1638-1715) to the regency of his great grandson, Louis XV (1710-74), a demand for comfort, intimacy and ornament led to the late Baroque variant of Rococo.
The word Rococo derives from the French word rocaille, meaning sea rocks and shells, and it is applied to the highly ornamental and decorative strain of late Baroque architecture. (more…)
The Renaissance continue… April 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Austria, Belgium, England, Europe, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Library, London, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain , 1 comment so farThis language was inherited by Donato Bramante (1444-1514), whose friends and mentors included Leonardo da Vinci (14591519), Alberti and Piero della Francesca (c.1420-1492). Within this extraordinary environment, Bramante, who had trained as a painter, studied the work of Brunelleschi and turned his genius to architecture. He collaborated with Leonardo da Vinci in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, a partnership that gave Milan a great building and the Last Supper. The French invasion of northern Italy forced Bramante to flee to Rome, where he taught Raphael (1483-1520) and the influential architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1483-1546), and he was commissioned to design the new St Peter’s by Pope Julius II. After Bramante’s death in 1514 and the sack of Rome in 1527, Michelangelo (1475-1564) inherited the task of continuing the project, which was to become the apogee of classical architecture. (more…)
Medieval Europe March 30, 2008
Posted by flyman in : China, England, Europe, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Lodges, Spain , 5commentsAfter the chaos of the Dark Ages that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, states and nations began to evolve. At the same time science, letters, arts and culture were developed by the monastic civilization that exercised a Christian order over an emerging feudal system, in the same way as the Samurai developed almost total military power over an identical system in Japan. But whereas the Japanese declined to lose its scholars to China and Korea by reverting to a complete and deliberate isolation that mummified any architectural development, the nations that were emerging in western Europe were becoming powerful enough to set aside the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, and they no longer stood in awe of the architectural remains that memorialized the genius of Roman architecture. Thus, Romanesque was born from the ruins of ancient buildings and developed as a prologue to the great European period of Gothic architecture. Romanesque was a compound of many influences, including Roman, Byzantine, Carolingian and Ottonian, Viking Celtic and Saracenic, but it was universally influenced by the monastic churches of St Bernard and St Benedict, where an eclectic style was homogenized by the development of the Roman vault. (more…)
