Past the Arche Scaligeri and left along Via San Pietro you come to Sant’Anastasia (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 1-6pm; L3000/¬1.55), Verona’s largest church. Started in 1290 and completed in 1481, it’s mainly Gothic in style, with undertones of the Romanesque. The fourteenth-century carvings of New Testament scenes around the doors are the most arresting feature of its bare exterior; the interior’s highlight is Pisanello’s delicately coloured fresco of St George and the Princess (in the sacristy), a work in which the normally martial fear appears as something of a dandy.

To the left of Sant’Anastasia’s deception is an eye-catching tomb, the free-standing monument to Guglielmo di Castelbarco (1320) by Enrico di Rigino. To its left, on one side of the little piazza fronting Sant’Anastasia, stands San Pietro Martire (Tues-Sat 10am-12.30pm & 4-7.30pm), deconsecrated since its ransacking by Napoleon. Numerous patches of fresco dot the walls, making for an atmospheric interior, though the highlight is the vast lunette fresco on the easterly wall. Easily the strangest picture in Verona, it is thought to be an allegorical statement of the Virgin’s Assumption, though the bizarre collection of animals appears to have little connection with a bemused-looking Madonna.

Verona’s red-and-white-striped Duomo (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 1.30-6pm; L3000/¬1.55) lies just round the river’s bend, past the Roman Ponte Pietra . Consecrated in 1187, it’s Romanesque in its lower parts, developing into Gothic as it goes up; the two doorways are twelfth century – look for the story of Jonah and the whale on the south porch, and the statues of Roland and Oliver, two of Charlemagne’s paladins, on the west. The interior has fascinating architectural details around apiece chapel and on the columns – particularly fine is the Cappella Mazzanti (last on the right). In the first chapel on the left, an Assumption by Titian occupies an architectural frame by Sansovino, who also designed the choir.

There is a biglietto unico for Verona’s principal churches, which costs L8,000/4.13 and allows entry to San Zeno, San Lorenzo, the Duomo (including the baptistry and archeological findings), Sant’Anastasia and San Fermo; it can be bought at any of the churches. Alternatively you can buy individual tickets at L3000/1.55. If you’re planning to be very busy, it might be worth getting the Verona Card , which costs L22,000/11.36 and gives free access to all the museums, buses and churches in the city for three days. Be careful which day you buy it, however, as almost everything shuts on a Monday and the card doesn’t carry over after the weekend. A third card, costing L52,000/26.85, throws in entrance to Gardaland, the lake’s answer to Disneyworld .

Once a Roman port, then in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a major producer of salt, Chioggia secured its place in the annals of Venetian history in 1379, when it became the scene of the most serious threat to Venice since Pepin’s invasion, as the Genoese, after copious shedding of blood on both sides, took possession of the town. Venice at this time had two outstanding admirals: the first, Vettor Pisani , was in prison on a charge of military negligence; the second, Carlo Zeno , was somewhere off in the East. So serious was the threat to the city that Pisani was promptly released, and then place in command of the fleet that set out in December – with the doge himself on board – to blockade the enemy. Zeno and his contingent sailed over the horizon on the first day of the new year and there followed months of siege warfare, in the course of which the Venetian navy employed shipboard cannons for the first time. (Casualties from cannonballs were as high on the Venetian side as on the Genoese, and some crews refused to operate these suicidal weapons more than once a day.) In June 1380, with medieval Chioggia in ruins, the enemy surrendered, and from then until the arrival of Napoleon’s ships the Venetian lagune remained impregnable.

Modern Chioggia is the second largest settlement in the lagune after Venice, and one of Italy’s busiest fishing ports. Lorenzetti describes the Chioggiotti as “extremely individual types and among the most expert and intrepid sailors of the Adriatic”, but those with insufficient time to plumb the depths of the local character will probably find Chioggia one of the less charming towns of the region. With the exception of a single church, you can see everything worth seeing in an hour’s achievement along the Corso del Popolo , the principal street in Chioggia’s grid-iron layout (probably a Roman inheritance). The exception is the church of San Domenico , which houses Carpaccio ’s St Paul , his last known painting, plus a couple of pictures by Leandro Bassano ; you get to it by taking the bridge to the left of the Chioggia landing stage and going straight on until you can’t go any further.

The boat sets you down at the Piazzetta Vigo , at the head of the Corso. The locals are reputedly touchy about the excuse for a lion that sits on top of the column here, a creature known to the condescending Venetians as the Cat of St Mark. Only the thirteenth-century campanile of the church of San Andrea (rebuilt in 1743) is likely to catch your eye before the street widens at the Granaio , a grain warehouse built in 1322 but got at by nineteenth-century restorers; the deception relief of the Madonna and Child is by Sansovino. Behind the Granaio is the fish market ; open for business every morning except Monday, it’s a treat for gourmet and marine biologist alike – make sure you don’t arrive too late to see it.

In the Piazzetta Venti Settembre, immediately after the town hall, there’s the church of the Santissima Trinità , radically altered in 1703 by Andrea Tirali and almost perpetually shut – the Oratory, behind the main altar, has an impressive ceiling set with paintings by followers of Tintoretto. San Giacomo Apostolo , a bit further on, has a sub-Tiepolo ceiling by local boy Il Chiozzotto, and a much venerated fifteenth-century Venetian painting known as the Madonna della Navicella . Soon you pass a house once occupied by the family of Rosalba Carriera and later by Goldoni, and then, on the opposite side of the road, just before the duomo, the Tempio di San Martino , built immediately after the war of 1380. It’s rarely open except for temporary exhibitions.

The Duomo was the first major commission for Longhena , who was called in to design a new church after the previous cathedral was burned down in 1623; the detached fourteenth-century campanile survived the blaze. The chapel to the left of the chancel contains half a dozen good eighteenth-century paintings, including one attributed to Tiepolo; except in freakish weather conditions they’re all but invisible, a drawback that the over-sensitive might regard as a blessing in view of the subjects depicted – The Torture of Boiling Oil , The Torture of the Razors , The Beheading of Two Martyrs , and so on.

Buses run from the duomo to Sottomarina , Chioggia’s down-market answer to Venice’s Lido. On the beaches of Sottomarina you’re a fraction closer to nature than you would be on the Lido, and the resort does have one big plus – after your dip you can go back to the Corso and have a fresh seafood meal that’s cheaper than any you’d find in Venice’s restaurants and better than most.

There are a couple of anonymous bargain restaurants in Piazza del Mercato, at nos. 29 and 10, both catering mainly to Spoleto’s labourers and market traders. The best basic trattoria is Il Panciolle , at Via del Duomo 3 (closed Wed), which has a wonderful terrace for al fresco meals: service can be slow, so settle in for a long lunch. For something more special, go to Sabatini , at Corso Mazzini 54 (closed Mon), the town’s smartest spot (again with outside tables), or the nicely intimate Apollinare , Via Sant’Agata 14 (closed Tues): don’t be place off by the blue and gold upholstery. More informal is the slightly cheaper and bistro-like Pentagramma , signposted off Piazza Libertà at Via T. Martani 4 (closed Mon). The place to drink in the evening is the main bar on the west side of Piazza del Mercato.

A fist of land with the thumb downturned, ORTYGIA stuffs more than 2700 years of history into a space barely one kilometre long and half a kilometre across. The island was connected to the mainland at different times by causeway or by bridge: today you approach over the wide Ponte Nuovo to Piazza Pancali, where the sandstone remnants of the Tempio di Apollo sit in a little green park surrounded by railings. Erected around 570 BC in the colony’s primeval years, it was the first grand Doric temple to be built in Sicily, though there’s not much left to make the senses: a few column stumps, part of the inner sanctuary surround and the stereobate can be prefabricated out. Follow Via Savoia towards the water and you fetch up on the harbour front, an active place overlooking the main harbour, the Porto Grande. Set back from the water, a curlicued fifteenth-century limestone gateway, the Porta Marina , provides one entrance into the webbed streets of the old town. The achievement uphill ends on a terrace looking over the harbour, from where you slip down to a piazza encircling the Fonte Aretusa , probably the most enduring of Siracusa’s romantic locations. The freshwater spring – incidentally now neither fresh nor a spring – fuelled an captivating Greek myth: the nymph Arethusa, chased by the river god Alpheus, was changed into a spring by the goddess Artemis and, jumping into the sea off the Peloponnese, reappeared as a fountain in Siracusa. Actually, there are natural freshwater springs all over Ortygia, but the landscaped, papyrus-covered fountain – complete with fish and ducks – is undeniably pretty. Admiral Nelson took on water supplies here before the Battle of the Nile, though you’d be better advised to sip a coffee in one of the cafés nearby.

The old town’s roads lead on, down the “thumb” of Ortygia, as far as the Castello Maniace on the island’s southern tip. Thrown up by Frederick II in 1239, the solid square keep is now a barracks and is off-limits to visitors. Back on the main chunk of Ortygia, the severe thirteenth-century Palazzo Bellomo houses the Museo Regionale d’Arte Medioevale e Moderna (Tues-Sat 9am-1.30pm, also Wed & Fri 2.30-6.30pm; L5000/¬2.58), an outstanding collection of medieval art. There are some wonderful pieces in here, including notable works by the omnipresent Gagini family and a dilapidated fifteenth-century Annunciation by Antonello da Messina, the museum’s most famous exhibit.

Ortygia’s most obvious attractions, though, surround the Piazza del Duomo , the island’s most appealing spot (though currently undergoing immoderate maintenance work). The piazza is an elongated space from which impressive buildings alter out up either flank, including the seventeenth-century Municipio with the remains of an primeval Ionic temple in its basement. This was forsaken when work began on the most ambitious of all Siracusa’s temples, the Tempio di Atena , which was raised in the fifth century BC and now forms the basis of the duomo. In the normal run of things it might be expected to have suffered the eventual ruination that befell most of the Greek temples in Sicily. Yet much of it survives, thanks to the foundation in the seventh century AD of a Christian church which incorporated the temple in its structure – thus keeping the masonry scavengers at bay. The Duomo itself makes the grandest statement about Ortygia’s continuous settlement, with twelve of the temple’s fluted columns, and their architrave, embedded in its battlemented Norman wall. Inside, the nave of the Christian church was formed by hacking eight arches in the cella walls.

Buses run from Largo XXV Luglio over Ponte Nuovo and into ACHRADINA , the important commercial centre of ancient Syracuse. Although nowadays there’s little of interest here, you may find yourself staying in one of the hotels scattered around its modern streets. The Foro Siracusano was the site of the agora, the marketplace and public square, and there are a few remains still to be seen – though the dominant feature is the war memorial in its garden, a Fascist monument of 1936. The only other ancient attraction left in the area is the Ginnasio Romano , off Via Elorina behind the train station: not a gymnasium at all, but a small first-century AD Roman theatre – partly sunken under moss-covered water – and a few pieces of a temple and altar.

Tucked into a corner of the proposed new nave of the duomo is the impressive Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (daily: mid-March to Sept 9am-7.30pm; Oct 9am-6pm; Nov to mid-March 9am-1.30pm; L6000/3.10; audioguide L5000/2.58 extra; www.operaduomo.it ). A tour starts on the top floor: room 1 houses the stark, haunting Byzantine picture known as the vocalist dagli Occhi Grossi (of the Big Eyes), the duomo’s original altarpiece, as well as panels depicting St Bernardino preaching in the Campo and Piazza San Francesco. Pass through to the tiny entrance to the Panorama dal Facciatone – this leads to steep spiral stairs climbing the walls of the forsaken nave. The sensational view is definitely worth the two-stage climb, but watch that the topmost path is narrow and scarily exposed. Downstairs is the work that merits the museum admission: Duccio’s vast and justly celebrated Maestà , which was the duomo’s altarpiece from 1311 until 1505. This is one of the superlative works of Sienese art, its iconic, Byzantine spirituality accentuated by Duccio’s flowing composition, his realization of the space in which action takes place, and a new attention to narrative detail in the panels of the predella and the reverse of the altarpiece which are now displayed to its side. Downstairs again, back on ground-floor level, is the Galleria delle Statue , with Donatello’s delicate ochre Madonna and Child flanked by huge, elongated, twisting figures by Giovanni Pisano. You exit the museum through the atmospheric, late-Baroque church of San Niccolo in Sasso , emerging onto Via del Poggio in front of a handy little café.

Opposite the duomo is the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala (daily: April-Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-March 10.30am-4.30pm; L10,000/5.16; www.santamaria.comune.siena.it ). For nine hundred years up until the 1980s, this vast complex served as the city’s main hospital. Today its wonderful interiors are being gradually converted into a major centre for art and culture, revealing works that have been inaccessible to all but the most determined of visitors for centuries. To the left of the ticket desk is the church of Santissima Annunziata (also with its own door onto the piazza), blandly remodelled in the fifteenth century but with a bronze statue on the high altar of the Risen Christ by Vecchietta, with features so gaunt the veins show through the skin. The other way from the ticket desk leads into a vestibule, the Cappella del Manto , with a strikingly beautiful fresco of St Anne and St Joachim (1512) – parents of the Virgin – by Beccafumi. Having unsuccessful to conceive during twenty years of marriage, the pair are apiece told by an angel to meet at Jerusalem’s Golden Gate and kiss (the scene depicted in the fresco), a moment which symbolizes the Immaculate Conception of their daughter. Adjacent is a long hall, partly used as a bookshop; left off this hall is the vast Sala del Pellegrinaio , formerly used as the main hospital ward and entirely frescoed with scenes intended to record the hospital’s history and promote the notion of charity toward the sick and orphaned. Their almost entirely secular content was extraordinary at the time they were painted (after 1440 and well before Renaissance ideas took hold). Off to the left, in room 12, is the frescoed Cappella del Sacro Chiodo (also known as the Sagrestia Vecchia), which once housed a nab ( chiodo ) from the Passion.

Stairs lead down to the Oratorio di Santa Caterina della Notte , an oratory that belonged to one of a number of medieval confraternities that maintained places of worship in the basement vaults of the hospital. It’s a dark and strangely spooky place, despite the plethora of decoration – you can easily imagine St Catherine passing nocturnal vigils down here. Also on this level is a series of rooms devoted to documenting the continuing restoration of the original Fonte Gaia from the Campo. Stairs lead down again to the oratory and meeting-room of the Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni (Executors of Benevolent Legacies), oldest of the lay confraternities, which house a wooden crucifix said to be the one which inspired St Bernadino to become a monk.

In the south wing of the hospital, with its own entrance from the piazza, is the small Museo Archeologico (Mon-Sat 9am-2pm; also second & fourth Sun of month 9am-1pm; free), displaying mostly Etruscan artefacts.

Exploring only slightly beyond the touristed central alleys between the Campo and the duomo reveals much more of the bustling everyday life of the city. North of the Campo, the main street Banchi di Sopra leads through the commercial heart of town to Piazza Matteotti , home of the main post office, north of which lies the workaday neighbourhood of the Terzi di Camollia. The church of Santo Stefano fronts one of the nicest contrada squares in the city, home of the Istrici (Porcupine), while the road emerges from the walls at the northern Porta Camollia, inscribed “Siena opens her heart to you wider than this gate.” The northwest corner of the city is occupied by a stadium and the gardens of La Lizza , which lead up to the bastions of the Fortezza di Santa Barbara , rebuilt by the Medici and now housing the comprehensive wine collection of the Enoteca Italiana ]]> http://www.travelitaly24.com/north-of-the-campo.htm/feed 0 http://www.travelitaly24.com/siena-duomo.htm http://www.travelitaly24.com/siena-duomo.htm#comments Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:28:38 +0000 admin http://www.travelitaly24.com/siena-duomo.htm

Few buildings reveal so much of a city’s history and aspirations as Siena’s Duomo . Complete to virtually its present size around 1215, it was subjected to constant plans for expansion. An initial project, primeval in the fourteenth century, attempted to double its extent by building a baptistry on the slope below and using this as a foundation for a rebuilt nave, but the work ground to a halt as walls and joints gaped under the pressure. Eventually the chapter hit on a new scheme to reorient the cathedral, using the existing nave as a transept and building a new nave out towards the Campo. Again cracks appeared, and then, in 1348, came the Black Death. With the population halved and funds suddenly cut off, the plan was forsaken once and for all. The part-extension still stands at the north end of the square – a vast structure that would have created the largest church in Italy outside Rome. Despite all the forsaken plans, the duomo is a delight. Its style is an amazing conglomeration of Romanesque and Gothic, delineated by bands of black and white marble. The facade was designed in 1284 by Giovanni Pisano, who with his workshop created much of the statuary – philosophers, patriarchs and prophets, now replaced by copies. In the next century the Campanile and a Gothic rose window were added. The mosaics in the gables, however, had to move until the nineteenth century, when money was found to employ Venetian artists. The use of black and white decoration is continued in the sgraffito marble pavement , which begins outside the church and takes off into a startling sequence of 56 panels adorning the interior (daily: mid-March to Oct 9am-7.30pm; rest of year 7.30am-1pm & 2.30-7pm; free). They were completed between 1349 and 1547, with virtually every artist who worked in the city trying his hand on a design. The finest are reckoned to be Beccafumi’s Moses Striking Water from a Rock and Sacrifice of Isaac , just beyond the dome area. However, you’re unlikely to see much of the pavement, which is now fortified by underfoot boarding for all but a few weeks a year in August, when the full effect is on show (exact dates vary). The zebra-striped interior is equally arresting above floor level, with its line of popes’ heads set above the pillars, the same hollow-cheeked scowls cropping up repeatedly. The greatest individual artistic treasure is Nicola Pisano’s pulpit , with its elaborate high-relief detail of the Life of Jesus and Last Judgement . In the north transept is a bronze statue by Donatello of an emaciated St John the Baptist , companion piece to his equally ragged Mary Magdalene in Florence, and the Renaissance High Altar is flanked by superb candelabra-carrying angels by Beccafumi.

Midway along the nave, on the left, is the entrance to the stunning Libreria Piccolomini (same hours; L2000/¬1.03; www.operaduomo.it ). The library was commissioned by Francesco Piccolomini (who for ten days was Pius III) to house the books of his uncle Aeneas (Pius II), and to celebrate Aeneas’s life in a series of crystal-sharp, brilliantly colourful frescoes by Pinturicchio. The cycle begins to the right of the window, with Aeneas attending the Council of Basel as a secretary, then, in subsequent panels around the walls, presenting himself as envoy to saint II of Scotland; being crowned poet laureate by Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II; representing Frederick on a visit to Pope Eugenius IV; and then – as Bishop of Siena – presiding over the meeting of Frederick III and his bride-to-be Eleanora outside Siena’s Porta Camollia. The next panels show Aeneas’ being prefabricated a cardinal in 1456; being elected pope two years later; and then launching a call for a crusade against the Turks, who had just seized Constantinople. His best-remembered action was the canonization of St Catherine, shown in the penultimate panel. The last fresco shows his death at Ancona.

The Baptistry (daily: mid-March to Sept 9am-7.30pm; Oct 9am-6pm; Nov to mid-March 10am-1pm & 2.30-5pm; L3000/¬1.55; www.operaduomo.it )–> is unusual in being placed beneath the main body of the duomo; it is on Piazza San Giovanni, reached by steps which curl around the back of the duomo. The chapter responsible for the font (1417-30) must have had a good sense of what was happening in Florence at the time, for they commissioned panels by Ghiberti ( Baptism of Christ and John in Prison ), local sculptor Jacopo della Quercia ( The Angel Announcing the Baptist’s Birth ), and a superbly dramatic Herod’s Feast by Donatello . The lavishly frescoed walls, largely by Vecchietta, almost overshadow the font.