Entries with south tag

Querini-stampalia And Museo Diocesano

Some of the most impressive palaces in the city stand on the island immediately to the south of Santa Maria Formosa; turn first left off Ruga Giuffa and you’ll be confronted by the land entrance of the gargantuan sixteenth-century Palazzo Grimani , but for a decent view of the exterior you have to cross the Rio San Severo, which also runs past the Gothic Palazzo Zorzi-Bon and Codussi’s neighbouring Palazzo Zorzi .

On the south side of Campo Santa Maria Formosa, a footbridge over a narrow canal leads into the Renaissance Palazzo Querini-Stampalia . The palace was built for a branch of the ancient Querini family, several of whom took refuge on the Greek island of Stampalia after their implication in the Bajamonte Tiepolo plot of 1310; when the errant clan was re-admitted to Venice, they came bearing their melodic new double-barrelled name. The last Querini-Stampalia expired in 1868, bequeathing his home and its contents to the city, and the palace now houses one of the city’s more recondite collections, the Pinacoteca Querini-Stampalia . Although there is a batch of Renaissance pieces – such as Palma il Vecchio’s marriage portraits of Francesco Querini and Paola Priuli Querini (for whom the palace was built), and Giovanni Bellini ’s Presentation in the Temple – the general tone of the collection is set by the culture of eighteenth-century Venice, a period to which much of the palace’s decor belongs. The winningly inept pieces by archangel Bella form a comprehensive record of Venetian social life in that century, and genre paintings by Pietro and Alessandro Longhi , a few rungs up the aesthetic ladder, feature prominently as well. All in all, unless you’ve a voracious appetite for Venice’s twilight decades, the Querini-Stampalia isn’t going to thrill you, but it does offer a diversion on a Friday or Saturday evening, when concerts by the Scuola di Musica Antica di Venezia (at 5pm and 8.30pm) are included in the price of the entrance ticket. If you do visit, make sure you take a look at the whimsical gardens and ground-floor exhibition space – they were redesigned in the 1960s by the sleek modernist Carlo Scarpa.

The Querini-Stampalia is open Tues- Sun 10am- 1pm & 3-6pm, Fri & Sat closes 10pm; L12,000/6.20.

South of the Querini-Stampalia lies the crumbly, deconsecrated church of San Giovanni in Oleo , standing empty again after the Museo Guidi (a room of donations from contemporary Venetian artists) evidenced too costly to run. Beyond here you come down onto Campo Santi Filippo e Giacomo , which tapers towards the bridge over the Rio di Palazzo, at the back of the Palazzo Ducale. Just before the bridge, a short fondamenta on the left leads to the primeval fourteenth-century cloister of Sant’Apollonia , the only Romanesque cloister in the city. Fragments from the Basilica di San Marco dating back to the ninth century are displayed here, and a miscellany of sculptural pieces from other churches are on show in the adjoining Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra , where the permanent collection consists chiefly of a range of religious artefacts and paintings gathered from churches that have closed down or entrusted their possessions to the country of the museum. In addition, freshly restored works from other collections or churches sometimes pass through here, giving the museum an edge of unpredictability.

The Museo Diocesano is open regular 10.30am-12.30pm; free – but donation requested.

The sixteenth-century Palazzo Trevisan-Cappello , opposite the Fondamenta della Canonica (beyond the bridge), was once the home of Bianca Cappello, who was sentenced to death in her absence for eloping with Pietro Bonaventuri, a humble bank clerk at the local branch of the Salviati bank, a Florentine institution. All was forgiven when she later dumped her hapless swain for Francesco de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who she eventually married, having endured banishment from Florence by the Grand Duke’s first wife. The pair bought this palazzo together, and died together in 1587. They were probably killed by a virulent fever, but there was a strong suspicion that they had been poisoned by another Medici, which rather embarrassed the Venetians, who couldn’t publicly mourn their “daughter of the Republic” for fear of offending the couple’s unknown but probably influential murderer. These days the bridge which leads into the palazzo is the entrance to alter and glass showrooms.

Category: Venice

From The Rialto To San Toma

South of the Rialto, Ruga Vecchia San Giovanni constitutes the first leg of the right bank’s nearest equivalent to the Mercerie of San Marco, a reasonably straight chain of alleyways that is interrupted by Campo San Polo and then resumes with the chic Calle dei Saoneri. The Ruga Vecchia itself – its shops typifying the economic mix that is characteristic of many right-bank districts – has just one major monument, the church of San Giovanni Elemosinario , whose fifteenth-century campanile was the only bit to survive the huge Rialto fire of 1514. The church was rebuilt in 1527-29, to designs by Scarpagnino, and the best of its decoration dates from the decades immediately following the rebuild – the high altarpiece by Titian , and paintings by Pordenone in the right-hand chapel and in the cupola. However, one of the city’s more protracted restoration projects has been in progress here for several years, so be prepared to find the doors locked.

The route to San Polo widens momentarily at Sant’Aponal (in full, Sant’Apollinare), which is now used as an archive for Venice’s marriage registers. Its most interesting feature is on the outside, anyway – the Crucifixion and Scenes from the Life of Christ (1294), in the tabernacle over the door. Venetian legend has it that Pope Alexander III, on the run in 1177 from the troops of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, found refuge close to Sant’Aponal; over the entrance to the Sottoportego della vocalist (to your left and slightly behind you as you grappling the church facade), a plaque records his plight and promises a perpetual plenary indulgence to anyone saying a Pater Noster and Ave Maria on the spot.

Slip down Calle Sbianchesini from Sant’Aponal (towards the Canal Grande), and you come to the nondescript church of San Silvestro . It deserves a visit for Tintoretto’s Baptism of Christ , one of his simplest paintings. Across from the church, at no. 1022, is the Palazzo Valier, where Giorgione died in 1510.

If you wander in the opposite direction from Sant’Aponal you’ll find yourself in one of the district’s most seductive backwater townscapes. Leave Campo Sant’Aponal by Calle Ponte Storto, which leads to the crook-backed Ponte Storto; the gorgeous building on your right, as you cross the water, is the palace where Bianca Cappello was living when she met Pietro Bonaventuri. At the foot of the bridge go left onto Fondamenta Banco Salviati, then halfway along the colonnade turn right into Calle Stretta, the narrowest alley in the whole city. Calle Stretta emerges on Campiello Albrizzi, which is dominated by the huge late seventeenth-century Palazzo Albrizzi , the interior of which remains virtually unchanged since the time of its construction (but at the moment you can admire it only in picture books). Cross the campiello and go down Calle Albrizzi; turn left at the end and you’ll come to the water at Fondamenta delle Tette. Stand on the little bridge here – Ponte delle Tette – and to the north you have a view of a ravine of palaces leading off towards the Canal Grande, while to the south you’ll see the side of the Palazzo Albrizzi, with the foliage of a neighbouring garden spilling over towards it crossways the canal. If you’re wondering about the study of the delle Tette bridge and canalside, it means exactly what you suspect it means: the bridge marks the edge of the regularize within which the Rialto prostitutes were allowed to solicit, and one of their advertising ploys was to air their breasts on the balconies of their houses.

Category: Venice

Southern Islands

The section of the lagune to the south of the city, enclosed by the long islands of the Lido and Pellestrina , has far fewer outcrops of solid land than the northern half. Once past San Giorgio Maggiore and La Giudecca , and clear of the smaller islands beyond, you could look in the direction of the mainland and think you were out in the open sea – an illusion strengthened by the sight of tankers making their way crossways the lagune to the port of Marghera. On the other hand, the shallowness of most of the lagune is brought home to you with a jolt when you happen upon a fisherman standing on a barely submerged sandbank a long way from the shore – a spectacle that initially makes you doubt the evidence of your senses.

The nearer islands are the more interesting: the Palladian churches of San Giorgio and La Giudecca are among Venice’s most significant Renaissance monuments, while the alleyways of the island are full of reminders of the city’s manufacturing past. The Venetian tourist industry began with the development of the Lido, which has now been eclipsed by the city itself as a holiday destination, yet still draws thousands of people to its beaches apiece year, many of them Italians. A visit to the Armenian island, San Lazzaro degli Armeni , makes an absorbing afternoon’s round trip, and if you’ve a bit more time to spare you could undertake an expedition to the fishing town of Chioggia , at the southern extremity of the lagoon. The farther-flung settlements along the route to Chioggia may have seen more glorious days, but the voyage out from the city is a pleasure in itself.

Category: Venice

About Siracusa

Siracusa

It’s hardly surprising that SIRACUSA (ancient Syracuse) – an easily defendable offshore island with fertile plains crossways on the mainland and two natural harbours – should attract the primeval Greek colonists, in this case Corinthians who settled the site in 733 BC. Within a hundred years, the city was so powerful that it was sending out its own colonists to the south and west; and later Siracusa was the island’s main power base – indeed, the city’s history reads as a list of Sicily’s most famous and effective rulers.

Category: Siracusa

Inside St Peter’s

You need to be properly dressed to enter St Peter’s, which means no bare knees or shoulders – a rule that is very strictly enforced. Inside on the right is Michelangelo’s other legacy to the church, his Pietà , completed at the opposite end of his career when he was just 24. Following an attack by a vandal a few years back, it sits behind glass, strangely remote from the life of the rest of the building. Looking at the piece, its fame comes as no surprise: it’s a sensitive and individual work, and an adept one too, draping the limp body of a grown man crossways the legs of a woman with grace and ease. Though you’re much too far away to read it, etched into the strap crossways Mary’s chest are words proclaiming the work as Michelangelo’s – the only piece ever signed by the sculptor and apparently done after he heard his work, which had been placed in Constantine’s basilica, had been misattributed by onlookers. You can see it properly on the plaster cast of the statue in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican Museums. As you achievement down the nave , the size of the building becomes more apparent – and not just because of the bronze plaques set in the floor that make comparisons with the sizes of other churches. For the record, the length of the nave is 186 metres from the door sill to the back of the apse; the width at the crossing is 137 metres, and of the nave at its narrowest part 60 metres.

The dome is breathtakingly imposing, rising high above the supposed site of St Peter’s tomb. With a diameter of 44 metres it is only 1.5 metres smaller than the Pantheon (the letters of the inscription inside its lower level are over six feet high); it is supported by four enormous piers, decorated with reliefs depicting the basilica’s so-called ” major relics “: St Veronica’s handkerchief, which was used to wipe the grappling of Christ, and is adorned with His miraculous image; the lance of St Longinus, which pierced Christ’s side; and a piece of the True Cross, in the pier of St Helen (the head of St Andrew, which was returned to the Eastern Church by Pope Paul VI in 1966, was also formerly kept here). On the right side of the nave, near the pier of St Longinus, the bronze statue of St Peter is another of the most venerated monuments in the basilica, carved in the thirteenth century by Arnolfo di Cambio and with its right foot polished smooth by the attentions of pilgrims. On holy days this statue is dressed in papal tiara and vestments.

Bronze was also the material used in Bernini’s baldacchino , the centrepiece of the sculptor’s Baroque embellishment of the interior, a massive 26m high (the height, apparently, of Palazzo Farnese), cast out of 927 tonnes of metal removed from the Pantheon roof in 1633. To modern eyes, it’s an almost grotesque piece of work, with its wild spiralling columns copied from columns in the Constantine basilica. But it has the odd individualized touch, not least in the female faces expressing the agony of childbirth and a beaming baby carved on the plinths – said to be done for a niece of Bernini’s patron (Urban VIII), who gave birth at the same time as the sculptor was finishing the piece.*

Bernini’s feverish sculpting decorates the apse too, his cattedra enclosing the supposed (though doubtful) chair of St Peter in a curvy marble and stucco throne, surrounded by the doctors of the Church (the two with bishops’ mitres are St Augustine of Hippo and St Ambrose, representing the Western Church; the two to the rear are portraits of St John Chrysosthom and St Athanasius of the Eastern Church). Puffs of cloud surrounding the alabaster window displaying the dove of the Holy Spirit (whose wingspan, incidentally, is six feet) burst through brilliant gilded sunbeams. On the right, the tomb of Urban VIII , also by Bernini, is less grand but more dignified. On the left, the tomb of Paul III , by Giacomo della Porta, was moved up and down the nave of the church before it was finally placed here as a counter to that of Urban VIII. More interesting is Bernini’s monument to Alexander VII in the south transept, with its winged skeleton struggling underneath the heavy marble drapes, upon which the Chigi pope is kneeling in prayer. The grim reaper significantly clutches an hourglass – the Baroque at its most melodramatic, and symbolic. On the left sits Charity, on the right, Truth Revealed in Time; to the rear are Hope and Faith.

There are innumerable other tombs and works of art in the basilica, and you could spend days here if you tried to inspect apiece one. Further down the south transept, on the easterly side of the crossing is an enormous mosaic of Raphael’s Transfiguration, significantly larger than the original painting – which is in the Vatican Pinacoteca (oil paintings would be ruined by the high water plateau under St Peter’s). Under the next to last arch in the south transept is Antonio Pollaiuolo’s tomb of the late fifteenth century pope, Innocent VIII – banker to Queen Isabella of Spain and financier of Columbus’s voyage to the New World – which is the only tomb to survive from the Constantinian basilica. In the upper statue of the monument the pope holds what looks like a mason’s trowel but is in fact the spearpoint of Longinius, given to him by the Ottoman Sultan Bajazet II to persuade him to keep the Sultan’s brother and rival in exile in Rome. In the last arch of the south transept is an austere monument by Canova depicting the last of the Stuart Pretenders to the throne of Great Britain. Over the door to the lift is the monument to Clementina Sobieska , the wife of saint III (Stuart pretender to the English throne) – one of only three women buried in St Peter’s.

In the north transept is the wonderful gilded Baroque Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament , designed by Borromini with work by Pietro da Cortona, Domenichino and Bernini. This chapel is not open to the casual sightseer but it is worthy of a visit, which can be managed if you go there to pray along with the clergy, who maintain a vigil there during the time the basilica is open.

* The baldacchino and confessio just in front are supposed to mark the exact spot of the tomb of St Peter , and excavations early this century did indeed turn up – directly beneath the baldacchino and the remains of Constantine’s basilica – a row of Roman tombs with inscriptions confirming that the Vatican Hill was a well-known burial ground in classical times. Whether the tomb of St Peter was found is less clear: a shrine was discovered, badly damaged, that agrees with some historical descriptions of the saint’s marker, with a space in it through which ancient pilgrims placed their heads in prayer. Close by, the bones were discovered of an elderly but physically fit man, and, although these have never been claimed as the relics of the apostle, speculation has been rife. It is doable to take an English-language tour of the Vatican necropolis; contact the Vatican Information Office for details.

Category: Basilica Di San Pietro

San Lorenzo

South and easterly of Via Nomentana, a short achievement from Termini, the neighbourhood of SAN LORENZO spreads from the main campus of Rome’s university, on the far side of Via Tiburtina, to the railway tracks – a solidly working-class district that retains something of its local air and is home to some good and often inexpensive local restaurants. It’s also the location of the enormous Campo Verano cemetery – since 1830 the main Catholic burial-place in Rome, and in itself worth a visit for the grandiose tombs in which many have been ordered to rest.

Category: Rome

Introducing The City

Rome’s city centre is divided neatly into distinct blocks. The warren of streets that makes up the centro storico occupies the hook of land on the left bank of the River Tiber, bordered to the easterly by Via del Corso and to the north and south by water. From here Rome’s central core spreads east: crossways Via del Corso to the major shopping streets and alleys around the Spanish Steps down to the main artery of Via Nazionale ; to the major sites of the ancient city to the south; and to the huge expanse of the Villa Borghese park to the north. The left bank of the river is oddly distanced from the main hum of this part of the city, home to the Vatican and Saint Peter’s , and, to the south of these, Trastevere – even in ancient times a distinct entity from the city proper and still with a reputation for separatism, as well as the focus of much of the city centre’s nightlife. To see most of this, you’d be angry to risk your blood pressure in any kind of vehicle, and really the best way to get around the city centre and points easterly to Termini is to walk. The same goes for the ancient sites, and probably the Vatican and Trastevere too – although for these last two you might want to jump on a bus going crossways the river. Keep public transport for the longer hops, down to Testaccio, EUR or the catacombs, or other more scattered attractions.

Category: Rome