23 February 2012

La Torre Pendente

Well, my internet access is dependable but infrequent, so apologies for how slowly I have been posting. Class is going well and my host, Marcella, is molto gentile. The last couple days have been gloriously sunny and almost warm, so I've been spending more time outdoors than inside the (freezing cold) school building.

Where were we? Ah, Pisa! I flew into the airport mid-evening and got a taxi to the pensione I'd booked, on a quiet little corner barely five minutes' walk from the Leaning Tower. I got dinner at a trattoria across the street (penne con porcini, and rabbit in a lovely tomato and olive sauce), and returned to my room to rest up for the next long day.

It started to pour down rain on Sunday, so I bought a cheap umbrella at a roadside stand and got right to work.

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The Leaning Tower, actually the belltower of the adjacent cathedral, is one of the most recognizable sights in Italy—perhaps in all of Europe. It is almost 200 feet tall and leans a full 15 feet—five degrees—to the south, thanks to the marshy soil and its shallow foundation. Construction began in 1173, but for reasons lost to history, work continued only for a few years. Twice, the tower was left incomplete—once in 1178 and again in 1278—each time for nearly one hundred years.

All of the buildings on il Campo dei Miracoli are leaning slightly, probably due to the unstable ground. The Baptistry leans about six feet to the north.

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Pisa's Baptistry is the largest in Italy, at 180 feet tall, and it showcases multiple architectural styles reflecting the length of its construction: Romanesque arches (12th century) on the lower level, Gothic (13th century) spires and arches mid-level, and a 15th century Renaissance dome.

The Duomo of Pisa is where the architectural term “Pisan Romanesque” is derived.

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The interior is spectacularly painted and frescoed, but no photos were allowed inside, sadly. So, let's focus our attention on that tower.

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The tower's incline presents some interesting problems when it comes to preservation and restoration. The south side, shielded from erosion from rain and wind, collects airborne dust and pollutants and requires manual cleaning; conversely, the north side suffers much more greatly from erosion and mineral deposits due to the flow of water. The angle of the tower places such stress on the structure itself that parts of the tower—particularly the outer columns, of which only 33 of the total 180 are original—have cracked or fractured.

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Notice that the very top level, the belfry, appears slightly askew in relation to the rest of the tower. This was an attempt by architect Tommaso Pisano (a descendent of the original designer, Bonnano Pisano) to shift the tower's center of gravity further north and slow its ever-increasing tilt.

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For a measly fifteen euros, you can climb to the top of the tower. Tours are taken up every half-hour. As the groups ascend, peals of dizzied laughter begin to fill the narrow stone passages. The tilt is more than noticeable as you spiral up and up, and the cognitive dissonance between the seemingly-regular stairway and the changing angle of your ascent is... really something. I do not recommend this climb for anyone with vertigo or difficulty balancing. I would also suggest, if you make it to the top, staying on the north side of the belfry.

Still, the view is stunning...

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… and they might ring the bells while you're up there.

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The tower is the only part of Pisa that gets much publicity, but another worthwhile stop is the Cemetery of Camposanto, a narrow, elegant marble structure just north of the Duomo, in which some six hundred prominent Pisans are entombed, many in recycled Roman sarcophagi.

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The rectangular structure encloses a lush, bright courtyard, filled with soil that was brought from Jerusalem during the crusades.

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Local legend holds that the soil has magical properties and can reduce a body to nothing but bones within a day. I had neither the time nor the spare bodies necessary to test it out, so a legend it will have to remain...

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Camposanto was severely damaged during World War II (and today there are photos on display showing just how extensive the damage was). The roof, originally made of expensive lead tiles, melted when the building was bombed and damaged the frescoes on the walls.

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Bit by bit, the frescoes are being restored and returned to their original positions.

Coming up next: some nice weather, for a change, and a look at Siena from several points of view.

20 February 2012

La Città della Luce part II

I have arrived safely in Siena and am getting settled at my home for the next three weeks. My host is a friendly older woman, my room is clean and bright, and I'm about ten minutes by bus from the historical city center. I don't have internet access at home, but I do at school, so the blogging shall continue uninterrupted from here on. Anyway! There is still much of Paris left to talk about, so I won't keep you waiting.

After leaving Notre Dame, I crossed to the north side of the river and walked west along it until I reached the Louvre.

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The statue in the courtyard is of King Louis XIV, who in 1682 chose to change residence from the Palais de Louvre to Versailles, thus allowing the palace to be used as a residence for artists.

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The famous palace was built on the foundations of an earlier 12th-century fortress, parts of which are part of the museum's exhibition beneath the ground floor. It was converted to a public museum after the French Revolution and opened officially in 1793. You enter the museum through the iconic glass pyramid and descend into a mall-like foyer with entrances into the different wings of the museum, cafes, and gift shops.

The Louvre is enormous. It contains wing after wing of 35,000 works of art, housed in 650,000 square feet of space, spanning two millennia and three continents at least. I had already seen the Roman art and artifacts (it briefly was shown at the Seattle Art Museum a few years back), but I lingered among the Greek statues and the Italian Renaissance paintings, and spent as long as I could gazing into the eyes of the Mona Lisa (but only after fighting to the front of the mob of tourists gathered around her). I wandered the halls for a good two hours, occasionally getting lost and having to backtrack, and once I'd had my fill, I made my exit through the glass pyramid and went to stroll the Tuileries.

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It drizzled on and off and there were low clouds for most of the day, but now and then the Eiffel Tower emerged in the distance.

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I stopped for a light lunch at Café le Nemours, just a few minutes across the street from the Louvre: a green salad with warm chevre on toasted bread.

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After the fuel-up (and more urgently, the chance to rest my already-aching feet), I headed across the river to the Musée Orsay.

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Where the Louvre leaves off at about 1850, Orsay picks up the baton with 19th century Conservative, Neoclassical, Realist, and Impressionist paintings and sculptures. A little pressed for time, I went straight to the top floor for the Impressionists and basked in Monet and Degas for a while, then backtracked to the second floor for Van Gogh.

After I'd taken in about as much classic art as my brain could process in one day, I took a stroll up the Champs-Elysées, surrounded on all sides by glittering storefronts and expensive restaurants. The rain had started up again, so I put away my camera and just walked, heading towards the Arc de Triomphe, where I took the metro south to the Eiffel Tower.

It's a few blocks' walk from the nearest metro station, but the tower is hard to miss. At the time of its construction culminating in 1889, it was the tallest structure in the world, 1,063 feet including the antenna. It was constructed using 7,300 tons of iron and took just over two years to build (about one-hundredth of the time needed to build Notre Dame—how things have changed!).

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While it is possible to take elevators to any of the three levels of the tower, I opted to save money and avoid lines by taking the stairs.

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Remember last year's 463-step ascent to the cupola of the Duomo of Florence? It is 670 steps to the second story of the Eiffel Tower. My legs ached for days.

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I didn't go up to the third and highest level (I was having bad enough vertigo as it was, the elevator lines were long, and sunset had come and gone), but they say that the view is best from the second level, anyway.

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Just as I was getting ready to return to solid ground, they switched on the lights.

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I made my sore and breathless way back down to earth through the blinding golden floodlights, and followed the crowds across the bridge to place de Trocadéro.

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After sunset, for five minutes, the tower comes alive with dancing white lights.

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I ended the long day at Café Bonaparte, a block off of boulevard St. Germain, with steak tartare (raw, seasoned, ground beef on toasted bread) and a glass of cider.

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Next up: a morning in Pisa!