Europe Journal 1999
The Last Report
I have not been writing the same way I did at the beginning of the trip. I write every day for myself, but most of it ends up being a laundry list of what we did. I’ve looked through what I wrote to collect some impressions of what we saw in Italy, some things that I think are at least reasonably well written. I hope you enjoy it.
December 4-6
Venice, Italy
Venice is hard to describe or explain. It’s a funny little city that defies all logic. It is loaded down with tourists and the tourist industry. Yet most tourists come only for the day, and so at night the atmosphere changes completely, as groups of locals go walking around town. There is decay everywhere, which is no great surprise for a city so old, built so improbably on a lagoon. In between the knick-knack stands and bumbling visitors one catches glimpses of the real city, the city where real people live and work. When wandering far off the beaten path, one can suddenly find oneself surrounded by locals, buying their newspapers, commuting to and from work, looking after their families.
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We wandered toward Piazza San Marco. Along the way we looked in shop windows. With an adult eye that I didn’t have before, I can appreciate the Venetian glass items — though many are insufferably cute, they are all amazing works of art, produced by highly skilled artisans. Some are specifically designed to show off the artist’s talents, as with the glass spiders whose tiny, segmented legs look like they might break if you breathed too hard on them.
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We hiked off to visit the northern section, Cannaregio, in particular to see the Ghetto, the very first Ghetto ever.
The word “ghetto” comes from Venetian dialect, and means “foundry”. The little island around a central square used to be a foundry. Later, it became the home of the Jewish community in Venice. Venice was apparently, by European standards, unusually tolerant of Jews, and attracted a sizable community — tolerance notwithstanding, Jews were barred from a number of types of work, and required to live, all of them, on that little tiny island. Gates were built and at night the gates were locked and guards were put there, paid for by a tax levied on the Jews, to keep them inside at night. This is a peculiar sort of tolerance, but then Spain and Portugal were so intolerant as to expel from Iberia all the Jews they could find — many of whom settled in Venice. The buildings were very densely populated, and in order to get the most floor space out of the limited building height ordained by law, ceilings were built very low, to eke 6 or 7 stories out. Napoleon took the gates down, the Austrians put them back up, and Mussolini deported the Jews living behind those gates to concentration camps. The gates are no longer there, and two monuments to the deportees sit on the edges of that central square.
When we came through there was a flea market in the central square. Though it is dense, the Ghetto has a rather large, irregularly shaped plaza. Compared to Roger’s Park in Chicago and the Lower East side in Manhattan, the Ghetto doesn’t look especially Jewish. However, looking around one sees Hebrew lettering carved over doorways and posters and signs related to Jewish community events. Also, walking by an open storefront (which didn’t seem to be being used as a store) we heard singing; looking in we saw a group of ultra-orthodox men in traditional orthodox dress. There is, in an old synagogue (which may or may not still function as a synagogue), a museum of Jewish culture, but we didn’t visit it. (We didn’t visit any museums in Venice, in fact.)
We walked out of there and eventually toward the northern edge of Venice. From there we could see Murano, the glass-blowing island, and also the Venetian cemetery island, where most deceased Venetians spend ten years before being taken out to make room for other deceased Venetians. From there you get a better idea of Venice as an island in a lagoon, because you really see the lagoon, the wide expanse of water scattered with islands.
We had come to that area to visit the church known as the Gesuiti, but it was closed for renovations.
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This morning we took the boat to Murano. Murano is the island near Venice where all Venetian glass is made — since a number of years ago when the workshops moved there from Venice because of the risk of fire. The island has two main things to offer: visits to glassmaking workshops, and lots of little stores selling glass at better prices than you find in Venice.
The boat ride was fun. It was a standard vaporetto, or water bus, which went from the Piazzale Roma and the train station to points north on Venice, then the cemetery island, then a few stops on Murano, then some other islands, then Lido, and finally points south on Venice. Then the route number changes, from 42 to 41, and the boat makes the same trip in reverse. Out on the water, we had a good view of the lagoon. It was a clear day, and we could see out over the perfectly flat mainland and industrial complex to the impossibly tall white-capped mountains that rose up behind them. A haze (smog?) obscured the base of the mountains, so they seemed to just float over the mainland port and towns, like a city dreaming of mountains. I could see better why Venice was such a well-defended city-state — it is easy to defend, surrounded as it is by mountains on three sides. Invaders would come from just a few directions, most likely from the sea.
We arrived at Murano as I was beginning to feel a bit seasick (which is rare for me). Getting off, a man stood at the base of the dock saying “glass workshops tours around the corner to the left.” Well, we didn’t know where to go, so we went there. It turned out that the central area is to the right, and no one would go left on their own, so this workshop sends people to meet the boats to scare up customers.
It was fun to watch them work in the workshop. The master glassblower was making a leaf-style chandelier with the help of two assistants. Three cats ran around the floor, which struck me as funny, and a little dangerous. After watching him complete one piece of the chandelier, we went into the little shop.
They had a lot of things that were pretty nice, but the only thing that really attracted us was a set of six little colored glasses. The salesman accosted us, and I found it remarkably hard to handle him. What do you say? They tend to phrase their questions so that “no thank you” doesn’t fit quite correctly as a response. He said, “did anyone tell you about the sale? 50% off because it’s the off season.” So Eric bought the glasses for half price. Of course, it was all a big lie; there was no sale, it was a sales technique. And it worked. Later we saw what looked like the same glasses in a store for $5 less (no big deal). I’m glad we only bought the glasses. In an effort to ring up more sales, he invited us to the special private gallery section, full of beautiful and big pieces. But we didn’t buy anything — there was no question about us buying anything, we just weren’t going to do it. A lot of what he showed us was exactly the kind of thing we rarely buy: big pieces of art. We buy vases, glasses, trays, bowls, etc., but not much sculpture, and certainly not abstract glass sculpture.
December 8
San Marino (Independent country within Italy)
Then we headed to San Marino. San Marino is a funny place. A small highway heads into it — the highway goes through Italian land, but it is clearly only there to connect San Marino with Rimini. You know you have entered the country because you pass through a sort of post-modern gate that says “Benvenuti alla antica terra de libertà” (welcome to the ancient land of liberty). San Marino, I understand, is the world’s oldest republic. The country is all hills — you pass under the gate as you begin the upward ascent. Then you twist and turn, go up and down, and climb slowly one hill after another until you are climbing the main mountain of San Marino. At the top is the city of San Marino, a medieval stone city perched up there. The views are spectacular and the city is quite pretty. It is also loaded down with tourism. San Marino seems to offer the world two things: tourism and low-tax outlet shopping. I can see why tourists come there: it is a separate country, which is a novelty, and it’s pretty, and it’s an easy daytrip from Rimini. We visited for about 25 minutes (that’s the amount of time I bought on a parking meter). We took some pictures, looked at the town, and left.
December 9-10
Siena, Italy
Siena is a little hard to explain — it’s not exactly a hill town, in the standard way. It’s built on a convergence of ridges — like a spider, as Eric put it. There are three major ridges, but there seem to be some minor ridges as well. Unlike other hill towns, which drape over gumdrop-shaped hills, this one sprawls, with roads going up and down unpredictably. As you walk from one part of town to another, you never know when you will find that the road goes up or down. You don’t know when there will be a gorge in between you and your destination. (There are not many buildings built in the gorges, but some are planted like parks.) It takes a little time to get used to. Also, there is no “lower town” in the flat land at the base of the ridge (as there is in many other places), so anywhere you go in the town involves going up or down.
There is a part in the city where two roads head off a main road almost right next to each other, basically parallel, but one heads upward slightly, and the other heads downward very steeply into a gorge (which seems to be built up, unusually). It’s funny to look at the two roads — it reminds me of M.C. Escher. It’s something he would have drawn. The streets look as though they just couldn’t be next to each other. In particular, the one going down looks like a portal into another world.
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Another room in the building (the building built by the council which governed Siena in Medieval times and served as, basically, a government building) had a set of very famous frescoes, the earliest recorded panoramas. One wall showed an allegorical portrait of bad government, rule by Tyranny, a fanged demon, with the assistance of Cruelty and other vices, Justice tied up at Tyranny’s feet, and a picture of life in the city and countryside under this government, robbers controlling the city, the countryside dark and uncultivated. Another wall showed the allegory of good government, ruled with the assistance of Justice and other virtues, the criminals under the control of the forces of order, with Concord assisting the council members to govern. A third wall shows a panorama of the city and countryside under good government, prosperous and safe, the fields full with grain. The wall of bad government is in bad condition, whereas for some reason the other two are in great condition. It was a very interesting set of frescoes, its allegorical message so clear. Apparently shortly after they were finished, the Black Plague came, wiping out half the city (including the artist and his family), and the city came under tyrannical rule.
December 12
Pisa, Italy
As you get closer to Pisa, you see the tower. The city is in the plains not far from the sea, and so a single tall structure really stands out, especially one so famous.
I was sort of following it, which is why I missed the turn-off to the center. I drove around a bit, looking for parking, and then went back along the way the sign had pointed, and then took a turn off for parking. I never did find the parking area. I just parked on a street near a market. We weren’t entirely close to the tower, our main reason for coming, but it was a pleasant walk.
We walked through the town to the tower, which shares a sort of campus, called the Campo dei Miracoli, with the Duomo, and a baptistery. All the buildings match, and there are really quite attractive. So much attention is paid to the fact that the tower is leaning that no one points out the soft pastels of the marble used to build it and the other buildings, the gently ornate details, and the marriage of three different but matching buildings. In addition, behind the three is the simple white marble wall of the nearby cemetery, founded for the bodies of slain crusaders. The baptistery is a gumdrop-shaped building — like a church dome with no church under it. It is rather ornate, and made with the same pale whitish marble that they all are made of, and inlaid in some places with a pinkish marble. The Duomo is a huge church with a dome (hence the name) which sports on one side ornate inlays in pink marble, and on the other side a large wooden door with a beautiful richly colored mosaic over it. Some of the marble used to make it must have come from previous buildings — in parts one sees blocks with letter or designs running across them, once part of larger words or borders. And the tower is also beautiful, made of the same marble, with pink marble inlays over the door, and beautiful ornamentation at the arches. But the most noticeably thing about it is, in fact, that it leans.
And boy does it lean. Even if it were open to tourists, I doubt that we would have gone up — it looks a bit like it should have keeled over a while ago. The fact that it hasn’t may be one of the miracles referred to in the name Campo dei Miracoli (field of miracles). However, Pisa is no longer relying on the grace of God to keep their tower up — along the base at the high side there are stacked a large number of concrete weights, designed to slowly return it upright, or at least more upright. Also, at the third or fourth level they have carefully wrapped the tower with steel cables, which then stretch away over the plaza below to disappear behind buildings. We didn’t look behind the buildings, but I thought I caught a glimpse of a large pulley at the roofline of one building — and according to our guidebook, the cable are there to make sure that the base does not buckle.
This work is to prevent the eventual toppling of the tower — tourists were not allowed up starting in 1990, but nonetheless in the first ten weeks of 1991 the tower moved as much as it had in all of the 1970’s and 80’s (just one millimeter — but the acceleration is cause for alarm).
If it is ever brought fully upright, it will be the first time for most of the building — it began to lean at a time when there were only 3 stories to the tower. The rest of the eight stories were added over the course of the next 180 years. The bell tower which crowns it sits at a somewhat awkward angle — slightly less tilted than the rest of the tower. I have seen reproductions of the tower, noticed that awkwardness, and had always assumed that it was a flaw in the reproduction, but it’s not. That’s really how it looks.
The rest of Pisa is quite nice. Well, we didn’t see all of the rest of it — we didn’t cross the river, for one thing. But there are a lot of nice buildings on the various piazze, and along the narrow streets of the medieval section the buildings are painted a pleasant yellow, running together like a single building but at a number of different heights.