travel
Zambia: Watercolors from the bush
We visited the village where our nephew Travis worked as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was a fabulous visit despite the primitive conditions- the people were just so loving and friendly. These are the only ones I still have and I am offering them for the next week at special prices. See blog on Zambia for further accounts of this special journey.
Aranjuez, the summer palace of the Spanish royalty
Aranjuez is just south of Madrid and home to the summer palace. It was built in the second half of the 16th century under Phillip II. The town was originally inhabited only by the court but now is a small but vibrant town dominated by the tourists who visit the palace.
The main entrance is through a gate that leads onto a large courtyard.
Visitors would have entered through the doors to be confronted with a magnificent marble staircase and a ceiling high above. Nowadays visitors enter through a much smaller entrance in the Renaissance style wing. This style features a rather flat presentation, with pediments of various sorts adoring the windows. Here you can also see the Romanesque arches, rounded versus the sharper edges of the Gothic style.
The interior visitors access is limited to two floors. Once you climb the main staircase there perhaps a dozen rooms. Some are more what you might expect in terms of high and painted ceilings, luxurious furnishings, and rich colors. Others are intensely decorated with ceramics:
The palace sits on the conjunction of two rivers, the Tagus and Jarama. The rivers feed numerous fountains and maintain the extensive gardens.
Nearby is the Palcio de Sivela, built in 1860 and completely restored in 1988. Here is my impression of it
Graz, Austria, a small city that is home to dozens of museums
June 2016
After an overnight in Dusseldorf, we flew in a prop jet into the small airpport in Graz, Austria. It’s a tiny airport, and but a 10 minute walk to train station. Before long we were exiting the system and taking the wrong exit, so we added a kilometer to our walk. We missed a turn and added a bit more, but then we got to the door.
Graz is 200 km southwest of Vienna, just about an hour by train. It is the second largest city in Austria and home to six universities with 44,000 students. The University of Gray is the city’s oldest. It was founded in 1585 under Archduke Karl II. There are over 30,000 students in it alone. The entire city is a World Heritage Site (1999). Slovenia is its nearest neighbor (to the south); Hungary is not far to the east. Graz is home to just 310,000 residents.
Graz was settled as far back as 5000 BC, likely for two reasons. First is the Mur River, which flows swiftly this time of year. This facilitated transportation and commerce. Second, there is a large and steep hill just off the river, not 5 minutes from our place, which made for an excellent natural fortification, which has never been breached.
Hitler visited in 1938 and was welcomed and the Jewish community subsequently destroyed. In 2000, on the anniversary of the the Kristalnacht pogroms the city presented the Jewish community with a new synagogue to replace they one destroyed. Some 15% of the city was destroyed by Allied bombing, but the Old Town was largely spared. Graz surrendered to Soviet troops at the end of WWII.
The city has dozens of museums. We bought a pass that allows entrance to 12 of them for 30 euros. So far we have just visited the Modern Art museum, largely given over to an incomprehensible installation. However there were some genuine works or art as well.
We’ve had a few snacks and light meals thus far. Soup. It’s June and the people are eating hot soup! With temperature in the low 20’s c (under 72f) the days are cool and the nights a bit on the chilly side, quite the contrast with Valencia, from where we just came, and where summer temperatures can hit 40C.
Here are views of Graz from the top of Schlossberg Castle.
Hagia Sophia (circa 550), one of the world’s greatest buildings
September 20 2015 Istanbul
The Hagia (Holy) Sophia (Wisdom) is a stunning domed building built as a Greek Orthodox cathedral in 537 when Istanbul, then called Constantinople, was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire(also known as the Byzantine Empire). Between 1204 and 1261 it was a Roman Catholic cathedral. Following the conquering of the Empire by the Ottomans in 1453, the Hagia Sofia became a mosque. In 1931 it was closed and then converted into a museum, which it is still. The minarets and round domes give it an Islamic setting, and some of the interior maintains that influence as well. Nonetheless it is an impressive structure, notably the dome, and for 1000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world, replaced in 1520 by the Cathedral in Seville.
Here are some stock photos of the interior. It is way too dark and large for me to get good photos. These are mosaics!
Istanbul Modern is another pleasant surprise
The Istanbul Modern is another pleasant surprise in a city full of them. The artists on exhibit when I visited yesterday were mostly Turkish, some trained here and others in the US and I think one or two in Germany. Most of the work is representational but very creative in a modernist sort of way, as you can from the photos I’ve placed below.
The installations made sense- how unusual- and were interesting as well- also unusual. One was a young man playing make-shift drums, another various people lip synching Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’ Behind thick sets of hanging strands of fabric hangs a geographical globe with stars and planets on the walls, while in another section is a political globe. In a third room a face of a woman is projected onto a mannequin. She is singing.
Not so pleasant is the getting there. There are large signs and even an arrow pointing tot the enntrance. The large signs do not point anywhere except for the one with the arrow, which points down a lonely, shabby alley. I walked past it thinking this could not be. But it was.
The location challenge came after I ran across an angry confrontation a few hundred meters from the entrance. There was angry shouting and a man banging hard on the hood of a van. There was pushing and shoving. The police arrived. I heard four bangs, someone with a notepad came running toward me. I then turned around and scooted back a hundred meters, and crossed the street. A security guard told me it was not gun shots, just more banging on the van I suppose, so I went on. Traffic had piled up between me and the scene so I felt reasonably safe.
Here are some of the pieces I found interesting. The first is fabric sewed onto canvas, probably my favorite, which given I am not a fabric art fan in general, is a strong endorsement:
Haggia Sophia, a World Heritage Site, noted for its architecture and mosaics
September 20 2015 Istanbul
The Hagia (Holy) Sophia (Wisdom) is a stunning domed building built as a Greek Orthodox cathedral in 537 when Istanbul, then called Constantinople, was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire(also known as the Byzantine Empire). Between 1204 and 1261 it was a Roman Catholic cathedral. Following the conquering of the Empire by the Ottomans in 1453, the Hagia Sofia became a mosque. In 1931 it was closed and then converted into a museum, which it is still. The minarets and round domes give it an Islamic setting, and some of the interior maintains that influence as well. Nonetheless it is an impressive structure, notably the dome, and for 1000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world, replaced in 1520 by the Cathedral in Seville.
Here are some stock photos of the interior. It is way too dark and large for me to get good photos.
These are mosaics!
Helsinki- some fabulous interior Jugend (Art Nouveau) decorations
September 8, 2015
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo at the Civico Museo Sartorio
August 14, 2014
We visited the Civico Museo Sartorio this week. It’s on the other side of Trieste but certainly walkable for us. It is another mansion owned by a wealthy family that now holds the family’s collections, furniture with plenty of room for exhibits. The mansion is huge, at least 4 stories and I bet there’s a hundred rooms.
The Sartorio family lived there from 1775 until Anna Segrè Sartorio donated the property to Trieste, requesting that it become a museum. The Allies made it their headquarters after WW2 until around 1953. The city renovated afterwards. Stunning floors and ceilings, endless displays of ceramics, and portraits that went on and on.
The special exhibit displayed the drawings of Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, an amazing artist whose vast out of drawings and paintings make him one of the worlds best albeit less known. . He died in 1770. Here’s one of his drawings. Many of the ones we saw were done in ink. They’ve been restored, having been found in bad condition. The ink was acidic and had to be neutralized, and the backings removed and replaced. This is quite an extensive collection.
See my art at http://garyartista.wix.com/gary-kirkpatrick-art
BandOrkestra at Piazza Verdi, Trieste (video)
It’s a lovely venue for concerts, just 100 meters from the port in a magnificent square. Several thousand were there, and hundreds more eating gelato in the nearby cafes. The band was a way too loud in the beginning. There’s a lot of brass and those first songs were heavy on them. I tire of being hit over the head with noise. The band’s leader paces constantly, which remained forever a distraction, but the musicians he assembled and leads are excellent. Here’s a video of one of the numbers.
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