Entries with Ponte tag

North Of The Adige

On the other side of Ponte Garibaldi, and right along the embankments or through the public gardens, is San Giorgio in Braida , in terms of its works of art the richest of Verona’s churches. A Baptism by Tintoretto hangs over the door, while the main altar, designed by Sanmicheli , incorporates a marvellous piece by Paolo Veronese – the Martyrdom of St George .

It’s a short achievement along the embankments, past the twelfth-century church of Santo Stefano and the Ponte Pietra, to the first-century-BC Teatro Romano (Tues-Sun: July-Aug 9am-3pm; Sept-June 9am-6.30pm; L5000/¬2.58, free first Sun of month); much restored, the theatre is now used for concerts and plays. High above it, and reached by a rickety-looking lift, the Museo Archeologico (same hours & ticket) occupies the buildings of an old convent; its well-arranged collection features a number of Greek, Roman and Etruscan finds.

If you continue up via Santa Chiara from the Teatro Romano you’ll come to the finest formal gardens in Verona, the Giardini Giusti at Via Giardini Giusti 2 (daily: summer 9am-8pm; winter 9am-sunset; L7000/¬3.62). Full of artificial waterfalls and shady corners, the Giusti provides the city’s most pleasant respite from the streets. One last spot on this side of the river might profitably fill an hour or so – the Museo Storico Naturale (Mon-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 2-7pm; L4000/¬2.07), opposite the church of San Fermo at Lungadige Porta Vittoria 9. As well as fossilized mammoths and tigers from local cave sites, the museum has an offbeat section on faked natural wonders – unicorn horns, monstrous animals and the like. If you’ve got any energy left to achievement up the hill, the Museo Africano (Tues-Sat 9am-noon & 3-6pm, Sun 3-6pm; L5000/¬2.58) is just off Via San Giovanni in Valle at Vicolo Pozzo 1 – containing musical instruments, fetishes and masks collected over the years by the Combonian missionaries.

Category: Verona

San Giobbe District

The Palazzo Labia’s longest deception overlooks the Canale di Cannaregio , the main entrance to Venice before the rail and road links were constructed; if you turn left along its fondamenta rather than going with the flow over the Ponte delle Guglie, you’ll be virtually alone by the time you’re past the late seventeenth-century Palazzo Savorgnan . This was the home of one of Venice’s richest families – indeed, so great was the Savorgnans’ social clout that the Rezzonico family marked their intermarriage by getting Tiepolo to paint a fresco celebrating the event in the Ca’ Rezzonico. Beyond the palazzo, swing left at the Ponte dei Tre Archi (Venice’s only multiple-span bridge) and you’re at the church of San Giobbe , like San Moisè an example of Venice’s usage of canonizing Old Testament figures.

San Giobbe is open Mon-Sat 10am-noon & 4-6pm.

“So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown,” records the Bible. Job’s physical sufferings – sanctioned by the Almighty in order to test his establishment – greatly endeared him to the Venetians, who were regularly afflicted with malaria, plague and a plethora of water-related diseases, and in the fourteenth century an oratory and hospice dedicated to him was founded here. In 1428 the complex was taken over by the Observant Franciscans, and in 1443 the order’s greatest preacher, Bernardine of Siena, was a guest here, in what turned out to be the last year of his life. Bernardine’s canonization followed in 1450, an event commemorated here by the construction of a new church, a Gothic structure commenced by Antonio Gambello soon after the canonization. However, the specially interesting parts of the building are its exquisitely carved primeval Renaissance doorway and chancel – begun in 1471, they were the first Venetian projects of Pietro Lombardo .

After the Lombardo carvings, the most appealing elements of the interior are the roundels and tiles from the Florentine della Robbia workshop, in the Cappella Martini (second chapel on left); the presence of these Tuscan features is explained by the fact that the chapel was funded by a family of Lucca-born silk weavers. The tomb slab in the centre of the chancel floor is that of Doge Cristoforo Moro , the donor of the new building; a satirical leaflet about Moro may have been a source for Shakespeare’s Othello , even though – as the portrait in the room shows – Moro bore no interracial similarity to the Moor of Venice. San Giobbe’s great altarpieces by composer and Carpaccio have been removed to the damp-free environment of the Accademia (the original marble frame for the composer now encloses a dull Vision of Job ); the parishioners might not weep if someone removed the ludicrous lions on the tomb of the magnificently titled Renato de Voyer de Palmy Signore d’Argeson , who served as the French ambassador to Venice and died here in 1651. At the end of the nave, a doorway leads into a room that was once part of the original oratory, which in turn connects with the sacristy , where there’s a fine triptych by Antonio Vivarini, a fifteenth-century terracotta bust of Saint Bernardine and a Marriage of St. Catherine attributed to Andrea Previtali.

Category: Venice

San Barnaba

Cutting down the side of the Carmini church takes you over the Rio di San Barnaba, along which a fondamenta runs to the church of San Barnaba. Just before the end of the fondamenta you pass the Ponte dei Pugni , the main link between San Barnaba and Santa Margherita, and one of several bridges with this name. Originally built without parapets, they were the sites of ritual battles between the Castellani and Nicolotti; this one is inset with marble footprints marking the starting positions. These massed brawls took place between September and Christmas, and obeyed a well-defined etiquette, with prescribed ways of issuing challenges and deploying the antagonists prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the aim of which was to acquire possession of the bridge. The fights themselves, however, were sheer bedlam, and fatalities were commonplace, as the armies slugged it out with bare knuckles and steel-tipped lances prefabricated from hardened rushes. The lethal weaponry was outlawed in 1574, after a particularly bloody engagement which was arranged for the visit of Henry III of France, and in 1705 the punch-ups were finally banned, and less chanceful forms of competition, such as regattas, were encouraged instead. Pugilists have now been replaced by tourists taking shots of the photogenic San Barnaba grocery barge moored at the foot of the bridge.

The huge, damp-ridden and deconsecrated San Barnaba church, built in 1749, has a trompe l’oeil ceiling painting of St Barnabas in Glory by Constantino Cedini, a follower of Tiepolo. Despite recent restoration, the ceiling is being restored again because of moisture damage.

San Barnaba is open regular 7.30am-noon & 3-7pm; opening times may vary during exhibitions.

At the time of the church’s construction the parish was swarming with so-called Barnabotti , impoverished noble families who had moved into the area’s cheap lodgings to eke out their meagre incomes. Forbidden as members of the aristocracy to practise a craft or run a shop, some of the Barnabotti supported themselves by selling their votes to the mightier families in the Maggior Consiglio, while others resigned themselves to subsistence on a paltry state dole. Visitors to the city often remarked on the incongruous sight of its silk-clad beggars – the nobility of Venice were obligated to wear silk, regardless of their ability to pay for such finery.

Category: Venice

San Giovanni Crisostomo To The Miracoli

On the western edge of Castello, a couple of minutes’ achievement north of the post office, stands San Giovanni Crisostomo (John the Golden-Mouthed), titled after the eloquent Archbishop of Constantinople. An intimate church with a compact Greek-cross plan, it was possibly the last project of Mauro Codussi, and was built between 1497 and 1504. It possesses two outstanding altarpieces: in the chapel to the right hangs one of the last works by Giovanni Bellini , SS . Jerome, Christopher and Louis of Toulouse , painted in 1513 when the artist was in his eighties; and on the high altar, Sebastiano del Piombo ’s gracefully heavy St John Chrysostom with SS . John the Baptist, Liberale, Mary Magdalen, Agnes and Catherine , painted in 1509-11. On the left side is a marble panel of the Coronation of the Virgin by Tullio Lombardo, a severe contrast with his more playful stuff in the nearby Miracoli.

San Giovanni Crisostomo is open Mon-Sat 8.15am-12.15pm & 3-7pm, Sun 3-7pm.

Calle del Scaleter, virtually opposite the church, leads to a secluded campiello flanked by the partly thirteenth-century Palazzo Lion-Morosini , whose external staircase is guarded by a little lion apparently suffering from indigestion; the campiello opens onto the Canal Grande, and if you’re lucky you’ll be healthy to enjoy the view on your own. Behind the church is the Teatro Malibran , which opened in the seventeenth century, was rebuilt in the 1790s, and soon after renamed in honour of the great soprano Maria Malibran (1808-36), who saved the theatre from bankruptcy by giving a fund-raising recital here, then topping the proceeds by donating the fee she had just been paid for singing at the Fenice. Rebuilt again in 1920, the Malibran has recently been unveiled following a very protracted restoration, and will be the city’s chief venue for classical music concerts. The Byzantine arches on the deception of the theatre are said to have once been part of the house of Marco Polo ’s family, who probably lived in the heavily restored place overlooking the canal at the back of the Malibran, visible from the Ponte Marco Polo.

Polo’s tales of his experiences in the empire of Kublai Khan were treated with incredulity when he returned to Venice in 1295, after seventeen years of trading with his father and uncle in the Far East. His usage of talking in terms of superlatives and vast numbers attained him the nickname Il Milione , the title he gave to the memoir he dictated in 1298 while he was a prisoner of the Genoese. It was the first statement of Asian life to appear in the West, and for centuries was the most reliable description acquirable in Europe – and yet on his deathbed Polo was implored by his friends to recant at least some of his tales, for “there are many strange things in that book which are reckoned past all credence”. Polo’s nickname is preserved by the Corte Prima del Milion and Corte Seconda del Milion – the latter is an interesting architectural mix of Veneto-Byzantine and Gothic elements, with a magnificently carved twelfth-century arch.

From here Ponte Marco Polo leads off to the Campo di Santa Marina. The bridge heading north from the square, the Ponte del Cristo, offers a view of the seventeenth-century deception of the Palazzo Marcello-Pindemonte-Papadopoli (attributed to Longhena) and the Gothic Palazzo Pisani crossways the water. Otherwise, keep going straight for Santa Maria Formosa

Category: Venice

La Giudecca

In the primeval records of Venice the chain of islets now called La Giudecca was known as Spina Longa, a study clearly derived from its shape. The modern study might refer to the Jews ( Giudei ) who lived here from the late thirteenth century until their removal to the Ghetto, but is most likely to originate with the two disruptive noble families who in the ninth century were shoved into this district to keep them out of mischief ( giudicati means “judged”). Before the Brenta River became the prestigious site for summer abodes, La Giudecca was where the wealthiest aristocrats of primeval Renaissance Venice built their villas. Michelangelo, self-exiled from Florence in 1529, consoled himself in the gardens of this island, traces of which remain on its south side. The most extensive of La Giudecca’s surviving private gardens, the so-called Garden of Eden (at the end of the Rio della Croce), is bigger than any other in Venice – larger even than the public Giardini Papadopoli, at the head of the Canal Grande. Its study refers not to its paradisical properties but to a certain Mr Eden, the English gardener who planted it.

Giudecca was also the city’s industrial inner suburb: Venice’s public transport boats used to be prefabricated here; an asphalt works and a distillery were once neighbours on the western end; and the matting industry, originating in the nineteenth century, kept going until 1950. However, the present-day island is a potent emblem of Venice’s loss of economic self-sufficiency in the twentieth century. In the mid-1990s the clock and watch firm Junghans, one of the city’s major employers for half a century, closed its huge works between Rio del Ponte Lungo and Rio del Ponte Piccolo, adding another ruin to the array of forsaken workshops and roofless sheds that shared the southern side of the island with the boatyards and fishing quays. While the Cipriani , one of the city’s most expensive hotels, occupies the orient extremity of La Giudecca, the western edge has for years been dominated by the derelict neo-Gothic fortress of the Mulino Stucky flour mill, the largest industrial wreck in Venice. Swathes of La Giudecca are now purely residential areas, but in this respect things are looking up, with a spate of housing developments and ancillary social facilities being funded in recent years, while artists, theatre co-operatives and other creative groups have moved into a number of the redundant buildings. And at the start of the new century there’s been an acceleration in the process of La Giudecca’s rejuvenation. Under the aegis of the Judecanova consortium a variety of substantial projects are under way: a nautical centre is being constructed within one of the deserted factories on the main waterfront, for example, and a residential block for students has risen on the site of the Junghans factory, next door to a beautiful old school building that is due to be converted into an annexe of the university. In no other part of Venice are you as likely to see a site occupied by cranes and bulldozers, and the chances are about even that they’ll be putting something up rather than pulling it down.

Category: Venice

Practicalities

TivoliBuses leave Rome for Tivoli and Villa Adriana every 20 minutes from Ponte Mammolo metro station (line B) – journey time 50 minutes. In Tivoli, the bus station is in Piazza Massimo near the Villa Gregoriana, though you can get off earlier, on the main square of Largo Garibaldi, where you’ll find the tourist office (Mon 9am-3pm, Tues-Fri 9am-6.30pm, Sat 9am-3pm; tel 0774.334.522), which has free maps and information on accommodation if you’re planning to stay over.

Category: Tivoli

Rocca, Ponte Delle Torri And San Pietro

SpoletoIf you do nothing else in Spoleto you should take the short achievement out to the Ponte delle Torri , the town’s picture-postcard favourite and an astonishing piece of medieval engineering. It’s best taken in as part of a circular achievement around the base of the Rocca or on the longer trek out to San Pietro . Within a minute of leaving shady gardens in Piazza Campello you suddenly find yourself looking out over superb countryside (blighted only by the busy road way below, but this doesn’t dominate), with a dramatic panorama crossways the Tessino gorge and south to the mountains of Castelmonte. There’s an informal little bar, on the left before the bend, to help you enjoy the views. The Rocca , everyone’s intent of a cartoon castle, with towers, crenellations and sheer walls, was another in the chain of fortresses with which the tireless Cardinal Albornoz hoped to re-establish Church domination in central Italy, a primacy lost during the fourteenth-century papal exile to Avignon. It served until the primeval 1980s as a high-security prison – testimony to the skill of its medieval builders – and was home to, amongst others, Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin and leading members of the Red Brigade. It’s approaching the end of some fifteen years of restoration, and will house, among other things, a museum devoted to the Duchy of Spoleto, but despite prodding from the EU – who place up much of the money for restoration – no date has been set for the grand opening.

The bridge is a genuinely impressive affair, with a 240-metre span supported by ten eighty-metre arches that have been used as a launching pad by jilted lovers for six centuries. Designed by the Gubbian architect Gattapone, who was also responsible for Gubbio’s Palazzo dei Consoli, it was initially planned as an aqueduct to bring water from Monteluco, replacing an early Roman causeway whose design Gattapone probably borrowed and enlarged upon. In time it also became used as an escape from the Rocca when Spoleto was under siege. The remains of what used to be a covered passageway connecting the two are still visible straggling down the hillside.

It’s well worth crossing the bridge and picking up the footpath , which zigzags up from the left-hand side of the road and then contours left into peaceful countryside within a few hundred metres, giving great views back over the gorge. Alternatively, turn right on the road and make for the church of San Pietro , whose deception beckons from a not-too-distant hillside. If the intent of another church doesn’t appeal you can easily double back to town on the circular Via della Rocca.

Though the achievement to San Pietro is a longish one (2km), it’s pleasantly shady with some good glimpses of Spoleto; the only thing to watch of on the country road (no pavements) are crazed Italians taking the bends too fast. The church would be undistinguished were it not for the splendid sculptures adorning its facade. Taken with Maitini’s bas-reliefs in Orvieto, they are the best Romanesque carvings in Umbria, partly Lombard in their inspiration, and drawing variously on the Gospels and medieval legend for their complicated narrative and symbolic purpose. A particularly juicy scene to look out for includes the Death of a Sinner (left series, second from the top) where the Archangel Michael abandons the sinner to a couple of demons who bind and torture him before bringing in the burning oil to finish the job. Fourth panel from the top (right series) shows a wolf disguised as a friar before a fleeing ram – a dig at dodgy monastic morals.

Category: Spoleto