We drove by bus from Venice to lake Como, visiting Verona en route and with a day in Milan from our Lake Como base.
The flat country from Venice until Lake Como is motorway country, and heavily populated, but with mountains to the north where the villages start to achieve a bit more distance between them. Verona is towards the hills and a decent sized city, with several claims to fame. It is the continuation of a Roman town, with its Roman remains considered more visible than most Italian towns, Rome obviously excepted. Sections of the town have been excavated to show the Roman basement, and elsewhere Roman walls and entrances are still standing in various states of repair. Some of those ruins predate the Colosseum in Rome and are about the time of Christ, an eerie sensation standing beside them.
In the centre of the city is the courtyard and balcony that inspired Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet. No doubt reconstructed, upgraded or whatever, but a magnet for visitors including ourselves. It starts as a covered walkway, a stone tunnel, that leads from the street into a small courtyard, enclosed by double story houses overlooked by the first floor balcony of Juliet. The place was packed with people, from a throng outside on the street to the crowds going in and out of the courtyard itself. 'Never seen it so quite' claimed Judith (Cullen.) The tunnel was lined with many depths of posted notes stuck to the wall as far as could be reached, declarations of love usually involving a few written words, or a heart with names or initials, and often dates. Under the balcony sat a lovely bronze salute of Juliet, almost impossible to photograph as hoards of people pressed in for a photo of themselves standing beside it. Out in the city we also noticed that declarations of love were spilling out onto other walls and the bridge over the river was also collecting locked padlocks which we have seen in Paris, where one bridge is laden with locked padlocks as the couples 'lock their hearts together' with that gesture. We could relate to it and liked it enormously that this was place where this was happening.
Verona also has a superb Roman amphitheater, its outer wall quite intact and the internal space converted to an expansive opera venue. Oh to go to go there during opera season! Outside was a display of photographs of the amphitheatre in action over the years. I found (and photographed) a photo from 1929 to show Nigel and Ruth.
Driving on to Lake Como, we left the flats and crossed through a range off hills, with a wow view of the town of Como as we passed through the saddle. The town sits at the foot of the lake, which winds up a narrow glacial valley, with steep hills on both side fully clad in deciduous forest. The town is the usual concentration of orange tiled, densely packed villas, but so pretty with its lakeside frontage. Continuing up the lakeside road we oggled at the beautiful villas right down to lakeside, with majestic old trees like the Stone Pine, Himalayan Cedar and Italian Cyprus. Clearly a very luxury district, featuring waterfront gardens, private boat harbours and ramps, but serviced by a very narrow winding road, often walled on one or both sides. Above the roadway the buildings gave way to the backdrop of steep forest leading to the ridge lines. Looking up the lake the mountains and ridge lines disappeared into haze, making a dreamy alpine backdrop to the lake and its clusters of villas in the bays.
The next day we drove further up the lake, which is not unlike Wakatipu and Queenstown in so far that it is a deep, clean, cold narrow lake with steep sided hills and mountains, and a narrow roadway with houses above and below that road. There the similarities end as Lake Como's architecture and residences are in a class of their own almost exclusively in stone with the terra cotta roof tiles and everything else that makes them Italian. We visited two gardens and villas, the first Villa del Balbianello, famed as a filming location for the Bond film Quantum of Solace. On a privately owned, forested peninsula, the house and gardens sit on the tip of the promontory, with many terraces and a stone boat landing. The buildings are traditional but sumptuous and holding superb art collections. The gardens are groomed from tip to tail, in the great classic style including stone pines, cyprus and oak. Semi formal in nature and as carefully groomed as a Japanese garden but on a large scale not miniaturised, including the grooming of many large old trees. One of them, a dome topped Holm Oak, is pruned annually as the gardeners climb the tree from within, pop their heads out of the canopy, and clip a section to finally produce a velvet textured dome well off the ground and perhaps 15 or more metre across. A truly sensational setting and garden. Have photos.
Further up the lake we visited a second fine garden then ferried home, stopping at all the small wharfs on the way down the lake. The gardens are great up close but they are also very striking from a distance, where their great trees and buildings can be seen in perspective. You would recognise the style immediately it's just what you think Italian/Mediterranean/lakeside/seaside classic grandeur should look like.
An excursion from Lake Como took us into Milan, fashion capital of Italy. There are certainly a lot of well groomed and presented people around here, in that simple but elegant style Italy seems to have. The men probably in pale trousers, tan belt and leather shoes, a crisp shirt and sunglasses, the women in a wide range of outfits with the dress being common and always elegant. Sunnies, handbags, chic accessories etc. Not to mention n the footwear!! No time of the day seems to be wrong to be well dressed, versus us grubby hobbits.
Milan was bombed to near oblivion in WW2 and the one hill in the city is comprised of the rubble that was gathered in that one place, before the city was rebuilt. It's cathedral the 'Milan Duomo' was hit but not decimated and is restored. It features an exceptional number of thin roof spires, literally a forest of them. Quite a sight. Then the cavernous interior, not so extravagant as many, supported by massive and distinctive columns. We didn't take the elevator up to walk on the roof space amongst the forest of spires on account of the lightening, thunder and rain, but it still looked wonderful from ground level and slightly reminiscent, I thought, of the flambouyantly towered Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
But the main event in Milan was to visit Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper, ' a fresco painted on a wall. It is revered globally but more so in Milan, as it survived the almost complete decimation of the building in WW2 and was virtually the only piece of wall left standing. Locals refer to it as ''the miracle of Milan' - we heard that phrase on a number of occasions when the painting was mentioned. The building has been rebuilt around the painting; solely, it appears, to house that item.
Bookings are required well in advance and viewers are admitted in batches of about 30, for a period of 15 minutes. It commences with access into the building and a locker room for all belongings, although a camera was permitted. The group passed through security then entered a decompression chamber where we stood for several minutes in a low pressure zero humidity environment, to reduce the level of moisture being carried in. We then walked into the chamber where the fresco was painted on an end wall, in a room about 10m x 30m. The Da Vinci occupies most of the wall and must be at least 8m wide, so much larger than expected. It shows its antiquity and also the deterioration caused by its oil and tempera mix of pigments, but the condition is still good. Perfectly lit of course, it glows with energy and soft colour. A guide gave us a 5 minute or so history and explanation of the painting, then we could sit and admire it (several rows of seating provided) or walk closer and stand behind a rail, perhaps 3m distant. We knew we were experiencing one of those moments of a lifetime, to have a few minutes in front of it. The subject matter is well known and means a lot to some, but that aside it is a wonderful painting with its luminous colour, drama and brilliance plus it is one of the defining works of Da Vinci that encapsulates that period in history.
From Lake Como our trip was now headed for Lake Maggiore, another of those Italian alpine lakes that are so full of history and civilisation.
No comments:
Post a Comment