We had just a day and a half in Naples, and focused on two things: Pompeii and cooking classes. Wes was excited for the pizza margherita class he and Dwayne were signed up for, and the girls and I were excited to learn how to make fresh pasta.
The famous pizza is named to honor Margherita, the queen of Italy, in 1889, which is probably about as true as anything I write here. I’m pretty sure everyone but me already knew this, but the point of pizza margherita is that it is Red, White and Green (tomatoes, mozzarella, basil), the colors of the flag of Italy. And it is now famous for being another pizza besides pepperoni that Wes likes to eat.
Piper loves cooking and baking and Kyla is always excited to learn new things. We learned how to roll gnocchi from a fork and make double cheese ravioli. We started with the same dough, and I managed to make mine hard and unappetizing with minimal effort. Brunella took over for me while I drank my wine, which is my ideal cooking class. Kyla and Piper did an excellent job, and Piper was happily shocked when, asked if she wanted wine, was poured a nearly-grown-up amount. When in Naples…
Note: Cesarine.com is a loosely organized group of home cooks across Italy (and maybe beyond) that give informal cooking classes in their own home, or in our case, the lovely roof terrace in uptown Naples.
[“Penis” is in the title. Do you need further clarification of the rating?]
I think we have done Naples perfectly. After a further study on the Third Classic Blunder*, we made it to the Palermo Airporto in time for the hour-long flight to Naples, giving us an entire afternoon in the “New York of Italy”†. Dwayne and I made our way to the MANN (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli**) to explore all the finds taken out of Pompeii excavations as well as all the marble statues we could hope for.
Why I love this: The body is of Circe (notable by black “witch” robes), the title character of a book with the most satisfying ending. Fifty-fifty chance the face is of Aphrodite, as she is a popular statue figure. I was surprised that some statues were mix-and-match, post-earthquakes and other destructions.
As we picked our audio guides, we were told that the secret room closes in 20 minutes. That’s an intriguing statement to make to a middle-aged couple sans children. We found another three others looking for the Gabinetto Segredo and through cooperative efforts, we entered . . . the room of Pompeii erotica. Mosaics and painted pottery, phallic whistles and wind chimes, statues and figurines, we had graphic displays of everything but woman-on-woman, which for some reason was taboo. [Zeus the Goose can rape maidens, and Satyrs can love their goats, but the only truly beautiful gender doesn’t get to enjoy the same loveliness? It does not hold up to scrutiny.] With a corner of my mind always narrating for this blog, I did not take pictures, knowing that this is shown to children and people I am related to and they have to see me over family dinners.
I was less censorious on our actual tour of Pompeii today. Let us enter the red district first because afterward, I have some really interesting tidbits to relate.
First of all, as everyone knows, Pompeii’s entire trajectory was transformed by the 79AD eruption of Vesuvius, covering the busy port city with ash, suffocating living things while burying and preserving organic and nonorganic materials alike. Pompeii’s current location, while close to water, isn’t exactly port material. There is good evidence that the plate tectonics that caused the earthquakes and eruptions over the millennia also changed the geography so that the ocean is no longer just 200 meters from one of Pompeii’s main gates, as it was over 2000 years ago.
A port city meant that sailors spent more time in areas of the city closest to the port gate. And where sailors roam, food and prostitutes take up residence. And how did sailors know they were in the right area? The penises embedded above shops and used as arrows (thank goodness penises can also point!) on streets and walls. In fact, an erect penis above a doorway was an excellent place to hang a red lantern. If the lantern was lit, services were available. Not lit, services were servicing. Tada, the infamous redlight district.
The gladiator school training yard of long ago.
One of two theaters in Pompeii. In about as good of shape as the ones we saw in Jordan!
Can you read this grafiti? “Liberti” from 2000 years ago.
Chariot/cart tracks on one of the main streets. Literal stepping stones so pedestrians could get across with dry feet. Stone placed so that wheels could still get by.
On of the best intact villas of elite Pompeii.
Same villa still had some original wall paint. Blue was particularly expensive and exclusive.
That’d be a penis-on-a-wall.
A row of house and shops.
One of the few mosaics left intact from earthquakes and museums hunters.
Look! An Igor Mitoraj sculpture in the main square of Pompeii! He’s the artist who did Icurus in Sicily’s Valley of the Temples I loved so much.
What?! A second Igor Mitoraj piece? I love Pompeii.
A brothel was practically an art gallery. Without relying on literacy or common language, one could just point to the mosaic that best detailed the service desired. Are you not entertained? These are still on the wall in Pompeii. (I’m leaving them small so you don’t have to get full details.)
Mosaic, portrait of a woman, found in Pompeii.
Let’s now turn to the interesting parts. I had pictured Pompeii differently. It is definitively ruined; former two- and three-story buildings now have only half a story. But destruction and preservation are not entirely mutually exclusive. Excavated walls still have painted murals. Mosaics, mostly relocated to the MANN, are plentiful. And unique among Roman ruins, mostly intact everyday items have been found, from petrified bread to glassware, pots, décor, jars of urine for bleaching at laundries, and, to keep with a theme, condoms. If you visited the Pompeii traveling exhibit, you also may be aware that about 80% of the population died in the eruption and were covered in ash where they fell and suffocated. Slowly, the bodies decayed, leaving a body-shaped hole in the layers. About 200 years ago, someone injected liquid plaster into those cavities and created forms of the bodies in their last moment. Also about 200 years ago, soldiers excavated the area with dynamite and threw away boring skeletons, so the 1800s wasn’t always brimming with brilliance.
Lead pipe in the original sidewalk. (Long, skinny part that curves.)
What may have fascinated me most today was the story of the water of Pompeii. Like all good Roman cities, an aqueduct brought fresh mountain spring water down to the population center. Clay pipes began dispersing it. But to one-up Petra, the water then flowed into metal pipes to reach the various fountains in this sizeable town. Lead pipes. Seriously. All evidence seemed to point to a well-nourished population that didn’t grow very tall or live very long (well under 5’ and lifespan of under 30 years for woman‡ and about 5’3” for men who lived 4-5 decades). There is some argument that the water ran through so much limestone that the pipes became coated with it, lessening the effects of the lead. Oh, to have a time machine and all of today’s scientific equipment!
Thanks for hanging in so long. I wrote the first draft the afternoon we returned from our Pompeii tour, and was still getting with finally seeing (a fraction of) this famous site.
*Classic blunders—the most famous of which is, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”—but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line”! Unfortunately, Vizzini died of iocane powder poisoning before completing, “The third is trusting Google maps when driving in Sicily, you idiot.” [Dad, Mom, you do remember famous Princess Bride quotations, right? Just nod and smile if you need to.]
†If you are looking for amazing art, museums, and food in a crowded, loud, smelly urban setting, the Venn diagram favors the comparison.
**Mann, I love my footnotes. Isn’t Italian great? I don’t even have to use my translator app to figure this out.
‡Childbirth, of course, skews this. Hmm, our guide also said that most families at the time were a “one is enough, two is too much” child-mindset, but it could have been their mothers didn’t regularly survive a second or third birth.
In a dramatic counterpoint to all of Wes’s Worst Day Ever (So Far) rants, I’d like to share one of the best days, for all of us.
La Rocca had been beckoning all week, and on our last full day in Sicily, the Activities Coordinator Who Must Be Obeyed* heeded the summons and herded the family together for the hike up Castle Rock. It was what all the Mediterranean brochures advertise—blue sky, turquoise water, green flora, crumbling ruins of goddesses and kings. As we bought our tickets, we crossed paths with a father-son team doing the climb for the second time in two days. When we met them again by the battlements, the kid connection kicked in and we started chatting, both agreeing that Londoners have the best accents and Americans can barely speak English†. In an astronomical coincidence, his ten-year-old, L, likes video games, and Wes, Piper, and L hit it off and then took off. They were detained at the gate until claimed by their grownups, where my kids quickly remembered the promised gelato for having to go on a beautiful hike and romp around castle ruins overlooking a cerulean sea.
All paths lead eventually to the duomo or beach, so it didn’t take long for the seven of us to find ourselves both sticky and sandy. William is both Kind and Interesting, and works in tech, so it was easy to hang out for hours while Wes buried L in sand.
I know you assumed Wes would leave L’s head unburied, but you are underestimating weird preteen boys.
We eventually had to do laundry and other leaving chores before heading to Naples the next morning, and Wonderful William offered to let Wes stay with them for the rest of the afternoon. He did them one better by just following them at distance, being a protective yet discreet money source, as the boys went out for espresso, where Wes impressed and horrified L with the amount of sugar he added, and then more food. We had a pick Wes up eventually so he could pack for our early departure the next morning, but we met up for dinner at the best pizza place in town.
We stretched out dinner, and another dessert, for as long as we could and even offered to buy L (who is a crazy-smart, bilingual, thoughtful, articulate kid with interests and ideas outside of video games), but William was unable to do so without his wife’s approval, and she was back in London, recovering from Covid, being the last in the family to get it. Also without her approval, William was unable to take Wes home with him for keeps, so the evening ended quite sadly.
* * * * * * *
Confidential to William and L: We’ve missed both of you all the way through Italy. I haven’t forgotten your book recommendations. We hope to land in the same city again someday!
*She has several titles, but I really think Wes’s “Mom-strosity” is fairly accurate and her phone is programed to call her “Goddess”.
†They were from London, and William tossed out words like “luster”, which I would clearly use in writing, but have probably never once said aloud in casual conversation. The Queen’s English wins hands down.
“Cefalù is best appreciated through that serendipitous decision to go left and not right, through breaking off from the tourist throngs and seeing where your feet or your camera lead you.”
I’m picturing women gathering 600 years ago to do the laundry, and making sure it took all day so they could have an excuse for chatting together. On the other hand, I’m afraid it did take all day, even with the gossip to make the labor interesting.
I had just read the above travel note when Dwayne and I did an exploratory walk of Old Town, mapping out an afternoon with the kids. Almost immediately, a random left-then-right brought us down to this medieval washhouse in a hidden corner. My cup runneth over.
Cefalù inspired me: If I can’t grow an orange tree in Seattle, perhaps a kumquat would be an acceptable alternative.
I haven’t yet tired of places with old towns, with alleys barely wide enough for a chariot and shop after shop selling either gelato or made-in-China tchotchkes. Cefalù (Chĕff’ uh loo) is a low-key beach town that combines Olde Towne charm, decent beaches, good pizza, a castle-on-top-of-the-hill, and non-lethal Italian driving. And, of course, there’s the requisite duomo (cathedral). We waited until the kids were with us before we bought the full exploration tickets, not at their request.
Topping off their fuel tanks before we explore the duomo behind us.
The day after Easter, the church was decorated for spring.
For Liza, and because candlelight is a reasonable symbol for a little extra hope, peace, and goodness in this world.
A bird’s eye (or upper story) view of the chapel.
Great views passing the upper walls between the bell towers.
The sea isn’t too bad either.
I got to explain my fascination with relics to my children*.
Not-the-whitest-Baby-Jesus I’ve seen in a nativity scene. This is a compliment, as I search for non-porcelain-skinned Jesus through Europe. I’ve kind of given up on Mary.
Cefalu was supposed to be a relaxing break where I could catch up on my writing and the kids their math, but sitting in a hotel room is anathema: when traveling, what can be done anywhere should be done “not here”. Relaxing is good; exploring is better. Sicily has been great for both!
*I’m not trying to be fully irreverent. Here’s what’s interesting about relics: 1) The precious and expensive vessel it is held in, which can be silver busts, jewel-crusted gold crosses, or anything grand and gawdy, and 2) the body part or sliver of cross/shroud/pillow/nail/thorn entombed in the reliquary. I think it was in St. Marks, Venice, that Jesus’s diaper was listed as a local relic. Most recently, I listened to a Rick Steve’s interview called “An Irreverent Curiosity” about a small town outside of Rome and their claim of Jesus’s foreskin, which eventually led to a pope’s decree about not talking about this delicate piece of His body, except on January 1st, if it must be spoken about at all.
Looking back, I realize that Dwayne and I, and usually Kyla, do one big day tour out from our landing spot, and in Sicily, it was the Valley of Temples. For millennia, Sicily was a great place to land for anyone with a boat and sword—a bloodthirsty power complex could be added later if not already fully developed. The Temples are a mix of ruined ruins and astonishingly well-preserved ruins from a Greek building spree about 2,500 years ago. They were an interesting counterpoint to the numerous Roman ruins we keep stumbling across.
There are three things I want to hold on to from this trip.
The Temple of Concordia is easily the most intact temple in Sicily and beautiful as well. Her eternal youth comes from being continuously useful (and therefore, maintained), first as a temple to unknown deities and then being repurposed as a Christian church for many centuries. But what made me fall smashingly hard for this temple was this modern statue of Icarus placed just so.
On one hand, I want to live in a world where this ancient statue has been left unmolested (unmelted?) for millennia just for the sheer rightness of the heart-aching beauty of the scene. On the other hand, I have a new artist, Igor Mitoraj*, to chase around the world.
2. The only way to account for the state of Zeus’s Temple is that Colossal Toddlers got away from the governess for an afternoon. But these giant figures were intended to hold up the roof of this enormous building. One was somewhat reconstructed on the ground, but the best-looking ruins were reassembled at the nearby museum. The model shows what the temple may have looked like with these man-shaped support columns.
3. Cyprus was just a warmup for how beautiful a Mediterranean island can be. Following Google Maps home, we had a wild cross-country drive from the south to the north coast**. Perhaps we hit the season just right, but it was green and lush and mountainous, with the wind waving tall grassy meadows in symphonies. Occasionally having to stop for a goat herd was just a bonus.
What we don’t want to remember, though I think we are doomed to, is driving the narrow “streets”. Dwayne asked me to take pictures of the route through the towns that Google, with a straight face, directed us through. I have thoughts and feelings about driving in Italy. I’ll share once the meds kick in.
*Sadly, Igor died in 2014, but clearly, his sculptures are his slice of immortality.
**You might be wondering why we didn’t take the freeway back the way we came. We ask that as well, Google.
If Italy is the boot, Sicily is the ball. Or the big rock Italia is about to trip over.
On the sixth day,
God accomplished his work
And, pleased with all the beauty
He had created,
He took the Earth in his hands
And kissed it.
There, where he put his lips,
That’s Sicily.
Renzo Barbera, Italian Businessman,
in typical Italian exuberance
When asked where we were headed next, we always said “Sicily” instead of Italy. Even in our total naiveté, we sensed the two weren’t fully interchangeable. Perhaps Sicily is supercharged Italy or Italia distilled. And I say all these hyperbolic things while fully acknowledging we ran off late at night into the safe harbor of Cefalu and barely peeked out again.
Our first full day was Easter and we woke up to heavy rain, occasionally emphasized with lightning and unscored by thunder. I spent my day writing cozily, ignoring everyone else. Easter dinner was at a pizza place the front desk recommended, just 4 minutes away. The 30 minutes it took us to figure out how to navigate and park still counts as a success for us because it ended with no tickets and a bottle of delicious local wine.
We ate authentic Sicilian pizza to honor the Resurrection. Unfortunately, it turns out we are barbarians. Since then, I have learned that Italian pizza is served whole, not sliced. There, we cut our pizza into slices and dove in. Being Americans, we were the first group in the restaurant since it wasn’t even 8pm. Then couples and groups drifted in, and as they got their pizzas, I realized everyone else ate theirs with forks and knives. Ah, well. Here’s the thing about traveling Americans: we’re loud, friendly, easy-going…and generally tip well, making sure that fellow countrymen get warm welcomes from waiters around the world no manner how terrible our manners.
Thank goodness I’m American, so I can pronounce this city’s name Suh-ville, instead of correctly like the rest of the world does, suh-VEE-ah.
It was one of those mornings we woke up with a few thousand steps already on our pedometers. It had been past midnight when, after a few false leads, we found the alley of our un-addressed B&B and collapsed as quickly as our host would let us. Seville was perfectly happy to let us sleep in, as Spain has the internal clock of an American teenager.
We kicked off our exploration with our first Segway tour—super fun mode of transportation to get an introduction to Old Town, the most important squares and parks, and the river paths. Seville was the perfect place to give the kids Euros and a key so everyone could go the direction they wanted. (You-know-who often headed straight back to the hotel.) Piper and I loved the cute clothes and did some shopping. Kyla and Dwayne headed further out to parks and a museum. Dwayne and I got caught in a rooftop terrace during a storm, forcing us to order more drinks. We all went enjoyed an evening of flamenco and tapas, and a tour of the replica of Magellen’s ship, the first to circumnavigate the world.
Look, aqueducts! I love them here, I love them there, I love ancient Roman aqueducts everywhere!
The Spanish Square has a canal around it, perfect to make tourists pay to stand in line to do something we’re bad at to see less in more time than if we had just walked around. I, of course, was the one who begged to do it.
Kyla was a good sport.
Peekaboo courtyards in the hidden Jewish quarter. I think the very best thing Rick Steves does is provide a free audible tour of some European cities, downloadable to your phone. I didn’t do this until our last day, and I just wished I had done it on our first!
The Gold Tower on our right was not made of gold. Instead, Seville was the protected port upriver where valuable trading ships did business, and this was the central trading business office, basically.
Preparing for the hoards of people watching (and participating) in the many processions of Holy Week.
Kyla and Dwayne went off to explore more parks while Piper and I shopped.
They also made it to the Illusion Museum. Both Kyla and Dwayne came back whole.
Magellen’s ship (but not Magellen) did make it all the way around the world almost exactly 500 years ago.
My meta picture. We did another tour boat up and down the river later, so taking a picture of the ship from a boat. It is very, very small for such a journey, and bunks were wherever sailors fell asleep on the top deck. It was a good history lesson. Wes writes about it at https://weswrite.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-remodel-of-get-moms-help-with-this.html.
Every Spainish city has a Spanish Square, but our guide insisted, probably correctly, that Seville’s was the best. I loved the painted tiles…and canal.
The just-normal jamón on top of more meat. The ham is sliced very thinly and cured thoroughly. It looks like dry bacon, but it really does taste better than that!
Everyone said to eat the jamón (ham), which is hung in large hocks in restaurants that brag about the quality of their pig*. There’s regular thinly sliced ham, and then there’s black ham from a free-range, acorn-eating, well-loved breed of pig that is either all black or has black toenails. There’s a 3-fold difference in price, and to keep from being deported, you will have to agree that it tastes five times better.
One of our favorite games is “Does Denise Like Beer Yet?” I never win this game.
Seville! We explored our hearts out and ate our fill, and still want to go back for more.
*I read that this was originally a way, after the christian-lower-case-c takeover of the formerly Muslim and Jewish-friendly town, to tell other groups they were not welcome, in both the establishment and the community.
It wasn’t until we were on the plane out of Barcelona and I was chatting with an exchange student from the US that I realized we were going to be in Seville during Holy Week. Sure, you’ve lived through and possibly even participated in the week before Easter your entire life, haven’t you?
No, you have not!
In a casually Catholic country (55-70%), there is a quite Catholic state (80%), and the capital of that state is Seville, which, at least during Holy Week, must have a Catholic population of about 150%. If that seems mathematically impossible to you, then you may not be ready to read on. That’s fine; it’s not too early for the first glass of cava*.
Semana Santa is a celebration and remembrance of the last days of Jesus. I will do my best not to misrepresent a meaningful tradition with too much irreverance, partly because I want to be respectful and mostly because [inspite of the absurd noise, chaos, and crowds] I really enjoyed it.
Seville has one cathedral, the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede.** About 70 religious brotherhoods, basically individual church communities, walk from their church to the Cathedral and back again during their designated processional time during the week. The heart of the processional is the float that depicts some aspect of Good Friday or Mary, and it is carried for hours and hours and hours by men strong and lucky enough to be chosen to shoulder the burden. There might be a marching band (and I love the sounds of the drums reverberating against the narrow stone alleys, even at 1am), there may be little kids dressed as priests handing out candy and saint trading cards to the kids, but there are always penitentes. You know you are an American seeing a penitente for the first time because you start freaking out while trying to act normal:
This sign in a pastry shop (“borrowed” from the internet) sums it up:
The anonymity of the pointed capirote is meant to be pious, not intimidating, and the point of the point is to point towards heaven. These traditional Semana Santa caps evolved from the Inquisition era, if online research is to be believed, and everyone agrees that they are not related to the KKK in anyway. Anecdotally, it seems American travelers just have to keep reminding themselves that this is a meaningful religious tradition denoting repentence and humility, not a lynching squad. It was just a bit unfortunate that our first morning in Seville coincided with the procession of the brotherhood that wears white-on-white.
The crowds were massive, of course, but mostly concentrated around the procession, which was canceled one day because of the rain, making the city itself mourn. But it was impressive how alleys that are too narrow for cars managed the number of participants, the floats, the bands, and all the people watching.
Remember, there are a bunch of muscley, sweaty men carrying the “paso”, sometimes for several miles. We never got close enough to check but “they” say you just see dozens of feet peeking out from the platform’s bottom.
A paso exiting the Cathedral. The Cathedral is much bigger than this corner of it shows…and so are the crowds.
We’re far enough away that the Roman soldies almost look real on this paso.
This bridge, which usually would be for cars and buses, is wall to wall people. You can see the golden float on the left hand side, above the white boat.
Seville has been our favorite European experience thus far, and I’m not really sure if it’s because or inspite of Holy Week. Guess we’ll have to soujourn again someday to find out.
*If it were born in Champagne, France, it could be called champagne. Alas, it was born on the wrong side of the border and must be called cava.
**Seville really loves Mary, to the point it might be a bit of “Jesus, who? Oh! You mean Saint Mary’s son!”. Also, I am still on my search to find a non-white Jesus.
Lesson #1: Never go to an amusement park on an April Monday.
We thought a delightful way to spend our last day in Barcelona would be to go to Tibidabo, a fun place to say, and according to the press, enormously fun to do, with a roller coaster that weaves in and out on this hilltop park, thrill rides, fun rides, historic rides, family rides…you get the picture. Somehow we missed the caveat that only four rides are open on Monday and the coolest of those lame ones would be broken.
So we did the carousel.
The 5th amusement was a collection of turn-of-the-century automatons that were mostly creepy and/or racist.
The oddest thing? It shared the grounds with a beautiful cathedral.
Lesson #2: Always peek inside a European church/cathedral/basilica, especially if it is free and not inconvenient.
We’ve been chased by mosaics and frescos since Jordan, but there was something special about these. They were very Barcelona-on-the-sea focused and so colorful and hyperrealistic.
Lesson #3: Take Kyla and Piper (and Denise and Dwayne!) to art museums once in a while.
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya is housed in the most amazing building, and even if most of its collection was everything but Renaissance, which is generally my preference over too much medieval religious same-same, it was tranquil and interesting. Piper and I went through the collections together, and I enjoyed her companionship immensely. Kyla loved delving into it herself, and we all met up for lunch in the great hall afterward.
Lesson #4: Take a cable car/gondola whenever you can.
The views from the top will be worth it. Keep the peace and purchase a return ticket as well. In exchange, your kids may happily walk another 30 minutes to get to the singular chocolate shop that they found on your phone. With enough chocolate in them, all sorts of other good things may happen. (Piper and I had a blast buying her more cute clothes in darling alley boutiques and walking back to the hotel, and Dwayne and Kyla explored the square a little more and taxied it back.)
Lesson #5: Stop what you were doing, even chasing down a singular chocolate shop, to watch street performers.
Kyla got chosen to be a volunteer for this. Dwayne did the same thing back in NYC six years ago.
Lesson #6: Stay at the Sensation Sagrada Familia.
It was the first place we stayed that did EVERYTHING right. Plenty of space, EVOO in the kitchen, soap/detergent aplenty, showers that kept the water in the shower*, the most helpful staff we’ve ever had in a hotel. We scratched our heads to come up with a way it could have been improved and came up with nada. We want to take this place and put it everywhere we go. Wes spent many happy hours when it was just better for everyone when he wasn’t up for adventuring.
Lesson #7: Write about Barcelona a few weeks after the fact so you don’t remember the quarrels, the blahs, the plans that just didn’t work out, or the terrible seafood paella. My memories are only good ones (except the paella) now!
*Egypt, Jordan, the EU, almost every place we’ve stayed does full showers that are half-enclosed. Some like leaving gaps between the too-few panels or where the panels meet the tub. We cannot fathom the reasoning, especially after wringing out so many towels after a short shower where I consciously try to keep water from splashing out.
Of the nine UNESCO sites in Barcelona, Antoni Gaudi designed seven of them. He is a Big Deal. Which is why I’ll pretend I knew all about him long before setting foot in Barcelona.
Gaudi (gow-rhymes-with-cow DEE) was an architect in the late 1800s until his weirdly anti-climatic tram death in 1926. By almost any standard, he was a Genius. After exploring three of his works, I’m mostly Team Gaudí and Dwayne is mostly not.
“Originality consists of returning to the origin,” said Gaudí, summarizing his deep desire to build the greatest reflection of nature he could design. Let’s see if I can show, not tell.
Casa Batlló
Kyla, Dwayne, and I toured this home designed for the Batlló family, where I crushed hard on the water-sky loveliness. It was airy and light and whimsical, and hardly a straight line to be found.
The upper floors of the exterior give off a “hippy sea dragon” vibe.
Another picture I did not take. This is the middle of the 3-room living room. The middle windows can lift fully, creating a glamorous balcony to wave to the bourgeoisie. I adore the stained glass and seashell swirl ceiling.
Those picture frames in the background? Digitial screens played “home videos” (actors in period costume) of the family entertaining, worshipping, and waving to the bourgeoisie in these main rooms.
I *love* this fireplace cozitarium, a place so inviting I had to create a new word.
Just a regular old staircase, Gaudi-style.
Think a central chimney, but for air circulation instead of smoke. The glass barriers, the ceramic rope gates, the increasingly blue tiles upward, all give the visitor the calm sensation of a smooth sea.
Fresh air is not the only point of this tower–lots of light “flects and reflects” into the entire house.
Nearly at the servants quarters, the usual drabbest of places was the lightest.
There were lovelier patios but the rooftop was a fun place to see how the chimneys became part of the motif.
Park Güel
I’m so glad we saw Batlló first. The park was crowded, inconvenient, expensive, and only amazing-ish. It was the first stop on a hop-on, hop-off tour bus and the excursion effectively murdered my children’s desire to see anything else that day. The park is famous for its serpentine bench that wraps around a very large terrace. Its display house (with an entry line that made me quickly walk in the opposite direction) demonstrated that melted-icing-over-a-sand-castle look that I associate with Gaudí exteriors.
The main entrance to “Park Guell”.
One of Gaudi’s fingerprints is the colorful tile mosaic on animal-like objects.
The sense of tall trees and clouds in the sky from pillars and weird ceilings is very Gaudi.
Here’s the smallest fraction of the serpentine bench, with some of the forementioned tile mosaics.
Am I the one tilting or is something odd about those pillars?
Crowded. Done and done.
The gingerbread, melted-icing look shows up on Sagrada Familia. And those lines! I really wanted to explore the house, and considered waiting for almost a second.
Sangrada Familia (Sacred Family)
This is the Cathedral that finally has a projected completion date of 2026, the one hundred year anniversary of Gaudí’s death. It is, if one may radically understate, atypical of a European cathedral with official minor basilica standing*.
Whoever managed to publish this shot somehow photoshopped or used clever angles to hide the cranes and construction.
I loved the “reversing” of the stained glass at night, making it beautiful for outsiders.
Yep, this cathedral has fruit on top. I believe one side of the massive structure focuses on harvest fruits (closest to the crucifiction side) and the other summer fruits on the entry, where the birth is depicted. I believe there is heaps of symbolism and clever nods to details that mostly escaped my notice.
Oh, dear, the nativity is a grandiose birdbath. I’m actually surprised metal spikes, disguised as halos, were not used.
A sea turtle holds up the entry pillar closest to the sea, and a giant tortoise is the basis for the pillar closer to the mountains.
The giant, enormous, oversized pillars branch out to hold up the ceiling and towers. Gaudi very much wanted you to feel you were in a forest dappled with sunlight.
The gorgeous stained glass practically sings.
The large airy inside of the cathedral lit up by these massive windows was my favorite part.
So much of this is not Gaudi, since he died long before much of this was constructed. The architect who did this Judas betrayal added a magic square, where each way adds up to 33, the age Jesus was at his death. Math puzzles on a church? Yes, please.
I am most intrigued by Pontius Pilate’s plight and meditation in these statues.
What Gaudi is particularly known for is his throwing out the good old-fashioned Roman arch (which Dwayne adores to the depth of his soul) and using parabolas instead. You get a parabola basically by holding both ends of a string and letting it hang down. Using strings and small weights to create the desired parabola, Gaudi designed his building …. UPSIDE DOWN. Can you see it now, sort of?
*This is a thing. There are 4 major basilicas in the world. They are all in Rome. Would you consider this more nepotism or self-aggrandizement?
Needopedia 