Incredible Journeys

Swiss Family Robinson would love the Treehouse "Treesort"

2010-07-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me information about a relatively new resort about 10 miles from Cave Junction, Oregon that looked really intriguing! The Treehouse "Treesort" offers an assortment of furnished treehouses to rent to give any aspiring "Swiss Family" the opportunity to see what the forests of southwest Oregon look like from a bird's point of view!

The Cavaltree Fort can sleep up to 7 people and shares a
swinging bridge with the "Treeloon", a treehouse fashioned
after a wild west saloon. Image courtesty of the Treehouse
Treesort.

The treehouses range from a more posh Schoolhouse Suite featuring a master suite with queen size bed, kitchenette and full bath with claw-foot tub and shower to the Cavaltree Fort, a two story treehouse that sleeps up to seven people. The first floor of the fort has a double bed under the tented portion with an adjacent observation deck . The second floor is built like a lookout tower with a bunk bed and movable single bed that can be rearranged to form a double bed. It also includes a loft that can easily accommodate two more kids. It is accessed by way of a swinging bridge.

I see the resort also offers a variety of outdoor activities including horseback riding, whitewater rafting, swimming in a river-fed rock lined pool and tree climbing with rappelling. They even offer the chance to swing on a giant 750 ft high Tarzan Swing!

One of the most popular activities is navigating over a mile of Zip Lines strung through the trees over the 36 acre property. Zip lines are steel cables that guests can slide on using a special harness. This video shows the variety of courses devised for both beginners and advanced zippers including the Achilles Line featuring a 500 foot plunge.

All in all it looks like a heck of a good time for families who enjoy the outdoors. Although pets are not allowed at this resort, the owners say they have friends that offer a very clean kennel close by.

United Breaks Guitars

2009-07-22T21:16:00.001-07:00

A friend sent me a link to this video and I cracked up. I, too, have been a victim of United's outrageous so-called customer service. When I was fell in Naples, Italy in 2007 and tore both left and right rotator cuffs in my shoulders, I had to book a flight home to have the damage surgically repaired. I requested medical assistance when I booked the flight. The leg of the flight from Naples to Munich was AirItalia and I was treated with the utmost kindness. Then in Munich I transferred to a United plane for the flight across the Atlantic. When I asked for assistance with my carryon bag - and I was trussed up in a sling applied by the emergency room doctors in Naples - a snotty United stewardess told me I'd just have to try to find some other passenger to help me because she had a bad back and stalked off.

Exploring Cabela's Animal Exhibits

2008-12-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

My sister-in-law took me to my first Cabela's while on a visit to Minnesota back in the 1990s. When she first suggested going to an outdoor store I didn't know what could be so interesting as I'm not into camping or hunting. I didn't even bother to take my camera. So when we got there and I saw the spectacular animal exhibits I was awestruck and insisted we return the next day so I could photograph them. I returned the next day and shot pictures until my camera battery died. Since then I have made a point of visiting every Cabela's we have encountered in our travels. So far, we have visited Cabela's in Owatonna, Minnesota, Mitchell, South Dakota, Sidney, Nebraska, and Hamburg, Pennsylvania. I missed seeing the exhibits in the Lehi, Utah store by only one week (the store was brand new and wasn't going to be open for another week). And I could not find reasonably priced ground transportation to see the Cabela's on the outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas when I was there for an Educause conference a couple of years ago. Now I understand there are stores in Washington state and outside Boise, Idaho. I hope to visit them next summer.

Cabela's does such an outstanding job of posing the animals in lifelike settings and engaged in lifelike movements that I found their exhibit far superior to the newly refurbished "Hall of Mammals" at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History that I visited in 2004. Cabela's gave me an opportunity to become a virtual wildlife photographer without the travel and physical endurance required by expeditions to rugged and remote environments. The central mountain is illuminated by an overhead skylight so there is enough natural light to shoot many of the exhibits without flash, enabling you to capture the natural colors of the fur or feathers.

A fellow photographer up on Flickr disdainfully commented "but they're all dead!". Yes, that is true, but by preserving their natural beauty, Cabela's provides an opportunity to study the detail of each species and creates a learning environment unmatched by many museums. In fact, many surrounding schools take their students to Cabela's on field trips.

Cabela's also gives aspiring photographers an opportunity to compose images more artfully, and zoom in for the kind of closeup only a highly skilled "National Geographic-type" photographer can produce in the wild.

Each Cabela's store also displays a unique bronze sculpture in front of their store for art lovers like me to admire. This Native America warrior is paddling a canoe in front of the Cabela's store in Hamburg, Pennsylvania.

Cabela's usually place their stores in rural settings along interstate freeways so they are easy to access by car and are frequently advertised several miles in advance for the happenstance encounter. Cabela's provides ample parking and kennel service if you are traveling with a pet and the weather is either too hot or too cold to leave them in the car during your visit. They also house a restaurant so you can take all the time you want and not worry about what to do for breakfast, lunch, or supper.

I designed a website to display some of the beautiful exhibits I photographed on some of my first visits. Later, I uploaded my images to a Flickr photoset since I have taken literally hundreds of pictures and wanted to make them available to students and teachers for learning projects and exercises. All of my images are licensed with Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 permissions which grant the right to use them freely for noncommercial purposes as long as you include the credit "Photo by Mary Harrsch" and any derivatives are shared in a like manner.

Sharks in Venice

2008-10-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

No, I really didn't see sharks in Venice. In fact, I've never been closer to Venice than the Grand Canals in The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, but I hope to see it in one of my future Italian sojourns. However, I saw this video clip about a direct to DVD film coming out in January 2009 entitled "Sharks in Venice". It appears to be a Stephen Baldwin effort at imitating Indiana Jones. But, when I saw a huge shark chomping the center of a gondola I burst out laughing. I always thought the gondoliers' singing was never that bad!! Anyway, I had to share it with you.

A Journey Gone Wrong - Naples, Italy October 2007

2007-10-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

October 9 &10, 2007

Well, I've finally arrived in Naples after a journey from hell. Everything went fine until I reached Munich and the fog was so thick you couldn't see the tip of the aircraft's wing. All the direct flights to Naples were cancelled but by afternoon, Lufthansa booked me on a flight to Milan along with a group of 16 other American women that were flying to Naples to meet a tour group. However, the Milan-bound flight took so long to leave Munich that we missed our connecting flight to Naples.

Lufthansa rebooked us on a later flight to Naples but when it got ready to board, they discovered a mechanical problem so we were told we would have to wait another two hours for another plane to fly in from Istanbul. It finally arrived and ferried us on down to Naples but we arrived with no luggage. Miraculously, AlItalia managed to track it down and return it to me about a month after I came home. The zipper was broken but even my $1500 CPAP machine (I have severe sleep apnea) was intact.

So I had only the dress I was wearing and one change of underwear (I rinsed a pair out every night so it could dry during the day and give me a change for the next day), my computer, camera gear and medication but nothing else.

To top things off, I severely wrenched my right shoulder trying to pack my carryon bag up a 60s style gangway in Munich because the airport doesn't have moveable jetways or at least not for smaller aircraft than those used for long distance trips. They load passengers on a bus that takes you out to the aircraft parked on the tarmac and you must pack your carryon up a stairway.

Anyway, the bus was packed with passengers and when the bus door opened to enable us to disembark the crowd surged forward with someone stepping in front of my carryon and the rest of the crowd pushed me forward causing me to lurch forward while my arm gripping the carryon was pulled backwards. The net result is that now I can't lift my right arm above about waist high without assistance from my left hand which makes taking pictures a rather painful challenge. Still, I was determined to carry on.

I suspected I'd torn the right rotator cuff but if I went to the doctor they would probably put it in a sling and I couldn't take pictures at all then so I stopped at a pharmacy and got a tube of ibuprofen gel to rub into it. I soaked my shoulder in a hot shower then rubbed on the gel and I really do think it helped. Quite honestly I had never heard of this gel version of ibuprophen and I guess I'm not alone because when I mentioned it to my doctor after I got home she didn't seem to have heard of it either.

In spite of all this, I managed to photograph all of Herculaneum although I probably took less pictures than I normally would. The beautiful mosaic at right was discovered in the House of Neptune and Amphitrite in the bath complex and is being carefully conserved.

Reproductions of some of the sculpture of the period discovered at the House of the Deer are now displayed on the site (as seen right).

Ancient tradition connected Herculaneum with the name of the Greek hero Herakles (Hercules in Latin and consequently Roman Mythology), an indication that the city was of Greek origin. In actuality, it seems that some primitive forefathers of the Samnite tribes of the Italian mainland founded the first civilization on the site of Herculaneum at the end of the 6th century BC. Soon after, the town came under Greek control and was used as a trading post because of its proximity to the Gulf of Naples. It is the Greeks who named the city Herculaneum. In the 4th century BC Herculaneum again came under the domination of the Samnites. The city remained under Samnite control until it became a Roman municipium in 89 BC, when, having participated in the Social War ("war of the allies" against Rome), it was defeated by Titus Didius, a legate of Sulla." - Wikipedia

More of the multi-story architecture has survived in Herculaneum than in Pompeii although most of the art has been removed and sent to the archaeological museum in Naples. There was still some incredibly bright mosaics in a bath complex though. A few frescoes remain in situ as well although they are pretty faded. There is a lot of conservation work going on though which I was glad to note. I also noticed that some of the columns were painted red just like those portrayed in HBO's "Rome".

It started to rain in the afternoon so my English photographer colleague and I popped into a restaurant. The little "ristorante" was decorated with dozens of colorful ceramic plates that reminded me of the beautiful collection of Maiolica ceramics I had seen at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco last year. I seriously doubt they were made in the 16th century though!

The shopkeeper showed us a little closet that was actually a tiny lift to take us up to the garden level. The tables were arrayed under an overhead trellis covered with vines of some type. I had a nice lunch of ciabatta bread, green salad with tomatoes and Mozzarella cheese, and tortellini in a delicate cream sauce. My colleague Richard ordered a bottle of wine but said afterwards that he doubted if it had ever seen a grape. I asked him what he meant by that and he said that you can produce wine chemically without grape juice and that was probably what had been served. I had never heard of such a thing and since I don't care for the taste of anything with alcohol in it I guess I won't ever care about it.

With still quite a bit of the afternoon to see, we caught the train back downtown to go to the Archaeological Museum. I finally got to see the famous Alexander defeating Darius at the Battle of Issus mosaic which was on my must see list. I had always thought it portrayed the final battle at Gaugamela but all the references say Issus so I guess I have to go with that. I wonder if there was an inscription saying Issus and not Gaugamela? I've also always wondered about the portrayal of Alexander with an out-of-proportion eye compared to the more realistic Persian warriors. I know the "Evil Eye" was much feared in the ancient world so I wonder if this distortion means the conquering Alexander possesses the ultimate source of knowledge and yes, even evil, and is thus unconquerable.

I couldn't get very good pictures of it on my first visit because the museum was full of tour groups and, like the tour groups that visit the Louvre all seeking a peek at the famed Mona Lisa - they clustered in front of it. I had better luck later when I returned on my last day before departure. Mondays apparently are less busy.

Of course the museum contained many other spectacular mosaics well worth a visit as well. I was surprised to find the mosaic of the Skull image used as the graphic for the intro to HBO's "Rome" miniseries. "Memento Mori" caught my eye immediately as I entered that portion of the gallery. I half expected the little wings beneath the skull to flutter and the skull itself to rock back and forth and Rome's theme music to begin playing since I have seen that graphic so many times as a fan of the series!

Other mosaics of note included one of the Dioynisian Mysteries, a famous one of animals from the Nile Valley, some with fishes, and one of a cat that looked identical to one I saw on my last trip to Rome in the National Museum.

I managed to get into the "must be over 18 to view' room of erotic art from the brothels and was surprised how mild the images were. Of course the Victorians were pretty prudish. I must admit though, that a couple of Priapine lamps were a bit over the top. I'll have to flag my picture of them "might offend" on Flickr!

Of course I was thrilled to see two famous statues of my "hero" Julius Caesar as well as an impressive colossal bust of Vespasian and an interesting bust of a very young Commodus that did not resemble his father Marcus Aurelius nearly as much as a bust of him as an older man wearing his Hercules lion garb that I saw at the Capitoline Museum in Rome

There was also a dynamic sculpture of worshippers wrestling with a sacrificial bull that once graced the halls of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Apparently it was purchased by a very wealthy Neopolitan family (The Farnesi) so it ended up down here instead of Rome.

Day 3

Well, things just don't seem to be working out on this trip. The ibuprofen gel had helped enough with my shoulder that I could take pictures as long as I lifted my one arm with the other one and helped support it but tonight when we were hurrying to catch a bus I didn't see a hole in the pavement and went down really hard wrenching both shoulders pretty severely. I couldn't even pour my own glass of water at dinner or even put the strap of my camera bag over my shoulder. Even typing this note is extremely painful and I've had a shower and doctored both shoulders with the painkilling gel.

To make matters worse, while I was still trembling from the fall, a man in his fifties came up the aisle of the bus and acted like he was just trying to hold on but started pressing his pelvis against my leg (I was sitting on an aisle seat and the bus was crowded and I had nowhere else to go). At first I thought he might just be lurching a little from the bus but the more I tried to scoot away from him the more he pressed against me then his movements became "rhythmical". It was like being raped in public. I didn't know what to do because if I made an issue of it he could just innocently claim he was just trying to hold on. I was also too embarrassed to tell Richard who was watching out the window for street signs so we would get off at the right stop. Thankfully, the man finally moved on. When we got off the bus, I asked Richard if he would let me sit next to the window in the future and I broke down and told him what happened. He was furious someone would try to do that to me so maybe its just as well I didn't say anything at the time. If he had struck the man he probably would have ended up in jail and I don't think his wife would have appreciated that. I know we joked about the old Italian custom of pinching before I left but this type of thing was totally disgusting. I guess I'm not as tough as I try to appear.

Tomorrow we are going to take the lift up to the top of Vesuvius and then spend the afternoon back at the Archaelogical Museum. I think I can do it if I get help on and off the train and Richard carries my camera bag. I don't know if I can manage any pictures but I don't want to spoil it for Richard so I'll just grit my teeth and try not to let it show. I think, though, unless I can get the pain back to a manageable level so I feel I can take care of myself without help, I'm going to cancel my train ticket and my reservation at the hotel in Rome and try to book a flight home.

I don't think I'll be able to work for a week or two except perhaps a little email from home. I'll have to see what the doctor says. I'm going to have to medicate pretty heavily just to try to drive the car back from Portland.

My luggage still hasn't shown up here. At least today I was able to find some underwear, a night gown, and another outfit to wear. I air out the dress i've been wearing overnight but it is surely getting a bit rank after all this time.

Day 4 & 5

The pain was so severe Saturday night that I had the desk call a cab to take me to the orthopedic hospital. I went up to Babelfish before I left for the hospital and wrote out a brief explanation of what happened, where it hurts, a short medical history, and my insurance and contact information and translated it all into Italian. The ER physician's assistant seemed to understand it so I guess the translation wasn't too bad. They X-rayed my shoulder and said there was no fracture but tied it up with a sling to keep me from pulling any more on the damaged muscle. It's kind of strange that the hospital does not prescribe any medications so I didn't get any pain medicine. I guess if I couldn't stand it any longer I could have gone to a pharmacy. Apparently a note online said pharmacists here actually prescribe medications. Richard had some arthritis strength pain tablets so I took those and rubbed on some more of the ibuprophen gel. Between the two things the pain finally was dulled enough to let me drift off to sleep for a few hours.

It was obvious that I was too injured to continue to Rome especially by myself so I cancelled my train ticket and my reservation at the hotel in Rome and booked a flight home. I was really upset as I was so looking forward to it. I guess my Trevi Fountain luck was not meant to be used this time.

I slept off and on Sunday. Richard went on up Vesuvius. He said it was just as well I didn't try it as the bus lets you off about 1 mile from the summit and it would have been quite a strenuous uphill walk. That evening we went out and got a bite at a restaurant and then stopped by a MacDonalds and picked me up a Caesar salad, some sliced apples, and a "Big and Tasty" hamburger. I told them to leave off the sauce so the bread wouldn't get soggy and stashed it in my little room bar refrigerator for tonight's dinner. The hotel is really quite beautiful but has no restaurant (except for hot rolls in the morning) and there are no restaurants nearby. Although the hotel is new it is in an old run down neighborhood and I don't trust going out alone - especially with my arm in a sling. It would be like advertising to the local predators.

Richard had to fly home today but before he left we took a cab back to the Museum. I only took the little Fuji since that's the only one I could use one-handed. I managed to photograph the rest of the museum in my effort to salvage something from this trip although it really aggravated the right shoulder - the one less damaged [As it turns out the one more damaged!]. I took a cab back to the hotel and downloaded my pictures to the Mac and then took a nap.

I made it home safely. All of my return flights actually ran on time and Terry met me at the security gate in Portland and drove me home. My main problem was getting assistance with my carryon bag. I guess the gauze sling looked hokey so nobody except the Italians took it seriously. I had requested special assistance all the way home but as soon as I left the Italians, I was pretty much ignored. The special assistance in Munich amounted to someone pointing at the elevator. When I boarded the plane I told the steward I would need help with my carryon bag and he said someone in the back would help me. I went to my seat with my carryon in the aisle and turned to look toward the stewards and stewardesses in the back and they just looked at me and kept munching their donuts. Finally I asked another passenger if he could get their attention for me and he came up and asked what I needed. I told him I couldn't lift my carryon and he snottily said "Well, who packed it?!!" I told him I had a torn shoulder and he roughly shoved it into the overhead bin and stalked back to his seat.

During the flight a stewardess came by asking if we wanted any additional beverage. The young man sitting next to me to her yes and I opened my eyes and said if she was bringing one for him I would appreciate one as well. She barked "PLEASE" and the young man and I looked at each other and humbly said "please". We certainly meant no disrespect, we were just answering her question although I must admit a "please" was probably appropriate but her aggressive correction was hardly necessary.

After the 8 hour flight I pressed the hostess call button to request help with the bag when we landed. Apparently the stewardess just turned off the call light. I waited another half hour then pressed the call button again and right away I heard them turn it off again. Finally, when the stewardess went by collecting cups I stopped her and asked her if someone could assist me with my carryon bag when we landed. She snapped "Well I've got a bad back! You'll just have to find another passenger to help you or something!" So much for United's "friendly skies!" Fortunately, the young man I was sitting with helped me with it without any snotty remarks.

Dulles airport in D.C. was a nightmare. It took almost two hours to get through customs and most of the delay was totally unnessary. They had you queue up for document checking which included looking at our customs declaration card. They they had you queue up again to pass by a guy who collected the customs declaration card (without looking at them or asking any questions) - ridiculous! Then they made everyone with luggage claim their luggage (of course it had already been inspected in Europe) and, without examining any of the contents (that I could see), queued you up to recheck your luggage! Then, of course, you had to pass through another security screening for your own person and your carryon bag even though you had just gotten off a plane that you had been screened to board in Europe. It finally occurred to me that the entire charade was not about Homeland Security - it was about making a show for the President and his cronies!

When I boarded the plane for Portland, I again told the stewardess I couldn't lift my carryon and she kindly stowed it in the forward compartment for me. When I deplaned they not only had my carryon ready for me but tried to get me to wait for a wheelchair. After almost 20 hours, all I wanted to do was go home. I waived them away and took my bag and headed for the exit.

When I got home I went to the doctor and had a full series of X-rays that showed no fractures but she suspected I tore the rotator cuffs in my shoulders. She ordered an MRI of the left shoulder and arranged for me to see an orthopedic surgeon. The MRI of the left shoulder showed I tore the rotator tendons clear away from the bone of my upper arm. He suspected I also tore the tendons in the right shoulder as well and has ordered an MRI for it too. The MRI of the right shoulder (which curiously is the one less painful) shows even a bigger tear than the left shoulder. I talked to the surgeon and we decided to operate on the left shoulder first, though, because it is the more painful. He will attempt to reattach the tendons using arthroscopic surgery but says he may have to resort to full open surgery. They've scheduled the surgery for Monday. He says after the surgery I'll be in a special sling for 6 to 8 weeks and will need to undergo physical therapy for about three months. Full recovery will take about six months. He will wait until the left shoulder is healed before operating on the right side.

I will probably not be able to drive for the next three months and he says he doesn't want me to lift anything heavier than a can of soup. I guess its a good thing I didn't register for that conference in San Antonio at the end of January. I probably should postpone my Filemaker class that is supposed to start November 5. It might be best to reschedule it for January. For now, I hope to work at home until a couple of weeks after the surgery then see if I can tolerate a full day.

Monastery Stays offer affordable accommodations in historical surroundings

2007-08-25T06:40:00.000-07:00

When I go to Rome in October I will be staying at a converted monastery not far from the Colosseum. I didn't find my accommodations through the Monastery Stays website but I had heard that monasteries were available throughout Rome. Today, I stumbled across the Monastery Stays website and was quite excited to note their widespread availability throughout Italy and Sicily. Not only do their structures offer historical interest but for a woman traveling alone, they provide security and a quiet refuge after the end of a busy day of exploration. If you are into a wild nightlife, these accommodations are probably not your cup of tea since they have curfews ranging from 11 p.m. to midnight. But, I usually am so tired by 9 or 10 p.m. that their curfew policy does not pose a problem for me. I will definitely be visiting their website to arrange future accomodations!

A Virtual Visit to the Dresden State Museum of Art

2007-08-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

My friend Kent Loobey sent me an article about the new Dresden State Museum of Art in Second Life and, of course, I had to go see it!

"The Dresden State Museum is one of Europe's oldest. Saxon kings began collecting art in the 1560s, but it wasn't until the reign of August the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, in the early 1700s that art collection began in earnest. Augustus believed in putting his wealth on display. He and his heirs effectively created the first public museums in an effort to impress their subjects and fellow royals. In 1855, the Zwinger was expanded to create a gallery for the state art collection." - Wired

I launched Second Life and searched on Dresden under Art and Culture and clicked Teleport. In a few seconds my avatar was standing in the beautiful plaza surrounding the gallery. I walked over to the beautiful fountain and sat on the edge to look around and take in the beauty of my surroundings. Of course I couldn't help but have my picture taken there. Although Second Life has an in-world Snapshot tool, I prefer to use a simple Print Screen because the resulting frame is sharper and more detailed.

When I visit museums in real life I like to take pictures of the facade and any interesting architectural details that I see. Second Life's Camera Control tool lets me do the same thing - allowing me to pan and zoom in and zoom out to get a better look at anything that catches my eye.

Camera controls is not normally visible by default but if you click on View -> Camera Controls then you get a small interface that looks like two virtual joystick controllers with a ruler running vertically between them with a + at the top and a - at the bottom. Clicking on the + zooms in. If you reach the maximum zoom, try moving your avatar just a little closer to the object you are examinging to zoom in even more. Then use the joystick on the right to adjust the angle of your camera up, down, left, or right, and the joystick on the left to move the camera itself up, down, left, or right to eliminate any angular distortion.

I entered the main gallery and stopped at the desk and picked up a guest book SDK so I could record my impressions. The reception area is magnificent with its ornate domed ceilings, bas reliefs and sparkling chandeliers. It truly gives you the authentic feeling that you have entered a world-class museum!

Then I walked down the entryway and entered a room that featured some spectacular tapestries. Again I used my Camera Controls and my MouseLook view to pan around the room and zoom in on each piece of art to examine it more closely. The room had chairs arranged in it so you could sit and contemplate the art just like you would in the "real" gallery.

The tapestry room also featured a piano with a little script attached that you could click on to "play" it. My sound wasn't working right today but I think normally you would hear it. I crashed the Second Life application because I think I had too many applications open and probably should have rebooted. I'll have to try it again when I get a few spare moments. I had piano lessons when I was a child but haven't played in years. Based on my avatar's motions, the piano must have been magical as she appeared to play as well as a concert pianist!

I moved on to the next room where a number of interesting historical cityscapes captured my attention. I normally prefer images of people, both portraits and paintings of people engaged in interesting activities, but these scenes of 18th century city life were quite colorful and intriguing. I particularly liked this painting of the Marketplace at Pirna by Bernardo Bellotto (nephew of Canaletto) painted from 1753-1754 CE. (This image was taken using the Camera Controls and the PrintScreen key on my computer. Yes, the quality of the experience is that good!)

"Bernardo Bellotto, an Italian painter, was from Venice and the nephew and pupil of Canaletto. He was known for his townscapes (vedute). He is listed in the fraglia (Venetian painters' guild) from 1738 to 1743, by which latter date he had established his reputation. In 1747 he left Venice for Dresden and there in 1748 was appointed court painter to Frederick Augustus 11 of Saxony; in c1758 he was at Vienna working for Empress Maria Theresa; in 1761 he was working in Munich, after which he returned for a while to Dresden, before moving in 1767 to Warsaw to work for King Stanislas Poniatowski, staying there for the remainder of his life." - From "The Bulfinch Guide to Art History".

I then wandered into the next room and was rewarded by the vision of a beautiful portrait of Princess Lubomirska, one time mistress of Augustus II (The Strong), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, by Louis De Silvestre painted in 1724 CE.

"Louis de Silvestre was the son of Israël Silvestre. He was first apprenticed to his father, going on to study under Charles Le Brun and then Bon Boullogne. In 1694 he competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome but left nevertheless for Italy. In Rome he met Carlo Maratti; he also visited Venice and Piedmont. On his return to Paris he was received (reçu) in 1702 into the Académie Royale, presenting the Creation of Man by Prometheus (Montpellier, Mus. Fabre). He embarked on a successful career, earning academic honours (he was appointed an assistant professor in 1704 and a full professor in 1706) and commissions from both the Church and the court. In 1703 he was commissioned by the guild of Paris goldsmiths to execute the May of Notre-Dame (Healing of the Sick, Arras, Mus. B.-A.). In 1709 he painted a Last Supper for the chapel at Versailles (in situ). This was followed by nine scenes from the Life of St Benedict (1709; examples in Paris, Louvre, see fig.; Béziers, Mus. B.-A.; Perpignan, Mus. Rigaud; Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.) for St Martin-des-Champs, and a St Matthew (1710; destr. 1748) for the cupola of St Roch, both in Paris. Among the secular works of his early career are the paintings originally intended for the Pavillon de la Ménagerie at Versailles, including Arion Playing the Lyre (1701; Compiègne, Château), and Hector Taking Leave of Andromache with its pendant Ulysses Taking Astyanax away from Andromache (both untraced), painted in 1708 for Armand-Gaston I de Rohan-Soubise (1674–1749); he also painted contemporary historical subjects (e.g. Battle of Kassel, Siege of Saint Omer; both untraced) for the funeral of Philippe I, Duc d’Orléans (d 1701)." - ArtNet.

I ran out of time for today's visit so I completed my comments statement in the space provided at the bottom of the Guestbook SDK I had received by touching the guest book in the reception area and returned to the guest book and dragged the SDK from my inventory over on top of the Guestbook on the table as instructed. Hopefully my comments were wisked away to the Dresden Gallery developers. I think this 3D experience gives the visitor much more of a feeling of "visiting" the museum than simply browsing through a well-illustrated book about the gallery. I hope other museums will follow Dresden's lead and provide many more such virtual galleries accessible to everyone (with access to a computer somewhere) regardless of their physical or financial ability to travel. I was certainly impressed!

I wish I had seen Yorktown when we visited Williamsburg

2007-08-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, my husband and I visited Williamsburg and spent the day exploring the shops of the colonial artisans like the wigmaker and the gunsmith, the Governor's mansion, and the Legislative Assembly Hall. But there is so much to see in Williamsburg that we didn't have time to also explore Yorktown, site of the famous decisive battle of the American Revolution. There is a fife and drum corps that performs at Williamsburg and Yorktown that I had so wanted to see. I bought a Department 56 set of miniatures of them that I treasure but I would have liked to have seen them in person. Today, I was searching the internet for military music for a soundtrack for an educational podcast about the Civil War and stumbled across a link to a video of the Yorktown Fife and Drum Corps. I found it quite amazing and wish to share it:

North to Alaska

2007-06-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

For years, my relatives in Alaska have been pleading with us to come up and see their beautiful part of the country. We finally did at the end of May to help my great niece, Jessica Davis, celebrate her graduation from high school.

My great niece lives with her parents, Scott and Traci Davis, in Ketchikan. My oldest sister has made a number of trips to Ketchikan and returned with great fish stories (supported by boxes of delicious halibut and smoked salmon) and other tales from the land of the midnight sun. So, it was finally time to see for ourselves.

We arrived by plane from Seattle and boarded the ferry to take us across the inland passage to the island where Ketchikan stretches along its shoreline.

One of the first things we noticed were the huge cruise ships lined up along the waterfront. I had never seen a cruise ship up close and these were gigantic. Scott told us they have some cruise ships that span 14 decks. Catering to the tourists appears to be the major economic activity here. We saw flocks of tourists surging from shop to shop, a horse-drawn wagon making the rounds, and charter boats filled with hopeful anglers plying the waters of the harbor.

The landscape reminded me of the Oregon of my childhood before the timber companies stripped many of the hills trying to make a quick buck by selling raw logs to Japan. The hills around Ketchikan were a deep green with tall fir and cedars and the mountains capped with snow. Even though it was almost June the weather was cool and it sprinkled off and on. Ketchikan claims to be the 4th wettest place on earth with annual rainfall over 400 inches.

I also got a chance to find out how rough it can be living on an isolated island with only one main road. The first night I was there I somehow came down with a virus. I wretched all night and most of the next morning. I finally decided to go in to the emergency room but had to wait for my family to return from an awards ceremony so someone could drive me in. They didn't get home until 1 p.m. which was, unfortunately, after the highway department started blasting the road they were attempting to improve while the weather was decent. They also used a little too much dynamite and ended up blocking the entire road (the only road between me and the hospital) and knocking down the powerlines. Initially, they planned to have an ambulance go to the other side of the rock slide and send a gurney over for me. I was afraid it was going to be quite a spectacle! We waited for almost an hour and a half. Then someone else behind us suffered a severe allergic reaction and also needed to go to the hospital and was in a life-threatening state. So, the highway crew hurried as best they could and cleared just enough room for us to get by in the car (we were cautioned not to roll the windws down or have our arms outside the car though because the power lines were still dangling).

I finally got to the hospital about 4 p.m. only to find the ER jammed with patients waiting to be evacuated to Seattle. Apparently, the ferry's engines had quit and it floated away (with another ambulance on-board) and there was no way to get to the airport without it. The Coast Guard came to the rescue and lassoed the errant ferry and dragged it back to the dock. I finally got a bottle of IV fluid and an injection for nausea about 6 pm. The doctor said I pretty much just had to ride it out since nothing much could be done for a virus except rehydration so we went home.

The next morning we were scheduled to go out on a charter boat. I was still a little shakey but I put my best foot forward, downed a sea-sickness pill, and headed for the dock. The charter boat captain was a friend of my niece and was quite welcoming. We trolled the inland passage hoping for a big King salmon but nothing much was biting in the gentle rain. The captain called in a bald eagle and pitched him some herring while I took pictures. Then we changed tactics and rigging and started fishing for rockfish and halibut. We managed to get several rockfish and just when it was almost time to go in, my brother-in-law, Ken, snagged a halibut. It was just a small one but I knew we'd have a delicious fish fry out of it.

That evening, my sister noticed an advertisement for a charity concert featuring "The Lettermen". They were popular when I was in high school. So, we changed clothes and headed for the auditorium. One of the original Lettermen was still in the group after 47 years of performances. He still sounded really good and his current fellow performers were wonderful too. We had a great time and even met them after the show. I thought to myself that I must have fallen into some time warp. This year I went to my first antiwar demonstration and my first Lettermen's concert thirty years after my 60s classmates had done those things!

The next day, my niece had scheduled a barbeque at Ward Lake Park. Since it is usually raining in Ketchikan, she had reserved a shelter just in case. Of course we needed it! We all huddled under the shelter while my nephew and his firehouse crewmates grilled hamburgers and hotdogs under the edge of the eaves. The local kids played out in the rain, throwing frisbees for their dog and splashing in the lake as if it was a sunny summer day.

Sunday, we all hustled down to the high school gymnasium to watch my niece receive her diploma. It was one of the best graduation ceremonies I have ever attended. Several of the seniors (including Jessica) got up and sang or played music. One very talented young man played music he had composed himself and conducted the high school band as well. The Tlingit Native American students wore their tribal ceremonial robes over the top of their cap-and-gowns and I noticed their parents and relatives did as well. Several of the seniors made the receipt of their diploma a particularly memorable event with acrobatics, skateboards, juggling, and, in Jessica's case, a march down the aisle dressed in her Dad's fireman's coat, hat , and boots. After all, she's a certified volunteer firefighter too!

On our last day, my nieces and sister took me to the Saxman Native Village where I learned about the Tlingit and Haida tribal histories, the importance of totems, and got a chance to participate in a tribal dance at the clan of the Beaver longhouse. I also toured the discovery center, the local historical museum, and had a delicious lunch up at the Inn at Cape Fox. Quite a grand finale! Have a look!

My "Adventure in Dreamland"

2007-05-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I was reading an article about a New York Times film critic's "Adventure in Dreamland" about his family's trip to tinseltown and was disturbed by his comment about his trip to the Hollywood Entertainment Museum:

"We began with the Hollywood Entertainment Museum, which occupies a handsome Art Deco building that used to house the Max Factor makeup company. As I bought tickets, Justine pointed her digital camera at a poster in the lobby — an advertisement for the museum itself — and was immediately accosted by a man who seemed more like a junior production executive than the security guard he apparently was. “Ma'am, I'll have to ask you to erase that picture,” he said, explaining that “everything in this museum is a copyrighted piece of intellectual property.”

He didn't even mention the complete Cheers bar (look for where the stars carved their initials in the bar during the final episode) or that his kids were able to sit in the captain's chair of the original set from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also didn't mention the series of interactive demonstration rooms that teach various tricks of filmmaking where, according to Frommer's guide, "visitors can create Foley soundtracks for a movie segment, test their skills at digital editing, and try out other fun, educational procedures."

I wonder if the rather rude reception his family received by the "security" guard left such a bad taste in his family's mouths that their enthusiasm for the museum's efforts were noticeably dampened. When I was there right after the facility opened in 1996, no one cared if you took pictures. I fear this is an example of the tact the MPAA is taking with all of the work they perceive as being so-called "protected" by copyright. Apparently they have learned nothing from the ridiculous antics of the music industry's RIAA and their attempted prosecution of "violators" as young as 12 years old. What a shame.

I was also saddened to hear that the place has become such a disorganized jumble of pictures and artifacts. At least when I was there I remember admiring some of the Egyptian miniatures used in the filming of the Ten Commandments and, of course, as a "Trekker" I got quite a thrill out of sitting in Captain Picard's chair and uttering "Make it So!". (The picture at left is me at the engineering console. At right I wait to consult with Captain Picard in his ready room). Time goes by so fast I guess I didn't realize that many of today's young people hardly remember "The Next Generation" since there has been three other series since then and the last, "Enterprise" had a relatively small viewership and has already passed into syndication on the Sci-Fi Channel.

I was also shocked by the price ($42) Warner Brothers charges for a less-than-two-hour backlot tour according to Mr. Scott's article. In 1996, I paid not much more than $46 for an entire day's pass to Universal Studios Hollywood. As I had already visited Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, I was not as overwhelmed as I was on my first visit but I enjoyed the Waterworld show with the costumed "smokers" on jetskis and rode the "Jurassic Park" ride five times including once in the dark after dinner. (Fortunately, it was very hot so getting soaked by the water spouts and the final four-story plunge into a pool was refreshing.) The "Twister" tornado experience was interesting but short as was the "Backdraft" fire sequence. Of course, the Hollywood park also has the "Jaws" shark ride which is always fun even if you've done it before. I wish they would have had the "Revenge of the Mummy Ride" finished when I was there but I'll have to see it some other time.

Maryhill Museum offers Fine Art to visitors of the Columbia Gorge

2007-04-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

Although I have lived only five hours away from the Maryhill Museum that is across the Columbia River from The Dalles, Oregon, I didn't become one of the 10,000 visitors per month to the museum until the summer of 2006. I had heard Maryhill had a wonderful collection of European art and was home to a number of items from the estate of Queen Marie of Romania (including her coronation gown at left) but just hadn't gotten around to visiting it. Then, this past year the museum hosted a concert by the National Choir of Latvia from Riga and my sisters, brother and I decided to make the journey to Goldendale, Washington to attend the concert as a treat for our new sister-in-law from Riga. Gunta and my brother spend a month each year there and she is always anxious to share her culture with us.

First, a little history: Construction on the museum began in 1914 as a mansion for the wealthy entrepreneur Sam Hill.

"Samuel Hill was born to Quakers, an abolitionist physician and his wife, in North Carolina in 1857. At the end of the Civil War, the family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Hill grew up and where he attended Haverhill College. Upon graduation in 1878, Hill went to Harvard and received a second bachelor's degree in 1879.

He returned to Minneapolis and entered into a successful law practice in which he won significant verdicts against several of James J. Hill's (1838-1916) railroads (which became the Great Northern Railway). James J. Hill was so impressed with Sam's skill that he offered him a job that expanded into the presidency or directorship of a number of Hill's companies.

In 1888, Sam married James Hill's eldest daughter Mary. By the end of the nineteenth century, Sam Hill was a wealthy and accomplished railroad executive, financial manager, and investor, and he was active in a wide range of civic groups and fraternal organizations. He was noted for his tireless ambition and energy and for his integrity." - History Link.org

Sam named his estate Maryhill after his daughter, Mary. "But Hill apparently became irritated with Washington state officials for not completing a highway on the north bank of the Columbia and he abandoned the project in 1917." - History Link.org

One of Sam's friends, Loie Fuller (see a bronze of her at left by French sculptor, Theodore Louis-Auguste Riviere), an acclaimed Folies Bergere pioneer of modern dance, suggested to Sam that he convert his home into a museum, providing a cultural outpost in this rugged part of the Pacific Northwest. Using her contacts in Paris, Fuller made it possible for Sam to purchase a number of original Auguste Rodin sculptures to form the foundation for the new art center, including the only pedestal sized plaster version of the celebrated figure of The Thinker and a life sized plaster of Eve from the famed "Gates of Hell".

Sam traveled the world in his study and evaluation of railroads and highways and met many influential people, among them Queen Marie of Romania. During World War I, Sam extended generous support to the people of Romania. Afterwards, he invited Queen Marie of Romania to come to the United States and to dedicate his new museum when it was completed. Sadly, Sam Hill died in 1931 before it was completed. But, another friend, Alma Spreckels (of the San Francisco sugar company fame), having already founded the Legion of Honor Museum (the subject of another of my journeys) took up the mantle as chief benefactor of the budding Maryhill Museum. She donated many works of art from her own collection and with her guidance, the museum opened on Sam Hill's birthday, May 13, 1940.

Upon her death, Queen Marie of Romania left a number of items from her personal estate including some uniquely beautiful Byzantine-styled furniture that she designed herself and her original audience chair. She also left her gold coronation gown and spectacular silver-filigreed chests and serving pieces that were given to her as wedding gifts. These items are displayed on the museum's main level along with a number of paintings from European masters.

The Rodin sculptures are displayed in a brightly lit gallery on the lower level along with an extensive collection of Native American baskets, clothing, and artifacts, many from the period of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery expedition. Maryhill's Native American Collection began with a group of baskets acquired by Sam Hill but has grown through donations to over 800 baskets, encompassing virtually every North American basketry tradition and technical style, "from a tiny Pomo basket less than one inch in diameter to a four-foot-tall Apache storage Basket called an "olla".

"Maryhill Museum is located in the heart of the cultural region that anthropologists call the Plateau. Lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade Range, the Plateau was peopled by seminomadic tribes who hunted and fished, and gathered wild roots and berries. The Plateau people were also excellent basket makers, and the Plateau collection at Maryhill is particularly noteworthy. Included are Wasco twined bags, twined cornhusk bags, and Klickitat and Interior Salish-style coiled baskets, as well as beaded bags and clothing, tools, utensils, toys, and games." - Maryhill Museum by Linda Brady Tesner.

One of my favorite items was the 19th-century owl-shaped mortar bowl pictured at left.

Taking a brief rest, we ordered a delicious freshly-made sandwich from the small cafe Maryhill operates on the lower level. You can sit at tables provided there or take your lunch outside and enjoy the spectacular view of the Columbia River far below the bluff on which Maryhill rests.

Maryhill also houses a chess set collection with over 500 examples of the strategy game from around the world that spans hundreds of years. The permanent collection is the result of an exhibit originally held in 1957. The exhibit was so popular that the then-curator Clifford Dolph decided to add these miniature works of art to the museum's permanent collection.

In the upper level of the museum, Russian Orthodox icons, many from the personal collection of Queen Marie of Romania, are displayed.

"The Russian Icons in Maryhill Museum's collection, like the Queen Marie royal regalia, shed light on the life and era of Maryhill's royal benefactor and speak to a religion and culture much different from that of the average American.

Queen Marie was the granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II; her mother, the Grand Duchess Marie and only daughter of Tsar Alexander II, married Prince Alfred of England, second son of Queen Victoria. While the marriage assured that Marie and her siblings would be raised in Victorian Great Britain and that the family would be trained in the church of England, the Russian Orthodox faith was part of Marie's life from an early age. Many of her childhood holidays were spent in Imperial Russia, where her relationships with her Romanov cousins exposed her to Orthodox rituals and religious artifacts.

Once Marie married Ferdinand, the Crown Prince of Roumania, Marie was obligated to adopt the Roumanian Orthodox faith and to promise to raise her children in the State Church. Her homes in Roumania were decorated with icons and other religious artifacts. Even in death, Marie held an icon of the Virgin.

In 1926 when Queen Marie ventured to the then-remote Pacific Northwest to dedicate Maryhill Museum for her friend Samuel Hill, she brought with her fifteen crates full of artwork and artifacts for the museum. Without doubt, some of the Maryhill Museum icons were in these crates.

To the Orthodox believer, these venerated objects provide a "window to heaven", a continuum which connects the secular world with the heavenly realm." - Maryhill Museum

More pictures of the objects in the permanent collection of Maryhill Museum

A Stroll Around the Tate Britain then Homeward Bound!

2006-04-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, April 11, 2006:

Today, we walked over to the Tate Britain and toured the wing devoted to one of our ancestors, JMW Turner. He paints mostly landscapes juxtaposing ancient ruins with contemporary country scenes or sea themes such as this work entitled " Ulysses deriding Polyphemus" in the style termed Romanticism which I find a little on the surreal side.

"Looking at Turner's pictures of the yellow dawn or the red of sunset, one is aware, perhaps for the first time in art, of the isolation of colour in itself. Even his sea-pieces contain flecks of bright unmodulated colour that enliven their at first sight more monochromatic treatment. To extract from the continuous range of light the purity of yellow, blue or red, the hues that command and comprise the rest, required an uncompromising integrity of vision. Turner had precisely 'the disposition to abstractions, to generalizing and classification' that Reynolds regarded as the great glory of the human mind, though in a form that Reynolds would hardly have recognised. Quite early in Turner's career his pictures were already accounted 'among the vagaries of a powerful genius rather than among the representations of nature'." - The ArtArchive

Often called "the painter of light" (and you thought that was Thomas Kinkade!) or the great pyrotechnist, Turner painted over 20,000 paintings over the course of his life. He exhibited his first work in the Royal Academy at the tender age of only 16 and was given full membership by the time he was 27.

Then we toured the work of British historical artists (much more my cup of tea). I saw the famous Lady of Shallot and works by famous portrait artists like George Romney. I also was introduced to works by John Everett Millais who is now on my favorites list. His statue graces the courtyard outside the Tate and I can see why!

Tomorrow its back to Heathrow and an 11 hour flight home over Iceland, Greenland, Hudson's Bay and beyond. It's going to be hard to pull myself back to the present after two weeks of immersion in another time and another place!

Forgive me if I use phrases you may not understand when I get back. I've learned that potato chips are called crisps and french fries are called chips. A baked potato is referred to as a "jacket" potato". Egg salad is called Egg Mayonnaise and often includes sprigs of watercress but if you want lettuce, tomato, etc. on your sandwich you say you want it with salad. However, if you order an egg and watercress sandwich, you get boiled egg and cress dry with no dressing at all. Salad here is often served with no dressing at all or only a hint of vinaigrette and Americans (including me) are notorious for wanting lots of ice with their beverages (usually they're served with no ice at all!)

I've learned that you won't find any "rubbish" bins in a train station so you have to carry your trash around with you until you can emerge from the underground and find a trash can. (security reasons). On our first trip out and about, we wandered around endlessly in Victoria station trying to find a trash can to dispose of our breakfast napkins until we finally asked a passerby. We thought we just didn't know what they looked like. I've learned that a mailbox here is referred to as a box but is in actuality a round red can-shaped receptacle. I've learned that if something is in good condition you say it is in "pretty good nick." And most importantly, I've learned when you need to go to the restroom you need to "pop the lu".

A Jaunt to York

2006-04-21T13:28:00.000-07:00

Even though the tour company said it would take three hours by train we got to York in only two so we arrived at 9 a.m. We had been given tickets for the hop on, hop off city tour bus so we hopped on and rode up to the Jorvik Viking Center. It's sort of like the Epcot Center travel through time ride. They put you in a car on a track and you are taken on a winding ride through a Viking settlement. They are proud of their authentic surroundings and smells. Trust me - Viking settlements are really smelly! After you exit the ride you enter a small museum displaying artifacts and containing reenactors that demonstrate some of the ancient Viking handcrafts. The Jorvik center also had a great gift shop where I got some excellent books on Viking history and archaeology as well as some nice figures for my office (My office is really going to be heavily populated after this trip!)

Then Jane and I wandered through the Shambles and we found several large antique shops that we had great fun exploring. Jane bought some half dolls and we each bought a 100-year old handmade miniature doll. Jane bought a lady in a very detailed gown while I bought a doll dressed as a Stuart-era gentleman in a tiny velvet suit with lace collar and cuffs, leather boots and gloves, and sporting a real beard and mustache. They are only about 1/2 doll house size (about 3" tall). I was also excited to find an authentic (certified) 4th century bronze Roman military cloak brooch in pretty good nick. We also came across a store that had small real metal Roman helmets complete with hinged cheekpieces and crest that I can display in my office (a bit too small for my head!) They had a life-sized vinyl Roman officer out front but I didn't want to buy another ticket home for him!

After lunch we walked over to Yorkminster Cathedral and I was surprised to discover that they are the first cathedral I have visited that actually allows photos in the sanctuary. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible and only used the flash when I absolutely had to but got some nice shots both inside and outside. They even had some Tudor-era funerary effigies like those I saw at Westminster Abbey. I find the effigies a fascinating study in portraiture and historical fashion. Using my zoom lens, I was able to get closeups of some of the gargoyles high up on the ramparts. I was a little surprised, though, that they are really rather small. Of course the stained glass windows were very beautiful and I managed to get some good photos of some of the particularly detailed ones. If I had wanted to take pictures of all of them it would have taken me days! Jane talked with an artist apprentice out in front of the church that had rolled out the template for a new ceiling fresco he was working on in pastels that is a new addition to the church's artwork.

Jane waited upstairs (she didn't want to see anything dead) while I went down into the crypt but I really didn't see any tombs or coffins. The church authorities have displayed historical artifacts down there in museum-like display cases. The church is built over an old Roman fort and you can see the dais that was used by the commanding general to address his legions. They displayed busts of Vespasian and Septimus Severus who actually commanded troops in the area at one time and a bust of Constantine that was actually unearthed in York. He doesn't resemble the formal busts in Rome at all!

The museum is set up so the displays begin with Rome then progress to Saxon and Viking times and end with the establishment of Christianity. It also includes the silver ritual vessels used in church services over the centuries.

After we left the cathedral we walked toward the York Museum Gardens where the Constantine the Great exhibit is on display. Jane was getting really tired and not particularly interested in the exhibit so I put her back on the tour bus and sent her back to the railway station while I went into the museum. Probably the most spectacular item in the exhibit was the Great Cameo depicting Constantine, his wife and children in a chariot pulled by prancing centaurs with Jupiter hovering over all. This huge cameo is about twice the size of a very large western-style cowboy belt buckle and is framed in gold encrusted with precious gems. I also toured the museum's permanent collection of Roman, Saxon, and Viking artifacts but my knees were about to give out on me so I didn't try to climb the stairs to the upper galleries that displayed local decorative arts.

I went out and caught the tour bus to get a ride back to the railway station but, of course, had to take the rest of the tour in the meantime (about 45 minutes). I learned about the famous local bandit Dick Turpin and saw the traitor's gate where the boiled and tarred heads of the town "bad boys" were displayed on spikes. We circled the medieval guild hall that is the oldest guild hall still in existence in Europe and were told all about the successful local "Kit Kat" candy bar factory (the guide even had us sing the Kit Kat advertising ditty!) We passed a very old church and learned about the small door called the "devil's door" on its west side. Apparently, back in medieval times, people believed that when a baby was baptized, the devil would then flee the child's body and needed a doorway to escape the church so each time a baby was christened this little door would be opened before the ceremony to accomodate the devil. The guide explained that most "devil's doors" were placed on the north side (the dark side) of the church but for some reason this little church had placed it on the west side. Of course York has most of its original medieval city walls in tact and you can see the slits in the wall where they used to shoot arrows and pour boiling oil over their attackers. There is even a small portion of the original Roman wall still visible as well.

I caught up with Jane at the railway station and we caught the 6:00 p.m. train back to Kings Cross.

Madame Tussaud's, Westminster Abbey, Stonehenge, and Roman Bath

2006-04-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

Monday, April 10, 2006: I can't remember where I left off so I'll start with Wednesday. Wednesday we had passes to Madame Tussaud's wax museum. As expected the wax figures were the best I have ever seen. Of course the Tom Cruise was one of the most popular (for me and my sister too!) although I think the most handsome was Colin Ferrel with his natural black hair rather than the streaky bleached hair he had for "Alexander". Mel Gibson's eyes were a very brilliant blue and my sister couldn't resist cuddling up to John Travolta. Their Indiana Jones figure looked much more like Harrison Ford than the sculpture of him in Tussaud's Las Vegas venue. As for the women, Julie Roberts and Angelina Jolie were big hits. I wish they would have had Clive Owens and Gerard Butler but maybe they're still in production!

In the world showcase, I was surprised that the most popular figures tourists were posing with were Adolph Hitler and Fidel Castro!!?? I preferred Admiral Lord Nelson myself! I had hoped to photograph Henry the VIII and Elizabeth but they had been removed temporarily to make room for a photo setup with Queen Elizabeth, Phillip and Prince Charles. The Pope John Paul II figure was very elaborate and a lot of rather silver-haired and somewhat wrinkled women (does that describe me?) were posing with the Beatles.

After leaving Madame Tussaud's we caught the train back to Westminster to tour Westminster Abbey. I was thrilled when we exited the underground and I looked up to see the famous statue of Boudicca, the warrior queen of the Iceni tribe who rebelled against the Romans in 62 CE. Prior to this time, the Iceni had coexisted with the Romans and Boudicca's husband Prasutagus was a client King. However, when Prasutagus died, the Roman governor of the region decided to seize her land and had Boudicca flogged and her daughters raped as a lesson in power. He discovered he had made a major mistake. She and her followers succeeded in burning down Camulodunum (modern day Colchester), Londonium, and Verulamium (the Roman site I will visit Saturday at St. Alban's).

We pressed on to Westminster Abbey. It was so huge and filled with so many memorials that it took us the rest of the day. I was particularly interested in the tomb effigy of Elizabeth I. The face was sculpted from her actual death mask. I was also surprised to learn that her sister Mary (daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon) is interred with her, and is engraved with a very loving inscription written by Elizabeth. I found all the fashions represented in the funeral effigies fascinating since they depicted styles from the time of Edward I up to the 19th century. Westminster does need to raise funds to clean many of the memorials that are darkly discolored from the prolonged exposure to candle smoke and the pollution of the industrial revolution.

Thursday, we went on a guided tour to Stonehenge, Roman Bath and Windsor Castle. Even though people have said Stonehenge is just a bunch of rocks, I still found it impressive. Of course I was fascinated by Roman Bath and spent my entire time there walking around the complex. I even crawled down and swished my hand in the water to see how hot it is (not too - just comfortable for bathing). Later my sister said there was a sign that said you weren't supposed to do that but I didn't see it! (She had gone shopping with a lady she befriended on the tour). I also went into the Pump Room and paid 50 pence for a full glass of the healing waters. I don't like drinking hot water but I figured I needed all the help I could get. At least it wasn't as nasty as the Lithia water down in Ashland.

We accidentally waited for the tour bus on the wrong side of the Abbey where it let us off and the driver didn't see us so we almost got left. Jane's friend called the office and they had the bus come back for us. Unfortunately it made us late for Windsor Castle and it was nip and tuck whether we would get there before they closed admissions for the day. We made it with only 5 minutes to spare. We raced (or should I say hobbled!) over to St. George's chapel (that section of the complex closed first) and I thought the high altar there was more beautiful than the one at Westminster Abbey. Then we headed over toward the state apartments and saw Queen Mary's doll house (Jane loved that) and the 20 lavishly furnished rooms that make up the public rooms of the palace. I was totally enthralled with the exquisitely detailed wall-length tapestries. I was surprised that the colors were so brilliant but I guess many of them are replacements that were obtained after the catastrophic fire a few years ago.

Friday, we thought we were going to have a relaxing day over at the Tower of London - famous last words! All of the stairs almost finished us both! I did enjoy looking at the crown jewels and all the sets of armor though. There were several sets of King Henry VIII's armor - both battle dress and jousting armor. I blushed, though, when I saw the suit of armor that was designed to fit a Henry VIII if he took a walloping dose of Viagra!

I was also dumbfounded by the size of a jousting lance. Although it was designed with flutes to ensure it would splinter when thrust solidly against another knight's armor and weighed only twenty pounds, I think I would chicken out if I saw someone riding towards me wielding that thing!

There were historical reenactors presenting little vignettes that I photographed and, I found way too many goodies at their gift shop! Jane says she isn't taking me to any more shops featuring "knight" goodies.

Saturday, Jane went back to Portobello Road for more antique shopping so I caught a train to St. Albans and had a very interesting visit to the new Roman Museum at Verulamium. I was particularly excited to see a set of hipposandals and the remains of a real section of lorica segmentata.

I admired the beautiful designs on the red Samian ware on display and was intrigued to learn that the delicate vines and leaves were added to the ware by a bag and nozzle apparatus similar to the ones used by modern day cake decorators. I also liked the ram-headed handles used with the patera displayed there. (Patera are dippers used during ritual proceedings.)

I was also glad to see an early Roman helmet and a funeral pyre-blackened set of chain mail. Of course I love mosaics and there are several spectacular mosaics completely intact discovered at Verulamium including a sea god (a horned Neptune?), a lion dragging a stag, and a number of mosaics featuring floral motifs that are apparently the most numerous patterns found in Roman Britain. I found an excellent book on Mosaics of Roman Britain in the gift shop. I also bought a small replica of the Venus of Verulamium for my office.

I didn't realize that a decorated lead coffin I had seen on a program on PBS is housed at the Verulamium museum along with a sculpture of the reconstructed bust of its inhabitant so seeing it in person was a special treat.

I walked down the street and explored the remains of the Roman theater. I'm afraid the Normans did a really thorough job of reusing Roman building stone so there is little remaining but it was still interesting to see.

At 2:30 p.m., two members of Legio XIII Gemina delivered a lively presentation in full Roman kit. I was a little surprised that the officer said the groin protector was primarily used to hold the legionary's tunic down in windy conditions. (?) He also did a thorough job of explaining the construction and functional attributes of a pilum. I knew the iron shaft would bend on impact but he pointed out that the pyramidal shape on the haft immediately behind the iron portion also served to overbalance the remaining wooden shaft so it could not be flipped around and its pointed end used as a javelin by the enemy. Of course he adeptly demonstrated thrusting techniques with the gladius and various uses of the scutum as a weapon as well as a shield, using the boss and the edges. He also pointed out that the scutum was laminated so it was about four times as strong as a Celtic shield. He was very informative and obviously very enthusiastic about the Roman army and Roman civilization. It is the first time I have ever seen a serious Roman reenactor and it was thrilling!

Today, we celebrated Palm Sunday by attending services in St. Paul's cathedral. St. Paul's is extremely beautiful with walls adorned with sparkling mosaics. When you are there for church there is no sightseeing allowed so we didn't go down into the crypt but I did see the Duke of Wellington's monument in the main transcept of the church. My favorite admiral, Lord Nelson is interred there as well. Afterwards, we participated in a procession with palm frond crosses led by two tiny donkeys that had been commandeered for the celebration. Attending a service in a cathedral gives you an opportunity to listen to the massive organs and the choir. The service was "high church" so it is a very nonparticipative form of worship. The audience sits quietly and simply sits and stands on command while the choir sings all the responsive readings. The only point in the service where the audience were expected to say anything was the during the declaration of the Nicene Creed. We were talking to some ladies from Canada and one of them said she could see why the populace became disenchanted with this form of worship.

Afterwards we took the train back to Westminster and crossed the bridge and went up in the London Eye. Even high up in the Eye, London stretches out before you in every direction. Well, I better sign off. It's time for a sandwich and early bedtime since we have to get up at 5 a.m. to catch a train to York tomorrow.

To the Tower!

2006-04-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 7, 2006: As you know, I struggle a bit with stairs but escalators and ramps are very rare. My face is still rather tender (I may have cracked my cheek bone) but it did not discolor much so it's not obvious. I just have to prop myself up a little to sleep on that side.

We are having a busy time and I've already filled up one of my camera's Gigabyte memory cards. We've hit a snag however on a trip to Fleetwood. The train from St. Alban's is much more expensive than I thought and leaves either too early to see what I wanted to see in St. Alban's or too late to get us to Manchester until way late at night. We also would need to rent luggage storage in Paddington Station as we have too much luggage (with our local purchases) to wrestle it all around alone on a train. In addition, after riding around the

Kent

countryside with Richard and seeing the very narrow streets and road directional symbols that I don't know what they mean, I am too uncomfortable about driving here to get a car. So, I found an alternative to get to York. The tour company we have been using here has a tour to York where they would take us up there and drop us off at the Viking Center (around 10 a.m.) on Monday and leave us for several hours to explore the city. I've written my friend in Fleetwood to see if she can meet us there and called the Normandy guest house and cancelled our reservations. I'm feeling much less nervous about the whole trip north now.

You know how I dive right in to any place that I visit (My sister is almost worn out!). So far we have seen:

Buckingham Palace, The Royal Mews, Trafalgar Square, The Victoria Memorial, Madame Tussaud's, Westminster Abbey, The British Museum, Portobello Road Street Fair, Oxford University, Stratford-On-Avon, Warwick Castle, Stonehenge, Roman Bath, Windsor Castle, Leed's Castle, Ingtham Mote, Lullingstone Villa, Big Ben and Parliament, and all the little nooks and crannies around our hotel. Today, we're going to the Tower of London. Whew!

I have the train information to St. Alban's for Saturday where I'll see the Roman Museum at Veralamium, a demonstration of Roman military tactics by Legio XIII, and hopefully have time for some shopping (a concession to Jane). Sunday, I thought we'd dress up a bit and attend services at St. Paul's Cathedral then catch the tube over to Westminster and go up in the London Eye and maybe take a cruise up the Thames. Monday we'll go to York if I can arrange it then Tuesday we'll walk over to the Tate Britian (it's just up the street from our hotel). I thought that would give us a more laid back day before we have to get up early the next morning and catch a shuttle back to Heathrow.

British Museum, The Royal Mews, Lullingstone Villa, Ingtham Mote, Leeds Castle, Oxford, Stratford-On-Avon then Warwick Castle - oh my!

2006-04-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 5, 2006: - Sorry to interrupt my commentary for so long but the internet was, as my British friends would say, a bit dodgy on Sunday and we returned too late Monday and was too tired to write Tuesday after touring all day.

Sunday we spent all morning at the British Museum after struggling with finding the right bus stops. So many immigrants are working in service jobs that even asking a bus driver is pointless because they don't seem to know any routes other than their own. Anyway, as you can guess, I was racing around shooting pictures until my shutter finger was almost worn out. I love mosaics so I was thrilled to find the stairway with mosaics from Halacarnassus all the way up the walls. I also didn't realize that there was anything left of the Tomb of Mausalus at Halicarnassus so was thrilled to see the large statue of Mausalus and his warrior queen Artemisia (she was the only female ship's captain serving the Persian king Xerxes at the battle of Salamis).

Of course I made a point of seeing the Elgin marbles. I was a little disappointed, however, because I didn't realize they were in such bad "nick". I only photographed a few fragments that still bore enough carving to tell what the original picture was about. I also made a point of finding the Rosetta Stone. I walked past it twice before I realized it was in the case that everyone was clustered around. I tried to get a picture of the surface of it without all the visitor reflections but I realized that it might be more interesting if I caught this reflection that one's imagination could presuppose was Cleopatra gazing b ack at us from antiquity.

I managed to photograph what I thought was the most interesting of the Greek, Roman, and Near East exhibits and started on the Egyptian exhibits when I had to report back to the main hall to meet my sister for lunch. I love the Greco-Roman mummy portraits from the Fayum region of Egypt and was lucky enough to see the beautifully painted sarcophagus of Artemidorus. I had watched a BBC program where the mummy was CAT-scanned during a study of it and never thought I would actually get to see Artemidorous' handsome visage in person.

We had to head over to the Royal Mews at 2 p.m. since it takes a while to get back to that part of London and the Mews no longer admits visitors after 3:15. The mews is the British word for stable and the Royal Mews contains not only the horses but all of the main state carriages used in royal processions. Of course the coronation coach was the spectacular grand finale.

Walking back to the Victoria Memorial so I could finish photographing it, I took a nose dive on the uneven paving stones along the side of Buckingham Palace. My face hit the stones so hard that I was afraid I was going to be totally black and blue on the right side of my face but, although it is a bit swollen and very tender to try to sleep on that side, it didn't discolor too much. My biggest concern was my camera but although it clattered to the ground, it seemed to have survived the mishap better than I did.

Monday, we took the train to Swanley where my friend Richard picked us up and drove us all around

Kent

where my father's parents grew up. First we visited the Roman excavation at Lullingstone Villa. Lullingstone is one of a number of 1st to 4th century Roman villas that have been discovered in the Darent Valley of Kent. It was initially excavated between 1949 and 1961 by retired British Lt Colonel Geoffrey Meates. The villa initially contained central living quarters that were erected about 75 CE. Then, the rooms were extended and a bath block was added to the south of the building. Later, rooms heated by an underfloor hot air system called a hypocaust were added as well. Finally, in the mid-fourth century, a lavish mosaic-decorated apsed dining room was constructed. The site is considered an important example of religious change that occured during this period of Roman occupation. A painting of two water nymphs, creatures that played an important role in pagan mythology, is still visible in the "Deep Room". While fragments of paintings of Christians in prayer were also found at the site.

Next, we toured a beautiful medieval manor house at Ingtham Mote. This moated structure was built in 1320. The original owner is now thought to be Isolde Inge later called St Pere. Until recently, Sir Thomas Cawne, a knight who may have fought with the Black Prince at Crecy, was credited with the construction.

Historians attribute its amazing state of preservation to the fact that none of its residents were particularly ambitious, seemingly satisfied to fulfill their roles as squires, sheriffs, or courtiers. That's not to say the house didn't witness at least a little intrigue. One of the subsequent owners, William Haute, joined Jack Cade and other lords, magnates and people of Kent to issue the The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent against Henry VI. Haute's son (or grandson) Richard, later joined in a rebellion against Richard III. So it may seem like a miracle that Ingtham's closest brush with destruction is said to have occurred during the English Civil War when Cromwell's soldiers, who had planned to loot Ingtham Mote, lost their way and ended up sacking another estate instead. I'm sure each visitor to the house is truly grateful! More pictures...

We topped off our day with a visit to the spectacularly beautiful Leeds Castle.

"Wonderful in manifold glories are the great castle visions of Europe; Windsor from the Thames, Warwick or Ludlow from their riversides, Conway or Caernarvon from the sea, Amboise from the Loire, Aigues Mortes from the lagoons, Carcassonne, Councy, Falaise and Chateau Gaillard - beautiful as they are and crowned with praise, are not comparable in beauty as with Leeds, beheld among the waters on an autumnal evening when the bracken is golden and there is a faint blue mist among the trees - the loveliest castle, as thus beheld, in the whole world." - Lord Conway

Originally the Saxon manor named Esledes, Leeds Castle was a stronghold of the Saxon royal family beginning with the reign of Ethelbert IV (856-860). It was later conveyed to the powerful house of Godwin by Edward the Confessor but following the Norman conquest it was granted to a cousin of William II Rufus, Hamo de Crevecoeur. When the de Crevecoeur family fortunes waned following the battle of Evesham in 1265, the castle passed to Sir Roger de Leyburn. His son later conveyed the castle to Edward I and his queen, Eleanor of Castile. From that point for the next three hundred years, Leeds Castle remained a royal home.

This canopied day bed in Queen Catherine de Valois' chamber is topped by a golden crown to denote the eminence of its royal occupant. The queen used this room to receive adviers, courtiers and petitioners. After the death of her husband, King Henry V, she fell in love with the Welsh Clerk of her Wardrobe, Owen Tudor. They were discovered and imprisoned but the Queen was subsequently released. When Tudor escaped, they secretly married and Catherine gave birth to a son, Edmund, who became the father of Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty.

The queen's bath was canopied with white damask and was designed to be easily dismantled so it could be moved to another residence when the queen relocated to another palace or outdoors in good weather.

Hot baths were still very popular during the early Middle Ages and most towns, as late as the mid-1200s had public bathhouses.

"By the mid-1300s, only the very wealthy could afford firewood for hot water in the winter. The rest of the population was forced to be dirty most of the time." - medieval-life.net

Henry the VIII refurbished Leeds Castle early in his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and the room termed the Queen's Gallery reflects their relationship in its ragstone fireplace emblazoned with the coat of arms of the House of Lancaster and the castle of Castile as well as the pomegranates of Aragon. However, Henry spent little time there after their separation. But, the faint play of light on a shadowed bust of Henry in this room gave me the feeling his spirit still frequents these halls.

A number of portraits and busts of the Tudor dynasty adorn Leeds Castle but I was particularly struck by a portrait labeled as unidentified but attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561-1635). Gheeraerts painted a number of portraits of Queen Elizabeth I but for some reason, art historians are hesitant to identify this portrait as one of them even though the lady wears a white dress (Elizabeth's favorite colors were white and black), she wears a crown upon auburn hair, and is lavishly adorned with pearls (another symbol used frequently by Elizabeth to emphasize her personnae as the "Virgin Queen".

Perhaps I was simply pleased to take my own photo of a potential Queen Elizabeth portrait in a white gown that I can use as I please after locking horns with the National Portrait Gallery over the noncommerical, educational use of an image of a similar portrait of Elizabeth in their collection. See Copyright Wars

Other artwork at Leeds includes this 14th century Burgundian limestone sculpture of St. Barbara, the patron saint of artillery who lived in the 4th century CE. She cradles a tower in her left hand that symbolizes her imprisonment to discourage suitors.

"According to legend, Saint Barbara was the extremely beautiful daughter of a wealthy heathen named Dioscorus, who lived near Nicomedia in Asia Minor. Because of her singular beauty and fearful that she be demanded in marriage and taken away from him, he jealously shut her up in a tower to protect her from the outside world.

Shortly before embarking on a journey, he commissioned a sumptuous bathhouse to be built for her, approving the design before he departed. Barbara had heard of the teachings of Christ, and while her father was gone spent much time in contemplation. From the windows of her tower she looked out upon the surrounding countryside and marveled at the growing things; the trees, the animals and the people. She decided that all these must be part of a master plan, and that the idols of wood and stone worshipped by her parents must be condemned as false. Gradually she came to accept the Christian faith.

As her belief became firm, she directed that the builders redesign the bathhouse her father had planned, adding another window so that the three windows might symbolize the Holy Trinity.

When her father returned, he was enraged at the changes and infuriated when Barbara acknowledged that she was a Christian. He dragged her before the perfect of the province, who decreed that she be tortured and put to death by beheading. Dioscorus himself carried out the death sentence. On his way home he was struck by lightening and his body consumed." - The Legend of St. Barbara

Another interesting sculpture is the carved oak figure of a laughing crusader at the head of the spiral staircase leading to the Gloriette Landing. The 16th-century style oak staircase was actually built by Armand Albert Rateau in 1929 but the figure gripping his sword and shield blend nicely with the genuine period art throughout the house. One concession is made to modern interpretation however. The crusader's shield bears a grinning lion sticking its tongue out as if the crusader was a refugee from Monty Python's dubious heroes in "The Holy Grail".

Another example of "faux period" design is the blue-panelled bedroom of Lady Baillie. Mrs. Wilson Filmer purchased the castle in 1924 when the Wykeham Martin family was forced to sell the estate to pay death duties and potential buyer, William Randolph Hearst, bowed out of the transaction. Lady Baillie, as she became known, hired interior designer Stephane Boudin to redecorate parts of the home. Boudin had joined the leading interior design firm in Paris, Maison Jansen, just the year before. He eventually became president of the company whose client list included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Lady Baillie's bedroom was redesigned to emulate the Regence style of the early 18th century. Boudin installed blue boiserie with several doors concealed behind the azure panels. To reflect Lady Baillie's love of birds, Boudin placed bird-shaped ceramic pieces around the room including pairs of famille rose cranes from the Qianlong period.

One of Boudin's last commissions in the 1960s was to convert the bedroom that had once been used by Queen Catherine of Aragon to a boudoir. Again he used white bedding and woodwork to emphasize the size of the room but incorporated a homey warmth with country-style wallpaper and a playful Victorian rocking horse.

The Merry Monarch, King Charles II (so named because he fathered numerous illegitimate children, of whom he acknowledged fourteen, and was an avid patron of the arts), is the subject of this Flemish tapestry based on Abraham van Diepenbeke's illustrations for a book on horsemanship published in 1658. Traditionally, if a king, knight, or nobleman is represented in an equestrian image with both of the horse's front feet raised, this symbolized a death in battle. However, this is not the case for King Charles II. Although he was the target of the Rye House Plot, he and his brother, the Duke of York, escaped the angry Protestants enraged because Charles, a Protestant himself, would not support their Exclusion Bill that would remove his catholic brother from the legal succession. Later, Charles died suddenly of uremia, a clinical syndrome due to kidney dysfunction.

"When he knew he was dying and in great secrecy, a priest, Father John Huddleston, was summoned to his bedside. Charles was admitted into the Catholic Church and received the last rites. He was succeeded by the Duke of York, who became James II in England and Ireland, and James VII in Scotland." - Wikipedia

The Thorpe Hall Room features warm, ornately carved-pine panelling rescued from a coat of green paint and brought to Leeds from Thorpe Hall near Peterborough. It was originally designed in 1653 by Peter Mills, who, together with Sir Christopher Wren, famous architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, supervised the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666. Once again we find birds as accent pieces. This time they are 19th century Chinese biscuit-ware ducks. They are accompanied by a Chinese ridge tile rabbit.

Leeds Castle is also home to the earliest known equestrian statue in the history of English sculpture - the Lumley Horseman. This carved oak figure was originally commissioned in memory of King Edward III by the 7th Lord Lumley for his castle in County Durham. The artist is not known but is thought to have been a Flemish sculptor working in England.

Wood carvers of this period often used tints of red, blue, green or white to add detail to their work. Bands of carvers would often travel from church to church embellishing altars and choir screens. One such carver was probably comandeered for this commission. - See the history of woodcarving

One of the contestants in the Hundred Years War, Edward III was the founder of the chivalrous " Order of the Garter, allegedly as a result of an incident when a lady, with whom he was dancing at a court ball, dropped an item of intimate apparel (possibly a sanitary belt, though sources describe it as being made of velvet). Gallantly picking it up to assuage her embarrassment, Edward tied it around his own leg, and remarked Honi soit qui mal y pense ('Shame on him who thinks evil of it'), which became the motto of the Order of the Garter." - Wikipedia

He also fathered the famous "Black Prince", Edward of Woodstock. Like Alexander the Great, Edward demonstrated his courage and military talent at the age of 16 at the Battle of Crecy.

As the light began to fade toward sunset, Richard took us to Aylsford Church where our grandparents were married in 1913. We topped the evening off with a delicious dinner of cider chicken at his home. His son is very into computers and was thrilled to have someone to talk with about computers. I think I have definitely made a new friend!

Yesterday, we took a tour bus up to Oxford University and then Stratford on Avon and toured Shakespeare's birthplace and had a brief photo op at Ann Hathaway's cottage, Then we finished our day at Warwick Castle. Warwick Castle has been purchased by Madame Tussaud's so beautiful wax replicas of English royalty are displayed throughout the castle. There is also costumed reenactors demonstrating archery, knighthood, and everyday 16th century life.

A visit to one of the world's largest antique fairs at Portobello Road in London

2006-04-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

April 1: Today, we got up early (I was awake by 3:15 a.m. anyway!) and took the underground over to Portobello Road to explore the world's largest antique fair. As we had been warned, the prices were pretty steep but we managed to find some things anyway (you know me!). My sister bought a Dutch half doll, some beautiful antique lace for some doll costumes she is making, some antique bottles and crockery for her husband, a delicate circa 1880s cameo, and a floral design embellished biscuit jar (English style cookie jar).

At the booth that Jane bought her husband's bottles and crockery, I found an English porcelain ointment jar with an 18th century scene for only 40 pounds. I have admired them in

antique shops for a number of years but in the

they sell for between $225 and $375. I also found a shop that sold meticulously painted military figurines. I purchased a lead Napoleonic Era mounted French Cavalry Officer, hand-painted in

Spain

, for only 45 pounds and a hand painted resin 90 mm figure of a Napoleonic-era Sharpe's Rifleman for only 20 pounds.

The crowds were horrendous and, without any benches to rest, I wore out by noon (We had been there since 6:30 a.m.) so we went back to the hotel for a nap. Jane turned the TV on and up popped John Wayne in "In Harm's Way". We both burst out laughing. At commercial, the announcer told us to stay tuned for NCIS, Miami Vice - New York, and Law and Order!

After a rest we wandered down the street to a Portugese spiced Chicken eatery and ordered a very tasty sandwich each then shared a tangy coleslaw and chips. We topped it off with a custard tart and a coconut tart. The coconut tart was much like a plump coconut macaroon. I preferred the custard tart myself. This was also the first restaurant we have encountered so far that offered free soda refills.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped into an upscale supermarket (sort of like Market of Choice) but found a much more diverse variety of products including cups of creme brulee! Even their frozen dinners looked better than ours! We plan to go back there Monday evening and pick up some breakfast items for Tuesday morning as we must catch our tour bus for Stratford-On-Avon before the hotel opens its continental breakfast center.

Tomorrow we will be heading over to the British Museum. Then on our way back we will stop off at Buckingham Palace and tour the Queen's Mews (stables). I also want to get more pictures of the Victoria Monument while we are there.

Rule Brittania! A Journey to the "Mother" country

2006-04-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

March 31, 2006: Well, we had our first full day here in London without having to deal with customs, trains, luggage, and taxis. We got an early start. After a continental breakfast of toast, cereal, fruit, and chocomilk (their version of milk and hot chocolate mixed) we met my friend and co-moderator of our Imperial Rome discussion group who had offered to take us on a London walkabout. We hiked around the local area photographing churches, window boxes, pubs, and phone booths (I'm afraid my sister here didn't know what I was talking about when I mentioned Dr. Who! She was never much of a sci-fi fan!) then we finally made it to Buckingham Palace. The Queen is in residence so visitors cannot go in this time of year but I got some nice shots of the exterior and Jane and I plan to return and tour the Queen's Mews (stables) and photograph the coaches later this week. The Royal Mews is closed on Friday (today) so we will have to find a spot in our schedule for our return visit. They also don't open until 11:00 and don't admit anyone after 3:15 p.m. this time of year so it is quite a challenge to find a time slot that won't disrupt an entire day. I'm sure it will be worth it though. I also hope to get some more pictures of the Victoria Monument.

We walked through St. James park enjoying the ducks, swans, and early flowering trees. It was pleasantly peaceful after the frenetic activity of Heathrow Airport and Paddington Station yesterday. We emerged near the palace entrance where the changing of the guard passes by in parade. It was pretty chilly so they were wearing gray overcoats but it was nice to get to see them. I couldn't get a good picture as the crowds were lining the street and I'm too short to shoot over their heads. However, we walked over to St. James palace and when we came around the backside there was a guardsman at his post. We waited until the crowd of tourists around him moved on then I was able to get several nice pictures of him including a closeup.

"Built largely between 1531 and 1536, St. James's Palace was a residence of kings and queens of England for over 300 years. It remains the official residence of the Sovereign, although, since the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, the Sovereign has lived at Buckingham Palace. High Commissioners present letters and Ambassadors are still formally accredited to the Court of St. James's for this reason. The palace was built by Henry VIII on the site of the Hospital of St. James, Westminster. Much survives of the red-brick building erected by Henry VIII, including the Chapel Royal, the gatehouse, some turrets and two surviving Tudor rooms in the State apartments.

Buildings later sprawled to cover the area of four courts now known as Ambassadors' Court, Engine Court, Friary Court and Colour Court. The great Tudor Gatehouse at the southern end of St. James's Street still bears Henry VIII's royal cypher HR, surmounted by his crown, above the original foot passages leading through to Colour Court.

Henry VIII's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, whom he contemplated recognising as his heir, was living in the Palace when he died in 1536 at the age of seventeen. From then on St. James's House, as it was known, saw a succession of Royal inhabitants who lived there while playing their part in some of the more famous events in English history.

Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, stayed there the night after her coronation. Before she was discarded following the birth of Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth, the initials HA entwined in a lovers' knot appeared on a couple of Tudor fireplaces in the State apartments.

It was in St. James's Palace in 1558 that Mary Tudor signed the treaty surrendering Calais. Elizabeth I was resident during the threat posed by the Spanish Armada and set out from St James's to address her troops assembled at Tilbury, to the east of London." - The Royal Residences

We turned down a side street and looked down an alley and we saw an interesting looking courtyard. I noticed a sculptured portrait of a general that looked like Santa Anna. Sure enough, the building was once inhabited by the Texas legation after the Mexican American War but the monument was probably Sam Houston. If he knew I thought he looked like Santa Ana he would probably turn over in his grave!

"After Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, England was one of the first countries in the world to recognize the Republic of Texas as a nation. Their charge d'affaires to the Court of St. James, Dr. Ashbel Smith rented office space at 3 St. James's St in an upper floor above Berry Bros. and Rudd (who opened a grocers here in 1696) If you pop in you can see a large set of scales used to weigh coffee - nearby residents would also get themselves weighed here - the shop's ledgers record the weights of Lord Byron, Horatio Nelson, his mistress Lady Hamilton and Queen Victoria's father." - The London Guide to Sightseeing

As I don't like to feel guilty about indulging myself at exotic restaurants when I'm on vacation, I didn't bother to go in and tip the scales.

Then we walked on down to the exclusive shopping district at St. James Place and I got a chance to photograph a "beadle". Going back to Teutonic times, a beadle was originally an officer of the court or deputy for the local constable.

"After the Norman Conquest, the beadle seems to have diminished in importance, becoming merely the crier in the manor and forest courts, and sometimes executing processes. He was also employed as the messenger of the parish, and thus became, to a certain extent, an ecclesiastical officer, but in reality acted more as a constable by keeping order in the church and churchyard during service. He also attended upon the clergy, the churchwardens and the vestry. He was appointed by the parishioners in vestry, and his wages were payable out of the church rate. From the Poor Law Act of 1601 till the act of 1834 by which poor-law administration was transferred to guardians, the beadle in England was an officer of much importance in his capacity of agent for the overseers. In all medieval universities the bedel was an officer who exercised various executive and spectacular functions.

He still survives in many universities on the continent of Europe and in those of Oxford and Cambridge, but he is now shorn of much of his importance. At Oxford there are four bedels, representing the faculties of law, medicine, arts and divinity. Their duties are chiefly processional, the junior or sub-bedel being the official attendant on the vice-chancellor, before whom he bears a silver mace. At Cambridge there are two, termed esquire-hedels, who both walk before the vicechancellor, bearing maces.

This beadle is a private security guard for the posh shops in this elegant upscale mall. I think his dashing suit and top hat are much more fetching than a guard's uniform!

Our guide, my friend Richard, joked with him about the local ordinance against whistling and singing. He promised the beadle that he would keep us under control!

We continued on to Picadilly Circus. There was a beautiful bronze fountain of plunging wild horses that photographed well and in one plaza there were bronzes of FDR and Winston Churchill sitting on a wooden park bench. We stopped to rest a bit in a little park that had a cute bronze of Charlie Chaplin. Then we continued on to Covent Garden. There we paused for a soda and listened to a quartet playing a selection of classical and turn-of-the-century songs including the English Hornpipe. Then we struck out for Trafalgar Square. Of course I had to photograph the bronzes of famous British war heroes and the fountains in front of the London Gallery and

Britain

's own triumphal arch. We could also see Big Ben from there, too.

My sister was exhausted so we hopped on the underground and rode back to the station nearest our hotel. I noticed on the train there was a picture of a befuddled George Bush with the caption "Investing, like public speaking, is best left to the experts!"

We rested a bit then went out for dinner. We were wandering around reading menus and mumbling about fish and chips when this nice English boy spoke up and said if we really wanted good fish and chips we should go down to the Sea Fresh restaurant a couple of blocks away. We took his advice and dined on a very lightly breaded cod fillet with chips that was very good. The only thing I didn't care for was the fact that the fish was cooked with the skin on but the fillet was more like a large slab so I just ate above the skin and had plenty to eat.

It's an early day tomorrow as the Portobello Road street market opens at 5:30 a.m. (I think if we get there around 8 a.m. that would be fine as far as I am concerned!)

Hesse A Princely German Collection

2006-02-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

Portland Art Museum: Last Week when I was up in Portland, Oregon attending the Instructional Technologies Strategies Conference I had the exquisite pleasure of also attending the Hesse: A Princely German Collection exhibition at the Portland Art Museum.

Like many Americans who receive little instruction in European history below the college level, I was vaguely aware of the German ancestry of Hessian soldiers in the American Revolution but had no idea that central Germany was not the typical monarchy that ruled most of the European states from the 16th century onward.

The exhibit catalogue explains: "By the end of the 17th century, most of the modern European nation-states had been forged by monarchs who ran them with professional centralized administrations. This was not so for a considerable area in central Europe that was not defined by natural boundaries. The German language was the only common denominator among its principalities. In the centuries following Charlemagne's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, C.E., this area of central Europe became known as "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." Although the designation lasted until 1806, it meant little in terms of political power. From the 16th century onward, the Emperor was usually a member of the Habsburg dynasty. Still, he had to be elected and was obliged to consult with the hereditary and ecclesiastical German princes and representatives of the great cities who voted him into office."

Among these principalities, Hesse-Kassel was ruled by the powerful family of Hesse, descended from the 13th century Dukes of Brabant. The Hesse rulers were instrumental in the adoption of the Lutheran faith and promoted the "Jugendstil" fusion of arts and industry.

"As active participants in the German Renaissance, Landgraf Wilhelm the Wise (1532-1592) and his son Moritz the Learned (1572-1632) regarded the assembling of a collection of works of art, be they paintings, scientific instruments, or antiquities, as part of the enhancement of the state and a personal duty of leadership."

We should all be thankful that they did.

The official exhibition description:

"The term "“Hessian" evokes the 18th century German soldiers whose training and prowess were so esteemed that they were engaged by the British to fight in the American War of Independence. Few outside of Germany, however, know of the noble family that has led the state of Hesse since the 16th century and continues to this day. Art historians are familiar with the great Madonna by Holbein which belongs to the family and is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt. Apart from this unsurpassed masterpiece of German Renaissance art, the vast Hesse art collections are virtually unknown.

The Portland Art Museum is the exclusive venue for the first public presentation of the artistic wealth of the house of Hesse which will take place October 2005 through March 2006. In addition to the great Holbein Madonna, this ground-breaking exhibition will include outstanding examples of German baroque silver and furniture, a royal coach, a gilded throne, German Romantic paintings, Winterhalter portraits, a Russian dowry, Jugendstil from the Hesse-sponsored Darmstadt artists colony, classical antiquities, and jeweled orders and tiaras.

One of the leading princely houses of Europe, the Hesse dynasty has welcomed into its ranks daughters of George II and of Queen Victoria; Tsar Nicolas I; Kaiser Friedrich III; and King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. The family tree includes the last czarina, Alexandra Feodorovna, who was born Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt. The family archive contains a wealth of unpublished material, letters, photographs and documents from which a chapter of European social history has yet to be written."

I was overwhelmed by the "Cinderella" beauty of the coach of Landgraf Ludwig VIII of Hesse Darmstadt, ca. 1750. This gilded beech wood, bronze, leather, oak and iron conveyance was the most ornate coach I have seen to date. I was amazed that at such an early date, a coach would be totally enclosed with beveled glass and the ornately carved leather suspension straps tighted with bronze cranks were state-of-the-art for the time period as well.

This "berlin" style coach was fashioned after a coach originally designed by Piedmontese architect and engineer Phillippe de Chieze for Grand Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg. Smaller than the other touring coaches of the day, it was used for ceremony more than travel. It was usually taken by boat to a landing nearest the site of a scheduled ceremony. There, sturdy wheels were installed for the short journey inland then replaced by ceremonial wheels like those pictured here for the actual procession.

I was also very impressed with the detail of tiny figures that populated paintings by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder, the court painter of Hesse-Kassel Landgraf Wilhelm VIII. His paintings have the scope of a large landscape but he populates the foreground with people enganged in various activities. As tiny as they are, the people have delicately detailed facial features and their costumes reflect the range of fabric used at the time, including some of the diaphanous tulle used in women's fashion. The military figures are resplendent with minute buttons and carefully detailed military decorations and ribbons.

Some of the most ornate metalwork I have ever seen was displayed in towering silver table fountains used to mix water with wine for guests.

"The classical Greek practice of diluting wine with water remained customary in southern Europe. Table fountains which performed the procedure quasi-mechanically, made their first appearance in 16th-century Florence at the court of the Medici. In northern Europe, however, wine was consumed full strength. Moritz the Learned's creation of an Order of Temperance in 1601 is an indication of the concern of German princes that drunkeness had become a social problem. The novel table fountains fashioned as glamourous silver sculpture offered an eyecatching means of advocating moderation." - Exhibition Catalogue

The goldsmith's craft was also demonstrated in the expansive Gilded Bronze Surtout de Table designed by Karl Friedrich Schninkel between 1815 and 1830.

"The surtout de table traditionally served as a centerpiece for a formal table setting. In the 18th century such centerpeices were usually composed of footed dishes for fruit and candies or assemblages of porcelain figures. Around 1800 these were replaced by gilded bronze centerpieces featuring a long deck with various sculptural embellishments. The fashion reached its pinnacle in the French Empire centerpieces by the bronze-worker Pierre Phillippe Thomire (1751-1843)." - Exhibit Catalogue

I couldn't help but marvel at the classically-inspired figures and wonder if the prince ever thought mere mortals would be able to gaze at his dining room splendor.

As someone who has an ongoing love affair with historical portraiture, I was dazzled by the huge portraits of Princess Anna of Prussia and Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna of Russia by German artist Franz Xavier Winterhalter. I collect modest Victorian-framed prints of famous historical personalities produced by Cameo Creations in the early 1900s and have one by Winterhalter but it is nothing like the spectacular 5-foot portraits displayed in this exhibition. I kept returning to them again and again trying to assimilate them like a fine glass of wine. Although not noticeable in this photograph, Winterhalter's conveyance of light and inner beauty was very inspirational. Of course the ornate Rococo frames were art in themselves as well.

"Born in a small village in Germany's Black Forest, Franz Xaver Winterhalter left his home to study painting at the academy of Monaco. Before becoming court painter to Louis-Philippe, the king of France, he joined a circle of French artists in Rome. In 1835, after he painted the German Grand Duke and Duchess of Badew, Winterhalter's international career as a court portrait painter was launched. Although he never received high praise for his work in his native Germany, the royal families of England, France, and Belgium all commissioned him to paint portraits. His monumental canvases established a substantial popular reputation, and lithographic copies of the portraits helped to spread his fame.

Winterhalter's portraits were prized for their subtle intimacy, but his popularity among patrons came from his ability to create the image his sitters wished or needed to project to their subjects. He was able to capture the moral and political climate of each court, adapting his style to each client until it seemed as if his paintings acted as press releases, issued by a master of public relations." - The Getty Center

Tivoli's Treasures: Hadrian's Villa and the Villa d'Este

2005-12-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

March 17, 2005: Tivoli - We got a wonderful start this morning heading for Tivoli and Hadrian's Villa. We were able to find the proper Autostrade straight away and arrived at the Villa by 9:30 a.m. We began by studying the meticulously detailed model of the Villa in the Visitor's Center.

Hadrian's Villa (Villa Hadriana) was built by the emperor Hadrian in the early second century CE. The villa was a sumptuous complex of over 30 buildings, covering an area of over 250 acres, of which much is still unexcavated.

"The villa was Hadrian's preferred residence when he was in Rome. His choice of an imperial palace outside Rome, instead one of the several palaces in Rome, was probably influenced by the miserable relations he had with the senate and the local Roman aristocracy.

Hadrian was born in Spain, just like his predecessor Trajan, and the senate and the local aristocracy had trouble coming to terms with another provincial on the imperial throne.

The way Hadrian had assumed power only reinforced their opposition to him. Trajan's adoption of Hadrian on his deathbed was immediately cast in doubt, and when four military leaders, all Roman aristocrats who had been close to Trajan and hence possible contenders for the throne, were assassinated immediately after Trajan's death, the senate immediately suspected Hadrian of having ordered the killings.

Hadrian only arrived in Rome eleven months after Trajan's death, and denied any wrongdoing, but his relationship with the senate never recovered from the crisis. As a consequence Hadrian stayed very little in Rome. He travelled extensively throughout most of the empire in two prolonged periods, in 121-125 CE and in 128-134 CE, and when in Italy he preferred to stay away from Rome. A grandiose imperial palace outside Rome, but not too far away, was the perfect answer. René Seindal, Hadrian's Villa

We noticed a large group of people disembarking from a tour bus in the parking lot so we hurried to the Canopus, probably the most famous structure of the villa, so we could get some good photographs before the crowd arrived. Here's a wonderful Quicktime p anorama of the Canopus!

The headless female warrior on the right is a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture of a wounded Amazon originally sculpted by Phidias for the Temple of Artemis.

Hadrian's Canopus is a recreation of the canal that connects Alexandria to the Nile in Egypt, and it was in these waters that the emperor's male lover, Antinous, drowned."

"Born in Bythnion around the year 105 of the Common Era, Antinous was a beautiful adolescent when he first caught the eye of the Emperor of the western world. Hadrian was already in his late forties by the time the two met; their sexual chemistry appears to have been mutual, eclectic, and immediate. Antinous became Hadrian's favorite, sharing the Emperor's bed and his life. For a period of a little less than a decade, the two were inseparable, much to the disgrace of Hadrian's legal wife, the childless and spiteful Sabina. Imperial art and literature of the times show the men in a variety of guises and activities, particularly hunting: a sport the two enjoyed immensely.

In the course of their relationship, Antinous matured from a beautiful youth into an intelligent and well-muscled young man. The Greeks referred to the visible maturation of a youth (the growth of his beard and body hair) as "clouds hiding the sun." It was shortly after the Emperor's young lover had reached this stage of his development, and just after his hair had been cut short in the style favored by the mature men of the period, that Antinous drowned mysteriously in the Nile river during an Imperial visit to the province of Egypt.

Egyptian custom decreed that all drowning victims in the Nile automatically assumed a type of minor divinity, and so Antinous was proclaimed a God. Within a year, Hadrian returned to Rome, where he officially proclaimed Antinous as a Roman God. While still deeply mourning the loss of his beloved, the Emperor realized the political significance of the Greek youth's death, and from the tragedy forged a unifying cult of worship in the previously divided Greek city-states. Hadrian and Antinous together built a unified Greek nation, a feat which the warring city-states themselves had never achieved. Despite other great accomplishments as Emperor, Hadrian spent the last eight years of his life mourning Antinous." - The Story of Antinous and Hadrian

Ares, the god of war, presides over the remaining inhabitants of the Canopus. Both Pat and I thought he had a rather attractive "bum"! Along the right bank, a few carytids remain flanked by Silenus figures. The carytids are copies of the Korai from the Erechtheon on the Athenian Acropolis. It is thought these figures once supported a pergola possibly adorned with flowering vines.

"Should any one wish for information on the origin of those draped matronal figures [...] called caryatids, I will explain it by the following story. Carya, a city of Peloponnese, joined the Persians in their war against the Greeks. These in return for the treachery, after having freed themselves by a most glorious victory from the intended Persian yoke, unanimously resolved to launch a war against the Caryans. Carya was taken and destroyed, its male population extinguished, and its matrons carried into slavery. To ensure that these circumstances might be better remembered, and the nature of the triumph perpetuated, the victors represented the matrons draped, and apparently suffering under the burden with which they were loaded, to expiate the crime of their native city. Thus, in their edifices, did the ancient architects, by the use of these statues, hand down to posterity a memorial of the crime of the Caryans."

[Vitruvius, On architecture 1.1.5]

I had hoped to see more mosaics as we wandered around the villa grounds but saw only remnants of the simpler black and white geometric mosaics that became popular during the first century CE. This floor once served as the surface for an exercise facility. Most of the colorful Hellenistic-style scenes created with polychrome tesserae have been removed to museums.

"In a hall in the Central Court of Hadrian's Villa a number of floor mosaics was discovered in 1779...two of mosaics illustrated country scenes with sanctuaries such as the "Goats with Goatherd". The wreathed figure in the mosaic is thought to be Dionysis since it holds a cluster of grapes and grasps a staff entwined with grape vines.

Another pair of mosaics discovered at that time depicted a more brutal aspect of nature with scenes of conflict, one from 'ordinary' life showing a "lion attacking cattle".

Both mosaics share not only a rich polychromy but also certain stylistic features. To create the illusion of depth in the scene and volume in the figures, use has been made of shading, highlighting, three-quarter views, and foreshortening (especially the "Lion attacking Cattle".

In "Goats and Goatherd", linear perspective is noticeable in the diminishing scale of the goats the further into the background they appear. Such naturalistic characteristics are generally associated with Greek painting from the 4th century BC onwards.

The mosaics are made in the polychrome tesselated technique, and were set into the floor as prefabricated emblemata. The area of Hadrian's Villa in which they were found belongs to its second building phase approx 128 A.D." - Mosaics From Hadrian's Villa, Classics New Zealand

Of course the Opus, an Egyptian themed meditation pool flanked by Greek sculptures, is probably the highlight of anyone's visit to the villa but the remains of three large and small thermal bath complexes were also fascinating. These baths were fed by two streams that surrounded the villa as well as copius amounts of water from the surrounding hills. Tivoli's abundant water supplied four aqueducts for the city of Rome.

Some of the vaulted ceiling still retained its decorated stucco.

Hadrian also constructed a Temple to the goddess Venus built as a copy of the Greek tholos that guarded the sculptor Prassitele's original Aphrodite. Hadrian's "Venus" has been removed to a nearby museum and has been replaced by a cast of the original but I still found the remains of the temple soothing.

Hadrian, ever the scholar, also built Greek and Latin libraries near a circular colonaded complex dubbed the Maritime Theater. It contains a mote-encircled miniature villa, complete with a small triclinium, sleeping rooms, and baths, that served as the emperor's private retreat. Hadrian reportedly loved to swim in the canal. The villa's island was connected to the outer grounds by revolving wooden bridges.

The Villa grounds are quite extensive and it took us until after lunch to take them all in. Richard suggested we still had time to visit Villa d'Este, a palatial estate built by a Renaissance cardinal. He showed me pictures of the spectacular fountains in a guide book we found at the gift shop at Hadrian's Villa. I readily agreed so we drove over there. As you all know, few things leave me speechless but Villa d'Este was one of them.

"Villa d'Este, masterpiece of the Italian Garden, is included in the UNESCO world heritage list. With its impressive concentration of fountains, nymphs, grottoes, plays of water, and music, it constitutes a much-copied model for European gardens in the mannerist and baroque styles.

The garden is generally considered within the larger and altogether extraordinary-- context of Tivoli itself: its landscape, art and history which includes the important ruins of ancient villas such as the Villa Adriana, as well as a zone rich in caves and waterfalls displaying the unending battle between water and stone. The imposing constructions and the series of terraces above terraces bring to mind the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world. The addition of water-- including an aqueduct tunneling beneath the city -- evokes the engineering skill of the Romans themselves.

Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, after the disappointment of a failed bid for the papacy, brought back to life here the splendor of the courts of Ferrara, Rome and Fontainebleau and revived the magnificence of Villa Adriana. Governor of Tivoli from 1550, he immediately nurtured the idea of realizing a garden in the hanging cliffs of the 'Valle gaudente', but it was only after 1560 that his architectural and iconographic program became clear-brainchild of the painter-architect-archeologist Pirro Ligorio and realized by court architect Alberto Galvani.

The rooms of the Palace were decorated under the tutelage of the stars of the late Roman Mannerism, such as Livio Agresti, Federico Zuccari, Durante Alberti, Girolamo Muziano, Cesare Nebbia and Antonio Tempesta.

[Mannerism is described as "a self-conscious design, overcharged with rich, artificially "natural" detail in physically improbable juxtapositions of jarring scale changes." - Wikipedia]

The work was almost complete at the time of the Cardinal's death (1572)." - Villa d'Este Official Site

I actually found the ornately muraled rooms of the Villa more spectacular than the Sistine Chapel. Perhaps not as surprising as it sounds since Pirro Ligorio worked under Michelangelo during the construction of St. Peter's Cathedral and took over the work following Michelangelo's death. I especially liked the Room of Hercules where artists had depicted his 12 labors. Perhaps special care was taken in this room as Ligorio was also a recognized scholar of antiquity.

My friend and I thought it must have seemed a bit incongruous to some of Cardinal d'Este's visitors to see so many representations of Greek and Roman pagan mythology at the home of a prince of the Catholic Church.

Outside, the lush formal gardens spill over the hillside below the Villa like a botanical cascade blooming with sparkling fountains. The largest fountain includes a massive artificial waterfall that drops over four stories to a series of reflecting pools below it. If any man-made structure could ever be called paradise on earth, the Villa d'Este would have to be among the top contenders.

Pompeii: Victims of an Eruption

2005-12-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

March 16, 2004: Pompeii - The day began with a bit of a disconcerting start driving in Rome rush hour traffic. As I mentioned before, the signage is poor to nonexistent which makes navigating very difficult. In addition, the Romans appear to ignore traffic signals and pedestrians. There are also few lane markers on the streets so the Romans just cram as many cars into the street as possible often with only a hair's breadth between them. Fortunately, the car makers here have developed a special collapsing sideview mirror to minimize the damage from frequent clips. Of course, there is also the swarm of Vespa scooters that weave back and forth any space they can squeeze into, ultimately working their way to the front of the pack by the time they reach the next traffic light.

It was a bit of a challenge finding the on ramp to the proper autostrade but we finally succeeded and started flying toward Pompeii (the speed "suggestion" here is 82 mph). We missed the first turn off and ended up exiting the autostrade at Sarno. We wound our way through the back streets toward Mt. Vesuvius and finally reached the archaeological park.

Although only one fourth of Pompeii has been excavated, it is a large area and we took the rest of the day exploring the ruins. It was fascinating to walk up and down the streets (Roman roads are very hard to walk on - we skirted the along the edge of the roads to walk on the smaller edging stones instead of the large paving stones) and see the fast food stalls, the ancient flour mill, and of course the remains of some lovely private villas.

People in Ancient Rome did not have any cooking facilities in their homes. As they lived in tiny apartments without ovens they took wheat to the local baker and had their bread baked there for them. So, it seems that the Ancient Romans often ate out. (Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Food: a History, reminds us that the population of ancient Rome ate more fast food per head of population than we do today in cities like London and New York.) So, there were many hot food shops and taverns where meals could be purchased and consumed.
All the usual fare of the Romans could be found at these shops or Taverna, including hot sausages, bread, cheese, dates and of course, wine.

Another place for the Ancient Romans to eat out was at the baths. They often had food shops, as well as libraries, hair-cutting facilities and other comforts for Roman Citizens." - Hadrians.com

Of course, I found the decor of the Roman eateries much more elegant than the local MacDonald's! I am fascinated by frescos, even the common ones as well as the elaborate vistas that adorn the palatial homes of the wealthy.

The preservationists have replanted several of the large peristyle gardens, such as those at the "House of Loreio Tiburtino" and some of the vineyards have been replanted as well.

Although few statues remain in situ, as an animal lover, I appreciated the replicas (the originals are housed at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples) of a little bronze dog and boar figures at the House of the Faun (Casa del Fauno). It is considered the largest private house excavated so far, featuring two large peristyle gardens and four dining rooms, and once held the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great defeating the Persian King Darius.

"The house was built at the height of the Samnite civilization and during the great influence of Hellenistic architecture, showing a fusion of Italian and Hellenistic elements." - Mr. Sedivy's Highlands Ranch History

I had to laugh because all of the tourists were running around waving their maps and consulting each other, trying to find the brothel where many of the erotic frescos were reputed to be located. Unfortunately,the famous brothel was roped off because it had begun to collapse, although work was in progress to shore it up.

I did see the famous fresco of Priapus at the House of the Vetti.

"Priapus is a god of fertility, protector of horticulture and viticulture. His statue, holding a wooden sickle in his hand, was used in the Roman gardens as scarecrow, and his enormous penis as a threat against thieves.

This god is mainly known for his huge virile member, and the size of it is so enormous that it has been called "column", "twelve-inch pole", "cypress", "spear", "pyramid", and many other names of the same kind referring to the dimensions of his penis. And just as Zeus shows his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident, Athena her spear, Apollo his golden arrows, Hermes his caduceus, Dionysus his thyrsus, Heracles his club, so Priapus cannot but proudly exhibit his penis, which best represents him, and without which he is weaponless. This is the reason why his privy parts are always shamelessly displayed in erection.

Some believe that the size of the male sexual organ has little or no relevance, but this lustful god has been assumed to think that the greatest advantage with his enormous penis is that no female can be too roomy for him.

When a certain ass once had a contest with Priapus on the matter of the size of their sexual organs, the beast was defeated by the god, and killed by him. Others say that the ass was killed for a different reason; they tell that after a party in the countryside, Priapus tried to ravish the nymph Lotis, and that when everybody was asleep after feasting and drinking, Priapus approached her silently. But when he was close to fulfilling his wish, the saddle-ass of Silenus gave out an ill-timed roar, which made the nymph to start up. Lotis pushed off Priapus and fled, but the only way to escape him was to turn into the flower called lotus. For having caused him to lose this girl, Priapus killed Silenus' ass, and that is why in Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont in northwestern Asia Minor where he was more revered than any other god, they used to sacrifice this animal to the god." - Priapus by Carlos Parada.

Although the famous mosaic of the watchdog with the warning "Cave Canem" from the House of the Tragic Poet has been moved to the museum in Naples, the House of P. Paquius Proculus still had its chained watchdog in the entry.

The fresco of a hunting scene still retained much of its vibrant color.

"The large corpus of wall paintings that survive at Pompeii, because of the archaeologically useful eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, led a German scholar, Augustus Mau (1882) to develop, during the years of study he put in at Pompeii, a sequence of four painting styles that fit into a specific chronological framework. He designated the different styles as First Style, Second Style, etc. In the House of the Vettii, we will mostly encounter wall paintings of the Third- and Fourth- Styles, therefore the most "modern" styles when the eruption of Pompeii occurred.

The colors used in the wall paintings at Pompeii were made of plain earth (ochre), minerals (carbonate of copper), and dyes of animal or vegetable origins for Pompeian reds, blues, greens, yellow, and black. Black resulted in a lustrous tone, easily polished, and thus was used in the best rooms to give a luxurious impression. The pigments were often supplemented with a soapy limestone and bonding element to adhere them to the wall. The finished painting was polished with wax to make them shine and preserve them from the incessant bonbardment of smoke and dirt." - Pompeiian Wall Paintings

But, I was sad to note that what few frescos remained in situ at this time were deteriorating rapidly. I'm glad I was able to still see them. I'm afraid Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill's estimate of only a few years before the art in the remains of Pompeii completely disappears is probably accurate based on what I observed.

Despite the fact that I had already been overwhelmed by the Colosseum in Rome, I was still quite impressed with both the amphitheater and the small Greek theater in Pompeii.

The amphitheater was built around 70 BCE to satisfy the entertainment needs of Sulla's veterans who were settled in Pompeii following the Social War (91-88 BCE), a century and a half earlier, when Rome's Italian allies had fought to acquire the benefits of citizenship. However, it also served as a monumental reminder of Roman dominance over the local Samnite population. The nearby town of Nuceria had not rebelled and subsequently was awarded territory confiscated from opposing residents. The friction this arrangement generated came to a head in 59 BCE when a riot erupted between Pompeiians and citizens of Nuceria during a gladiator bout in the amphitheater.

"About this time [AD 59] there was a serious fight between the inhabitants of two Roman settlements, Nuceria and Pompeii. It arose out of a trifling incident at a gladiatorial show....During an exchange of taunts--characteristic of these disorderly country towns--abuse led to stone-throwing, and then swords were drawn. The people of Pompeii, where the show was held, came off best. Many wounded and mutilated Nucerians were taken to the capital. Many bereavements, too, were suffered by parents and children. The emperor instructed the senate to investigate the affair. The senate passed it to the consuls. When they reported back, the senate debarred Pompeii from holding any similar gathering for ten years. Illegal associations in the town were dissolved; and the sponsor of the show and his fellow-instigators of the disorders were exiled."

Tacitus, Annals (XIV.17)

Of course the real horror of the tragedy that befell Pompeii is reflected in the faces of its inhabitants that were overwhelmed by the toxic gases of the pyroclastic flow that swept through Pompeii on the morning of August 25, 79 CE, approximately 18 hours after the inital eruption began.

"The 79 eruption of Vesuvius had two distinct phases: first a Plinian phase, where material was ejected in a tall column, spread in atmosphere and fell to earth like rain; followed by a PelÃ©an phase where material flowed down the sides of the volcano as fast-moving avalanches of gas and dust, called pyroclastic flow (pyroclasts are rock fragments formed by a volcanic explosion or ejected from a volcanic vent). The term Plinian derives from the name of Pliny the Younger, whose written observations of the 79 eruption form an important part of the historic record of Pompeii. The term PelÃ©an derives from the name of Mount PelÃ©e on the island of Martinique, where the phenomenon of pyroclastic flow was first documented in a 1902 eruption. The pyroclastic flows of the PelÃ©an phase at Pompeii were the primary cause of volcanic damage to walls, however the air-fall pumice and ash fall during the Plinian phase was also significant since the deposits collapsed roofs and buried low structures, shielding them from the effects of the pyroclastic flow that followed.

A Plinian eruption ejects a column of tephra high into the atmoshpere (tephra refers to any material that is ejected from a volcano into the atmosphere), creating a form similar to the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. A Plinian eruption of Vesuvius began at midday on 24 August 79 AD created a Plinian column approximately 20 km (66,000 feet) high. This phase created a rain of ash and pumice over a broad area primarily to the south of Vesuvius, carried by prevailing winds. This phase lasted approximately eighteen hours..."

"By the morning of 25 August, it is clear that all covered buildings in Pompeii were uninhabitable due to collapsed floors and roofs, and it is likely that there was a mass exodus from the city; of Pompeii's estimated 20,000 residents, only about 2,000 have been found in excavations, and the majority of those have been found on top of the pumice layer [Sigurdsson 1985, p. 352]. The Plinian phase created a nearly deserted city of buildings without roofs or floors, where the bottom story level was submerged in a layer of pumice; this set the stage for the pyroclastic flow of the PelÃ©an phase that began on the morning of 25 August. The PelÃ©an phase brought a much more damaging eruption, in the form of high-temperature avalanches of gas and dust hugging the ground at high velocity." - Volcanic Phenomena at Pompeii, Kirk Martini.

More images of Pompeii....

Postscript - December 8, 2005: Although I only saw a couple of human casts at the archaeological park, I saw many more last month when I attended the exhibit "Pompeii: Stories From An Eruption" at the Chicago Field Museum. The cast that displayed the sheer agony of the victim's last moments was not human but that of a dog that had been left chained in the House of Orpheus.

The exhibit also included a gladiator's ornate parade armor. The Thracian-style helmet featured scenes of barbarians, prisoners, and trophies. I marveled at the circumference of the greaves (shin guards) adorned with a relief of Athena. The gladiator must have been extremely muscled.

I also enjoyed seeing the Second Style fresco panels from the House of the Cryptoporticus. The panels depicted herms on pedestals against a backdrop of garlands that framed smaller pictures of scenes of the Dionysiac mysteries. The bright orange panels with pictures of the muses from the House of Julius Polybius must have brightened the dining experience of many Pompeiians and the flowers and trees with golden apples depicted on fragments of the triclinium fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet reminded me of the beautiful garden frescoes from Livia's villa that I saw at the Museo Nationale di Roma in Rome.

The remains of a bronze-framed wooden dining couch that was embellished with a bust of the satyr Silenus, similar to this one, was also quite impressive.

"Some have asserted that SATYRS were the inhabitants of the islands called Satyrides, being notorious for outraging foreign women. Since these SATYRS were utterly wild men living in certain Mediterranean islands in the vicinity of Italy, the sailors used to do whatever was necessary in order to avoid them. But sometimes, not having any other choice, they were obliged to put in at what they named the Satyrides islands.

According to these sailors (but sailors love to invent tales), the SATYRS had tails upon their flanks almost as long as those of horses. That was not so bad; much worse was that, when they caught sight of visitors, they ran down to the ship uttering loud sounds, and having come on board, they immediately assaulted the female passengers. This behaviour caused such a panic in the crew that on one occasion the sailors decided to get rid of these savages by casting a foreign woman to the island for them to outrage in the most shocking manner, while they sailed away." - Silenus: The Greek Mythology Link

"Because the consumption of wine played a prominent, if not central, role in these banquets, animals and personages connected with Dionysus were appropriate attributes for the adornments of the couches. Silver coins struck as early as the fifth century B.C. in the wine-producing city of Mende in Macedonia represent Dionysus reclining, two-handled wine cup in hand, on the back of a mule as if he were using it as a couch. (Other figures equally fitting for the couches are maenads, the raving women who rush after Dionysus in mountain revels, and satyrs, his part-animal male attendants.) On late Hellenistic and early Imperial Roman couches, the wise old sileni, fully aware of the dangers posed by drunkenness, might be seen as convivial companions to the banqueters reclining on the couches. " - D. G. Mitten, Oberlin College, Allen Memorial Art Museum

Another interesting detail I noticed on a strongbox found in the peristyle of the Villa of Lucius Crassius Tertius was a painting of a face of a creature or demon whose features, especially the distinctive eyes, looked very similar to the demons found in eastern Indian art. I'm afraid the detail does not show up in this image (as with most traveling exhibits, the promoters of this event prohibited guest photography) but it is located in the square panel in the center of the front of the box. The house where the strongbox was found was not luxurious. In fact, some of the walls were not even plastered and it had simple earthen floors. But piles of amphorae discovered there along with a series of commercial weights have led researchers to conclude that the home was the site of a small business engaged in the production of wine, oil, and other agricultural produce. Perhaps the box was received in trade.

When I told my husband that I wanted to see this exhibit he asked why since I had been to Pompeii itself. I told him obviously, since these artifacts were on tour I had not seen them in Pompeii. I was not disappointed!

To Honor Caesar on the Ides of March

2005-12-06T16:21:00.000-08:00

Ides of March, 2005 - Early the next morning, we went straight to the Forum to place purple roses on the altar at Julius Caesar's temple, which marks the exact spot where his body was cremated 5 days after his murder. When we arrived, we found some beautiful flowers already there, and two elderly gentlemen paying their respects. They kindly climbed over the barrier and laid our bouquet on top of the altar. As they left, one saluted, and with tears in his eyes, said, "Ave, Caesar!" We then proceeded to lay another bouquet at Caesar's statue on the Via Dei Fori Imperiali, not far from the King Victor Emmanuel Monument.

We then walked up the Capitoline hill and found a sign directing us to the "carcere" where Vercingetorix was executed. Supposedly it was also the cell that housed St. Peter. There was a stone to which Peter was supposedly chained and angels appeared and caused his chains to fall off.

"...according to legends already circulating in republican Rome, the carcer was built as a prison by Rome's fourth king, Ancus Marcius and then the lower chamber, the "tullianum", was dug below the carcer during the reign of the sixth king, Servius Tullius, and took its name from him. Archeological and physical evidence clearly contradicts the legends. The tullianum chamber clearly existed before the upper carcer. It originally was circular and probably was constructed as a cistern around the still flowing spring in its floor (the Latin word tullus means spring. When the upper chamber was added to convert the building into a prison, the lower structure was truncated, and entry to it was blocked except for a hole in the floor of the upper chamber, through which prisoners were lowered. The time of the construction of both chambers is questionable, but it is clear from literary references that both levels already existed by the middle of the Republican period. It is probable that the floor of the tullianum was at or slightly below ground level when it was built around the 4th century BC and that, after the ground level had risen somewhat, the carcer was built above the truncated tullianum, also at or near its own contemporary ground level in the 2nd century BC. The carcer is about a dozen steps below today's street level. The attraction to this place for most visitors is that this is the prison where St. Peter was supposedly kept while awaiting his execution in Rome, and thus would have been the scene of one of his angelic visitations. According to the legend, Peter was freed from his chains by the angel and was fleeing south down the Appian Way when he met a man he recognized as Jesus, who was heading into Rome. After a short conversation, Peter decided to accompany the man back to Rome to accept martyrdom. The church of "Dominus, Quo Vadis?" marks the spot on the Appian where Peter asked the man, "Lord, where are you going?" The chains, centuries later, were miraculously conjoined with the other set of chains that bound Peter when he was imprisoned in Caeasarea Maritima in Palestine, and they are in the church of St. Peter in Chains on the Esquiline Hill. So goes the legend, despite the fact that many scholars accept the possibility that Peter never visited Rome. Whether or not Peter was ever an inmate of the Mamertine prison was the subject of heated theological and ideological debates, mostly between Protestants and Catholics, up to the early years of the 20th century, and research sparked by those debates revealed several interesting facts. Among them, it became clear that no ancient Roman would have recognized the name "Mamertine" -- that was a Medieval name attached to the site, probably to tie the prison to Roman legends surrounding Peter. The ancient Romans, in their usual prosaic style, simply called the site "carcer", which we usually translate as "prison". The Latin word, apparently derived from Etruscan, originally meant an enclosed space or pen, but it is clear that later Latin usage almost always referred to this particular structure in the forum, just north of the Sacra Via and near the Senate's meeting hall, the Curia.

The "carcer" was, in fact, the only prison of ancient Rome, and it was never designed as a place of long-term imprisonment for the punishment of common criminals -- immediate corporal punishment, exile, or the arena was their fate. Betrayal of the state (for example, opening the gates to surrounding enemies) might get you thrown off the Tarpeian Rock. Being an enemy of the Emperor, or just owning a property he coveted, might get your name on a list of proscribed ("written down") persons that anyone could kill on sight. Imprisonment in the carcer was reserved for important state prisoners -- often foreign leaders who had been unwilling exhibits in triumphal parades -- while they waited the few hours for their almost inevitable executions. For them, the carcer was a short-term "death row", a holding area, and not a place of long term imprisonment. The actual killing would be carried out precisely at the moment when the victorious Roman general would dedicate captured treasures in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. The death of the prisoner was also dedicated to the god in a long-lasting holdover of rites of human sacrifice. Jugurtha, a North African successor of Hannibal was executed in the Carcer as was Vercingetorix, or, if a public spectacle was deemed advisable, in front of the Senate building.

Cicero also had some of the Catalinian conspirators "incarcerated" (that is, put in the carcer) before unconstitutionally and unceremoniously having them executed there. Cicero himself was executed years later after making himself an enemy of Octavian (later Augustus). Technically, he died after being proscribed by the Second Triumvirate: Octavian, Marc Antony, and Lepidus. But he did not rate immurement in the carcer." - The Carcer--Mamertine Prison.

We then wandered around trying to find the Wax Museum I had read about on the web. It actually turned out to be our first disappointment.

Although I had read that the founder of the Rome Wax Museum had been inspired to create it after visiting Madame Tussaud's in London, he apparently was not willing to hire the quality of sculptors that Madame Tussaud used. The figures did not have real hair and were very stiffly posed, giving the impression they were a collection of mannequins and not "real" people. To add insult to injury, their costumes looked like they hadn't been cleaned or replaced in decades so they were extremely faded and dusty.

We grabbed a bowl of pasta then decided to catch the Metro down to Fermi and tour the Museum of Roman Civilization. This part of the city, known as EUR, was a model community Benito Mussolini designed as the city of the future. However, it was never completed.

"In 1936 the Italian government made a successful application for hosting in Rome the next World Exhibition which was due in 1941. The Exhibition was soon postponed to 1942 to celebrate the XXth anniversary of the Fascist regime. The area chosen for the exhibition was some three miles south of the walls, near the river and the road to Ostia. The architect Marcello Piacentini was asked to coordinate the development of a plan having the objective to create a new quarter of Rome and not only to build the temporary pavilions required by the Exhibition.
Marcello Piacentini was renowned for the neat design of the new Railway Station of Florence, but the government wanted to emphasize the monumental aspects of the new quarter and Piacentini and the other architects who cooperated with him had to meet this expectation. The new quarter was soon known as E.U.R., the acronym of Esposizione Universale Roma...The Fascist regime emphasized the links between the expansion of the Roman Empire and its own aggressive policies and it poured money into redesigning in a spectacular way many areas of the city, mainly to the detriment of medieval or Baroque monuments; for sure the regime had something in common with the ancient Romans: a passion for erecting large buildings...

The first building to be completed was aimed at hosting the offices for the Exhibition. While the building had a very neat and modern design the mosaics and the reliefs which embellished it were evocative of Ancient Rome. The black and white mosaics replicated a pattern typical of Caracalla's Baths and the reliefs portrayed ancient monuments (in the image above: the Arch of Titus, Trajan's Column and the Pantheon). Mussolini himself was portrayed as if he were a direct descendant of the Roman consuls and emperors. He had a peculiar way of speaking with his fists pointed against his hips as shown by the position of his left arm; the right arm is raised in the so called saluto fascista which had replaced the traditional shaking of hands. What at the time must have looked very impressive, today appears a flattering description of Mussolini's ability to ride a horse without holding the reins.

The Exhibition never took place because of WWII and the few buildings which had been completed were occupied by families who had lost their homes because of war events. In 1951, when the post war emergency was gradually receding, the Italian government decided to complete the quarter by relocating public offices and by inviting companies to build their headquarters in the new quarter. The quarter was renamed Quartiere Europa retaining to some extent its original name and the streets and buildings were in some cases renamed too in order to cancel references to the past regime. The assignment to Rome of the 1960 Olympic Games gave a new impulse to the completion of the monumental parts of EUR including the stela to Marconi." - EUR: A XXth Century New Rome

We got down to Fermi and got misdirected and wandered around for over and hour. When we finally found the Museo della Civiltà Romana it was only about 1:45 p.m. but the guard told us the museum was already closed to anyone that didn't already have a ticket. This was our second disappointment. I guess I would have to wait for another future visit to photograph the reconstruction (scale 1:250) of the City of Rome in the IVth century.

So we caught the train back to Rome and decided we'd better head back to the hotel to give our karma a chance to recover.

However, Fortune was not yet done with us. Our other friend from England, my co-moderator of the Imperial Rome discussion group, was due to arrive at 5:30 p.m. and I had reserved a car that he had volunteered to drive for us to Pompeii, Florence, Ostia, and Tivoli.

Although I booked the car online, I had to go down to Termini to let Hertz verify my credit card and Richard had to supply his drivers license information. Pat and I started out at 5:10 and got to Termini about 10 minutes later. I had written down the address for the Hertz car rental agency but we soon discovered that assigning street numbers to buildings in Rome is as haphazard as their road signage. The numbers got larger then smaller then larger again and the block of numbers that included 34, our destination, appeared to be missing.

After several aborted attempts to get directions, we finally found a shoe merchant who kindly took the time to walk out of his shop and point the way. By then, we were almost an hour and a half late. Richard had had time to walk to the hotel with his luggage and return to Termini and was hovering rather worriedly by the counter when we finally arrived.

A visit to the Vatican

2005-10-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

Monday, March 14, 2005:

Well, today was a Vatican day. Much to our dismay, we arrived to find a line of visitors queued up for the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel that wrapped around three sides of the walls of Vatican City. I knew my feet would not survive a three hour stand in line so I thought we might have to forgo the Sistine Chapel. But I suggested to Pat that we check out the interior of St. Peter's Cathedral and the Pieta and see if we could at least see that.

Much to our pleasant surprise there was only a short line there. So we went inside and I proceeded to photograph practically everything I could get a decent shot at in the low light - in that large of space, the shutter speed is still pretty slow even with the flash. But I see a number of them turned out okay. Of course the Pieta was absolutely breathtaking. I took photos as best I could then just gazed at it to try to remember as much of the experience as I could. I understand it is the only statue on which Michelangelo chiseled his name. I guess he became quite upset when he overheard someone discussing the sculpture and attributed it to one of his rivals.

"The Pieta is considered to be the masterpiece of his early years, deeply poignant, exquisitely beautiful and more highly finished than his later works were to be. In creating a harmonious pyramidal group from the problematic combination of the figure of a full-grown man lying dead across the lap of his mother, Michelangelo solved a formal problem that had hitherto baffled artists." - From "The Bulfinch Guide to Art History"

It was sad that this magnificent piece of art has to be protected by a bullet-proof glass enclosure now after some deranged individual attacked it with a hammer.

We then wandered around the cathedral taking pictures of various sculptures and of course the high altar and the Pope's ornate bronze canopy.

Most of the interior decoration of St. Peter's, including the high altar, is the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680).

"Bernini was a sculptor, painter and architect and a formative influence as an outstanding exponent of the Italian Baroque. He was an exceptional portrait artist and owes to his father his accomplished techniques in the handling of marble and also an impressive list of patrons that included the Borghese and the Barbarini families. Bernini originally worked in the Late Mannerist tradition but rejected the contrived tendencies of this style. By 1624 he had adopted an expression that was passionate and full of emotional and psychological energy. His figures are caught in a transient moment from a single viewpoint, bursting into the spectator's space." - From "The A-Z of Art: The World's Greatest and Most Popular Artists and Their Works", by Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson

"Bernini was made a papal knight at the age of twenty three. A year later his chief patron, Maffeo Barberini, was made Pope Urban VIII, and immediately summoned the sculptor: 'It is your great good luck, Cavaliere, to see Maffeo Barberini pope. But we are even luckier in that the Cavaliere Bernini lives at the time of our pontificate.' Urban reigned for nearly twenty-one years, during which Bernini was the most grandly employed, and richly rewarded, artist in the world. In the mid 1640s, under the new pope, Innocent X, Bernini was (probably unfairly) blamed for cracks in St Peter's bell towers, which had to be pulled down. But he was soon back in favour and continued to serve the papacy under Innocent and his four successors, for another thirty-five years, making fifty-six in all.

During this long and intensive service, Bernini effectively completed the setting and interior of St Peter's. Indeed his contribution to the church as we see it today is greater than that of any other artist, including Michelangelo. He did three principal things. The main fabric was completed in 1626 and Bernini was charged with ennobling its interior. He did this first by constructing (1623-24) an enormous baldacchino over the high altar. He placed four immense marble bases at each corner, and on them constructed colossal gilt bronze columns, wrought into spirals and joined by a cornice, with angels, each twice life-size, guarding its crowned superstructure. It is a work of complete originality, for nothing like it has been built before or since (apart from smaller copies). There are those who believe that Bernini's contemporary and (at times) rival, Francesco Borromini (1599-1667), provided some ideas. Maybe he did, but the work as it stands has the impress of Bernini's artistic character all over it. While working in and around the Vatican, Bernini also provided, as a setting for his wonderful St Teresa, the architectural and painted embellishments of the Cornaro Chapel (1644-55). This too was completely original, for no one before had combined together, in a single artistic design, and on the largest possible scale, marble and stone, brass and gilt, gold and silver, plain and stained glass, all wrought together to produce a single emotional spasm. The divine dove descends, skeletons arise from the pavement, angels swirl around and crown the scene with flowers, while all the time, in the centre, Teresa writhes with joy. It is an amazing composition which drew admirers from all over Europe, and was imitated by all who had the means.

It inspired the papacy to demand from Bernini a similar artefact, on an even larger scale, to complete the main decoration of the interior of St Peter's. This is the famous Cathedra Petri, or Peter's throne, in effect a gigantic reliquary, which forms the climax of the view along the nave, and is framed by the baldacchino columns. It is a complex piece of sculptural architectural confectionery, made up of red jasper, black Sicilian marble, masses of bronze, some gilt, stone, iron, marble statuary, a yellow glass eye, through which the light pours, and golden stucco clouds. The size is staggering but is perfectly in scale with the huge dimensions of the building. Bernini continued his work inside the church by shifting around various papal tombs, and designing new ones, and creating a suitably grandiose setting for the spectacular papal collection of relics - for most visitors their main object in coming to St Peter's. Finally, he put into the Vatican Palace, adjoining the church, a regal staircase, the Scala Regia, through which princes progressed upwards to the papal apartments. In an ideal world, he would have pulled down the entire palace, externally an eyesore which remains to this day and spoils the total prospect. But this could not be done, at any rate in those days, without demolishing the magnificent frescoes, by Raphael and others, on its internal walls. So Bernini was left with an awkward site for his stairs, a problem he solved by a brilliant piece of trompe l'oeil foreshortening which makes the stairs seem longer, grander and steeper than they actually are, and has to be seen to be believed. It is even more ingenious than Michelangelo's stairs in the Laurentian Library, if not as beautiful.

Finally, Bernini transformed the small existing piazza in front of St Peter's into the largest and grandest square in the world, or rather a key shaped device of colonnades, which branch out from the church in a narrowing stem, then form into two halves of a circle, which encompasses an obelisk and two fountains. The circle was intended by Bernini to be closed by a third colonnade, which screened the whole from the visitor approaching from the Tiber. But this was never built, and in 1939 Mussolini hacked through an avenue which spoils the surprise. Even so, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world, for the colonnades, despite their grandeur, are low by comparison with St Peter's facade, which thus continues to dominate the whole and appears to stretch out arms to gather in the faithful - clearly Bernini's master idea." - From "Art: A New History", by Paul Johnson.

The paintings in the domes were very beautiful and Bernini's richly embellished ceiling looked like decorative icing on a wedding cake.

As we emerged from St. Peter's, we saw the Pope's guards in medieval costume traditionally said to be designed by Michelangelo.

"When the company was founded, in 1505, the soldiers wore simple tunics, but in 1548 the present uniforms were adopted. A long-standing tradition holds that they were designed by Michelangelo, but there is no foundation for this belief. As well as their everyday costumes, the Swiss Guards have suits of armor, with swords weighing thirty kilos, but these are used only for escorting the Pope during special ceremonies in St. Peter's.

At the beginning of the 16th century the Vatican began to employ Swiss mercenaries, who had a reputation for faithful and disinterested service. During the Sack of Rome in 1527, when Charles V of Spain devastated the city with his army of "lanzichelecchi", it was only the quick reaction of the Swiss Guards which enabled Pope Clement VII to take refuge in Castel Sant'Angelo; 147 Swiss soldiers died in the fighting. The invaders occupied the Vatican buildings, causing untold damage: they used ancient manuscripts as bedding for their horses, lit fires on the marble floors and scratched graffiti on the frescoes.

The Cohors Helvetica currently numbers 107: the commander, five officers (including a chaplain) and 101 soldiers, all of Swiss birth. Until about 30 years ago, only citizens of the German-speaking cantons were eligible for admission to the company, but in recent years there has been a dearth of candidates and now French- and Italian-speaking nationals can also enrol. They must be Roman Catholics, unmarried, between 18 and 25 years of age, and they must also be good-looking. Officially they are supposed to be over 1.74 meters tall, but nowadays this regulation is not enforced too strictly. Their pay is not very high - the equivalent of just over 1,000 U.S. dollars per month, paid in Swiss francs - but they are given full board and lodging.

Every year on May 6, anniversary of the Sack of Rome, the Swiss Guards renew their vows of allegiance in the Courtyard of San Damaso inside the Vatican. In a colorful ceremony, new recruits kneel down, raise three fingers of their right hand to symbolize the Trinity and swear to serve the Pope "to the death". - InfoRoma

They did not wear the conquistador-style helmet today that I have seen on television but a cocky beret instead.

We then strolled over to the Vatican Post Office to send some postcards and I found some wonderful books about the artwork of St. Peters, Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and a gold papal medallion depicting a scene of the Madonna from one of Leonardo's paintings.

Apparently the Vatican releases one each year but I preferred the art on the 2002 Medallion to the scene on the 2005 Medallion. Maybe I can find more on Ebay - oh oh - another collection!

We stopped by a food cart for a sandwich and were charged 21 EUR for two sandwiches and two bottles of Coke. I told Pat it was sacriligous to rip people off right under the Pope's nose but Pat said the Coke was probably specially blessed by the Pope to make me feel better about it.

Afterwards, we stopped by a nice gift shop and I found some delicate cameos for my sister Jane, a cross with medieval artwork for my minister sister, and a detailed figurine of the Capitoline wolf for me.

As we walked back towards the Metro, we saw that the line to the Vatican Museum was gone so we excitedly headed towards it. Although we found that the Etruscan gallery was closed, we were able to see some of the Roman sculptures.

We then followed the sea of humanity flowing toward the direction of the Sistine Chapel. On our way to the chapel we strolled through the famous Hall of Maps. I was simply awestruck by the riotous colors of art in the Hall of Maps. I actually enjoyed the images in the Hall of Maps more than the Sistine Chapel. (Is that considered sacrilege?) Of course the Sistine Chapel was unforgettable, too. Personally, I like the bright hues of the paintings since they have been cleaned and restored. In one of the books I purchased it showed the difference between the soiled paintings and the restored paintings and there is simply no comparison. Michelangelo's delicate flesh tones and rich colors of clothing and landscape are once more visible to an appreciative audience.

Upon emerging from the Vatican, I thought of the dean's wife who loves the Italian version of ice cream called gelatto so we stopped by a cafe for a cooling dish of rich vanilla gelatto and fresh strawberries. We returned to our hotel for a brief rest and to prepare the roses Pat brought to place on Caesar's bier tomorrow on the Ides of March and I went online to reserve the car for Pompeii.

Richard (my co-moderator of the Imperial Rome discussion group) will be arriving tomorrow and is our designated driver for our Pompeii, Ostia, Tivoli, and Florence road trips.

Pat remembered she had seen a web page on the internet with pictures of Roman catapults and a caption that said reproductions of these types of Roman military equipment were located in the Museum of Roman Civilization. I looked it up on the web and we found it is about 3 1/2 miles from our hotel on the blue Metro line. So, if we aren't too tired after our trip back to the Forum tomorrow and our exploration of the Roman Wax Museum, we will catch the Metro down to the Museum of Roman Civilization.

We concluded the day with a light dinner at a restaurant close to the hotel that we have visited several times. The waiter has become friendly enough with us that he is now joking with us. Tonight I ordered a calzone wood style which is a calzone filled with cheese and mushrooms. I also ordered a tomato salad and was surprised to find that when you order a tomato salad you are brought a plate of sliced cherry tomatoes garnished with a few sprigs of watercress. So, Pat donated some lettuce garnish from her ravioli and some black olives that had been placed on the butter plate for decoration and I produced an American-style salad. I noticed the waiter passed our table and looked a little confused when he saw what I had done with the salad.

We topped the meal off with a dish of mousse.

Rome Journal: The Glories of Capitoline Hill

2005-10-07T14:08:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 13, 2005: " Although the not-so-mythical founder of Rome (Romulus) built his first stronghold on the Palatine hill, the Capitoline was long the defensive center of Rome. It was the highest and rockiest hill in Rome, being bordered on all sides by sharp cliffs. In fact, the western side was known as the Tarpeian Rock, off of which criminals were thrown to supplement crucifixion and burning at the stake in the Romans' repertoire of means of capital punishment. Access to the Capitoline was only by means of a narrow path leading up the southern side of the hill. This was easy to defend in the event of an attack. Even at the height of Rome's power, the Capitoline was still considered the citadel of the city, and citizens could flee there in case the city's walls were breached by an invading army. So, this massive, fortified hill towered over the city, and still does today." - Capitoline by W. Logan.

Today, we were excited to find the Capitoline Museum open (Pat had thought it was still closed for rennovation) so I took hundreds of pictures as you can imagine. I got some nice photos of the murals depicting the founding of Rome although it was a challenge since flash photography is not allowed and I'm a bit short so the angle creates some distortion. I was only barked at twice by one of the female guards. Once because I was trying to steady my camera by leaning against a wall (Pat, my volunteer human tripod, had taken a break) and once because she thought I might be shooting video which is also forbidden.

Of course I took pictures of the Capitoline Wolf from all different angles. The Capitoline Wolf, the ancient symbol of the city of Rome, is probably one of the most immediately recognized statues of the ancient world. The bronze wolf is thought to be of Etruscan origin dating from the 5th century BCE. The suckling children were added during the Renaissance. Most people are familiar with the legend of Romulus and Remus. Although the Renaissance additions depict chubby apparently happy children, as young men, the two brothers did not get along nearly as well. In an argument over the site of their newly proposed city, Romulus killed Remus. So the eternal city ended up with the name of Rome (not Reme). Romulus ruled for 38 years then legend says that he was taken up to heaven by a violent whirlwind:

"Romulus's end, in the 38th year of his reign, was a supernatural disappearance, if he was not slain by the Senate. Plutarch (Life of Numa Pompilius) tells the legend with a note of skepticism:

"It was the thirty-seventh year, counted from the foundation of Rome, when Romulus, then reigning, did, on the fifth day of the month of July, called the Caprotine Nones, offer a public sacrifice at the Goat's Marsh, in presence of the senate and people of Rome. Suddenly the sky was darkened, a thick cloud of storm and rain settled on the earth; the common people fled in affright, and were dispersed; and in this whirlwind Romulus disappeared, his body being never found either living or dead. A foul suspicion presently attached to the patricians, and rumors were current among the people as if that they, weary of kingly government, and exasperated of late by the imperious deportment of Romulus towards them, had plotted against his life and made him away, that so they might assume the authority and government into their own hands. This suspicion they sought to turn aside by decreeing divine honors to Romulus, as to one not dead but translated to a higher condition. And Proculus, a man of note, took oath that he saw Romulus caught up into heaven in his arms and vestments, and heard him, as he ascended, cry out that they should hereafter style him by the name of Quirinus."

"Then a few voices began to proclaim Romulus's divinity; the cry was taken up, and at last every man present hailed him as a god and son of a god, and prayed to him to be for ever gracious and to protect his children. However, even on this great occasion there were, I believe, a few dissentients who secretly maintained that the king had been torn to pieces by the senators. At all events the story got about, though in veiled terms; but it was not important, as awe, and admiration for Romulus's greatness, set the seal upon the other version of his end, which was, moreover, given further credit by the timely action of a certain Julius Proculus, a man, we are told, honored for his wise counsel on weighty matters. The loss of the king had left the people in an uneasy mood and suspicious of the senators, and Proculus, aware of the prevalent temper, conceived the shrewd idea of addressing the Assembly. Romulus, he declared, the father of our City descended from heaven at dawn this morning and appeared to me. In awe and reverence I stood before him, praying for permission to look upon his face without sin. "Go," he said, "and tell the Romans that by heaven's will my Rome shall be capital of the world. Let them learn to be soldiers. Let them know, and teach their children, that no power on earth can stand against Roman arms. Having spoken these words, he was taken up again into the sky. " (Livy, 1.16, trans. A. de Selincourt, The Early History of Rome, 34-35) [1] (http://rel2243-04.fa03.fsu.edu/divine.htm)"

I found a nicely detailed figurine of the wolf with suckling Romulus and Remus the next day at a shop outside the Vatican for a very reasonable price. It resides in a place of honor on my bookshelf in my office. I thought this picture of a WWII poster showing a much less maternal wolf was quite interesting. Notice the target of the wolf's wrath. It apparently was used for recruiting purposes by Mussolini's regime.

I also made a special effort to be sure to seek out the bust of Brutus. Brutus is of course Lucius Junius Brutus, often referred to as the founder of the Roman Republic, who lived in the 6th century BCE not Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the conspirators that assassinated Caesar. According to Livy,

"Brutus was the most important personality of the patrician "revolution" which overthrew monarchic rule in Rome and instituted the Republic. Brutus was the son of Marcus Junius and of a sister of Tarquinius Superbus. When he was still a child, he saw his father and brothers being executed by the tyrant and escaped solely by feigning mental insanity (the origin of his cognomen Brutus). Saved by such deceit, he was regarded with disdain, being kept in the palace as a laughing stock. He grew up in the royal entourage, waiting for the right moment for vengeance.
During a plague which almost overwhelmed Rome, Tarquin's sons were sent to Delphi in order to consult the oracle and they took Brutus along, obviously to amuse themselves and forget about the boredom and the smaller inconveniences of the trip. Brutus brught as an offering to the god Apollo a coarse stick. But Brutus had hidden a golden sceptre inside the stick. Apollo's pythia predicted the god would give the empire of Rome to the one who would first embrace his mother after their return.

Brutus, perceiving the true meaning of the pythia's prophecy, kissed the land, the mother of mankind, of his ancestors immediately after entering Rome.

However, Brutus did not need to feign imbecility for much longer, because the ill-fated rape and murder of Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, one of the king's sons, gave him the pretext he needed to act. He grew enraged when confronted with the dead body of this heroine, seized the iron stick which had served as the murder weapon against her chaste resistance and swore to kill all the Tarquins, who were deeply unpopular in Rome, if not odious. Brutus ran to the Forum, called the people to listen to his speech (it was his legal right as tribune of the Celers, and the king was abroad) and proclaimed the abolishment of the Roman Monarchy and the enactment of the exile of the Tarquins.

The royal family quickly returned to the city in order to deal with the rebel - to them, he was little more than a usurper. They didn't understand their lack of popularity and this sudden change in their fool's personality, believing he was perhaps controlled by the senatorial magistrates. The Tarquins attempted to take the city by surprise but were abandoned by their soldiers. Rome was a republic - res publica." - Controversial Personalities of the Roman Republic by 'Andraeus Papadopolus Dacicus Maximus'

Of course as a big fan of the film "Gladiator" and actor Joaquin Phoenix, I had to search out the famous statue of Commodus dressed as Hercules in the robe of the Nemean lion.

"Commodus began to dress like the god Hercules, wearing lion skins and carrying a club. Thus he appropriated the Antonines' traditional identification with Hercules, but even more aggressively. Commodus' complete identification with Hercules can be seen as an attempt to solidify his claim as new founder of Rome, which he now called the Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana. This was legitimized by his direct link to Hercules, son of Father Jupiter. He probably took the title of Hercules officially some time before mid-September 192.

While the literary sources, especially Dio, Herodian, and the Historia Augusta, all ridicule the antics of his later career, they also give important insight into Commodus' relationship to the people. His most important maneuver to solidify his claims as Hercules Romanus was to show himself as the god to the Roman people by taking part in spectacles in the amphitheater. Not only would Commodus fight and defeat the most skilled gladiators, he would also test his talents by encountering the most ferocious of the beasts. Commodus won all of his bouts against the gladiators. The slayer of wild beasts, Hercules, was the mythical symbol of Commodus' rule, as protector of the Empire.

During his final years he declared that his age should be called the "Golden Age." He wanted all to revel in peace and happiness in his age of glory, praise the felicitas Commodi, the glorious libertas, his pietas, providentia, his victoria and virtus aeterna. Commodus wanted there to be no doubt that this "Golden Age" had been achieved through his munificence as Nobilissimus Princeps. He had declared a brand new day in Rome, founding it anew in 190, declaring himself the new Romulus. Rome was now to be called Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana, as noted above, and deemed "the Immortal," "the Fortunate," "the Universal Colony of the Earth." Coins represent the archaic rituals of city-[re]foundation, identifying Commodus as a new founder and his age as new days.

Also in 190 he renamed all the months to correspond exactly with his titles. From January, they run as follows: Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, Pius. According to Dio Cassius, the changing of the names of the months was all part of Commodus' megalomania. Commodus was the first and last in the Antonine dynasty to change the names of the months.

The legions were renamed Commodianae, the fleet which imported grain from Africa was called Alexandria Commodiana Togata, the Senate was deemed the Commodian Fortunate Senate, his palace and the Roman people were all given the name Commodianus. The day that these new names were announced was also given a new title: Dies Commodianus. Indeed, the emperor presented himself with growing vigor as the center of Roman life and the fountainhead of religion. New expressions of old religious thought and new cults previously restricted to private worship invade the highest level of imperial power.

If Eusebius of Caesarea is to be believed, the reign of Commodus inaugurated a period of numerous conversions to Christianity. Commodus did not pursue his father's prohibitions against the Christians, although he did not actually change their legal position. Rather, he relaxed persecutions, after minor efforts early in his reign. Tradition credits Commodus's policy to the influence of his concubine Marcia; she was probably his favorite, but it is not clear that she was a Christian. More likely, Commodus preferred to neglect the sect, so that persecutions would not detract from his claims to be leading the Empire through a "Golden Age."

During his reign several attempts were made on Commodus' life. After a few botched efforts, an orchestrated plot was carried out early in December 192, apparently including his mistress Marcia. On 31 December an athlete named Narcissus strangled him in his bath, and the emperor's memory was cursed. This brought an end to the Antonine Dynasty. - Commodus by Dennis Quinn

The original of the Dying Gaul, another well known statue, is also in The Capitoline Museum. Although this statue depicts a Gaul with a Romanized short haircut, it may actually be more accurate than the monument erected to Vercingetorix with his long flowing hair. Many Gallic, Germanic, and Batavian chieftains that led revolts against the Roman domination of Gaul and Germania were Romanized to a large degree, having served as commanders of Roman Auxilliaries.

We met another lady traveling by herself from Australia and she joined our adventure today. She and I took the time to go into the King Victor Emmanuel monument and I managed to photograph some murals and sculptures inside as well as take some close up photos of the tomb of the unknown warrior and the honor guard. I also got some more pictures of Trajan's forum and a few more of Trajan's column.

On the way back to our hotel, the taxi drove by the Circus Maximus so we got to check it off our list too.

Column of Marcus Aurelius contains a 200-step staircase

2005-04-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

Column of Marcus Aurelius 8, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"The column [of Marcus Aurelius] is a direct imitation of that of Trajan, the height of shaft, torus, and capital being the same, 100 Roman feet (29.77 metres), but tapers less and therefore seems more massive. The shaft itself, 26.50 metres in height and 3.90 in diameter, is composed of 26 rings of Luna marble. It is hollow, and contains a spiral stairway with 200 steps. The interior is lighted by 56 rectangular loop-holes." - Lacus Curtius

Column of Marcus Aurelius

2005-04-05T15:54:00.000-07:00

Column of Marcus Aurelius 4, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Not far from the Pantheon stands the column of Marcus Aurelius. Standing 100 feet high, it bears reliefs depicting his conquests in the Danubian Wars over the Marcomanni and Sarmatians. (Do all columns tell the story of wars that start with a "D"?)

Although the column is not as old as Trajan's column, it has apparently suffered from earthquakes and a fire. The quality of the sculptures is inferior to those on Trajan's column as well.

Pantheon converted to Christian church in 7th century

2005-04-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

Pantheon Mural Detail, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"Until the 5th century, the Pantheon was a temple dedicated to all the Roman gods. In 609, Emperor Phocas gave it to Pope Boniface IV, who consecrated it, dedicated it to St. Mary and all the Christian martyrs, and renamed it Santa Maria ad Martyres." - Monolithic.com

By this time, we were too tired to walk the 1.5 kilometers back to the Metro station so we hailed a cab for the trip back to the hotel (only 7.50 EUR)

Red Granite Columns of the Pantheon Portico

2005-04-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

Red Granite Columns of the Pantheon Portico, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"The large columned porch of the Pantheon has a facade composed of eight columns in grey granite. Two red granite columns each are set behind the first, third, sixth, and eighth column of the facade, thus forming three aisles. The central aisle, which is the widest, leads to the entrance. The side aisles end in two large niches destined for the statues of Agrippa and Augustus. The tympanum was decorated with a crowned eagle in bronze of which only the fix holes still remain. The ceiling of the porch was also decorated in bronze but this was removed by Pope Urban VIII Barberini." - Romeguide

Pantheon dome a marvel of early engineering

2005-04-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

Pantheon 6, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Then it was on to the Pantheon. I couldn't get a full shot of the dome and oculus because there was a huge scaffolding in the way due to reconstruction to repair water damage to the marble floor from rain. The dome, cast of concrete mixed with pumice and tufa poured over a wooden framework, spans 142 feet. It was the largest dome in Italy until Brunelleschi constructed the dome of the Florence Cathedral beginning in 1420.

"In truth, no one knows the Pantheon's exact age. One legend says that the first Roman citizens built the original Pantheon on the very site where the current one still stands in the Campo Marzo - modern Rome's business district. The ancients constructed this first Pantheon after Romulus (753-716 BC), their mythological founder, ascended to heaven from that site. They dedicated it to Romulus and some of his divine ancestors and, for centuries, held rites and processions there.

Most historians, however, claim that Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa built the first Pantheon in 27 BC, a rectilinear, T-shaped structure, 144 feet by 66 feet (44m x 20m), with masonry walls and a pitched timber roof. It burned in the great fire of 80 AD, was rebuilt by Emperor Domitian, but was struck by lightening and burned again in 110 AD. By 120 AD, Hadrian began designing a Pantheon reminiscent of Greek temples and far more elaborate than anything Rome had yet seen. His plans called for a structure with three main parts: a pronaos or entrance portico, a circular domed rotunda or vault, and a connection between the two. The rotunda's internal geometry would create a perfect sphere, since the height of the rotunda to the top of its dome would match its diameter: 142 feet (43.30 m). At its top, the dome would have an oculus or eye, a circular opening, with a diameter of 27 feet (8.2m), as its only light source.

Hadrian said, "My intentions had been that this sanctuary of All Gods should reproduce the likeness of the terrestrial globe and of the stellar sphere...The cupola...revealed the sky through a great hole at the center, showing alternately dark and blue. This temple, both open and mysteriously enclosed, was conceived as a solar quadrant. The hours would make their round on that caissoned ceiling so carefully polished by Greek artisans; the disk of daylight would rest suspended there like a shield of gold; rain would form its clear pool on the pavement below, prayers would rise like smoke toward that void where we place the gods." - Monolithic.com

Fontana Dei Fiumi or Fountain of the Four Rivers

2005-04-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Obelisk 3, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"In the centre of the Piazza Navona is Bernini's most spectacular fountain, la Fontana dei Fiumi, erected in 1651. It features a central rocky structure that supports an obelisk that was an ancient Roman imitation of the Egyptian form. Around this structure are four giant statues by Bernini's pupils following his designs representing the Nile, the Danube, the Ganges, and the Rio della Plata, each representing one of the four quarters of the world." - Roma Interactive

Fontana Del Moro at the Piazza Navona

2005-04-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Fountain at the Piazza Navona 20, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

The fountain of the Moor at the southern end of the Piazza Navona, which was also designed by Bernini, features the statue of a Moor fighting with a dolphin. Dolphins also seem to vie with other figures for the precious water.

Fountain of Neptune at the Piazza Navona

2005-04-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

Fountain at the Piazza Navona 5, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

After touring Hadrian's Tomb we walked on to the Piazza Navona and I had two ornate fountains to photograph.

The Piazza Navona is exceptionally long and owes its shape to the ruins that formed it, for under the buildings that surround Piazza Navona are the remains of the Circus Domitianus, Domitian's stadium. In ancient times the stadium was the site of the Agonal games, from which the present piazza takes its name by corruption from "in agone" to "n'agone" to "navone" and finally "navona". - Roma Interactive

The basin of the fountain of Neptune was originally sculpted in 1576 by Giacomo della Porta. The figural statues were added three centuries later.

Hadrian's tomb first incorporated into the Aurelian Wall

2005-04-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

Castel S Angelo 37, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"As early as A.D. 403 the emperor Honorius may have incorporated the building in an outpost bastion of the Aurelian walls. In 537, when it was already a fortress, it was attacked by Vitiges and his Goths. In the 10th century it was transformed into a castle." - Rome Guide

Fresco at the Castel S Angelo

2005-04-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Castel S Angelo 22, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

This celing panel along the outer wall of Castel S. Angelo is very similar in style to the frescoes that adorn the walls of the command chamber. (photography was prohibited in there) I assume the command chamber was originally the location of the urns containing Hadrian's remains. However, the style appears to be more medieval than imperial so it may have been a later embellishment to the structure.

War and Sacrifice

2005-04-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

Castel S Angelo 23, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

This frieze of a Roman emperor offering sacrifice served to inspire the men who later served within the walls of the Castel S. Angelo.

"The military was the greatest observer of religious events and possessed a calendar detailing the dates and events that were to take place. These involved rituals and displays of faith, especially to the emperor and the god Jupiter. Each unit would erect a new altar to the deity on the edge of the parade ground. A time after the ceremonies were completed, the discarded pieces would be buried. They would also maintain a shrine which would hold the statutes relating to the military, and the Legion's standard when it was not being used. The rituals were observed meticulously by all involved, as it would be deemed an insult to the deity, so these ceremonies were taken most seriously." - Romans-In-Britain.org

Hadrian's tomb converted to medieval fortress

2005-04-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

Castel S Angelo 9, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

The Castel S. Angelo, once known as the Mole Adriana, was not originally built for defensive purposes but as a funeral monument for the emperor Hadrian.

"It was finished in 139 CE, a year after the emperor's death, by his successor Antoninus Pious. [Hadrian's ashes were then transferred there from their temporary burial-place in the former villa of Cicero at Puteoli] It was then used up to the year 217 CE as a sepulchral for the Antonine family. Although constructed on the river edge, it was built on very solid ground and in an area previously used as a cemetery (actually in the gardens of Domitia, which, with those of Agrippina, formed a crown property called by Tacitus "Nero's Gardens.")

The monument was composed of at least three overlaid architectural bodies - a square base, a large cylindrical body, and a third and last piece. The latter was cylindrical too, but smaller in diameter and consisted of two overlaid orders, on the top of which the statue of Hadrian pulling a quadriga (chariot drawn by four horses) stood." - Castle.org

The structure was once topped with a tumulus of earth planted with trees. A ring of decorative marble statues stood along the edges of the parapet. I wish it still had the trees there. It would give the structure a less military aspect.

"Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138, together with those of his wife Sabina, and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who also died in 138. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were also placed here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217. The urns containing these ashes were probably placed in what is now known as the Treasury room deep within the building." - Wikipedia

The mausoleum of Augustus had last been opened to receive the remains of Nerva, but was no longer in use; so the Antonine emperors and their families were buried in the mausoleum of Hadrian, so it was later referred to by the name of Antoninorum sepulcrum.

Inscriptions actually recorded included the dedicatory inscription to Hadrian and Sabina set up in 139 A.D. (the latter was already deified, the former not) by Antoninus Pius, the sepulchral inscriptions of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, and of three of their children; of Aelius Caesar; of three children of Marcus Aurelius; of Lucius Verus, and of Commodus. That Marcus Aurelius himself was buried here is recorded by Herodian 4.1.4 who also relates that the urn containing the ashes of Septimius Severus and probably Faustina the younger were also interred here. Cassius Dio tells us that, besides Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta were also laid to rest here. - edited from entry in Lacus Curtius.

"Much of the tomb contents and decoration has been lost since the building's conversion into a military fortress in 401 and inclusion by Flavius Augustus Honorius in the Aurelian Walls. The urns and ashes were scattered by Visigoth looters in Alaric's sack of Rome in 410, and the original decorative bronze and stone statuary was thrown down upon the attacking Goths when they besieged Rome in 537, as recounted by Procopius. " - Wikipedia

Bernini's Angels on Pont S. Angelo gird for battle

2005-04-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ponte S Angelo 7, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, the designer of St. Peter's Square, was also commissioned to embellish the bridge to Castel S. Angelo, formerly the emperor Hadrian's tomb. This angel appeared to be holding a modern day window washing device that she is preparing to use on the irreverent pigeon perched on her head.

King Victor Emanuel honored throughout Italy

2005-04-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

Sculpture on Pont Victorio Emanuelle II 4, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

King Victorio Emanuelle II is honored on monuments throughout Italy. King Victor Emanuel II of Savoia achieved the unification of Italy in 1870.

In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars Italy was divided into a patchwork of kingdoms and duchies. The famous composer Verdi, a fervent adherent of liberal nationalism, was widely perceived as a figurehead for the unification movement (the Risorgimento). Although staunchly anti-clerical and a republican, he agreed with those who argued that the best prospect for unification lay in accepting Victor Emanuel, the liberal King of Piedmont, as the monarch of a united Italy. 'Viva Verdi' became a national rallying cry, his name being an acronym of 'Vittorio Emanuele Re d'Italia' (King of Italy). - Adapted from Verdi, The People's Opera

View of the Pont Victorio Emanuelle from the Pont S. Angelo

2005-04-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

The River Tiber 5, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

From St. Peter's, we walked to Hadrian's Tomb/Castel san Angelo. On the way I had an opportunity to get some wonderful photos of the sculptures along the bridge of Victorio Emanuelle and the Pont S. Angelo that cross the Tiber.

Saints and Martyrs gaze down on visitors to St. Peter's Square

2005-04-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

St Peters Cathedral 35, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

There are 140 statues of saints and martyrs atop the balustrade of the ellipse of St. Peter's Square.

On the left side of the piazza is the Vatican post office. I bought two postcards and mailed them to my colleagues back in the Dean's office from there so they would bear the Vatican City postmark.

St. Peter's colonade a masterful illusion

2005-04-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

St Peters Cathedral 25, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Bernini planned the colonnade design by drawing chalk lines, and possibly using strings to carefully predict the visual illusions. - Father Gary Coulter

The Travertine columns were placed so that if you stood on the foci of the elipse, there appears to be only a single row of columns. The portico formed by the colonade is wide enough to let carriages pass through.

Bernini commissioned to build the huge piazza

2005-04-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

St Peters Cathedral 24, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

In 1655, Pope Alexander VII commissioned Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini to design a monumental square in front of the recently completed St. Peter's basilica.

"The immense piazza is bounded by two semicircular colonnades, each of which is made up of four rows of Doric columns. In the centre of the piazza is an obelisk brought to Rome by Caligula from Heliopolis in ancient Egypt." - Lonely Planet

The obelisk had served as a turning post in the chariot races at the nearby ancient Circus of Nero, where St. Peter was crucified.

My first trip to Rome Day 3

2005-04-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

St Peters Cathedral 26, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Saturday, March 12, we took the Metro over to Vatican City only to discover thousands of pilgrims. We had lost track of time and did not realize it was the weekend. There are probably four times as many visitors on the weekend as during the week. However, I got some wonderful photos of St. Peter's Square.

The elliptical shape, symbolising the Church's embrace of all of mankind, is defined by a series of 284 columns arranged in four rows. The square was designed by Bernini and features a central obelisk and two identical fountains.

Scene originally adorning triclinium in Livia's villa

2005-04-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

Scene from Livia's triclinium 1, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

One entire room of the National Museum is adorned with a mural of an orchard of apple trees laden with fruit and delicate birds that once embellished the underground triclinium of Livia's villa in Prima Porta. These frescoes are considered among the best conserved illustrations of an ancient Roman garden.

"Apart from the statue of Augustus, the most well-known find from the Villa of Livia are the spectacular garden frescoes, often referred to in works on Roman painting. Once attached to the walls of a large underground room measuring 5 x 11 metres, these frescoes were moved to the National museum in 1955. Currently under restoration,they are hopefully soon to be displayed in the new museum in Palazzo Massimo. The frescoes exhibit not so much a cultivated garden as a subtle flourishing landscape, rich in trees, flowers and birds of all kinds. In this image, some scholars want to see direct links to the Ara Pacis Augustae and the general pictorial programme of nature and fertility in Augustan art.

In the foreground we find a low wickerwork fence running around the whole room;behind this comes a grassy walk, bordered on its far side by a stone parapet. This stone enclosure have recesses at some points for single trees â€” one pine, one oak and four spruces. The background consists of a great variety of vegetation, where the laurel is omnipresent in different shapes, ranging from shrubs to tall trees. In the midst of the leaves, nightingales, oriols, magpies, swallows, blackbirds and many more spieces of birds can be identified. According to ancient sources, Augustus owned a talking magpie, as well as a raven and a parrot. More important is the fact that all the flowers in the fresco bloom simultaneously and can directly be associated with love and fecundity. In the age of Ovid'™s Metamorphoses, the motif of the fresco can be seen as a celebration of Augustan perpetual peace" - Prima Porta: Villa of Livia, Uppsala University.

Discus thrower curls his foot

2005-04-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Discus thrower 5, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Both my friend Pat and I thought it unusual that the discus thrower sculpture shows the athlete was rotating on curled toes. Since I am not an expert on throwing the discus I am not sure that this foot position is truly a form not used today.

Myron's Discus Thrower

2005-04-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

Discus Thrower 1, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

This Roman copy of Myron's Discus Thrower is the centerpiece for a display about the importance of athletics to the ancient Romans. Myron, one of the most famous Greek sculptors of the 5th century B.C.E., lived in Athens. His original work, entitled Discobolus, was thought to represent the perfect athletic form.

Roman Charioteer Mosaic 4

2005-04-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

Roman Charioteer Mosaic 4, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

The Romans loved chariot racing so I was not surprised to find a series of mosaics depicting the four factions of chariot racers denoted by their color. If I remember correctly, Robert Graves related that Tiberias became suspicious of people cheering for the green faction because the team was a favorite of Agrippina the Elder. Agrippina had publicly accused Tiberias of engineering the poisoning of her popular husband, Germanicus.

Finely detailed Fishes

2005-04-01T11:40:00.000-08:00

Fish Mosaic, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Being raised in a small fishing community on the Oregon coast I frequently fished in local streams and from the jetty near my hometown lighthouse. So I became familiar with a variety of fish species. Therefore I found the detail of the fishes depicted in this mosaic fascinating.

National Museum's Mosaics are spectacular

2005-04-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Elegant Mosaic, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

As someone who loves the beauty and craftsmanship of ancient mosaics, I was mesmerized by the spectacular collection of mosaics I found at the National Museum. Subjects ranged from gods and goddesses to animals and fishes.

Many mosaics were found in Roman dining rooms so scenes of "edibles" are also abundant.

Augustus as Pontifex Maximus

2005-04-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

Augustus closeup 1, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

We finally climbed the steps of the central hall of the National Museum of Rome after our long circuitous route.

"Formerly the site of the preparatory school "Massimiliano Massimo", this building was constructed in 1883-87 by Camillo Pistrucci in imitation of the noble residences of the early Roman baroque period." - Roma Online

Of course the most immediately recognizable sculpture to me located on the first floor was the statue of Augustus attired as the Pontifex Maximus (high priest).

This work was recovered from the Via Labicana.

A massive organ capable of 77 registers

2005-03-11T16:37:00.000-08:00

A massive organ capable of 77 registers, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"On the left wall on the Chapel of St Bruno is the monumental organ built by Bartelemy Formentelli in the 1990's. It has 77 registers, and is made in cherry, walnut and chestnut wood. It is still used for concerts today." - Exseminarians Churches of Rome

A natural miracle

2005-03-11T16:36:00.000-08:00

Its a miracle, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

In general, the lighting in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli was very low and made it difficult to photograph much of the beautiful artwork that adorns its sanctuary but I found it interesting that a shaft of afternoon sunlight created a visual "miracle" shining on this mural. Actually, I found in my research that the central transcept of the sanctuary has been purposefully modified to enable the use of a sundial laid down along the meridian that crosses through Rome. I wish I had known about this aspect of the design and I would have made a point of photographing the Meridian Line that runs along the left side of the chapel floor. Having a latitude 15º at true noon, about 12.15 pm (1.15 pm in summer time), the sun casts its light dead on this line. It made me think of the Rose Line mentioned in the novel "The DaVinci Code".

"If you look at the right side of the transept wall, you can see that part of the cornice has been cut away to provide the effect. The markings were made by the astronomer, mathematician, archaeologist, historian and philosopher Francesco Bianchini. Bianchini had been commissioned by Pope Clement XI to make them for the Holy Year of 1700. It took a bit longer; they were comleted in 1703 with the assistance of the astronomer G.F. Maraldi." - Exseminarians Churches of Rome

This portion of the basilica, known as the Chapel of St. Bruno, was designed by Carlo Maratta. The altar was made from an older altar by Francesco Fontana in 1864. Above the altar is Giovanni Odazzi's painting The Apparition of the Virgin Mary to St Bruno. It was painted for the 1700 Jubilee, and shows the Blessed Virgin handing the Order's Rule to St Bruno. The vault was painted by Andrea Procaccini with figures of the Evangelists, while the rest of the decorations were painted by Antonio Bicchierai.

Later, I was chatting with another visitor and she asked me if I had not seen the coin boxes that you can place money in so lights will come up for a few moments to assist you in your photography. I didn't notice any boxes or signage to that affect in this church.

Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli incorporated the central chambers of Diocletian's baths

2005-03-11T16:35:00.000-08:00

Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

We grabbed some tasty sandwiches at Termini then, following the map supplied by our hotel, set out for Piazza del Republica that we thought had to be the nearest stop to the Museo Nationale di Roma. We did not realize we had spent the entire morning in one venue of the Museum at Diocletian's Baths. To our surprise, we got off at the stop indicated on the map and proceeded to wander in a virtual circle asking Italians where their national museum was and finally discovered it was right next to Termini if we had taken our eyes off the traffic (read as Italian men) we would have seen the sign on the building. As it was, we wandered about for the better part of an hour and a half. At one point we did wander through the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli at the direction of a priest we met in an alley. The church was so ornate and embellished with paintings that Pat says mostly featured saints being put to death in various interesting ways. I did find them quite beautiful.

" When the Medici pope called in his chosen architect, Michelangelo, both of these aging Renaissance men wanted to honor the architectural wonders of the past by converting a monument of pagan hedonism into a religious masterpiece.

The unprepossessing facade is a rounded brick wall, one of the interior partitions of Diocletian's ancient Bath.

The church's entrance originally separated the now-vanished hot "caldarium" baths from the luke-warm "tepidarium" of Diocletianâ€™s Bath, which is now the church's vestibule.
Next comes the finest statue in the church, representing St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusian order, by the 18C French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.
You then enter the ancient Bath's central hall. The altar is straight ahead on the short axis of the nave, while the overwhelming bulk of the original baths runs in both directions toward the altars on either side, lavishly decorated by Vanvitelli.
The effect of this crossing at the center is breathtaking for its vast size and elegant proportions.

Italian state funerals are usually held here. During the Christmas and Easter seasons there are concerts of religious music. - Roma Online

Slave numbers uncertain in the Roman Empire

2005-03-11T16:04:00.000-08:00

Slave medallion, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

This is the first artifact of Roman slavery I had ever seen. Although it is acknowledged that Roman society depended heavily on slave labor, the numbers of slaves at any one time within Rome itself can only be estimated.

"Though slavery was a prevailing feature of all Mediterranean countries in antiquity, the Romans had more slaves and depended more on them than any other people.

It is impossible, however, to put an accurate figure on the number of slaves owned by the Romans at any given period: for the early Empire with which we are concerned conditions varied from time to time and from place to place. Yet, some estimates for Rome, Italy, and the Empire are worth attempting. The largest numbers were of course in Italy and especially in the capital itself. In Rome there were great numbers in the imperial household and in the civil service - the normal staff on the aqueducts alone numbered 700 (Frontin. Aq. 116-7). Certain rich private individuals too had large numbers - as much for ostentation as for work (Sen. Ep.110.17). Pedanius Secundus, City Prefect in AD 61, kept 400 slaves (Tac. Ann. 14.43.4), Gaius Caecilius Isidorus, freedman of Gaius Caecilius, left 4116 in his will in 8 BC, while some owners had so many that a nomenclator had to be used to identify them (Pliny HN 33.135; 33.26). However, there is evidence to suggest that these cases were not typical - even for great houses. Sepulchral inscriptions for the rich noble gens the Statilii list a total of approximately 428 slaves and freedpersons from 40 BC to AD 65. When these figures are analysed, the number of slaves and freedpersons definitely owned by individual members of the gens is small, e.g. Statilius Taurus Sisenna (consul of AD 16) and his son had six, Statilius Taurus Corvinus (consul ordinarius of AD 45) had eight, and Statilia Messalina, wife of Nero, four or five. Seneca, a man of extraordinary wealth, believed he was travelling frugally when he had with him one cartload of slaves (most likely four or five) (Ep 87.2). References in Juvenal and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae suggest that many non-plebeian Romans had either no slave or merely one or two (Sat. 3.286; 9.64-67,142-7; S.H.A. Hadr.17.6). From evidence such as this Westermann, Hopkins and others are understandably cautious when attempting to come to a total figure for slaves in the city of Rome in the 1st century AD. Hopkins' estimate of 300,000-350,000 out of a population of about 900,000-950,000 at the time of Augustus seems plausible." - John Madden, Slavery in the Roman Empire Numbers and Origins

Unique animal head sculpture in the garden of the Baths of Diocletian

2005-03-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

Unique animal head sculpture in the garden of the Baths of Diocletian, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Large stone animal heads protruding from square-cut shrubs in the garden at the Baths of Diocletian were quite interesting and made some unusual framing material for some scenic photos. Some of the animals depicted such as the elephant and the rhinocerous were favorite performers in staged beast hunts held in amphitheaters around the Empire.

Mithrasism was adopted by many Roman legionaries

2005-03-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

Frieze from a Mithraeum, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

I was particularly interested in several exhibits of art recovered from Mithraeums throughout the Roman Empire.

"The Roman army first encountered the cult of Mithras in Persia (modern Iran) during the reign of the emperor Nero although its origins in India have been traced back to 1400 BC. One of the many mystery cults that the Romans introduced from the east, Mithraism first appealed to slaves and freedmen but with Mithras's title Invictus, the cult's emphasis on truth, honour and courage, and its demand for discipline soon led to Mithras becoming a god of soldiers and traders.

Various stories survive to account for Mithras's birth. Often he is depicted springing from the living rock or from a tree; at Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall, however, there was a tradition that he was born from the Cosmic Egg.

Mithras's early life was one of hardship and painful triumph. Finally,he captured the primaeval bull and, after dragging it back to his cave, killed the animal in order to release its life force for the benefit of humanity: from the bull's body grew useful plants and herbs, from its blood came the vine, and from its semen all useful animals." - The Museum of Antiquities Online

This bull slaying scene - known as a tauroctony is found in virtually all Mithrae.

Renaissance Monk

2005-03-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

Renaissance Monk, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

In the Diocletian wing of the National Museum we found this wonderful painting of a Carmelite monk. I tried to find out more about it but found only references to a Florentine painter named Fra Filippo Lippi. I don't know whether it is his work or not. The hazard of taking hundreds of photos in such a short time without taking notes.

Roman sarcophagus lid

2005-03-11T14:52:00.000-08:00

Roman sarcophagus lid, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

In the courtyard, we found an extensive collection of funerary monuments and sarcophagi. I found this sarcophagus lid especially poignant with a reclining man lovingly cradling a bust of his wife.

"In your place I have only your image as solace; this we cherish with reverence and lavish with flowers. When I come with you, it follows in attendance. But to whom in my visiting can I trust a thing so venerable? If there ever is anyone to whom I can entrust it, I shall be fortunate in this alone now that I have lost you. But-woe is me-you have won the contest-my fate and yours are the same." - Allia Potestas, late 3rd-4th cent. C.E.

My first visit to Rome Day 2: The Baths of Diocletian

2005-03-11T14:37:00.000-08:00

Diocletion Baths Fresco 1, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Our first stop on our second day in Rome was the Baths of Diocletian.

"Almost a century after Caracalla gave Romans his gargantuan Baths, Emperor Diocletian, who never even visited Rome, strove to outshine his imperial predecessor by commissioning the largest and most gorgeous bathing establishment the world had ever seen.

It could accommodate 3000 bathers simultaneously, about twice as many as the Baths of Caracalla, covered 13 hectares (32 acres) and had the full panoply of changing rooms, gymnasiums, libraries, meeting rooms, theaters, concert halls, sculpture gardens, vast basins for hot, lukewarm and cold plunges, as well as mosaic floors and marble facades. Today's luxurious spas and health resorts are but pale copies of the Baths of Diocletian.

Fragments of the Baths' core were incorporated into the Renaissance Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli by Michelangelo and now form part of the Museo Nazionale Romano.

The Baths were built of brick that was faced on the inside with marble and on the outside with white stucco imitating blocks of white marble, like the Baths of Caracalla. The enormous central hall, 280 by 160 yards, is an engineering wonder that was the model for the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum." - Roma Online

My first visit to Rome Day 1 Part 8

2005-03-10T16:11:00.000-08:00

Gaius Julius Caesar 1, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

We continued down the street and Pat photographed me with the statue of Julius Caesar. My reawakened interest in Rome is a direct result of reading Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series of novels. Her literary portrait of Julius Caesar stirred my admiration and kindled my desire to learn all that I could about this fascinating culture that has had such a significant influence on my own.

I also photographed statues of the emperors Nerva and Augustus. We were about ready to drop so we caught the Metro at the Colosseum back to Manzoni station then walked from there back to the hotel with one side trip to a wonderful little sandwich shop where we grabbed a couple of delicious panini sandwiches for supper (we had shot our wad for dinner at the cafe near the Colosseum but it was certainly worth it!)

My first visit to Rome Day 1 Part 7

2005-03-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

Trajans Column relief detail, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Trajan's column is just a short walk from the Victor Emanuel Monument. Although it presently has scaffolding around the base I was still able to get some great shots of the sculptured images with my 12X zoom lens. The difficult part is trying to remember where you are on the monument to take the next successive photograph.

I had been anxious to see Trajan's column ever since I attended a lecture on Trajan and the Dacian Wars. I was certainly not disappointed. This is a period of Roman history I hope to learn more about and it is exciting to see the events depicted in so much detail on the column shaft.

Carved from 20 blocks of Carrara marble, the column stands over 30 meters high.

"The upper parts of the Column were designed to be seen not from the ground level but from the galleries of the buildings which originally stood around it. A statue of the emperor himself once stood on the summit; the present statue of St Peter dates only from 1588. The base of the Column is a massive cube containing a number of small rooms, the innermost of which was Trajan's tomb chamber. Cremation was still the customary rite among high-ranking Romans during this period. Two holes drilled in the rear wall of the room may have been intended to hold the funerary urns of Trajan and his wife Plotina."

My first visit to Rome Day 1 Part 6

2005-03-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

Victor Emanuel Monument, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

The Victor Emanuel monument was spectacular with beautiful statues and fountains. Built between 1885 and 1911, the monument was dedicated to the memory of King Victor Emanuel, II of Savoia who achieved the unification of Italy in 1870 with Rome as its capital. The monument is also the site of the tomb of the Unknown Italian Soldier of World War I. Originally designed by Giuseppe Sacconi, the structure includes two allegorical groups in bronze gilt, representing Thought and Action and two fountains representing the the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas. The construction of the monument was controversial because a number of ancient Roman ruins and medieval churches were demolished to make room for the structure. Some art historians have also complained about the degree of ornamentation used on the building. However, I found it rather breathtaking myself although I am particuarly partial to elaborate historical motifs.

My first visit to Rome Day 1 Part 5

2005-03-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

Marcus Aurelius Closeup, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

We then walked over to the Campodiglio and I photographed all the sculptures including the Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue.

"A few years after he arrived in Rome, Pope Paul III (Farnese) decided to reshape the Capitoline Hill into a monumental civic piazza; Michelangelo designed the project and his Piazza del Campidoglio is one of the most significant contributions ever made in the history of urban planning. The hill's importance as a sacred site in antiquity had been largely forgotten due to its medieval transformation into the seat of the secular government and headquarters for the Roman guilds, and it was in forlorn condition when Michelangelo took charge of reorganizing it as a dynamic new center of Roman political life. The project went forward in slow stages with many interruptions; little was built before his death in 1564. It was begun in 1538 and was not completed until the seventeenth century, but Michelangelo's original design is preserved in engravings from the 1560s by Ãˆtienne DupÃ¨rac."

â€”Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. p313-14.

Apparently the Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue, formerly in the Lateran square, was moved to the Capitoline in 1538 but was not originally considered by Michelangelo as decoration for the square.

A sad end to a great man

2005-03-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

Julius Caesar's Funeral Pyre, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

When we stopped at Caesar's temple, we were amazed to see that the silk roses my friend Pat left there two years ago were still there and still lovely. We have some purple roses tied with consul's purple ribbon that we will leave at the temple on the Ides. Pat also brought another bouquet to leave at his statue.

Home of the Eternal City's Eternal Flame

2005-03-10T15:45:00.000-08:00

Temple of Vesta, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

"Containing the sacred fire and the Palladium, an effigy of Athene (Minerva) believed to have been brought by Aeneas from Troy, this ancient temple was built in imitation of a primitive round hut, its hearth fire symbolizing the perpetuity of the Roman State. It was not a true temple in that its space was not inaugurated, nor did it contain an image of Vesta, the goddess of the household hearth. As the handmaidens of Vesta, the principal duty of the six Vestals was never to allow the flame to be extinguished, an arduous task in a building with a vent in the roof. There also was danger that the temple, itself, might catch fire, which it sometimes did. It was destroyed in the fire of Nero in AD 64, which reached this point of the Forum. The last time it burned, in AD 191, the temple was restored by Julia Domna, the wife of Severus. Once a year, on June 15, the ashes of the tended fire were ritually thrown into the Tiber.

Completely stripped of its marble in the mid-sixteenth century, a section of the temple was reconstructed in 1930." - Encyclopedia Romana, University of California at San Francisco.

The Curia or Senate Chamber was frequent target of political unrest

2005-03-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

Reconstruction of the Curia or Senate Chamber, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

The Curia was the meeting place of the Senate. The original Curia was built by the third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius. It burnt down four times, first in 80 B.C. Diocletian built the current structure shortly after the devastating fire of 283 C.E. on the site of an earlier curia begun by Julius Caesar and completed by Octavianus (Augustus) in 29 B.C.E. The lower half of the building was once faced with marble, the upper half with stucco. The holes in the facade once supported the chalcidicum - a portico built by Augustus to house the senate's vast collection of records. The Curia could seat up to 200 senators.

Forgive and Forget

2005-03-10T15:43:00.000-08:00

Temple of Antonius and Faustina, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Although it was said that Faustina, the Emperor Antonius' wife was serially unfaithful, he nonetheless dedicated this temple to her in 141 C.E. After his death, it was rededicated to them both. In the 11th century the temple was converted to a church named San Lorenzo because it was thought that San Lorenzo had been condemned to death there. The church was later rebuilt in 1601.

Indentification of Temple of Divus Romulus still debated

2005-03-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

Temple of Divus Romulus, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

One of the few structures relatively still intact in the Forum is the Temple of Divus Romulus. Although one might think this is a shrine to one of the founders of Rome it is actually said to have been built to honor the son of Maxentius, who died in 307 C.E. Scholars are not in agreement on this, however.

The massive bronze door is quite impressive and the flanking columns are carved from porphyry, a purple stone mined in north Africa.

My first visit to Rome Day 1 part 4

2005-03-10T15:41:00.000-08:00

Forum Romanum, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

I could hardly get over my amazement at actually being in the Roman Forum in person after reading so much about all of the famous people of history who have been there before me!

"Originally the area of the Forum was wet and covered in grass, as it was not suitable for building. A necropolis has been found, dating from the 10th century BCE, but otherwise the area doesn't seem to have been used. This changed in the 7th century with the construction of the Cloaca Maxima. This sewer system, which was enclosed and covered to drain the areawas based on a natural stream, was a sign that the settlements on the Palatine Hill was spreading into the valley." - Rome-Italy.org.uk.

A stroll down the Sacred Way

2005-03-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

Via Sacra, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

We walked down the Via Sacra to the Forum Romanum. Roman roads are actually rather difficult for a pedestrian to walk upon. There is a narrow strip of small paving stones to the left of the larger Roman paving stones that I used because they were far more comfortable to tread. I think, however, they were a later addition.

Constantine raided monuments to Trajan and Hadrian to build triumphal arch

2005-03-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

Frieze on the Arch of Constantine 1, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Since so much of the remains of ancient Rome had been stripped of their marble and original ornamentation, I was pleasantly surprised to find the Arch of Constantine in such good condition. The friezes were wonderfully detailed and I took quite a few detail photos of all of the ornamentation. I learned, however, that Constantine, himself, raided the monuments of Trajan and Hadrian to construct this triumphal arch erected to commemorate his victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 315 C.E.

Modern Reenactors work the crowds at the Colosseum

2005-03-10T15:25:00.000-08:00

Friends Romans Countrymen, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

Although I didn't get to see any gladiators in costume near the Colosseum, I did see this fellow dressed in legionary regalia. These "professional" Roman soldiers and a fellow dressed as a Roman senator lure tourists over for a rather expensive photo session (I was told it was something like 35 EUR). I took this clandestine shot with my 12X zoom lens.

We had a wonderful lunch at a sidewalk cafe across the street from the Colosseum. I had an absolutely delicious tortellini with sweet cream sauce that was exquisite and Pat had a creamy spaghetti carbonara which we topped off with real Italian tiramisu.

Plays are occasionally staged on the rebuilt arena floor of the Colosseum

2005-03-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

Plays are occasionally staged on the rebuilt arena floor of the Colosseum, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

At the Colosseum I spent quite a bit of time photographing the hypocaust, the area beneath the wooden arena floor, where there was a complex set of rooms and passageways for wild beasts and other provisions for staging the spectacles. A portion of the floor has now been rebuilt and occasionally plays are presented to modern audiences.

My first visit to Rome Day 1

2005-03-10T15:18:00.000-08:00

Colosseum as seen from the Domus Aurea, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

I arrived in Rome today and my friend Pat Hunter and I have already walked our legs off! Although I had flown for almost 20 hours, I was too excited to rest so we headed out for some site seeing right away. Of course I wanted to see the Colosseum first. There is a park across the street from the Colosseum where the remains of the Domus Aurea (Nero's Golden House) is located. We were told the next presentation would not be held for another hour and forty minutes so we strolled through the park over to the Colosseum.

"The Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheater was begun by Vespasian, inaugurated by Titus in 80 A.D. and completed by Domitian. Located on marshy land between the Esquiline and Caelian Hills, it was the first permanent amphitheater to be built in Rome." - Great Buildings Online

I liked taking this photo of the Colosseum because you don't see the traffic in front of it from this viewpoint. I also wanted to capture images of the emperor's box and the gladiators' gate.

The price of admission includes a multimedia show projected on hanging panels of fabric inside the Colosseum's passageways. I wish I could have seen a battle reenactment.

Great Blacks In Wax Museum

2005-03-04T14:56:00.000-08:00

Booker T Washington, originally uploaded by mharrsch.

I am always a fan of wax museums and when I read about the "Great Blacks In Wax" Museum in Baltimore I had to include it in my schedule when I attended a conference there in October 2004. I found the visit very interesting since my knowledge of famous African-Americans was pretty much limited to George Washington Carver, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King.

Although some of the older figures are basically costumed manniquins, the newer figures are quality wax sculptures equal to those I have seen at Madame Tussaud's in Las Vegas. I don't necessarily agree with the depiction of Hannibal as a black African (he was descended from a Phoenician noble family that colonized Carthage) or Imhotep as black (his image is depicted in ancient Egyptian murals as having a red complexion not the black of a Nubian). There were Nubian pharaohs that are documented in Egyptian history and I would have preferred an exhibit of them with a model of one of their distinctive silver sarcophagi. However, I found much of the information presented fascinating and well worth the visit. The museum also features a well stocked gift shop where I picked up a beautifully illustrated book about Addy, the black "American Girl" from Mattel's doll series, and some excellent videos about ancient civilizations.

See more images of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum

Dariush Grand Hotel, Kish Island, Iran

2005-02-22T14:17:00.000-08:00

Dariush Grand Hotel, Kish Island, originally uploaded by Mahdi Ayat's iRAN Project.

I saw this beautiful picture while browsing the images tagged 'ancient' up at Flickr.com. I have been to a number of the "themed" hotels in Las Vegas including the Luxor, the Venetian, and Caesar's Palace but none of them hold a candle to this spectacular wonder of the modern world. I only wish our government would make a serious effort to normalize relations with Iran so those of us who enjoy learning about the country and it's fascinating history could visit and enjoy a setting as marvelous as this!