Jewel of the Renaissance

Firenze gets it just right.

Rome has the remains of a mighty ancient empire and is the seat of the wealthy Vatican and in that, it exudes a certain arrogance. To the traveller, Rome is a disjointed set of landmarks and artifacts lacking a sense of belonging to the city. The ancient ruins, wondrous churches and sublime carvings are all just slaves to the money minting machine that is Rome, stiflingly thrust upon the traveller in an attempt to subdue him into awe. For good or for ill, the old world remains, but Rome has moved on. 

And on the other hand is Naples, which in its attempt to maintain the ancient Roman and medieval Italian roots has forgotten to wake up from centuries old slumber. Loose cobblestones on roads well worn with over centuries of use, garbage littering the streets and mold encrusted walls fill the historic part of this port city. While indeed beautiful, one gets the feeling that the city has taken a step backward in time since when it was first constructed. 

Florence gets the balance just right! 

From the moment you step out of the train in sight of the Basilica Santa Maria Novella, through the winding roads that take you past the Uffizi, Vecchio and Duomo, Florence enthralls you with the beauty of the Renaissance. It is old and it is new, in a way that is hard to describe. Like the feelings from five centuries past are somehow magically transported to blend in with the modern world. It is still a tourist haven, but unlike Rome, it hasn't lost control. That is what Renaissance is as a concept - a love of art. And Florence has that in abundance. There is a certainty that the city cherishes its ancient marble residents, many of whom still stand where they were first stood. No, these are definitely not slaves to attract tourists. 

The city stands now as you would imagine it once did when the Medicis walked the streets. Would not the bottegas on Ponte Vecchio still have sold trinkets and fine clothing back then as they do now, visited by the fashionistas of the day? Yes, one can imagine that music would have played in the street corners entertaining passersby on pleasant summer evenings. The streets would have been filled with tourists as they are today, people who had come to witness with their own eyes the marvels that they have heard so much about. A lot has changed in the past six hundred years, but the spirit remains. 

And what a wonderful experience it is for a traveller to walk through these streets. To come by chance upon the Piazza della Signora, where Florence seems to have decided that it has too many precious works of art and that some of them can just be tossed out for the public to soak in without any museum fees. If ever we need giants to defend us from Godzillas and Kaijus, let us just wake them up from frozen slumber. Each one of them looks just about ready to jump off the pedestal and walk to battle. Hercules and David guard the doors of the Palazzo Vecchio, but Cellini's Perseus steals the show in this star studded crowd as he stares down in disgust at the headless body of Medusa. Michelangelo's David is impressive here, but one look at the original in the Accademia is sufficient to make you feel that Goliath never stood a chance. 

And speaking of goliaths, the massive cathedral in red, white and green - Santa Maria del Fiore looms over the city, far taller than any buildings around it. It is near impossible to describe the feelings upon seeing the near three dimensional bronze reliefs of Ghiberti on the doors of the baptistry, or the innumerable museums with arguably the greatest art in the world, or seeing the memorials inside the Basilica di Santa Croce honouring some of Italy's greatest sons buried beneath it. It is great walking through the city which fostered the many of the greatest artists in the world. In its glory days, Florence was patron to the glorious quartet of Donatello, da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. It was home to Dante, Machiavelli, Brunelleschi and Vasari. The list is too long to detail here. 

But as I walked through the streets, I started to wonder why we stopped. When did we stop making such soulful pieces of art? Why do we not still cherish people who use their hands to do things that another cannot repeat? Why have we shifted all our efforts on making identical plastic toys that everyone wants to own? Can you imagine Donatello and Michelangelo competing by alternately making their sculptures one inch longer or few kilos lighter? I am as big an atheist as any other, but through this trip I started to wonder if I was seeing possibly the only good thing to come out of religion. David is more than a statue of some man. It is a character with feelings, about to perform an action that would shape the world. And this emotion and story goes along with the sight of the sculpture. Religion provided the character mythos, the money purses, and to the artists, a certain desire to impress. 

If someone has a chance to go to only one city in Italy, skip Naples, Venice and Rome. Go visit Florence. Because Florence gets it just right. 

Napoli Sotterranea

It is said that Naples was founded by the sirens, whose songs lured sailors to their death, in fact the very ones whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped. It is also said that outside this city in the Phlegrean Fields is where he outwitted the one-eyed cyclops. This is the city with the legend of Niccolo Pesce who was said have webbed hands and feet, so adept he was in the sea. And there is Pulcinella, the masked prankster of Neapolitan lore whose figurines hang from hundreds of stores around the city. But all these characters and tales of fantasy aside, Naples holds in its belly, a little known passageway that lets you travel back by more than two thousand years.

About fifty meters under Naples lies a labyrinth of man-made tunnels and caves, long and vast, almost a small city underneath Naples above. In places, they are three times the height of man and many times as wide. And these have a history that would hold the interest of both the engineer and the historian, a realist and an escapist alike. These tunnels were at first aqueducts, and then subsequently stone quarries, sewers, landfills and bomb shelters. And thankfully for me, presently they are used as as a little known tourist attraction.

More than four hundred years before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Greek settlers in the area that is now Napoli decided to cave out these aqueducts under the ground, both to collect rainwater in cisterns and to bring water from afar. And this ancient engineering wonder begins here. Leave aside the immense labour that would have gone into excavating the tunnels. The rocks of the ground, and thus the walls of the cave are made of a porous volcanic stone "Tuff". And to keep the walls from absorbing water, the walls were covered in a water-proof plaster that is in places intact to this day.  Wells extended down to the cisterns, which were the source of potable water for the entire city for many many centuries.They also had the foresight to construct access wells for maintenance crew to descend and sidewalls for them to stand on while they cleaned the debris from the water.

As time passed, in the late middle ages from 1200-1500 A.D., these caves served another purpose when a ban was imposed on importing construction material into the city. They provided the stone needed for construction of the city above it. The surprising thing is the fact that to construct the city above, one would quarry stone from right beneath their feet. Sounds like hacking off the tree branch you are sitting on, and yet despite this hollow foundation, the city seems to have stood the test of time. The stone was quarried using a procedure I have often read about and yet one that never ceases to amaze me in its simplicity. Wooden spikes were driven along grains in the rock and were wetted with water. The wood expanded and the rock split along these fault lines making it easy to quarry them in large chunks to suit construction needs. The stone was then lifted out through chutes running up to the surface. Around the 1800s or so, unfortunately there was a spread of Cholera in the city and infected waters from the sewers seeped in through the porous stone, contaminating the water. And so finally, after 2000 years, the water system was finally abandoned. The dark caverns lay ignored until darker times called once more for their need.

It was the early years of the 1940s when bombs rained in from the skies, the people were forced to seek shelter beneath the ground. For the city that had the unfortunate reputation of being the most bombed in Italy, the ancient Greeks came to rescue. The Sotterranea were turned into bomb shelters. Most of the access wells were closed with just a few left open for air, fingers crossed in the hope that a bomb wouldn't fall through it. The depth beneath the ground forced the elderly, the children and all those who could not descend quickly in emergencies to convert the tunnels into temporary living quarters. Tonnes of cooking utensils and children's toys from the time were recovered in recent excavations. But people inside survived, even as a church above was razed to the ground. And in years to pass, with the horrors of war forgotten, the Sotterranea were turned into landfill sites for waste from construction activities.

Climbing up a level, yet beneath modern ground, one comes to the old Roman buildings. A theater in fact. And bizzarely, the sections of the building are used today as basements and wine cellars by the more modern  (and yet still pretty old) buildings constructed on top of them. Knocking on someone's door and descending the stairs into their cellar, one descends into Roman history, replete with the walls of the era. With a constant threat of war over centuries, in the quest to keep all construction within the city walls, Naples rose vertically building over older structures. They did not then know that in centuries time, these old structures would be searched for eagerly by glassy eyed people known as archaeologists.

And the ancient interest in engineering is once again revealed in these walls, which are constructed with a crisscross of horizontally lined bricks and diamond shaped stones. The pattern, I was told, was earthquake resistant, and succeeded in distributing the stress from shocks, so as not to crack. While I do not know of its accuracy, it's hard to argue when you see the behemoth Colosseum still standing while modern buildings tumble within a decade.

Fortunately the tunnels were cleared in the 1980s and turned into a semi-museum which it remains to date. But in the beginning, I told you it was a site to interest the realist and escapist alike and have yet to narrate the most curious facet of these caves. Being deep beneath the ground, and being so vast and probably specific to the climate of the region, the temperature inside the caves remains at a pleasant 15-20 °C, regardless of the weather outside. And the humidity is always high, near 90%. It does not matter in there if it is a boiling 35 °C as it was on the day of my visit or nearing zero as it is in winters. This combination gave rise to an interesting experiment. It was demonstrated that plants can survive in here with no need of being watered as long as there is light, for they absorb water from the humidity in the air. Potted plants illuminated by UV lamps survived for months untouched by human hand. And this raised a question in my mind. Could there not be more life as we go deeper? Might not the fantastic subterranean world of Jules Verne be then real? :) 

Le Lourve

Paris! How does one start describing this city? Maybe some day I will scrounge up the courage needed to explain this city to you readers, but not yet. Not when I have spent but a scant two days in it. But on one of these two days, I walked into a building and the moment I set foot within its walls, I knew what I was going to write about. The Musée du Louvre. Or well, a part of it. You'll soon see. A massive fort and palace built on the banks of the Seine, Palais du Louvre was the seat of the French royalty and government till it was moved to Versailles by Louis XIV in 1648. Construction began in the 16th century and it was constantly expanded well into the 19th century. But the dates and times are minor details. Though I recount them now, I really paid them little or no attention while I was gazing around at the magnificence that surrounded me. For a few hours that day I had forgotten about history. Did it really matter if the statue of Augustus was carved while he was alive or after he passed away? Did it matter if the rooms with the exquisite murals on the ceilings belonged to Anne of Austria or of Mary, Queen of Scots? Or if the Winged Victory of Samothrace was Greek or Etruscan? For those few hours, as soulful eyes gazed at me from white marble and coloured canvas, the answer was no. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me walk you through from the beginning, for there is plenty to talk about of the outside too. Hope you've had your breakfast because this is a long one. And as I finish the article, I am coming back here to apologize in advance for the overly sentimental nature I adopt in this presentation. I hope, if I have done this right, by the end of the page you will understand the reasons that made me so. 

The best way to get the Louvre is over the bridge, Pont des Arts, with the morning light glinting off the thousands of brass "love padlocks" covered in droplets from the night's rain. A short tunnel like arch leads you into a vast open square surrounded by high walls on all four sides. On that chilly morning under the cover of clouds, as I stood in the center of the courtyard beside the fountain that spouted clear water high into the air, there was a certain sense of tranquility. I was amazed by the size and beauty of the four pairs of stone women carved high up on the facade, looking out at their lovely city and with the bearded old men and the sword bearing soldier at their sides. Innumerable carved men and women peaked out at me from the niches in the walls, each one with their own individual personality. I spent a good half hour walking around the courtyard noticing the smaller details, but then it was time to join the ant like tourists brushing past me, scarcely looking up at this lovely courtyard because they had an planned agenda to follow. So I followed them under a second arch, to another courtyard spanned on either side by newer wings of the fort and was greeted with a more popular sight - the glass pyramids.

The queue was a mile long and I stood in it for an hour. And yet, there was little reason to complain as the slow march took me around this second courtyard, allowing me to observe closely at the numerous statues that lined the terraces. Names sprung up from childhood readings. Mathematicians and scientists Lavosier, L'Hôpital and Descartes looked down at me, and I could feel their accusing glances for all the times that I had erred with their life's work. There stood Richelieu in a regal stance, Mazarin with a tired countenance and Voltaire with an impish smile. And it was not only the people in stone that kept me amused but even the ones still alive. The short man in Peter Pan's green tights posing for the finger pressing down the pyramid photo, the girl in pink crouching down awkwardly posing for the pyramid on the palm, the two fat kids trying desperately to jump in time with their thinner counterparts - the cliches were out in full force. I had the constant chatter in the varied tongues of the tourists to keep me company, reminding me of all the places I still want to visit. And finally as the hour passed, I entered the pyramid descending into the lower levels of the Louvre.


After a quick dash to purchase a ticket and rent a recorded audio guide, I was ready to begin. I chose one of the three wings at random and entered, having decided to cover the rooms in systematic order so as not to miss anything. And in less than 15 minutes, I was completely lost. Even with a GPS installed audio-guide in my hand. The vastness of the place is beyond imagination. The interconnects between the various rooms, the multiple staircases connecting the various floors and the pathways running between the various wings all formed a maze so intricate that in half an hour, I had entered a whole other wing of the museum and not known it. But I did not care.

I passed by a section on Greek and Etruscan antiquities displaying the usual pots and pans of the ancient civilizations. I browsed through the room on Islamic art. And then I ran into a broad torso of a muscular man that seemed to be guarding entry to the stairs behind him. And those stairs led up to some of the most exquisite chambers I have ever seen. Relief sculptures of men, women and children draped in plated gold lined the edges where the walls joined the ceiling. A pattern of gold bordered the ceiling, leading the eye to its center, which was covered in massive murals. My neck strained from looking up as I walked along these rooms trying to take in the imagery from these paintings. It would have been nice to have a bed that I could lie on and look up, but I guess for such luxuries  you have to be a queen.

Looking up was not enough though. The rooms were also full of sculptures on display - freestanding and reliefs, busts and full bodied, clothed and naked, human and animal. Augustus, Hadrian, Caligula, Claudius... the list of personalities depicted in this room alone was staggering. The audioguide talked into my ear providing quite interesting pieces of information like how the subject of the sculpture is identified to be Augustus by the pincer and fork arrangement of his hair, how the age of Hadrian's bust was estimated by the remains of paint in the pupils of the eyes. Most of these were from the old Greek and Roman eras carved over 2000 years ago. Yet they could have been carved the previous day, such was the state of their preservation.

I was in those chambers for a long time. But I had recently spent 600 pages of paper and 80 years of life alongside Michelangelo and so I was dying to get to the sculptures from the Italian Renaissance. After a break for a slice of expensive pizza and a coffee, I charted out the required route on my guide. As I write this, I realize that there are no words to describe the pieces of art I saw in those rooms that day. The best I can do is show you their photographs, while recognizing the irony of capturing these three dimensional artworks on flat pictures. To be honest, as impressive as I found Michelangelo's Captives to be, they were possibly overshadowed by the many others beside them. But then I also knew that these two sculptures of his were left unfinished, part of the ill-fated tomb of Pope Julius II. There were numerous others pieces of shining marble - many many more which I am too ignorant to name. A cupid and psyche locked in passionate embrace, a virgin and child, an angel about to take flight, a delicate face hidden under a veil of marble, ... the list is endless. I took in my fill of these wonderful sights. I wanted to stay forever in this museum and at the same time leave. I could not digest any more and my feet were turning to rubber. I decided to head up to see the Mona Lisa and leave.

Following the numerous signposts directing the crowd towards the one painting they had all come to see, I reached the painting galleries. I walked by not daring to linger long for fear that I might wish to stay. I came to the Mona Lisa with a thick crowd around it. It was a dulled painting of an average subject, more like a celebrity than a talented artiste. Perhaps to art connoisseurs it means a lot. The audio commentary kept telling me how the background with its aerial view was the first of its kind, how the smile was probably da Vinci's clever wordplay with the lady's surname - la Gioconda, how the pose is natural and relaxed and how the angle is an invitation into the painting. And yet, probably because I was tired, or because I was too thick in the head to understand, I did not get the hype behind the painting. I turned to leave after the customary photograph, when  the painting on the opposite wall caught my eye. I say caught my eye, but in reality it was four times the height of man, so it was hard to miss. The Wedding Feast at Cana painted by Veronèse, describing the biblical scene where Christ turned the water into wine. It was a massive painting with amazing detail. Christ beside his mother Mary, flanked on the left by monks and on the right by nobility.

I circled the room to see another exquisite picture of Paradise, painted as circular stages. The voice in my ear told me that it, and other similar paintings, were all based on Dante's concept from Divine Comedy. I had seen such paintings but had never made the connection, nor realized that the imagery of Paradise and Hell were completely reinvented for artists by Dante. I tore my gaze away and legged it towards the exit. But the museum was not done enthralling me.

On the way to my destination, I came across another room of sculptures. On high pedestals stood marvelous figures of white marble, more human than the ones walking underneath. I am unsure what it was about them that moved me so much - their gigantic size, the light reflecting off the polished white stone, the regal poses in which they were carved or just the sight of the sheer collection as a whole.  And as I stood in their midst, I started laughing silently. I did not know if people passing me thought me mad. But I wasn't bothered. I realized that the same passion that caused all the troubles of the world were also in some form responsible for these works of art. It's a passion that springs from the inside, something that these best of men managed to capture in pieces of stone. I am not particularly pessimistic about humanity's future, yet my heart filled with hope at man's genius and ability. But I had also realized that it was a place that is best seen alone. It makes you think and it makes you feel. Thoughts and feelings that can only come from the inside and anyone else's words would only be a disturbance.

I walked out of the museum content. And yet not so. What I report above are but nail clippings to the entire body of work contained within those walls. In six or so hours I had managed to see less than a third. Among all the artworks on display there, probably one just as great was the museum itself. The Louvre palace was itself beautiful and the artwork as a collection just made the place special. As I stepped out the gate, I knew I would be returning. À bientôt Louvre. See you soon!

And that is the end of my journey, and here I leave you with the rest of the photographs I captured. Just click on the link below. 

Flick page with other photos from the Louvre (will be updated with future visits to the museum)

Updated: Here is a wonderful documentary by historian-writer Andrew Hussey titled "Treasures of the Louvre". It describes beautifully the growth of the Louvre, and its collections, alongside the tumultuous history of France. Indeed as the presenter says - the history of the Louvre is the history of Paris. 

Bordeaux

    I first heard the name Bordeaux as a kid, long before I came to France, as a shade of red ink so named for its similarity to the colour of the famous red wines of the region. As I walked through the streets on the first afternoon, sheltered under my umbrella with rain pummeling down all around me, the empty slippery streets littered with piles of garbage and the damp walls of brick and stone gave me a feeling that the city had not yet rid itself of the nickname "La Belle Endormie", Sleeping Beauty. The city had earned the backhanded compliment for the mold and the black soot of pollution that covered the walls and veiled the beauty of the carved facades that decorate almost every building in the old town. But the next morning, as the sun slipped out of the clouds, the city seemed to wake up and shrug off that moniker. The rows of white walls shimmered in the morning sun, the cobble-stoned streets clicked with their distinctive sound under the feet of the morning walkers and the air buzzed with the noise from the local market, Capucin, which served the gastronomic with fresh produce and meat. Around 15 years ago, the city council took firm actions to revive the city. Streets and walls were bleached white, with citizens being taxed or fined to spruce up their house facades. With tramways set up, cycle lanes marked, and the signs 'ma ville' plastered all over town to bolster local pride, the newer eco-friendly Bordeaux soon took on a new title- "La perle d'Aquitaine", the pearl of Aquitaine. 
    

(image from wiki)

One of the bigger cities of France, situated on the banks of the river Garonne,  Bordeaux derives its name from an ancient Celtic tribe that inhabited the region around 300 B.C. The port city is the state capital of Aquitaine. Like most other regions of Europe, the history of Bordeaux has an imprint marked by ancient Rome. 107 B.C. saw the Battle of Burdigala, where a group of Germanic tribes gained victory over the Roman legions in an ambush, inspiring similar uprisings in other areas of Gaul. Bordeaux (or as it was known at the time, Burdigala) finally fell under the Roman rule in 60 B.C. and became the capital of Gallia Aquitania, one of the regional provinces of Rome occupied France. Remains of a Roman amphitheater dating to the 3rd century can still be found in Palais Gallien (pictured). Throughout the first millenium, Bordeaux saw invasions and plundering by Vandals, the Visigoths (who are the Goths from the west but live in the east in relation to the Gauls), the Adalusian Moors and the Vikings.

    The marriage of the Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine in the 12th century to Henry, Duke of Normandy, the soon-to-be king of England raised the importance of Aquitaine region, and with it, of Bordeaux. Perhaps as a result, for the majority of the hundred years war, until 1453, Bordeaux remained under English control. I was particularly thankful for this little piece of history, because the heritage has carried on to make Bordeaux more favourable towards the English language. In four days in the city, I met about ten people able to speak good English, about eight more than I have come across in Poitiers. Not to mention the multitude of English/Irish pubs with names like 'The Charles Dickens, 'The Sherlock Holmes' and 'The Frog and the Rosbif'. 
    

    The city is littered with 'portes' or gateways built in the following centuries, and while to my untrained eye they did not stand out as very dissimilar from one another, each gateway was accompanied by its own tiny piece of historical nugget. Porte Dijeaux was constructed at a location where a temple to Jupiter stood in the Roman era (hence the derivative of the name di-Jou), Porte de Grosse Cloche was the city's bell tower, ringing to signal public ceremonies and warnings and Porte Cailhau (pictured left) which stands along the river quay was the main entry to the city, built in 1495 to commemorate a victory of Charles VIII against Italians. Remains of the ramparts extending from this gate can still be seen, on which were stationed crossbowmen to protect  against attacks from the riverside. 

    As with most French cities, Bordeaux has its own set of impressive cathedrals. And nowhere is the recent past more evident than in the Cathedral of Saint-André, which is in the process of being cleaned. Sections of the cathedral show the signs of having witnessed five centuries of history, and yet probably none have done it as much damage as the last. But there is still hope for this and other monuments around the lovely continent, for the polished sections seem to be bringing out the hidden beauty with which these cathedrals originally started out. As with many other cathedrals I have witnessed in Poitiers and Bordeaux, this one is also bare on the inside, with barely nothing adorning the walls and with little signs of the ostentatious wealth that one often associates with Catholic churches. A climb on to the adjoining Tower of Pay Berland gave me a fantastic view of this port city from high above the ground, and from where the cathedral is much more impressive, with the fine structures running down along the sides leaving me to wonder whether I should praise the architects or the engineers. Saint-Pierre, Notre Dame, Sainte-Croix, Saint-Michael are some of the other vast cathedrals that adorn this city, built in various Romanesque and Gothic styles, some even a mix of both as they have undergone repairs and renovations over the centuries. 

(image from wiki)

    Walking up north along the quay lead me to monuments for martyrs from more recent history - the Girondins massacared in the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution. Erected at the turn of the 19th century, the monument (pictured left) has Lady Liberté standing atop a tall tower with intricately carved statues surrounding the base. The Place de la Bourse, constructed in the 1750s has a thin mirror of water in front of the building, producing an exquisite reflection best seen past the setting sun when the building is lit up in multitude of colours. As a long line of similarly minded people queued up beside me waiting for the perfect moment with blue skies and yellow green lights, I was not the only enthusiastic photographer who had seen the photo on the internet. Another sight to be seen at twilight is the Opera National or Grand Theater of Bordeaux, with statues of the nine muses and the three famous godesses of Greek mythos lining its terrace. 

    

(image from wiki)

    By the end of the day, after a tiring day of walking the streets, it was time to sample the local specialties. Canelé, a local pastry is supposedly best made in Bordeaux. Shaped like a baker's hat and made from egg, sugar, milk and flour, this dessert with a  tender center and a thick crust was a tasty delight. I pondered long and hard as the bite reminded me of something from back home in India and it was not until about 20 minutes after the last  bite that the answer struck me - the South Indian Ghee Appam. 

    But it is not the beautiful buildings of Bordeaux that give it its global fame. That comes from the rich wines of the region. I tried a glass of red wine from the nearby Médoc region, but am too ignorant in the art of wines to comment on it. I am neither a connoisseur of wines, nor do I really like them. But to end an article on Bordeaux without a reference to its wine would be sacrilege. A survey of the wine-map that lay on the table showed the numerous varieties that were produced all over the region. Someday, maybe a year later, if I ever learn the fine art of wine tasting, I will be sure to revisit the place and take one of the many available tours of the vineyards around the regions. 


Note: I am not a historian and do not claim any accuracy on the details included in my articles. My sources include the plaques at the monuments, museum labels, information from the locals, tourism websites, blogs and other online sources (including wikipedia).