Before the season is completely finished, I must share these views from Rome! You might expect Rome to go all out for Christmas, and it does!

You wouldn’t be disappointed!

The crèche in a field of homemade pasta. My field of dreams! NB: the crib is always empty until midnight in the 25th. Then the child appears on his birth day.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Somewhere near the main piazza of any Italian town, no matter now small, will be il monumento ai caduti (literally, “the monument to the falllen”). These pay tribute to those townspeople who died in World Wars I and II.

• 

• 

Above: La Fontana Vecchia (The Old Fountain) is built into the side of one of the walls of the Palazzo d’Accursio on Via Ugo Bassi. This is no simple fountain, though. In fact, it’s incredibly grand and impressive in its own rights, even though it was built originally more for the lower/working classes so that they wouldn’t befoul the water in the nearby Neptune Fountain while doing their washing.

Cardinal Carlo Borromeo commissioned La Fontana Vecchia in 1563, with Tommaso Palermo Laureti chosen to create the fountain. A Sicilian painter, architect, and sculptor, Laureti worked and studied extensively in Bologna. However, having spent some time in Rome, the influence of Michelangelo worked its way into his artwork. As well as designing the Fontana Vecchia, Laureti’s drawings served as the foundation for the base and its figures of the Neptune Fountain, though the rest of the fountain was created by Giambologna.

Plaques and bas-relief sculptures cover the fountain, including family coats of arms and the Papal crown and keys in the center in honor of Pope Pius IV. A member of the Medici, his coat of arms is displayed beneath the crown and keys. There are also other symbols displayed on the fountain, such as the word “Libertas,” which represents the city of Bologna. You’ll see the word in a variety of locations throughout the city.

• 

• 

The elegant and upscale Galleria Cavour. Located in the Palazzo VASSÉ which was from 1550 an important patrician residence/ Partially destroyed in WWII, since 1959 this location has been the prestigious venue of the Cavour Gallery. The Cavour Gallery is inside one of the oldest and most important buildings in Bologna. Built in the 1500s, bombed during the war and now restored, it contains important art jewels all to be discovered.

Above, looking through Piazza Nettuno, with Giambologna’s fountain masterpiece, looking further towards Piazza Maggiore with the Basilica of San Petronius.

Below, the Basilica. I’ll be discussing this church in a couple of separate posts.

General ambience of the city and the arcades:

Above and below: The fountain of Pincio in Bologna, Italy, is at the entry of the Park of Montagnola, the oldest park in Bologna, opened to the public since 1664.

The Pincio staircase and the Montagnola garden

Im 1896, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita inaugurated this impressive stairway leading to the Montagnola Gardens. It was designed by Tito Azzolini (1837-1907) and Attilio Muggia (1850-1936).

Begun in 1893 by the mayor Dallolio, the works continued for three years without interruption, employing an average of 100-150 workers per day. The excavated earth served to fill the pits of the walls, between Porta S. Isaia and Porta Lame.

As a whole, the work consists of three parts: the stairs, the portico on via Indipendenza and the portico along the walls. The central body is made up of two overlapping fronts, with a panoramic terrace at the top accessible by side stairs.

The main front is decorated with two bas-reliefs: Bologna docet by Arturo Colombarini and Bologna Libertas by Ettore Sabbioni. In the center, a fountain, made by Diego Sarti (1859-1914) and Pietro Veronesi, based on a design by Muggia and Azzolini, represents a nymph attacked by an octopus. She will be commonly called “the wife of the Giant,”  that is of Neptune, and Giosue Carducci will dedicate a famous sonnet to her.

On the second front, which supports the garden, there are three other bas-reliefs, with historical themes linked to the place: The return from the victory of the Fossalta by Pietro Veronesi, The expulsion of the Austrians by Tullo Golfarelli (1852-1928) – with the “saint rogue” , who “rushes against the guns leveled by the invaders of the Fatherland” (Pascoli) – and The destruction of the fortress of Galliera by Arturo Orsoni.

At the end of the passage on via Galliera, the Maccaferri building, home of the café chantant Eden, will be built three years later. The staircase is equipped with 72 cast iron candelabra with six or four lamp posts. The steps are joined to the parapets by marble edges, which will often be used by children as slides (sblisgàn).

The Montagnola garden is transformed in a more aristocratic sense. In the center is the large fountain, complete with five groups of statues with animals and mermaids, already used for the Emilian Exposition of 1888.

In the reconstruction of 1896 the original design by Diego Sarti is partly distorted: the tub is no longer in the shape of an ellipse, but round and the edge is no longer raised and wavy.

The sculptural groups are moved away from the perimeter of the basin and disconnected from each other. The turtles, originally climbing on the edge, are gathered around the central water jet. 

Roman ruins near the Pincio.

And finally, the Bologna train station. Can someone please explain to me why there are no seats to rest upon in places in Italy where one really needs them??!!

Dominating the major square of Piazza Maggiore in Bologna is this important basilica. For me, the relief sculptures on the facade are the reason to visit, but there are many other reasons as well.

The basilica is dedicated to the patron saint of the city, Saint Petronius, who was the bishop of Bologna in the 5th century. Construction began in 1390 and its main facade has never been finished. Interestingly, the basilica was only consecrated in 1954! It has held the relics of Bologna’s patron saint only since 2000; until then they were preserved in the Santo Stefano.

The main doorway (Porta Magna) was decorated by Jacopo della Quercia of Siena with scenes from the Old Testament on the pillars, eighteen prophets on the archivolt, scenes from the New Testament on the architrave, and a Madonna and Child, Saint Ambrose and Saint Petronius on the tympanum.

Two side doors flank the central one with della Quercia’s reliefs. Alfonso Lombardi’s Resurrection sequence is on the left and Amico Aspertini’s Deposition in on the right.

• 

• 

But I’m only concerned in this post with the sculpture by Jacopo della Quercia (c. 1374-1438). He was also known as Jacopo di Pietro d’Agnolo di Guarnieri. He was a major sculptor of the Renaissance, a contemporary of Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Donatello. He is considered to be a precursor of Michelangelo.

Here is a portrait of the artist:

A

Below: a detail of the archivolt sculptures of the Prophets

In 1425 della Quercia accepted a major commission: the design of the round-arched Porta Magna of the San Petronio church in Bologna. It would keep him busy for a good deal of the last thirteen years of his life and it is considered his masterwork. Each side of the door is flanked, first by a colonette with a spirally wound decoration, then nine busts of prophets and at the end five scenes from the Old Testament, carved into somewhat lower relief.

In the Creation of Adam, he uses the same arrangement as in the Fonte Gaia (in Siena), but in reverse order.

Michelangelo, who had visited Bologna in 1494, conceded that his Genesis on the Sistine Chapel ceiling was based on these reliefs.

The architrave above the door contains five reliefs with representations from the New Testament.

The lunette contains three free-standing statues : Virgin and Child, Saint Petronius (with a model of Bologna in his right hand) and Saint Ambrose (carved by another sculptor Domenico Aimo in 1510). Originally this third statue had to represent the papal legate Cardinal Alemmano, but this intention was quickly abandoned after the cardinal had been evicted from Bologna. He relied heavily on the artists of his Bolognese workshop, such as Cino di Bartolo, for assistance in this project.

Mm

Cassini’s Meridian Line

The church has a meridian line inlaid in 1655 the paving of the left aisle; it was calculated and designed by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who was teaching astronomy at the University.

A meridian line does not indicate the time: instead, with its length of 66.8 metres (219 ft) it is one of the largest astronomical instruments in the world, allowing measurements that were for the time uniquely precise.

The sunlight, entering through a 27.07 mm (1.066 in) hole placed at a 27.07 m (88.8 ft) height in the church wall, projects an elliptical image of the sun, which at local noon falls exactly on the meridian line and every day is different as to position and size. The position of the projected image along the line allows to determine accurately the daily altitude of the sun at noon, from which Cassini was able to calculate with unprecedented precision astronomical parameters such as the obliquity of the ecliptic, the duration of the tropical year and the timing of equinoxes and solstices. On the other hand, the size of the projected sun’s image, and in particular its rate of variation during the year, allowed Cassini the first experimental verification of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

https://frenchtogether.com/french-christmas-traditions/

The lovely bell tower in Modena is attached to the duomo and is known as the Ghirlandina. It makes a very impressive first glance when framed by the ubiquitous arcades of the city.

Standing alongside the apse of the cathedral, 89.32 meters tall, is the Ghirlandina bellt ower, the symbol of the city of Modena. The Ghirlandina was given this nickname by the city’s inhabitants due, perhaps, to the double ring of parapets that crown its steeple, “as light as garlands.” The word for garland in Italian is ghirlanda.

Built as the belltower for the cathedral, this tower has however played an important civic function since its origins: the ringing of its bells marked the time for life in the city, it announced the opening of the gates in the city walls and acting as a warning for the people in situations of alarm and danger.

Its mighty walls guarded the so-called “Sacristy” of the Municipality, which was home to the strongboxes, public documents and objects of great symbolic value like the famous fourteenth-century “Secchia rapita” or Stolen Bucket (a copy is currently on display). This humble yet supreme object of contention between the people of Modena and Bologna in the enflamed historic battle of Zappolino (1325) was raised to fame in the mock-heroic poem of the same name by Alessandro Tassoni.

Debate regarding the chronology of the Ghirlandina is still open because direct historic sources are missing for the initial building stages. By about 1160 the foundations were being dug and the tower was built to a height of 11 metres. Between 1167 and 1184, after a brief pause due to settlement of the site, building reached the fifth floor, topped by four corner turrets. In 1260 the sixth storey was built, which incorporated the turrets. In 1319, the tower was completed with the octagonal pinnacle, exquisitely gothic and originally decorated by numerous spires, to plans by Enrico da Campione.

The outside of the Ghirlandina is characterised by a rich array of sculptures and by stone cladding, the material salvaged from the Roman town know as “Mutina,” as revealed by scientific investigations carried out during the recent renovation work, started in 2007 and completed in 2011.

Inside the Ghirlandina, on the fifth floor there is the so-called Stanza dei Torresani, once lived in by the tower custodians and where important capitals can be admired.

Together with the cathedral and Piazza Grande, the Ghirlandina belltower has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.

When the tower was finished as we see it today in 1588, a solemn ceremony was held during which, using an external ladder, the cross was put on the top, soldered to the golden sphere where an urn contains relics of the Patron Saint of the city, Geminiano. On the outside, S.P.Q.M. is written; that is Senatus Populus Que Mutinensis, which in Latin means ‘Senate and People of Modena’).

One of the most interesting things to me about the bell tower is this memorial from WWII placed on its base and dutifully commemorated with the wreath with ribbons the color of the Italian flag. This is a distinctive memorial form that I have noted in other places in Emilia-Romagna, such as in Bologna. I’ve not seen this form in other regions. Certainly not in Tuscany.

Pictures of those who lost their lives in the war are included.

Under the memorial wreath, on the day that I visited, were these little sprigs of mums with a tag that says they are symbols of ending domestic violence. I saw them in other places around town.