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Italy

huhtikuuta - toukokuuta 2024
14-päiväinen seikkaillu — Dominick Lue lisää
  • 21jalanjäljet
  • 2maat
  • 14päivää
  • 375valokuvat
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  • 612kilometriä
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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 2

    Rome — Centro Storico

    28. huhtikuuta, Italia ⋅ ☁️ 77 °F

    From the moment I arrived, I’ve been immersed in Italian culture with all of its stereotypes — a wild taxi ride led to this beautiful, family-run pensione in Piazza Bologna where I was checked in by warm and welcoming Cristallo with his 4-year-old nephew sitting on his lap. Went out for a late dinner to a bar not far down a street filled with Fiats and Vespas. Cristallo had said it was too late for good food and reluctantly recommended this place where the food turned out to be amazing. It was Saturday night and the piazza was loaded with people of all ages out for a ‘passegiata’ and they were loud — breaking into song once or twice — and just loving life. La Dolce Vita. La Vita É Bella. Families with little kids, couples sharing a pizza, old women walking arm in arm, packs of teens, two nuns out for a stroll. It all becomes part of the soup — la minestra — that is Rome. This morning I took a long walk in the Centro Storico (historic center). I wanted to hit the main sites but I also wanted to find something I’ve never been to before, and that turned out to be La Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola (Saint Ignatius). It was fantastic. The whole place was designed, constructed, and decorated by Jesuit laborers including Andrea Pozzo, the artist who painted the ceiling. Since they ran out of money for the church and they could not afford to build a dome, he painted an optical illusion which creates a fake dome when viewed from below. My favorite part was something created by a contemporary artist, Vincenzo Pandolfi, a Neapolitan cabinet-maker who worked for 28 years from age 70 to 98 on a wooden sculpture called The Temple of Christ the King. Pandolfi included shrines, churches, and temples from all over the world. The inspiration behind it was to imagine a world where there is universal peace. The Latin phrase “Ut unum sint” was carved in various places, which means “so that they will be one.” As someone looking for something meaningful to do in his retirement, I was blown away by the thought of Vincenzo devoting the last decades of his life on his last wish for the world.Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 2

    Rome — Pantheon & Spagna

    28. huhtikuuta, Italia ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F

    The Pantheon has been a place of worship for 2000 years and a Catholic Church since the year 609. Its dome has inspired architects and artists for centuries. It’s such an incredible place. Raffaele is buried here (tomb with wreath) and Brunelleschi studied its cupola for his design of Florence’s Duomo. I think it stands as a symbol of what is so amazing about Rome — ancient civilization, marvels of engineering, preservation of Greek culture, spread of Christianity, heart of the Church, and workshop for Renaissance artists.Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 3

    St Peter’s & Sant’Angelo

    29. huhtikuuta, Vatikaanivaltio ⋅ ☀️ 72 °F

    At the Vatican, I eagerly waited for Martina to complete her final day of the Via Francigena, an Italian pilgrimage to Rome which she started over a month ago at the Swiss border. She arrived at about 1 pm after walking the final 11 miles this morning. I was happy to be the welcoming committee for someone in the way that Andrew and others were there for me in Santiago. Martina finished the camino in Spain about a week before me. She had returned to Germany but got the urge to walk again and chose the way of Saint Francis, so she headed to Italy. We are going to travel together for the next week. Something new to the Vatican since I was here last — the sculpture Angels Unawares has a prominent place in the Square and is the first addition to St. Peter’s since Bernini. It is an emotional piece. It includes the faces of migrants and refugees from all over the world. Pope Francis dedicated it in 2019 saying that he wanted the sculpture “to remind everyone of the evangelical challenge of hospitality.” In the spirit of hospitality, I welcomed Martina with a big hug, a bottle of water, and two small gifts as rewards for finishing the pilgrimage and walking into St Peter’s.Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 4

    Naples

    30. huhtikuuta, Italia ⋅ ☁️ 77 °F

    I’ve only stayed in Naples once before although I’ve been through here several times to go to Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, and the villages where my grandparents came from. It’s another place that evokes a lot of emotion. As I said to Martina, “if you’re bothered by Rome, you’re gonna hate Naples.” It’s loud, fast-paced, gritty, and completely unapologetic. On the walk to the apartment, a kid — maybe 10 years old — came riding down the street and across a busy lane of traffic to cut across the sidewalk where we were walking and disappear down an alley. The man he nearly hit on the sidewalk just laughed it off and turned to us and proudly yelled, “Napoli!” He said it in the way someone might say “only in New York.” We made our way to Claudia’s apartment. She wanted to meet us there to make sure we knew how everything worked. We followed her directions down a graffiti-filled alley into a quiet street scene that could have been straight out of a WWII film of the liberation of Naples. She buzzed us up and gave us the warmest welcome to her gorgeous penthouse apartment with a rooftop terrace. All of Naples is within clear view — Vesuvius, Capri, Capodimonte, and the ships in the port. Before giving us a very detailed list of instructions and a tutorial on how to lock and unlock the door and what to put down on the tile table so as not to make a mark, she gave us each a little gift. “You may have heard that we are a very superstitious people here in Napoli.” And she handed us each a wooden horn to ward off evil spirits. It was the same horn my grandfather had hanging from the rearview mirror of his car. I told her my people were from Naples and she said, “Oh, you are Neapolitan, so you understand.” That is how I feel when I’m in Naples. Growing up in the culture, so much is familiar. I see a young man kissing his elderly father goodbye, a group of waiters teasing the tourists, a mother yelling for her kids from an open window, someone is hosing down the front stoop, an older woman is arguing with the grocer about tomatoes, and I feel like I get it.Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 5

    Naples — San Giuseppe

    1. toukokuuta, Italia ⋅ ☁️ 66 °F

    The highlight of today’s tour of Naples was the Teatro di San Carlo, the famous opera house created by the Bourbon kings of Naples in the 18th century. There were mirrors in all of the boxes around the theater and the guide explained that all of them faced the royal box so that everyone could see the king, giving him control over the nobles in attendance. Clap when he claps, laugh when he laughs. During this time, the Kingdom of Naples was a major European power — very wealthy and influential. Naples was considered the third most cosmopolitan city of Europe behind only Paris and London. This comes to an end when the kingdom collapses in the 1800s and the Neapolitans contend that the rest of Italy stole the wealth of the kingdom when it united with the north to form modern Italy. There are several Royal palaces here and hundreds of ornate churches, but they have lost their luster. A dad might say Naples went from Baroque to broke (that one is for the Guineys). The kingdom may have dissolved but its influence continued in one major sense — culturally uniting the region. That’s the reason Italian immigrants from this region would say they were from Naples even though they were not from the city itself. They were identifying with the kingdom which included much of the South. The language is another example. There are still 7 million Napulitano speakers and, with it comes an attitude that they proudly proclaim as Napulitanitá (Neapolitan-ness) — a mix of creativity, flexibility, and chaos. Historians (and the Neapolitans themselves) claim it comes from living in the shadow of Vesuvius. My current travel partner, Martina — a German — is not a fan.Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 6

    Naples — Bòna Jurnàta

    2. toukokuuta, Italia ⋅ ⛅ 64 °F

    Good morning! While Martina heads out to explore Pompeii and Sorrento, I’m hitting the streets of Naples once more. Sfolgliatella with coffee was just as advertised — buying happiness. Plus they had pizza gain, so I picked some up for later since I missed it at Easter. Pavarotti is singing “Vincerò” in my head right now.Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 6

    Quartieri Spagnoli — Maradona Shrine

    2. toukokuuta, Italia ⋅ ☁️ 64 °F

    This has become a major attraction in Naples — the shrine created in the streets of the Spanish Quarter to Diego Maradona. It has brought tourists to a part of town they might have missed. And if you like Naples, you’re gonna love the Spanish Quarter. It’s Naples in the extreme. So many people flock here now to pay their respects to their football hero, they have had to put up signs for crowd flow. Group after group of school kids were being led up the hill to the shrine along with lots of grown men traveling solo who pose for selfies in front of the murals. A sign over the road reads “Benvenuti al Largo Maradona” — welcome to Maradona Square. One holdout, however, declares itself “Sophia Loren Corner.”Lue lisää

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  • MatkaajaItaly
    Päivä 6

    Naples — Gallerie d’Italia

    2. toukokuuta, Italia ⋅ ☁️ 63 °F

    There’s amazing artwork in Naples. Caravaggio lived and worked here for a while having fled Venice when he killed a man in a duel. One masterpiece is usually on display at Le Gallerie but it was on loan to London. They did trade for a couple of masterpieces by Velasquez who also painted for a short time in Naples. They believe while he was living in the city he was spying for the Spanish king. If you watched the Spanish series “El Ministerio del Tiempo” you would know that that would be such a Velasquez move.Lue lisää

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