SIENA

I see my posts getting less and less frequent, and being posted farther and farther after things happen. That's the problem with being as busy here as I am back at home. I even forgot to tell my family that I went to Siena this past weekend, which could have been bad if it wasn't a day trip with my Reading Cities class.

So we went to Siena on Friday with both sections of the class so tour around the city for the day. We had another one of our professors from the school come along to disperse his knowledge among us.

When we first got there we past by a ledge that was supposed to give you a view of all of Siena, but unfortunately it was extremely foggy (a situation that made all of the professors crack up). The fog wasn't much better in the city either. 

You can see the effects of the fog at the Palazzo Salembini (above) and the Palazzo Pubblico (below).

Fortunately the sun was coming out and quickly cleared out the fog. So while that whole scientific process was happening, our workout was starting. Oh, I meant to say we climbed to the top of the Torre del Mangia (the tall tower you can see as a shadow in the fog).

The staircase was very spacious, as you can see, and was very gentle to my claustrophobia. But honestly, it was a little tight at places, and going down was way worse than coming up, but it goes quickly and I don't think it's an opportunity to be passed up. Therefore everyone should climb it if they get a chance.

Just look at the rewarding view from at the top. I could literally see the fog dispersing from the city. It was like something you'd see in a sci-fi movie.

And of course it gives you a great view of the Piazza del Campo. (I'd love to have this view during the horse races in July.) 

*Note* Please be prepared for the copious different shots of the Cathedral. It's a basic fixture that you can always find in the city from the bunches of high places we went to. I'm not even sorry. It's gorgeous. 

And then I'm going to say that the thin air got to us, because we started to get a little silly. I present Megan's "smolder" as exhibit A.

So we tried to convince Rachel to smolder for my camera, but she clearly wasn't having it and just laughed at us.

Back to intelligent things; the building in the middle of the shot above is the only one whose facade is still what it originally was, which fit the laws that were put in place for the buildings surrounding the Palazzo to match it's facade.

Fun side-note (sorry intelligent things) there is confetti on the ground always. Why? I guess all the cool kids would know (so you're all out of luck here).

When we climbed up what would have been the facade of the Cathedral, I thought that this was as high as we could go, but we found stairs that took you right to the tippy-top.

Just for scale, so you can see the cozy size of the halls and staircases we were going through. Plus Megan is just lovely.

From that very top position you can see the city like you would on Google Earth or on a map. It was unreal how perfectly you can see how the city works when you're only seeing the roof forms.

Those little specks down there were the first half of the group that already went up the facade. 

After everyone went up and had their fill of the heights, we finally all entered into the Cathedral. I won't post any more pictures of the interior so I don't hurt everyone's eyes with all of the stripping in the interior, but I will give you a classic dome-shot.

After the Cathedral and lunch we entered the building directly across from the Cathedral, that was once a hospital and has now been partially turned into an archaeological museum.

Just passing through the building to get to the archaeological museum you are immersed in the archaeology of the site its self. Take this hallway for instance; it was once the 'covered road' that brought all of the supplies to the hospital but also to the city as a whole.

And then I of course dropped my lens cap, again, and almost lost it forever under the flooring. But I think the Italians chivalry is rubbing off because Aaron saved it for me (just kidding, he's always been a sweetheart).

The set up of this museum is basically an insert into the building. So we can walk through the space and experience it, but never actually physically touch it (unless you have to rescue your lens cap). It's a great way to allow visitors to view the space but also to preserve it.

This display case is a great example of how the museum works. It's also clearly a new addition, and this contrast between new and old is carried out through the whole design to further draw attention to the historic portions. 

Honestly, I just found this display case of old coins really cool. It was basically the only light in the room, and ramps down with the room, creating a great visual experience that pulls you in and allows you to casually experience the coins.

After the museum we were supposed to straight to the Palazzo Salembini, the oldest currently in use bank, but we were forced to wait outside for about an hour or so until our guide was available. The sun was setting and I had just wanted to get home to my gelato so I was a tad bit grumpy about staying and not just skipping the place all together. But after going in and seeing it, I'm definitely glad that we did. My gelato wasn't going anywhere anyways.

This gorgeous view is from the courtyard at the back of the building. You can see the reflection in the windows of the sky, which can give you a sense of the clear view of the city that one can get from those windows (which was the intention).

One of the biggest points of this building is the staircase that was added in its renovation in the 20th century. If it reminds you of the Geuggenheim then you get it. IT was definitely inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, but that's not the part that I found the most amazing. The exterior is composed of wooden glu-lam's, and the stairs themselves are concrete. And, you can kind of see it in this picture on the right, the underside of the concrete has been textured to emulate wood. It was so convincing that some people had to reach up and touch it as we were climbing the stairs, just to confirm.

This ceiling was in one of the main rooms that looks out onto the city and where larger, more important meetings would have been held (and probably still are held since it's still in use).

And then to cap off the day, we were allowed to go all the way up onto the roof, where we not only had another great view of the city, but we also go to see the most mind-blowing sunset. 

Thanks once again for bearing with me and my lazy posting practices. I will hopefully keep this pace, and not get any slower as the semester progresses and my work increases. Ciao!

I'M GOING ON AN ADVENTURE : valentines days edition

Instead of hanging around in the city, and seeing the already enormous amounts of PDA Italy has to offer being doubled because of the holiday, my roommate Rachel and I decided to head out that day with the hope of finding a spot across the fume to sketch and lounge around at most of the day. All of our friends were wither in Rome or Barcelona for the weekend anyways, so it looked like the most fun.

Our first stop before heading out of the center of the city was a small, vintage bookshop just around the corner from our apartment. We had been in there once before and absolutely loved it.

 Even though all of the books are in Italian, we both found ones that we thought we could aspire to one day make it through, giving us a goal to improve our Italian and also getting an awesome souvenir. So we hid them away in one of the shelves for another day. When we went back on Friday, we were luck enough to actually find them again! I ended up buying two books, on a hardback, and both graphic novels for only €5.50 total. I know, I know, you're probably judging me right now because I just bought "comic books", but they are legitimately large enough to be novels, and my thinking is that it will be a great way to learn phrases and conversational words, instead of struggling through a 'mature' novel that I'll never be able to fully understand. Rachel walked out with a hardback book as well for only €5, and no she did not get a graphic novel.

After that we headed over the river via Ponte Vecchio, which we had seen in the distance, but had not yet actually been too as we like to avoid the tourist areas. But since it was our "date" out we decided to be typical tourists for half a second.

After our temporary tourist moment, we decided to actually get across the river and out of tourist country. While walking we were vaguely on the search for some mountain side spot, one of which we didn't actually know, to sit and sketch and read for the rest of the afternoon. We ended up stumbling upon a small asian market and picking up an enormous bottle of soy sauce (it's incredibly expensive here and we really enjoy making stir fry), so our trip was already counted as a success.

 After that we kept on walking until Rachel saw a road that seemed safe enough and looked like it lead up into the hills. It was a bit of a workout to get up the hill, and we were both out of breath, but the view when we turned back around was definitely worth it.

We attempted to climb the wall to get a better picture, but unfortunately neither of us are Spiderman so it was quite impossible. After consulting our map we determined that if we kept walking we'd end up at a large garden complex, and figured that may be a good spot for us to rest for the afternoon.

We were greeted by what looked like a countryside on top of the mountain, which was already a good sign for what we were looking for.

What we had actually found was the Italian version of a National Park, but it was more a National Garden. Needless to say we were incredibly excited and marveled at how gorgeous and empty this area was. 

Rachel looking very gorgeous among the scenery. I'm sneaky with pictures like this.

It was just too quaint with little bridges like this one.

The view on top of the bridge wasn't half bad either.

As we climbed back down form the garden on the mountain, we found more of Narnia lamp posts! We're taking it as a sign, or the fact that the authors of LOTR and Narnia were form Europe and probably saw scenes like these all the time. Whichever scenario you prefer.

We even got to see some more snow-caped mountains waaaaaay in the distance.

We rounded off our time out back in the city by the "babies" where we read for a little bit before we went and ate out at a rather disappointing chinese restaurant. The conclusion from that experience is that it's just better to cook at home, monetarily speaking as well. Since our dinner wasn't that great we made some snacks with our Nutella, strawberries, and bananas. That made up for it a million times over. It's the little things sometimes, and this day had been full of millions of them.

ROMA, GIORNA 4

 The weather in Rome was wonderful until our last day, in which it rained almost the entire day. Unfortunately the tour we took today was all outside, so I don't have as many pictures as usual. It's even more unfortunate because this was a fantastic tour through the baroque period in Italy.

Regardless, our tour guide was amazing, and it was an incredibly informative and all around awesome tour. 

So we met up with our guide at the first stop of our tour, Palazzo Navona (you can see him and and Eugenio above). For those of you new to the Piazza Navona, it's the former stadium of Domitian. Then it basically because the piazza for the Pamphili family to show off their wealth and familial connections to the Pope of the time. Anyways, it turned out to produce a beautiful square, and we got the Fountain of the Four Rivers out of it.

After the Piazza, we headed over to Sant'Ivo all Sapienza, which is a chapel that was built for the University of Rome at essentially the beginning of the Renaissance by Borromini.

You can start to get a sense of how ornamentation is a major thing in the Renaissance, although this one isn't as fully "decorated" as one would think of Renaissance architecture. It's lacking color for one thing, but Borromini meant for this to be paint while as it is, and it's still incredibly stunning.

Even the courtyard is stunningly designed, casually slipping in the patrons coat of arms.

Later in the tour we ended up behind the chapel, allowing us to have a fantastic view of the spiral at the top of the dome. Now that spiral is definitely Renaissance, no doubt about it.

Our next stop, before our coffee break (our guide was cute like that), was the Pantheon. I had been there once before in the week, but this time it was earlier in the day and we were with a guide, so it was a totally different experience. I don't have any good photographs from the outside because of two reasons. The first is that this structure is so large in comparison to the surrounding area that there's no way I can get a remotely good picture of the entire thing. And the second reason is the vastly large amount of tourists everywhere that ruin every shot. Though I shouldn't berrade them too much since I'm one too.

Either way I came out with some great shots of the dome, which is the best part of the Pantheon anyways (in my opinion!). For those who don't know, it's a concrete dome with an open oculus at the top. The oculus not only lets natural light into this very dense space, but it also acts as a sun dial, which you can see in the picture above.

Our next stop was to see the obelisk at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. This obelisk was originally designed to be hollow between the elephants legs, but the patrons thought that the weight of the obelisk would definitely crush the base, and thus made him create a completely solid base. This incident is probably what really motivated him to create the Fountain of the Four Rivers with such a dramatic opening in the base.

Just for fun, here is the inside of that church (although we didn't really learn about it).

Our next stop, St. Ignatius Church, is possibly one of my favorites from that day. When you walk in you see this roof.

But when you step on a circular stone on the floor this is the view you get. This enormous perspective seen deserves a lot of respect and awe.

The same painter that did the fresco I just showed you, also painted the dome.

Except when you get closer to the dome, you can also see that it is a fake!

This was a laugh out loud moment, especially after all of the amazing domes I've stood under and take pictures of. This one is a flat roof simply painted to look magnificent. I can't even comprehend the skills that it would take to pull something like this off.

After the church, we headed over to the oh-so-famous Trevi fountain. Though spectacularly gorgeous, it was the most tourist-packed place I had been to yet, so I really only got a few good shots for it, and it was hard for our guide to tell us much in such a crowded space.

After whoever wanted to threw their coins in the fountain (a tradition that supposedly will bring you back to Rome again), we headed to our final destination with our guide, the Spanish Steps.

A quick last stop, and it was our lunch break. Yes, we did all of that before lunch.

Our afternoon was a bit less packed. We all met up after lunch and headed to the Ara Pacis Museum.

This museum is quite the controversial one in Rome. It was one of the first modern buildings built in the center of the city since the 30's, and it's quite a large structure to hold just one artifact. But the biggest concern to people is the belief that it doesn't pay attention to its context and so it blocks the views of the neighboring church.

I won't get into whether or not I agree with those statements, because I still have yet to draw a definite conclusion, and I think that it's a serious issue for an architect to face since we spend so much time studying the site, and putting our models into site models and walking around and around them. Regardless, the interior of the building is gorgeous!

Fun fact, I saw this water feature in the stairs and how successful it was and kicked myself a little because I had designed one in my last project, but took it out. It just looks so amazing!

Anyways, let's get back on topic. After the Ara Pacis, our small time to catch our breath, we had to head to the hotel to pick up our luggage and meet the bus so that we could make it to the train station and head home. 

Fortunately we didn't arrive home too late, but unfortunately that means that we arrived home and promptly headed to studio to catch up on the work we successfully (or unsuccessfully depending on how you look at it) avoided while in Rome.

It was an incredibly busy couple of days after that with our final precedent studies due, plus the 7 analytic and in-depth sketches from the Rome trip due right after that. And then I was in charge of 16 other students during our appointment to get our Italian stay-permits. I've finally just gotten a chance to catch my breath and actually sleep, so that you all for bearing with my very delayed updates on Rome and life in general!

ROMA, GIORNA 3

The third day in Rome seemed like it was going to be a bit of a let down since our first stop was the MAXXI Museum that was built by Zaha Hadid. I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong about that. Sure, I don't particularly Hadid designs (I'm a minimalist, what can I say), but in the general sense I think that this building was one that actually was successful in it's uses. Hadid had designed it as the sort of urban liveliness that the neighborhood needed, while also designing one of her abstracted shapes to still fit within the city block structure. That's not the part that I find successful (it's a bit subjective). The first part that I found successful was the courtyard in front of the museum. It's a paved surface, open to the public, and since we were there on a Saturday it was in use! It didn't matter that it was a paved surface, the children were running all over, playing on the outdoor art installations, enjoying the open space. It's probably even better that the space was paved because we saw children riding their scooters and skateboards, which isn't safe for the children to do over here like it is back in the states. It's a rarity that a space like that gets used for its intended purpose, especially since it was fenced it. Needless to say, that left me impressed.  

The second part that I found successful was the interior of the building itsself. It's a very odd configuration with a series of floating staircases and bending walls, but in actuality, and this is purely my opinion, it got me moving throughout the museum. Not only because I'm a curious architecture student, but because it just visually did that. She didn't create complex viewing spaces, but ones that let you roam and then entice you on to the next. But unfortunately we didn't get to see the "best view" out of the large window jutting out of the facade, so we didn't get to see what the hype was about in its entirety.

I was only told after I took this picture that we aren't allowed to take pictures in the actual galleries. Oops. Also, if you decide you want to come to this museum  note that they have a free coat check, and if your bag is deemed too big by their standards (as mine was, grrrr) then you have to put a €1 coin in a locker to keep your bag (you get the €1 back once you're done).

After the Maxxi Museum and lunch we headed just a few blocks over to Music Park Auditorium by Renzo Piano. It was designed with three interior halls and one outdoor theater space. Honestly speaking, the interior music hall look like three beetles, and not the famous band (that's funnier when said out loud). I wasn't too impressed by our tour, mainly because the guide continuously referred to everything as "perfect", such as the sound and shapes and use of materials, but I had no way to verify so I was just in a skeptical mood the whole time.

I did enjoy the way that Renzo created fantastic views to the city from essentially every spot in the complex. I also very much appreciated the use of materials through out, such as the cherry wood for the interior wall paneling and the 2mm thick lead that made up the shells on the 'beetles'. The intense amount of details put into these three buildings is also something to be commended. One of the halls actually was designed so that the seats on the floor level in the center can be moved to accommodate any type of even. Each seat has it's own AC/heating unit (while still being portable), plus the seats were from a company that designed them so that they have the same sound absorbency/reverberation when left empty as when someone is sitting in them, so that the reverberation time for the whole room remains constant continually. Details like this are so important in architecture, yet in schooling we rarely have the time to get down to these details because of the semester time constraints and number of projects to complete. 

Regardless of my skepticism, the whole complex was gorgeous, and I wish I was able to see at least one of the halls in action to verify how "perfect" it's design is.

ROMA, GIORNA 2

Day two of our trip to room started on a very good note, with a free breakfast from the hotel that we stayed at. (Are you starting to see the theme of how happy food makes me?) We made sure to eat a lot and take some fruit with us so that we wouldn't have to buy lunch.

After breakfast we headed out to the Roman Forum, which is located at the center of the city and was the heart of the Roman empire during it's time. It's mainly ruins now, but we had a professor from our school, who is an expert on all things Roman, come and give us a tour around. If you're ever thinking of going to the Forum, I suggest that you either research it quite a bit before you go, go with someone who knows quite a bit about it, or go with a guide. Otherwise it will all just seem like piles of rocks and you'll miss the importance of the ruins.

This is an example of said "pile of rocks". Trying to figure this out would be like trying to finish a 100 piece puzzle with only 25 pieces.

When you first enter you will walk right past this jewel, which was being restored when we went, but it's super fascinating, at least to me. It was a temple at one point, with the open structure and the colonnade surrounding the perimeter, but when the Catholic church became a larger power in Rome a chapel was built within the confines of the temple as a sort of statement.

Old rocks excite me, like these ones, which used to be the dining hall (archaeologist think) of  Nero's enormous villa.

Speaking of old stones, these are the oldest in the Forum in the Hut Village, dating back to the 5th century BC. BC people. That's unimaginably old, and I could have just reached out and touched them. But I didn't. I like to keep what I call a "National Parks" mentality of "Leave only footprints, take only pictures".

Finally for the Forum (alliteration alert) we have one of two triumphal arches. It's hard to see in this picture, but if you look straight down the arch, you can see the Colosseum. And the Colosseum was our next stop.

We walked through the bustling crowds towards the Colosseum, and as soon as our professor Eugenio (whose head is shown here) stopped and we looked up, this was the overwhelming and powerful view we had.

After climbing the steps...correction, the Roman steps (they are incredibly high and I will have buns of steel just from the one visit), we are once again welcomed with a powerful and overwhelming view. A camera can't take in as wide of a frame as we were getting in person. It was  a lot to see, and I'm sure that feeling was just what the designers were going for. But I digress. 

Here is the classic close-up view of the ruins that would have been the staging areas for the animals and gladiators. Fun fact: It also housed the rooms that the trap doors, located all over the battle area floor, lead to. Another fun fact: the wooden floor that covered these rooms was covered itself in sand to absorb all of the blood and sweat from the "games". (I hope none of you are squeamish.)

   

And finally for the Colosseum, this was the gorgeous last view we had before exiting (finding the exit is a bit of a adventure by the way.)

After we were done at the Colosseum, our professor and chaperon gave us the choice of either going on our own because it was our free time, or hanging out with them in a less formal format and having them show us interesting places in Rome and just getting to know each other. So Rachel and I, and a few other girls, took them up on the offer. We learned from Beatrice where to get native Roman food called Tramenzzino, which we absolutely got later, and we headed off to the large national monument. After the monument, which I don't have fond memories of because a pigeon "relieved" its self on my head, we headed over to a square that I had studied in school, the Campidoglio. 

We hung out here and looked around the square for a bit before taking a more scenic route back towards the hotel, where Rachel and I split off in search of our Tramenzinzo. Once that was acquired we were in for the night, and our second day in Rome was essentially over.