A visual update

I know I've been horrible about posting pictures, but I actually have some to post from the Venice and Emiglia-Romano field trip. Most of them are Venice and Verona, which were my two favorites, so don't be surprised that they are the most represented!

This is a villa we visited one day. We were touring with an italian architect named Pier Carlo Bontempi, and he took us around to different buildings he had built in this one town. He talked to us in italian about what he went through learning classicism and building all these buildings- there was one story he told where he said that he went to rebuild a block that had been damaged in WWII, but because of a historical charter he could not build anything that was different than it had been previously. Apparently previously it had been a pretty ugly block, so he actually went and forged a document on 18th century paper, showing a building in that site that was extremely similar to the one he proposed! When he showed the people in the permit office the document, they granted him the permit because his design satisfied the requirement of being historically truthful!
This villa was a different project though- he apparently knew the people and they were employing a different architect who was trying to make a modernized villa, using concrete and stuff. Pier Carlo said it looked pretty ugly, and eventually the wife stepped in and said that it wasn't her dream house, so they fired the architect and hired Pier Carlo instead. The house was absolutely gorgeous- it's right next to the vinyard, and the owners let us tour the house and the grounds, and then gave us the best wine and parmesan cheese and clementines I've ever tasted... mmm.







This picture is the city of Verona along the riverfront from one of the bridges- at night, obviously. It's not the greatest picture, but it should give you an idea of why I loved the city! It's really cute and quaint, and the riverfront is especially gorgeous.




And here are Colleen and I in front of the Villa Rotunda, which was a pretty sweet house built by Palladio. We had to take this picture because freshman year our end of the year project for one of our classes was to build a model of a famous building, and we ended up with this one- and it ended up being horrible! That night I had to stay up and finish not only the model but also my studio project, and I definitely saw sunrise. Not to mention our model was pretty lame! So this just brings back one of those memories that you've learned to laugh at instead of cringe!




This a a picture of I belive San Georgio Maggiore, by Palladio, from across the Grand Canal. I don't know about you, but I definitely pictured something a lot smaller than that as a canal! I was really a huge fan of the mist, althought this picture doesn't show it that well- I love how all the buildings just fade and then pop out of the mist in front of you. The churches by Palladio were also very neat in that regard- they were generally all white, so it looked like a glow in the fog as you approached, and then I thought they were beautiful up close as well.





This is of course the picture that I just had to post- the requisite gondola! You've got to love it. I will give Venice major coolness points for those and the canals. You can see the difference in sizes between the main canal and the side canals!












And lastly, my favorite picture- from the Duomo in Verona: