San Vito

So the next leg of our journey was San Vito, a tiny little town (home of the architect Carlos Scarpa) where you'll find a tiny cemetery called Brion Cemetery. In which there is a memorial 'park' designed by Scarpa entirely out of site-cast concrete- and it's considered the most important work of his life. He's actually buried there. 

I wont go into detail about the memorial but it was really incredible. The whole thing was an analogy for what happens to a married couple in the after-life (namely the Brion Family). It was complete with tomb, reflecting pools, a chapel, and other amazing details. The use of water

 running through the site and the way he controlled light with the shapes and angles made me think he was clinically insane. 

There was this one part when you entered where you were supposed to mentally remove yourself from your body in order to prepare yourself for some intense reflection and spiritualization so Scarpa had a door there that was mirrored glass so you could see yourself, but instead of opening it, you had to reach up to the top and push the door down which slid into the floor. You were literally pushing your self image away and into the ground. It was so cool- the whole thing was filled with stuff like that. 

If you're ever in the area, check it out!

Verona

So i lied again, haha sorry... it's been two days. 

I left off in Florence- at the end of which we (my class and two professors) jumped on a bus and began the trip to Venice. Along the way however we made two stops to see the two most important pieces of architecture done by a man named Carlos Scarpa. The first was the

 Castel Vecchio Museum in Verona, and the second, the Brion Cemetery in San Vito. 

The Castle Vecchio Museum is, as you could guess, a collection of medieval art (paintings, sculpture, artifacts) put into the old Castle Vecchio. Carlos Scarpa designed the entire thing- and the man was so crazy he'd only ever visit the job site at night so he could use his flashlight and inspect only that which was highlighted by the little cone of light. But it paid off. The details and connections were amazing- we

 stayed there for two hours just sketching and noting these details. 

Probably pretty boring to you all, haha, but I loved it. We ended up just getting lunch in the square and back on the bus to San Vito!

Florence

hey everyone! so i'm really sorry it's been over a month since my last post :-( haha where on earth has the time gone.... and now i have so much to catch you all up on! I think i'll go in order and talk about one city per post, so hopefully in the next two weeks i'll have talked about most of my travels!

Today i'll start with Florence. (Firenze)

For the third leg of our journey with the class 

(first was pompeii, second paestum), we jumped on a bullet train from rome to florence, and arriving at our hotel (hotel medici, highly

 recommended) found ourselves right in the heart of the city. We were literally two blocks away from the d

uomo and we had a roof terrace that gave us an incredible veiw.

Florence was a great city to walk around in. As far as city planning goes, i'm sure you'll all be interested to know that it was the first entirely Roman city, founded in 1100 ad, so the romans laid it out on a specific grid. This was such a change from the maze of Rome i'm used to! 

While in Florence we hit all the major sites in two days. It 

was exhausting but we climbed the duomo to get an amazing 360 degree view of the city, saw michaelangelo's David,  the uffizzi, castel vecchio, palazzo dei innocenti, ponte vecchio, San Laurenzo and about ten thousand other churches

 including Santa Croce which housed the tombs of Michaelangelo, Dante, and Galileo! We also almost got into the Laurentian Library but got chased down by some lady who told us it was closed. I got the closest... i actually saw the front doors ;-)

One evening, after a lecture with our professor he l

ead us up to the top of one of the Florentine hills surrounding the city to one of the last remaining 

Bennedictan Monestaries (the monks that never leave) We made it just in time to

 catch the end of the evening mass and hear the monks singin

g- the church was huge, dark, dingy, and mixed with the gregorian chants coming from the basement under the altar was really haunting. And to top it off, when we walked out we got to watch the sunset over the  city. What a sight! 

Another funny part of the trip is worth mentioni

ng is the end of carnivale. We were there for tuesday (mardi gras) the day before ash wednesday, and Florence celebrated big time. There were crazy parties and parades going on in the streets with costumes and floats and madness. The parade passed right outside our hotel and a few of us decided to join in. It was about 11:45 at night, and 15 minutes later in the piazza outside San Laurenzo when the clock struck 12, a man with a megaphone told everyone to 'put out their cigarettes, put away their beer, and go home and pray' and sure enough, the music ended, noise went down, and everyone went home! 

All in all Florence was great, tiring but gave us some great street-side pizza experiences and lots of leather options ;-) End of the weekend came too soon and we hopped in a bus to start our three city tour: San Vito- Verona- Venice! More tomorrow!