Sights in Italy
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Riva degli Schiavoni
Stretching west from the Palazzo Ducale in San Marco all the way to the city’s eastern edges, this paved boardwalk is one of the world’s great promenades.
Schiavoni (literally, ‘Slavs’) refers to fishermen from Dalmatia (a region roughly equivalent to the former Yugoslavia) who arrived in Venice in medieval times and found this a handy spot for casting their nets. For centuries, vessels would dock and disembark here, right into the heart of Venice – if they could find a parking space between galleons and gondolas. A Rosetta Stone’s worth of languages were spoken here, as traders, dignitaries, sailors and servants arrived from ports around the Mediterranean and beyond.…
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Palazzo Querini Stampalia
The outer shell of this palazzo dates from the first half of the 16th century, but the inside could not be more surprising: a 1963 bridge, 1940s entrance and garden, and a 1959 1st-floor library all designed by Scarpa, with noteworthy 1990s embellishments by Mario Botta.
Enter through the Botta-designed bookshop to get a free pass to the cafe and its garden. Design-savvy drinkers take their spritz with a twist of high modernism in the Carlo Scarpa–designed courtyard garden or the Mario Botta–designed Qcoffee Bar.
Alternately, buy a ticket and head upstairs to the 2nd-floor Museo della Fondazione Querini Stampalia. The museum occupies a series of sumptuous,…
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I Frari
This soaring Italian-brick Gothic church features marquetry choir stalls, Canova's pyramid mausoleum, Bellini's achingly sweet Madonna with Child triptych in the sacristy, and Longhena's creepy Doge Pesaro funereal monument hoisted by burly slaves bursting from ragged clothes like Invisible Hulks – yet visitors are inevitably drawn to the small altarpiece.
This is Titian's 1518 Assumption, in which a radiant Madonna in a Titian-red cloak reaches heavenward, steps onto a cloud and escapes this mortal coil. Both inside and outside the painting, onlookers gasp and point out at the sight; Titian outdid himself here, upstaging his own 1526 Pesaro Altarpiece near the entry.…
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Basilica di San Francesco Upper Church
The Basilica di San Francesco Upper Church was built just after the lower church, between 1230 and 1253, and the change in style and grandiosity is readily apparent. One of the most famous pieces of art in the world is the 28-part fresco circling the walls. The fresco has been attributed to Giotto and his pupils for hundreds of years, but the question of who produced it is now under debate within the art-historian community.
The fresco starts just to the right of the altar and continues clockwise around the church. Above each image is a corresponding biblical fresco with 28 corresponding images from the Old and New Testament (possibly painted by Giotto, or Pietro…
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Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna
Designed and built by Jacopo Sansovino with a facade by Palladio – his first church commission – this enchanting Franciscan church is one of Venice’s most underappreciated attractions. The Madonna positively glows in Bellini’s 1507 Madonna and Saints in the Capella Santa, just off the flower-carpeted cloister courtyard, while swimming angels and strutting birds steal the scene in the delightful Virgin Enthroned, by Antonio da Negroponte c 1460–70.
Palladio and the Madonna are tough acts to follow, but father-son sculptors Pietro and Tullio Lombardo make their own mark with their 15th-century marble reliefs that recount the lives of Christ and an assortment of…
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Chiesa di San Zaccaria
When 15th-century Venetian girls preferred sailors to saints, they often had to do a penitential stint at the convent adjoining this remarkable church. A hotchpotch of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and baroque, it represents centuries of the wealth of disgruntled parents. Don't miss Bellini's melancholy Virgin or Tiepolo's version of the flight into Egypt via Venetian-style boat. For €1, you can also visit hidden chapels and the waterlogged, 10th-century foundations.
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Acropolis
The Acropolis, the heart of Selinunte's political and social life, occupies a slanted plateau overlooking the now-silted-up Gorgo di Cottone. It is crossed by two thoroughfares - one running north-south, the other east-west, dividing the acropolis into four separate sections.
Huddled in the southeastern part are five temples (A, B, C, D and O). The northernmost is Temple D, built towards the end of the 6th century BC and dedicated to either Neptune or Venus. Virtually the symbol of Selinunte, Temple C is the oldest temple on the site, built in the middle of the 6th century BC. The stunning metopes found by Harris and Angell were once a part of this formidable structure,…
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Chiesa di San Nicolò dei Mendicoli
Other churches in town may be grander and glitzier, but San Nicolò dei Mendicoli earns a special spot in local hearts for being the most essentially Venetian. From the outside, this low, spare brick Veneto-Gothic church dedicated to serving the poor hasn’t changed much since the 12th century, when its cloisters functioned as a women’s shelter and its portico sheltered mendicoli (beggars). The tiny, picturesque campo out front is a Venice in miniature, surrounded on three sides by canals and bearing a pylon bearing the winged lion of St Mark, one of the few in Venice to have escaped target practice by Napoleon’s troops. Dim interiors are illuminated by a golden arcade…
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Basilica di San Paolo Fuori le Mura
The biggest church in Rome after St Peter’s (and the world’s third-largest) stands on the site where St Paul was buried after being decapitated in AD 67. Built by Constantine in the 4th century, it was largely destroyed by fire in 1823 and much of what you see today is a 19th-century reconstruction. However, some treasures survived the fire, including the 5th-century triumphal arch, with its heavily restored mosaics, and the gothic marble tabernacle over the high altar. This was designed in about 1285 by Arnolfo di Cambio together with another artist, possibly Pietro Cavallini. To the right of the altar, the elaborate Romanesque paschal candlestick was fashioned by…
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Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista
Political power had its perks for this influential Venetian confraternity, including a polychrome marble 1st-floor meeting hall designed in 1729 by Giorgio Massari, a grand, Codussi-designed double staircase, and Pietro Lombardo’s 1481 carved marble courtyard entry arch topped by the eagle of patron saint John the Baptist. Bellini and Titian turned out world-class works for the scuola (religious confraternity) that have since been moved to the Gallerie dell’Accademia – but Palma Il Giovane’s works still illuminate the Sala d’Albergo, and Pietro Longhi’s charming Adoration of the Wise Men is still here, with its bright-eyed, wriggling baby Jesus.
One of the six…
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Museo di Torcello
Across the square from the cathedral in the 13th-century Palazzo del Consiglio is this museum dedicated to Torcello’s bygone splendours. Downstairs are early Byzantine mosaics painstakingly assembled from half-centimetre tesserae; upstairs is a daunting display of heavy medieval culinary irons, used by nuns to stamp holy host wafers.
A captivating collection of ancient curiosities is upstairs in the 11th- to 12th-century Palazzo dell’Archivio, opposite the Palazzo del Consiglio. Roman items unearthed at the now-vanished Altino include charming, enigmatic bronze miniatures: a poppy, a chicken’s claw, and a dolphin. Elegantly incised Egyptian bronze mirrors date from…
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Fondaco dei Turchi
The dukes of Ferrara had the run of this 12th-century mansion until they were elbowed aside in 1621 to make room for Venice’s most important trading partner: Turkey. Turkish merchants were a constant in Venice throughout the maritime powers’ rocky romance, celebrated with favoured-nation trading status and inter-Adriatic weddings, and tested by periodic acts of piracy, invasion and looting. The Fondaco dei Turchi remained rented out to the Turks until 1858, after which the place underwent a disastrous modernisation. Original facade features were sacrificed to the architectural fancies of the time, including odd crenellations that made the gracious Gothic building look…
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Ca’ Pesaro
Like a Carnevale costume built for two, the stately exterior of this Baldassare Longhena–designed 1710 palazzo hides two quirky museums: the Galleria d’Arte Moderna and Museo d’Arte Orientale. At Galleria d’Arte Moderna three storeys of Venetian modern- art history begin with flag-waving early Biennales, showcasing Venetian landscapes and Venetian socialites by Venetian painters (notably Giacomo Favretto and Guglielmo Ciardi). Savvy Biennale organisers soon diversified, showcasing Gustav Klimt’s 1909 Judith II (Salome) and Marc Chagall’s Rabbi of Vitebsk (1914–22). The 1st-floor 1961 De Lisi Bequest added Kandinskys and Morandis to the modernist mix of de…
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Ca’ d’Oro
Along the Grand Canal, you can’t miss the stunning 15th-century Ca’ d’Oro, its lacy Gothic facade resplendent even without the original gold-leaf details that gave the palace its name (Golden House). The lacy Gothic arcade framing the double loggia balcony is Venice’s most irresistible photo-op, and the intricate semiprecious stone mosaicspaving the water door entry make a grander entrance than any red carpet.
Ca’ d’Oro was donated to the city by Baron Franchetti with an impressive art collection, now displayed in the upstairs Galleria Franchetti, alongside a jackpot of artwork plundered from Veneto churches during Napoleon’s Italy conquest. Napoleon had…
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Area Archeologica del Teatro di Marcello
Rising from the ruins to the east of Via del Teatro di Marcello, the Teatro di Marcello is the star of this recently opened archaeological area.
The theatre was originally planned by Julius Caesar but remained unfinished at the time of his death in 44 BC. Augustus then inherited the project and named it after his favourite nephew Marcellus, who had died earlier in 23 BC. By 17 BC the theatre was in use, and was formally inaugurated in 11 BC.
Capable of holding more than 20,000 people, it was frequently restored after fires and earthquakes until it eventually fell into disuse. In AD 365 it was partially demolished and the stone used to restore nearby Ponte Cestio.
Beyond…
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Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica: Palazzo Barberini
The 17th-century Palazzo Barberini was commissioned by Urban VIII to celebrate the Barberini family's rise to papal power. Many high-profile baroque architects worked on it, including rivals Bernini and Borromini; the former contributed a large squared staircase, the latter a helicoidal one. Today the palace houses part of Galleria Nazionale, a Renaissance and baroque art feast. Besides works by Raphael, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Bernini, Filippo Lippi, Holbein, Titian and Tintoretto, there is the captivating ceiling of the main salon, the Triumph of Divine Providence (1632–39) by Pietro da Cortona. Don't miss Hans Holbein's famous portrait of a portly Henry VIII (c 1540)…
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Museo della Follia
Part of San Servolo’s former insane asylum has been turned into a museum. Two intriguing rooms are full of paraphernalia and explanations of the days when a stint at San Servolo rarely guaranteed a cure. In the first room, find a series of before and after photos of 19th-century inmates, many of whose chief malady was extreme poverty, with hallucinations and nonspecific symptoms resulting from bad nutrition and vitamin deficiency. In the main room, you’ll see instruments used for electroshock therapy, while in an annexe there are other ‘therapeutic’ instruments, including chains and straitjackets.
Of particular interest is the ancient pharmacy, where for centuries…
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Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli
When Nicolò di Pietro’s Madonna icon started miraculously weeping in its outdoor shrine around 1480, crowd control became impossible in this cramped corner of Cannaregio. Out of deference to her holiness – and possibly to disperse foot-traffic jams – the neighbours took up a collection to build a chapel to house the painting and its ecstatic admirers. But there was another miracle in store for the neighbourhood: Pietro and Tullio Lombardo’s design, which completely ignored then-current Gothic in favour of a simpler, more classical approach that would come to be known as Renaissance architecture. Although frequently described as a ‘jewel box’, the church is not especially…
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Giardino di Boboli
Despite the volumes of visitors and a slightly shop-worn mien, the Boboli gardens remain both a marvel of Tuscan Renaissance landscape architecture and, in its further reaches, a fine escape from the tourist hordes. Perhaps its most impressive feature is the stately VialedeiCipressi, a grand, cypress-lined avenue that leads down to Isolotto, a marvellous ornamental pond adorned with a marble Neptune and nymphs and, in warmer weather, fragrant citrus trees. Nearer the Palazzo Pitti, a fleshy Venus by Giambologna rises from the waves in the Grotta del Buontalenti, a fanciful grotto designed by the eponymous artist. Don’t miss the haunting ‘face’ sculpture (1998) by Polish…
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Palazzo Grassi
Rounding a Grand Canal bend, gondola riders gasp with the shock of the new: installations by contemporary artists like Richard Prince and Jeff Koons docked at Giorgio Masari's 1749 neoclassical palace. French billionaire François Pinault installed his provocative contemporary art collectionat the Palazzo Grassi in 2005, providing Venice with sensation and scandal between Biennales. Postmodern architect Gae Aulenti peeled back twee rococo decor to reveal Masari's muscular classicism in 1985–86, and minimalist Tadao Ando heightened the palace's stage-set drama with backlit scrims and spotlighting in 2003–05. Don't miss the cafe overlooking the Grand Canal, with interiors…
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Certosa di Galluzzo
Dominating the village of Galluzzo, about 3km south along Via Senese from Porta Romana, is this quite remarkable 14th-century monastery. The Carthusian order of monks once had 50 monasteries in Italy. Of these, only two are now inhabited by monks of that order. The Certosa passed into Cistercian hands in 1955.
The Certosa can only be visited with a guide (reckon on about 45 minutes) who will take you first to the Gothic hall of the Palazzo degli Studi, now graced by a small collection of art, including five somewhat weathered frescoes by Pontormo. It is a little depressing to think that, until Napoleon's troops looted the place in the early 19th century, more than 500…
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Basilica di Santa Sabina
A genuinely spiritual spot, this solemn basilica was founded by Peter of Illyria in around AD 422. It was enlarged in the 9th century and again in 1216, just before it was given to the newly founded Dominican order – look out for the mosaic tombstone of Muñoz de Zamora, one of the order’s founding fathers, in the nave floor. A 20th-century restoration returned it to its original look. One of the few surviving 4th-century elements are the basilica’s cypress-wood doors. They feature 18 carved panels depicting biblical events, including one of the oldest Crucifixion scenes in existence. It’s quite hard to make out in the top left, but it depicts Jesus and the two thieves…
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Parco Nazionale dell'Arcipelago Toscan
According to local legend, when Venus rose from the waves, seven precious stones fell from her tiara, creating seven islands off the Tuscan coast. They range from the 530 sq km of Elba, the largest, to tiny Montecristo, at just over 1000 hectares. All except Montecristo, nowadays a closed marine biological reserve, rely mainly on income from tourism. This national park was established in 1996 to protect the delicate ecosystems of the islands.
But it's not only the land that's protected - the 60,000 hectares of sea that washes around the islands make up Europe's largest marine protected area. Here, typical Mediterranean fish abound and rare species, such as the wonderfully…
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Basilica di San Giovanni
According to Roman law, Christians were not allowed to bury their dead within the city limits (which during the Roman occupation did not extend beyond Ortygia). Forced to go elsewhere, Christians conducted their burials in the outlying district of Tyche and its underground aqueducts, unused since Greek times. New tunnels were carved out and the result was a labyrinthine network of burial chambers, most of which are inaccessible except the ones underneath the Basilica di San Giovanni.
The church itself is pretty, with its skeletal rose window open to the sun. In the 17th century it served as the city's cathedral and is dedicated to the city's first bishop, St Marcian, who…
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Palazzo Pantaleo
Carry on down Via Duomo and take a left onto Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. Here you'll find the Palazzo Pantaleo , the temporary home of the city's archaeological collection. We say 'temporary' but the edited selection of artefacts on display has actually been here for seven years now. Still, it's certainly worth the visit as it exhibits the most sophisticated works of Magna Graecia that you're likely to see anywhere in Puglia.
Particularly fine are the ceramics, which Taranto precociously developed in its potteries during the 4th century and sold throughout the Greek world. There are lots of Corinthian and Laconian ceramics, but the best pieces are the superb black-and-red…
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