Author Archives: Blue Guides

The Transylvanian Book Festival

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At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, it was made compulsory for all new churches to enclose relics in their altars. The aim was to ensure that no church was founded without a genuine raison d’être. Today, faced with so many literary festivals around the world, the raisons d’être become vitally important in choosing which to go to. This month the Blue Guides sponsored two: Hay Festival Segovia, an offshoot of the original Literary Festival in the original Town of Books, Hay-on-Wye; and the Transylvanian Book Festival.

The latter took place deep in the heart of Transylvania, on 8th–11th September. It has impeccable metaphorical relics in its altar: those of Count Dracula. The historical Vlad Țepeș was in fact imprisoned in the citadel of Mediaș, one of the town on the Festival itinerary. Dracula might seem a hackneyed subject for a Transylvanian festival (he was far from the main theme of the event), but Marius-Mircea Crișan, who spoke about him, took a fresh angle on the subject with his ideas on Transylvania as the ideal locus for the horror genre: somewhere far enough away to be unknown yet still close enough to home for a frisson of terror to be felt.

Transylvania is still relatively unknown. Which makes it all the better a setting for a festival. The Transylvanian Book Festival takes a diffuse approach. The main events space is the old Saxon meeting hall in the village of Richiș. Participants are lodged in the village as well as in the neighbouring settlements of Biertan and Copșa Mare and the events themselves were held in Richiș, Mediaș (in its synagogue and Saxon citadel) and Alma Vii (whose citadel has recently been restored by the Mihai Eminescu Trust).

The Festival programme is diffuse as well. Its founder is Lucy Abel Smith (author of the recent Blue Guide to the region) and she put together a clever mix of history, travelogue, biography, fiction and poetry (for the full programme, see here). Interspersed among the bookish talk were delightful interludes of music and film. Dragoș Lumpan presented a preview of his forthcoming documentary on transhumance, the age-old practice of moving livestock on foot between summer and winter pastures. Benjy Fox-Rosen gave a recital of Yiddish music in the old synagogue of Mediaș, which for some was the highlight of the Festival.

The natural world also played an important part. The landscape of this region is broad and sweeping, made up of expanses of field, grassland, scrub and forest, and because historically this was not a feudal society, there are no enclosures. It is this, in the opinion of another of the speakers, the naturalist Bob Gibbons, that makes the area so exceptionally rich in wildlife.

Transylvania is a place that has had many identities in the course of its history and many peoples have called it home. What makes it such an exceptional place to visit is the inherited complexity of all of that, as well as the powerful sense of a destiny in the balance. Where will it go next? One of the most popular talks at the recent Festival was Bernard Wasserstein’s on the life and multiple identities of Trebitsch Lincoln, born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Hungary, who went on to become successively a Presbyterian missionary, Anglican curate, Liberal MP, Buddhist monk and Nazi agent. That’s quite a trajectory.

Roman Brixia

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Brescia is well known for its wealth of Roman remains due to the unique urban development of the town after the demise of the Roman Empire. The original nucleus of the settlement at the foot of the Cidneo hill became crown property under the Lombards in the 8th century and was largely occupied by a religious foundation. Medieval Brixia expanded to the west around watercourses that came in handy as Roman aqueducts and sewers went out of use.

Later the area became available again and a number of fine town houses were built on top of the Roman remains, with frequent use of spolia. The Roman street grid was largely respected: today’s Piazza del Foro is the same shape and size as the Roman forum. At its north end, the creatively reconstructed Capitolium (open Tues–Sun 9–5.30,10.30–7 in summer; entry fee) with its three cellae, one each for Juno, Jupiter and Minerva, its podium and monumental steps, dominates the scene. All around the piazza, the Renaissance houses are known to have Roman remains in their cellars; the archaeological trail at Palazzo Martinengo on the west side of the square is an excellent introduction to the complex archaeology.

Recently a couple of new venues have been opened to the public. In the forum itself, one cella of the Republican Temple is now accessible. It had been known for some time that the Capitolium (1st century AD) was not built on virgin soil. Two earlier buildings had been identified. The Republican Temple (1st century BC) had been levelled and backfilled to make way for the new structure willed by the emperor Vespasian. In the process Rome took the decision to stamp out any localism. The four cellae of the Republican Temple (three for the Capitoline Triad, one for a local deity) were reduced to three for the Capitoline Triad only. The local deity was completely obliterated: its name is now not even known. Its cella, however, is the one that has survived best and is now open to the public. The statue of the deity may be missing from its podium at the far end but the loss is largely compensated for by vivid painted decoration (illustrated above) with sumptuous dadoes imitating fanciful breccia marble underscored by elegant drapery. The floor is the finest mosaic, stark white with a black band, made of minute tesserae. Fluted columns are either trompe l’oeil or brick covered in painted stucco. Higher up on the wall, the grave and the drain belong to the Lombards. Further up a 17th-century building (Casa Pallaveri) obtrudes on the area. It is this stratification that has preserved the cella while at the same time making its display a technical challenge.

At the south end of the forum, part of the Roman Basilica (the legal and commercial heart of the town), over time incorporated in a later building, can now be visited (Mon–Fri 9–12). The entrance is in Piazza Labus (whose name celebrates a local 19th-century antiquarian and epigrapher). You can see immediately how much the street level has risen: over three metres. From the short bridge you can admire in situ the outer flooring made of thin slabs of imported marble arranged in a geometric design with contrasting blue-grey and white panels. Inside, in what is now the cellar, and was originally the ground floor, the flooring is the same pattern but the colour scheme is reversed. All around are the finds connected with the excavation of the area showing its development from the 5th century BC, with Attic pottery possibly obtained via Etruscan connections, through to its incorporation into the Roman forum; later, after the basilica lost its marble cladding and its roof, squatters moved in while earth and refuse accumulated. Towards the end of the 1st millennium AD, part of the basilica was a burial ground. It was the incorporation of the surviving elements of the south façade of the basilica into the so-called Palazzo d’Ercole around the 17th century that preserved it for us. In spite of its name, though, the new building was hardly a palace, with poky rooms and a dearth of decorative elements except for the painted terracotta ceilings.

Skipping the Roman theatre east of the Capitolium (it was hopelessly spoliated by the building of a Renaissance palace on top of it, now in part demolished), you can end your tour at Portici X Giornate 51. Here, at the back of an optician’s shop (Vigano’-Salmoiraghi), a substantial stretch of Roman urban road is accessible to the public. It is wide enough for two vehicles and the paving blocks are just enormous: you can’t fail to be impressed. All you are missing is the din of the populace and the screeching of the waggon wheels.

by Paola Pugsley, author of Blue Guide Crete and e-guides to Turkey.

The new Museo degli Innocenti

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The long-awaited new museum of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence finally opened last month. Its most famous works of art, the enamelled terracotta medallions which Andrea della Robbia added in 1487 to Brunelleschi’s portico in the piazza, are currently exhibited at eye level since their restoration. The babies in swaddling clothes in roundels about a metre in diameter are wonderfully made, all ten of them with outstretched arms but each with highly individual expressions. The swaddling bands of the boys are unravelled. This is a unique chance to see these masterpieces close up, as it is planned to return them to their original positions outside.

The museum space has been expanded into the basement of the building where the history of this remarkable Institute is clearly recorded (also with the help of video installations). Opened in 1445, it was the first foundling hospital in Europe, where destitute mothers could take their babies (leaving them at a special window under the portico, without being seen) The babies were then given out to wet-nurses, and when weaned could return to live here. The orphanage was recognised in later centuries as one of the most up-to-date institutions of its kind. One of the most touching parts of the museum is a room where cupboards have been installed with 140 little drawers which you can open one by one to see the identification tags left with the babies by their mothers in the hope that one day they would be able to be reunited with them. These anonymous ‘messages’ take the form of jewels, keepsakes, notes, pieces of cloth, rosary beads, coral, etc., and all of them were carefully preserved in the Archive of the Institute under the name of the child given to him or her when they entered the Innocenti.

On the ground floor is the exquisite 15th-century oblong cloister (derived from designs by Brunelleschi) next to the larger cloister decorated in the following century. The works of art are still exhibited in the long gallery once used as a day nursery on an upper floor. The masterpieces here are Luca della Robbia’s white enamelled terracotta Madonna and Child and Domenico Ghirlandaio’s painting of the Adoration of the Magi, which includes two of the “Innocenti” foundlings in the foreground. There is access to the roof terrace, once used for drying laundry and subsequently for the nurses and children to take the air, and now a delightful café. All the new stairs and constructions in the museum are in good taste (except perhaps for the golden entrance and exit in the Piazza).

Since the reopening of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo last year, the reopening of this museum is a significant event, demonstrating that Florence is now at the forefront of museum design.

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence.

Wine guide wins prize

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“Hungarian wine” by Rob Smyth has been awarded a special commendation in the OIV’s prestigious prize for the best wine book published in the last year.

The OIV – l’Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin – is a Paris-based “a scientific and technical” intergovernmental body.

Hungarian wine: A Tasting Trip to the New Old World is a widely-appreciated approachable and comprehensive introduction to the wines and vines of Hungary.  The special commendation was issued in the OIV’s category “Wines and Territories”.

Jesters at the Court of the Medici

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Front view of Bronzino’s double portrait of the Medici court dwarf Baccio di Bartolo (1552).

A delightful small exhibition at Palazzo Pitti in Florence (until 11th September) of genre paintings and portraits from the mid-16th century to the early 18th illustrates the protagonists of the comic, sometimes bizarre side of court life in Florence in those years, which was otherwise locked away from public view. Visitors are asked to be prepared to see the ironic humour in the works displayed. The new director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi (which now includes all the museums in Palazzo Pitti), Eike Schmidt, plans this as one of a series of exhibitions of works from the gallery’s important deposits (which include some 1,200 paintings) that will give curators a welcome opportunity to study them and restore them. Schmidt gave due credit to the late Marco Chiarini, for many years director of the Galleria Palatina, for having planned the exhibition (the lovely small catalogue is dedicated to his memory). Schmidt also invited the President of the Italian association dedicated to those affected with achondroplasia (the condition which causes dwarfism) to speak at the opening and he gave a moving account of how ‘diversity’ can be equated with value.

The exhibition occupies a suite of rooms on the landing known as the Andito degli Angiolini, below the entrance to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, and has excellent labelling together with some delightful quotes from the literature of the times, including Castiglione and Bernardo Ricci (‘……everyone needs happiness and laughter’). It takes up just five well-arranged small rooms. The importance of comedy and laughter to the Medici is illustrated by the official court painter, Suttermans’s portrait of the court jester. There are also portraits of six jolly members of the ducal household in the servants’ hall after a hunt; as well as a remarkable painting of two elderly peasant women, one holding a duck and one a basket of eggs, accompanied by a black page with a pearl earring (the label records that the names of all three of these people are known to us since they frequently appear in Ferdinando II’s account books). Other well-known painters of the time whose works are included in the exhibition include Anton Domenico Gabbiani (a portrait of four Medici servants), Cesare Dandini (a young shepherd with a hornpipe) and Niccolò Cassano (two court jesters from Prince Ferdinando’s inner circle dressed as huntsmen). But the most important painting is Bronzino’s well-known portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici’s favourite dwarf, Baccio di Bartolo (ironically nicknamed after the giant Morgante), painted on both sides so seen both from front and back, and which includes extraordinary botanical details.

The exhibition also includes paintings by lesser-known masters such as Faustino Bocchi, who was at work in the late 17th century (a delightful, playful painting of dwarves bathing beneath huge passion flowers; and a queen riding a cat cheered on by a crowd of dwarves). There are also paintings by unknown artists, of which one of the most memorable is the portrait from the first half of the 17th century of a player of the ball game known as pallottola: the protagonist is shown dressed in magnificent breeches as he tosses the ball beneath his leg. Although not strictly related to the theme, the superb painting by Joseph Heintz the Younger entitled Orpheus in the Underworld has been included as it was owned by the Medici and shows the astonished young hero standing in a magical setting with creatures all around him in a performance which, as the label suggests, is reminiscent of a modern-day musical.

The exhibition extends into the Boboli Gardens, where the sculpture of the nude Morgante riding a tortoise is one of Florence’s most famous statues (it is by Valerio Cioli and dates from around 1564; his statue of another dwarf, Pietro Barbino, made around the same time, can be seen in the Kaffeehaus, which has been opened specially for the exhibition). They are just some of the many statues of peasants, players and jocose figures which adorn the beautiful gardens behind Palazzo Pitti.

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence.