Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Fall Field Trip to Bologna and the Veneto

It's been a while since my last post, mainly because I've been doing a lot of traveling. This means that I should be able to more than make up for my recent silence. Two weeks ago, my class went on a field trip to Northern Italy, traveling to Bologna, Mantova, Verona, Vicenza, and ending in Venice. After our field trip I had a break in school, and I decided to visit Greece. I've been back from Greece since Sunday night, and have been working hard in studio for a couple of project deadlines that are coming up later this week.

It has been a blur of traveling recently (not that I'm complaining) and I'm still sorting out all the things I saw and all the experiences I had. The field trip especially was an incredible learning experience. We spent about a day in each city until we got to Venice, where we had a bit more time. I must have been used to Rome, where I could take my education slow and really take my time to absorb the city, because I often felt a bit frantic to make the most of my limited time in the cities we visited, which were all intricate ecosystems with unique and special lessons to learn from.

Our first stop was Bologna, which is a largely medieval city with a strong Etruscan and Roman background. Bologna is a university town, holding the first university in all of Europe. Being full of students, it had a friendly and unpretentious feeling which I really enjoyed. Bologna's gift to the world is its cuisine, which I have been told is widely considered the best in Italy. Bologna is known for its tortelini, hams, and meat sauce. Unfortunately, we were there on a Sunday night when many restaurants were closed, but I was able to get the most delicious lasagna alla bolognese (the meat sauce) that I have ever had, albeit for a price. Bologna's gift to architects in particular is its system of arcades. An arcade is a series of arched opening which create a porch behind. The city of Bologna has miles of arcades which line its streets, creating designated pedestrian sidewalks. Each individual building in Bologna had an individual arcade, and the way in which the different arcades mesh together to become a unified street is quite beautiful.

Our next stop was Mantova, which was a sleepy Italian town, which, due to its more glamorous past, held some gems of architecture. The town itself is very rural, sitting in the heart of the Po river valley, Italy's most fertile farmland. Our morning guided tour of the city (my schedule basically consisted of morning tours with afternoons of completing various sketching or analysis assignments) went a bit late and I was unable to spend as much time in many of Mantova's buildings, most notable the enormous Renaissance church, San Andrea, which felt like something between a cave, a sports arena, and a Roman bath due to its dimly illuminated side chapels and soaring nave. Even though I wasn't able to see as much of Mantova as I would have liked, my mood was improved by a visit to the Palazzo del Te. This is a suburban villa (basically a party house) that I have spent much of my academic career studying and almost as much of my time disliking. It is the prime example of Mannerist architecture, a style that seeks to create tension and unease through deliberate violations of architectural canon. I always thought of Mannerism as somewhat vulgar and undisciplined. Instead, I was shocked by how well the building's details worked to encourage the feeling its owner desired. This would have been a fun place to party! Seeing the Palazzo del Te reminded me of how lucky I am to be able to actually visit architectural monuments and judge them with my own eyes.

Our next stop was Verona, which was so friendly, clean, and charmingly unassuming that I could see myself living there. No buildings truly stand out in Verona, and the "monuments" to the Montagues and Capulets of "Romeo and Juliet" are nothing special. However, the city is molded around the powerful Adige river and sheltered in the rising foothills of the Alps, and seems to let the drama of nature create the place rather than human hands. On our field trip we traveled with the 10 graduate students in the Rome program, and got to know them a bit better.

After Verona, my class took the bus up to Vicenza, which is a mecca for architects, and not really anybody else. The reason for this is it is the hometown of the most copied and influential architect in the world, Andrea Palladio. We started our tour of Vicenza in the afternoon, making our way up the ever-steeper Alpine foothills to the famous Villa Capra, or La Rotonda. This building, which was another house for entertaining guests, was Palladio's study in ideality. Four identical facades with identical porches leading to a square plan with a circle in the center make up a building that takes every opportunity to honor geometry and symmetry. Our class had an entire afternoon to sketch and study Villa Capra, and it was nice to be able to take my time at a place rather than rush through it, like much of the field trip. The city of Vicenza was also filled with Palladian architecture, which was quite monumental for a city that has obviously shrunk somewhat since the Renaissance.

Finally, we took the train into Venice, which is a paradigm of novelty and man's relationship and struggles with nature. Nothing really prepared me for the absolute fact that Venice is a city built on water. Set in a shallow lagoon, the early Venetians sunk millions of pilings into the sandy islands of the site and built wooden and stone decks on top. The many islands became neighborhoods and campos, the Italian word for field, were built on the high point of the island, becoming a sort of piazza system similar to Rome. The difference is that water surrounded everything. Navigating Venice is somewhat impossible. A labyrinthine narrow street dead ends into a similarly narrow canal that smells of the sea and is lined with colorfully painted wooden boats. You have to turn around and find another way to your destination, but with the right mindset, being lost in Venice is more a treat than a dilemma. Venice really has only two civic spaces that organize the city, the grand canal which s- curves through the heart of the city, and the piazza of San Marco, which is a space as perfectly suited for its function as any that I can think of. Lined with beautiful stone buildings that lead you towards the golden Byzantine Church of San Marco and the Doge's palace behind it, the piazza feels like a place of great power and ceremony, which is exactly what it was to the wealthy Venetians. The space leads to the lagoon and there allows for distant perspective views of the great processional churches of Palladio, San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore, which sit on the lagoon like pictures in a postcard, their entire structure in miniaturized perspective. Also in sight is the church of Santa Maria della Salute, a round baroque church whose dome seems to rise up to the heavens like a crown for the Virgin Mary it is named after. We had some free time in Venice, and with it I visited the Academia, the art museum in Venice, and went to mass in the spectacular San Marco. The Academia was a beautiful collection of art from the medieval to 18th century sublime. My favorites were the dramatic baroque paintings as well as the Vitruvian Man by da Vinci which was temporarily in the museum. My history teacher offered to show us around the museum and it was nice to be in a museum with someone that really knew what she was talking about. High mass in San Marco was a perfect way for me to finish my trip. An hour of quiet reflection was set in a church that is almost indescribable. Covered in golden mosaics, it almost felt like a cavern full of precious stone misty from the swirls of incense that slowly filled up the shafts of light entering from rounded windows. The entire space glowed in a hazy sheen. I feel I could talk about Venice for a while. I was just very impressed by how unique a place it was. I am sure that there is no place in the world like it.

Well, I guess there is a whirlwind update for my whirlwind trip. I will try to write another post soon while my memories from Greece are still fresh in my mind, but I have to get back to my homework now. I'm thinking of back home a lot, and am starting to miss everyone, but I always can remind myself that I'm studying in Rome I know I will most likely never be able to have so many opportunities to learn and grow in my life again. Especially since the field trip I have felt like a vine of ivy, trying to reach my tentacles out and grab a hold of everything I have. Already my time seems to be flying by, and by the end of the year I hope to feel that I have made the most of my time. I realize now that I might be starting to sound like a bit of a prick and a nerd, but I guess you'll have to talk to my friends to see if that's true.
Posted by bhart3 at 10:13 AM