It is hard to imagine visiting Rome without seeing some part of the Vatican. Separate tours include Saint Peters, the Vatican Museums, the Gardens, the catacombs.

  

This blog is an introduction to the Vatican Museums.  The Popes have been collecting artifacts here since the mid 1300s, and it is quite breathtaking in scope.   1400 rooms.  Endless artifacts and only a fraction on display.

Unfortunately these days the museum is very very crowded, which detracts from the experience.

Here are some photos help you appreciate the enormity of this collection.

Statues by the thousands.

Many other sculptures.

Maps

Tapestries

Exhibits of artifacts from other cultures, for example Assyrian, Etruscan, Egyptian.

Paintings

And the building itself.  For example here the ceiling in the Map corridor.

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo is rightly revered, but the Popes invited a number of famous painters, including Raphael, to decorate ceilings and walls throughout the museum.

One can no longer take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, but I snagged these images from post cards in the gift shop to give you an idea of the paintings.

Like many people I love to visit Tuscany.  And sometimes I think that I am experiencing the echo of the Etruscan civilization coming down from nearly 3000 years ago.

For about 900 years before the Roman era, the Etruscans expanded in the Western Mediterranean, out of their core cities in the northwest parts of the Italian peninsula.  They were contemporaries of the Greeks who during the same period dominated the Eastern Mediterranean.  And over the centuries the two civilizations heavily influenced each other’s development.

The origin of the people who settled in northwest Italy and became the Etruscans is not known exactly.  What we can discern from their language is that it is quite different from the early foundation languages that became the classical European. Even now we can’t completely translate their writing.  These gold leaf tablets are similar to the Rosetta Stone in that they are a translation document from Etruscan to Phoenician. 

They were great metalworkers and artists in metal.  They controlled the largest sources of both tin and iron in the whole Mediterranean area. Their bronze work encompassed the range from weapons to household goods to personal articles.  Down to the safety pin.

These bronze mirrors, common throughout the ancient world, would have been formulated with a high tin content and when polished daily be highly reflective.

They also excelled as artists in pottery and terracotta.

The Greeks described them as decadent because their women had equal rights with men in the society. (Both the Greeks and Romans excluded women from almost everything except the home).  Etruscan women attended banquets, could go anywhere out of the home, be educated and own businesses.

All their towns were on hill tops, preferably with a river on one or two sides.  When Rome was in its infancy, the powerful Etruscan town of Veii was twelve miles away.  The little village on the Palatine hill that would become Rome was directly at the ford of the Tiber River, the first ford inland from the sea.

Somewhere in the mid-400s B.C., Syracuse defeated the Etruscans, who lost the sea power required to keep up their civilization.   On the peninsula, the Romans began to take their cities from the south and by around 250 B.C. the Etruscans’ time had ended.

Still, when you are in Tuscany and have some wild boar and beans and wine and polenta (theirs was from farro) .. and relax in the easy friendly atmosphere .. you can raise a glass to the ancient Etruscans.

All of these photos are from the excellent National Etruscan museum in Rome, housed in the 500 year old Villa Giulia.

We signed up for a tour of Pompeii. I have wanted to visit the archeological site for years.  But since the tour was from Rome we spent most of the day in a car coming and going, and the actual tour proved to be too superficial.

Still, even the little we could see was fascinating.

Pompeii was a Greek city, since the Greeks settled the coast of Italy from Naples south.  It was only a Roman city for about 250 years.  Sitting at that time right on the sea it was an important port city. 

As everyone knows it was buried under volcanic ash about 2000 years ago by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius.  Most of the 25,000 inhabitants escaped.

Some things that surprised me.

The city was badly damaged by an earthquake a few years before the eruption and was still being repaired when the eruption occurred.   It was buried pretty deep.  In this photo you can see the depth looking at this only partially excavated villa.

The layout of the city was surprisingly modern.  There were open spaces, municipal government buildings, judicial buildings. 

The lifestyle for the 50% that were not slaves was also pretty modern.  They had fancy houses.

Also fast food restaurants, markets, bakeries, etc.  Here are some pictures of a neighborhood bath.

Also, the city was not a dinky little village, but covered two square miles. 

There are some interior decorations still at the site but most have been taken to a museum in Naples.

Again, this is only a simple introduction.   You may want to search for more pictures and information, which can be easily accessed.

I will be posting some photos and comments from Rome soon.  Thanks for coming along.

Having persuaded CAMarchand to come spend some time in Italy we are now in an apartment in Florence, one of our favorite cities. 

This city has been acclaimed for centuries as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  Even today with Italy scrappy and backward and chaotic and overrun with tourists (and wonderful), this city is remarkable.  The entire center of Florence is a world heritage site.  But the beauty of the city is not just the great buildings and churches but the treasure of the art they contain.

Although we are living virtually in the shadow of the Duomo our neighborhood is certainly not posh.  But we are close to some nice markets and (as everywhere here) plenty of restaurants and shops. A few photos of nearby places.

There was nothing at the site of Florence before the Romans came to establish the city in the first century AD.  For the previous 900 years Tuscany was the country of the Etruscans, famous metalworkers and bean eaters.  But the Etruscan cities were all on the tops of hills for defensive reasons.  At that time the Romans were a military superpower and could build their towns where ever they pleased .. and set up their standard one-square-mile fortified city here in the valley of the Arno river. 

There were hot springs here then.  The Romans would bathe daily if they could and loved hot springs, which determined the sites of so many European cities – for example, Siena, Rome, Paris.

About 500 years ago there was a great awakening of thought in the western world which we call the Renaissance, and it mostly happened here.  So from between a bit before 1300 until a bit after 1500 this was the richest and most important city in the world.  The history of the city is truly incredible but beyond the scope of this simple blog. But it is well documented and plenty of photos of the preserved buildings and the art of Florence can be found with a search. For a nice overview I would direct you here:  wikitravel/en/Florence.

We have stayed a few times in hotels around the Piazza della Repubblica, which was the old roman forum.  And I would recommend this area as upscale and in the center of the bustle of the city.

We lived here for a summer back maybe twenty years ago while I went to Italian cooking school.  From this postcard photo .. we had an apartment just off the square you can see down river from the old bridge.   

I would recommend you not stay too close to the train station or over the river, but otherwise anywhere around the old town is good.  There are pedestrian-only areas in the old town, but it can be difficult to walk outside of that area because of the very narrow sidewalks, traffic, and the herds of tourists.  For exercise there is a great park down the river past the old walls where you can walk for quite long distances away from the congestion of the city. 

I love this old painting of the city looking upriver from where the park is today.

For me Italy is mostly about the food and the wine.   But any description I might offer would probably turn into a semi religious rant.  I will just say that there are restaurants everywhere and that even the simplest of meals can be tear-formingly delicious and even memorable.  The markets are filled with ingredients of the highest quality, bursting with flavor, to bring back to the apartment kitchen.  Even the little grocery stores are filled with excellent foods and wines.

The Tuscan countryside is picturesque with numerous interesting towns you can easily tour from Florence as a base. 

Volterra, capital of the Etruscans, is small but very interesting and has an excellent museum.   San Gimignano was a wealthy city on the ancient pilgrimage route to Rome and is famous for the peculiar tower houses and the region’s nice white wines.

Monteriggioni, a very small hilltop fortress dating from 1213, is worth a quick stop.

And Siena is a fascinating little city with a very rich history and I would highly recommend a visit.  Unfortunately, a bit gritty having never really recovered from the plague years and a sacking by the Florentines.  If you visit with CAMarchand she has a wonderful little book she constructed from days of photographing the city.

I do not pretend to know much about art, but living here it is so much around me I have to comment a bit.  First, Florence has the Uffizi, perhaps the best art gallery in the world. Then there are the churches. There are a lot of them and they are filled with art.

A renaissance art comment you might be interested in:  One of the most famous churches in the city is Santa Croce.  And one of the many paintings there is this depiction of the Last Supper painted by Gaddi in 1350. It is flood damaged but one can easily see the flat medieval faces depicted.

In 1480, just 130 years later, Ghirlandaio painted this depiction of the Last Supper in one of my favorite churches, the Chiesa di Ognissanti.  The difference is dramatic.  Ghirlandaio used plumblines to lay out the perspective to make the painting look like an extension of the hall. 

The painting depicts realistic characters dining in the double style of the medieval times. It also is filled with a very many interesting religious symbols from the middle ages, which I leave you to search if interested.

People who know art say that Michelangelo’s depiction of the Last Supper painted just before 1500, now in Milano, is the greatest.  But I still vote for Ghirlandaio because of how remarkably he set his painting to look like an extension of the dining hall of the church.

The Chiesa di Ognissanti, like all of these neighborhood churches, is in use every day.  It also contains the grave of Amerigo Vespucci, namesake of our country.

Again, CAMarchand has a book put together from a summer of photographing the churches of Florence.

Except for the art the churches are quite plain inside compared to those in Rome, where rich patrons and royalty competed to fill them with the most ornate marbles imaginable.

These churches were very plain on the outside too (raw bricks) until in the 1800s when ornate marble facades became fashionable.

There are some wonderful museums here. If you are a scientist you will enjoy the Galileo Museum. The Uffizi is amazing, but I confess that I get zoned out when facing the endless paintings.

I highly recommend the Bargello.  Filled with just enough of great (primarily) Renaissance art to understand what it was all about, and including some of the finest Renaissance sculptures.

And the building itself, a former prison, is wonderful.

And if bored you can meet some folks from the 1400s.

So, as a bonus for reading this far, photos of some remarkable things from a few church interiors:

Wood carvings from the 1400s.

Stained glass from the 1300s.

And both very old and quite new tombs of the famous:

Galileo.

Michelangelo.

Machiavelli.

Florence Nightingale.

Fermi.

Marconi.

Thanks for coming along. We will be moving down to another apartment in Rome in a while and I can check in from there. 

BRUSSELS, Capital of the European Union. 

There is a fair amount of new investment/construction going on, and some very nice areas of the city.

But Brussels is certainly not gaudy, and does not seem particularly prosperous.  It has a character more like a second tier French city, say Lyon.

This is the Capital of Belgium, complete with Palaces and government buildings.

There are a handful of gothic churches.

Founded around 900 the city was at the farthest navigable point up the river Senne.   This building is in the space of what was once an island where the city was founded. 

It is possible to track down glimples of the Senne but today it flows beneath the city.

The ground zero for the many tourists who visit Brussels is the Grand Place and the surrounding old town.

Belgium is famous for their hundreds of beers, Belgium waffles and Moules (Black Mussels).

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Just a few street pictures.

BRUGES, a world treasure.

We took a day trip over to Bruges. Why not, it is only an hour and the tickets cost less than two glasses of hot wine in the Bruges central square.

Bruges, West Capital of Flanders once was open to the sea, and was an important trading center in the middle ages.  Wealthy and urbanized the culture rivaled that of northern Italy.

Brugge is inundated with tourists because it is beautiful and unique in its degree of preservation.  Many of the city buildings from 500 to 700 years ago are still in everyday use. Without further comment here are some city photos .

We are returnng to the USA tomorrow for the holidays. But will be back on the road in January.

Thanks for coming along on this trip.

There are probably several posts in here about London, since we come here often. Like this one:

A few things about London

But I love this city and am happy to ramble away once again about why I personally like visiting here.

There was nothing at the site of London before the Romans came.  They chose the site because it was far enough up the river to be warned about any raid from Germanic pirates, but navigable to the sea.  And here they could bridge the river. Two hills to the north gave some protection and the Fleet River which ran perpendicular into the Thames to the west provided additional protection.

The Romans began to export the rough commodities available like timber, hides, etc. And wool. Eventually British wool garments came to be considered the finest available in the Empire.

But the real prize they came after was Tin.  There was a fair amount of Iron around Europe by then, but the economy of the Roman empire stood on Bronze. And to make Bronze you add Tin to Copper.  But there is/was surprisingly little Tin around the Mediterranean.  The Etruscans had depleted their mines even before the Roman era.

The British island has a wealth of metals, including lots of Tin, which became a major export.  

In London today, history from the Roman times exists here side by side with the modern.

Downtown, in more or less the area of the original Roman square mile around 400,000 people work in the leading financial center of the world. 

There are more American banks than in New York and more Japanese banks than in Tokyo.  Don’t try the underground when they all evacuate at 6PM.

London has endless attractions for visitors.   Royalty and historical places, theater, great museums of every kind plus ever new special exhibitions,.

and all the shopping and restaurants possible.

We like to stay between Grosvenor square and Hyde Park. 

It is an easy walk through the park down to the Science Museum .. see the only existing unmodified Newcomen engine, a Babbage difference machine, and on and on.

And to the Natural History Museum..

and the incomparable Victoria and Albert Museum. 

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We like to walk along Oxford street and over to the British Museum.  There is only one word for this museum: unbelievable.  Certainly the best museum in the world.  Here are some notes I took a few years ago.

The British Museum

This time I only took one picture.  News articles.  One tells about the death of Alexander the great in 323BC.  Another the passage of Hailey’s comet in 164BC.

And I have not mentioned the art museums.

We like the London theater and always see a few plays when we visit. 

And when it rains there are plenty of historic buildings to pop into .. such as visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral.

This is an easy city for a visitor to get around. Walking, underground, taxis.

It is almost 50 years since I lived here and I still love it.  If you are thinking of visiting and want to talk about plans, give me a note here or email.

Starting the winter travel season in Northern Europe ..

in the company of CAMarchand.

First stop: Amsterdam.

Probably the most wealthy city in the world during the Golden age of the Dutch, in the 1600’s.  Capitalism was rooted here with the invention of joint shares and the world’s first stock exchange.

Today the old city center with its canals is a World Heritage site, more or less still as the city was in the mid 1800’s.  And it is visited by millions of tourists each year. 

Mainly the canals are lined with thousands of old trading houses since the Amsterdam Dutch traded in almost any commodity saleable, from the new world to Japan.

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Tulips, forever popular and once a mania are still for sale.

There are still some older buildings but mainly churches and the remnants of fortifications. There are no palaces or royal buildings since the Netherlands has been a republic since the end of the Orange wars.

Today commerce in the city seems to be dominated by steak houses, cheese shops, and pastry shops.

And Cannabis. The coffee shops and head shops cater to the users who puff away everywhere.

In the morning the city smells like sugar and cannabis. In the afternoon like grilling hamburgers and cannabis.

The museums are not up to London standards, but excellent.  The renovation of the old Rijks Museum is complete and it has reopened and is gorgeous.  We were lucky to be here for a special exhibition contrasting Spanish and Dutch artists of the Rembrandt era.

We are off to London next week and will keep in touch. Thanks for coming along.

Mystras is virtually a “modern” site by Greek standards.  Established by the Franks around 1250 and later the Byzantine (Constantinople) capital of the Peloponnese.

Some photos:

Messsene. The city state of Thebes founded around 400BC. These are the ruins of a very large city. 

The Theater.

The city council chambers.

The gymnasium.

Olympia.  A major world heritage site.  Inhabited for ~6000 years with a city here for at least 4000 years.  The ruins cover a large area.

This is, of course the site of the ancient Olympic games. The stadium is still here, set up for 45,000 spectators.

Olympia was also the site of the Temple of Zeus.  The 40+ foot statue of Zeus in the temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  The statue stood in the temple for over 800 years. It was removed to Constantinople and lost in the great fire around 500AD. 

There is an excellent museum at the site.

For centuries offerings great and small were brought here to Zeus.  One special custom was that after a successful military campaign the generals brought artifacts from both the victors and the vanquished.  Here both from roughly 500BC, helmets from the destruction of the Etruscans. 

And the defeat of the Persians at Marathon.

Delphi

This was believed to be the geographic center of the world in ancient times.  For maybe 2000 years the oracle spoke to men as the voice of Apollo answering questions and delivering prophecies.  Emperors and kings, governors and princes and common persons travelled here to deliver offerings and receive the advice of the oracle.

Both the current town and the ancient town site are very compact and very vertical.

Once one of the richest sites in the ancient world with majestic statues, buildings holding the valuable offerings of city states and nations ..

… today a ruin. 

The riches have been plundered by many groups and even the little museum sadly holds mainly fragments.

A few photos from a little road trip down the coast from Kalamata.

And of course some food photos.  The little braised leg of lamb in one of these photos was about 9 inches long and could be cut with a fork.

And so, that’s it for Greece this year. 

Thanks for coming along. 

We are heading back to Bemidji by way of a few days in London.

The Peloponnesian peninsula contains some of the most important historical sites from Greek history and therefore the history of the cradle of western civilization. These are a few simple notes and pictures just to give you an idea of the incredible richness of the history of this area.

Corinth.
Once a very large Greek city state. But today not a lot of Greek construction left. A few standing columns from the old Greek Temple.

The fountains and water system.

But most of what remains are the ruins of what the Romans rebuilt after they sacked the city in about 150BC.

There is an ancient fortress on the high hill overlooking the site that is said to be very interesting.  I did not make it up there.

Epidauros
The most famous healing center in the ancient world. Mostly ruins today, the site mined for the cut stones.

But there is a 14,000 seat theater in its original form dating from around 450BC. As a fellow scrivener: Pausanias of Lydia said in about 150AD, “particularly worth a visit”.

Special theatrical events are still held in the theater and it is said that the acoustics are such that you can hear the actors from any seat in the theater.

I liked the little Gymnasium area.

 

Mycenea
The ruling palace of the Myceneans.

It is hard to believe that from this remote inland location they ruled the north eastern Mediterranean between 1500BC and 1100BC.

There is a nice museum at this site.

The Myceneans had great bronze technology, and were notable for having more gold than anyone else in the western world.

Many of their remaining artifacts are in the National Archeological Museum in Athens.

Nafplion
This is a very nice small (tourist) town and a good place to stay and day trip to the many nearby historic sites.

The site was occupied from antiquity. And it is possible that a group from Egypt settled here. It was occupied by various pre-greek tribes. But the wonderful fortifications come from almost modern times in comparison as the Byzantines, Ottomans and Venetians held and lost and held the strategic town over centuries.

There is a great walking trail around the old town and for a few miles out along the coast.

And, a Nafplion treat:

This is the third winter I have visited Athens and have two earlier posts about the city on this site.

This year I convinced CAMarchand to come over to Greece and join me for a short time. We have been staying in Athens, and will start a little road trip around the Peloponnese peninsula tomorrow.

The Acropolis
The number one Athens must see site.
We have been living in the old town and from almost anyplace you can look up at the Acropolis.

The Acropolis is the site, the high jutting rock.

One of the buildings on the Acropolis is the Parthenon, the large Doric temple built around 500BC as a celebration of their victory over an invasion by the Persians.

The Ottomans occupied Athens from the mid 1400’s. During an attack by the Venetians in 1687 the Ottomans fortified the Acropolis and stored their ammunition in the Parthenon. A direct artillery hit exploded the ammunitions and severely damaged the Parthenon.
There is a smaller Doric temple standing complete in the “Agora”, the ruins of the ancient Greek/Roman city below the Acropolis.  Here you can learn some things about the inner workings of these temples.

Around 1800 a British “Lord” (bribed the guards per the Greeks), removed the surviving sculptures and sold them to the British Museum. The Greeks have built a museum to house them upon their return, which they have been trying to accomplish since the mid 1980’s.
A few more pictures.

There are also plenty of ruins of mainly Greek, Roman, and Ottoman history just lying all around all over the old town.

For more history I would direct you to the fantastic National Archeological Museum here in Athens. Great permanent displays. Great temporary displays. Covering all of the northern Mediterranean civilizations from Neolithic until Roman times. Completely described in English.

I could have taken a million pictures in the museum, but like these two.

A good place to learn some history.

Some 3500 year old data storage devices.

Here are some tourist pictures of Athens “just walking around”.

One comment: Downtown Athens has the most shocking graffiti problem I have ever seen. Even worse than Prague. Areas NOT covered with grafitti are notable. This takes some getting used to.

And, of course, a few food pictures.