architecture, le due torri, photography

Bologna in one photo

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classic view of bologna portici asineli

Before moving to the city, there were three things that came to mind when I created my mental view of Bologna: colorful buildings, portici, and the two towers. This one picture of Bologna manages to feature two-and-a-half of the three things. Not bad!

Years ago, while studying Italian Renaissance architecture at uni, my favorite professor, Richard J. Tuttle, took a day out of the usual studies to focus solely on Bologna. He had lived here while doing some research on both the city and some surrounding architectural points of interest, and like almost anyone who comes to Bologna, he fell in love with the city. I remember looking at his own personal slides and becoming enamored with both the colors of the city and the seemingly never-ending porticoes (portici). One of my favorite things in architecture is a courtyard filled with arches and here’s a whole city full of these beautiful architectural elements! Nearly 40 kilometers (almost 25 miles) worth of portici can be found in the city. And all in rich, glorious colors!

Whether old or new, buildings all over Bologna have these covered walkways. Even in our neighborhood, which was rebuilt after WWII, there are portici along many of the streets. Between the sheer prevalence as well as my love for the feature, you can expect to see lots of photos of columns and vaulting in this blog.

You’ll also see lots of shades of orange, yellow, and pink in the buildings. I believe some of the colors, historically, came from the variations of ground-up brick that were used to make the pigments. Now the paints are typically synthetic, but there’s still an amazing mix of colors. No matter how bright, they never seem garish.

So in this view of Bologna, you’ve got two fantastic rows of portici, in buildings with some spectacular coloring. And to finish it off, you get one of the two towers that are symbols of the city. In this case, you get the tall one, the Asinelli. I can even just see the top of the Asinelli tower from our apartment terrace. I’ll save the towers for another post, though, when I have time to do more research and take better photos. Plus, they’re worth a post of their own.

This photo was taken last weekend, when the weather wasn’t particularly nice. Today we have clear blue skies and the colors of the buildings are practically glowing! Fingers crossed that it’s just as nice tomorrow!

Enjoy your weekend!

pets, photography, shopping

Head Shops and Dutch Dogs

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dutch dog finds hemp shop head shop in bologna italy qui canapa

Here’s Charlie putting the cane (dog) in canapa (hemp). What do you expect from a Dutch dog? While out walking this morning, his nose zoomed in on Qui Canapa, a hemp/grow/seed/head shop in Bologna. This discovery was soon followed up by a long sniff around the nearby pizza restaurant. I’m not kidding!

Charlie probably recognized some of the scents coming from the hemp shop. After all, in Utrecht, we had three “coffee shops” within a 3-5 minute walk from our house, and one of those places was actually a boat, known as the Culture Boat! (The larger white/blue/red boat on the right.)
Iced In

Despite the Dutch reputation, most people don’t smoke weed/pot/hashish. Tourists and university students probably make up a large portion of the customers, with a few other local regulars. You smell it on occasion, but it’s not like everyone’s stopping in to a “coffee shop” or culture boat on a regular basis. Plenty of people don’t bother at all.

Still, I had to laugh when I realized what the shop was that Charlie was sniffing around so intently this morning. Of course the Dutch dog found the head shop in Bologna. In another bit of synchronicity, I received an email today from Philip Lindeman, a Dutch artist I’d written about a few months ago for my Utrecht blog. He did a great mural on the wall outside of one of the head shops in Utrecht. It’s almost like the universe is trying to tell me something …

Seriously, though, the shop isn’t a Dutch “coffee shop”. Per their website, they are a shop, but also an information point as part of their aim is to make people more aware of the uses of hemp, both in therapy and in a wide range of products. Hemp has long been used for a variety of purposes that had nothing to do with getting high. In fact, the shop sells pasta, beer, chocolate, oil, face creams, bags, t-shirt, glasses and more, all based on hemp/canabis. Hemp is an easily renewable resource, so I’m actually interested in going in some time and checking out what they have to offer. I think Charlie wants to go, too.

dutch dog finds hemp shop head shop in bologna italy qui canapa

architecture, photography

Peeking Through Doorways

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One of the things I love about so much of Italian architecture, particularly Renaissance or Renaissance-inspired architecture, is a good big architectural doorway. When I studied Italian Renaissance architecture, I certainly saw plenty of architectural doors in the palazzi, but had no true sense of the scale just by looking at photos. It wasn’t until my first trip to Italy that I truly began to understand just how magnificent they can be. Now living here, I find myself constantly peeking through any big open doorways I can find and usually wondering what is behind all of those colossal closed doors.

Florence — my Renaissance architectural heaven — was the first stop on my first trip to Italy with a friend. Taking the advice of Miss Lavish from A Room with a View, I was determined to ignore my Baedeker (well, my map of Florence). I had studied enough of the city’s layout that I thought I could find many of the major things to see in Florence without needing to consult a map all the time. I wasn’t always right, and there’s a whole story about a defeated search for the Boboli Gardens, but I’ll save that for another time.

It was on one of our wanderings around the city, looking for one thing, that I found another. Walking down what seemed like a narrow alley, I looked up at the building on my right and realized it was the Palazzo Medici. With a chorus of hallelujah’s echoing in my head, I raced around the corner and found the front of the palazzo. And drew up short in amazement at the sheer size of the door! My love of grand Italian doorways was born.

From Florence to Bologna

Bologna has its own share of big doorways that vary from what I think of as Dutch size (i.e., really tall) to giant size. There’s a rather glorious set of large wooden doors with a chain through the handles on Via Irnerio that I pass quite often and long to see what is behind them. But that’s just one set of doors. They’re everywhere!

On Sunday, while out for a walk, we happened to pass a set of decent-size doors with one temptingly open. I couldn’t resist and managed to get a few quick snaps into the hidden world that lies behind the doors. In this case, it looked like a beautiful sunlight-yellow building and some lovely vaulting. That’s the stuff daydreams are made of! Well, for me anyway.

open door italian renaissance arch bologna architectural doorway with vaulting in bologna italy

Grand Doorways

In the Netherlands, I got to satisfy any vague hints of voyeurism thanks to the practice of large windows without curtains, which is all part of the Dutch concept of having nothing to hide. It’s a bit different here, so I can’t help but want to peek behind these big wooden doors. There are all sorts of visual surprises just waiting to be seen. Just imagine what’s behind this grand architectural doorway!

Grand Doorways

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Famous Bolognese, history

Famous Bolognese: Guglielmo Marconi

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Radio. I haven’t had a physical one in almost nine years and miss it occasionally, though there’s always the online option. In fact, years ago, while still living in the US, I used to listen to Italian radio online, just to practice listening to Italian. I blame my love of cheesy Italian pop on all that time spent listening to RTL 102.5. That and the limited selection of Italian CDs for sale at my local Borders bookstore at the time.

Anyway, it seems appropriate that I used to listen to Italian radio, even if online, as the man who is generally credited as the inventor of radio is an Italian, Guglielmo Marconi (Bologna, 25 April 1874 – Roma, 20 July 1937). As it turns out, not only is he Italian, he was from Bologna!

For the record, he didn’t specifically invent the radio, but he did  developed the first apparatus for long distance radio communication.  He also won a Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Karl Ferdinand Braun, for  contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy. He was just 27 when he received the first transatlantic radio signal. He would go on to become a successful businessman, entrepreneur, and through a continuing series of innovations, he was able to help make commercial radio into a success.

Nowadays, if you fly into Bologna, you’ll arrive at the Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport. Then, if you’re sticking around town for a while, you can follow one of the Marconi-inspired itineraries available from Bologna Welcome, where you can learn more about this famous son of Bologna.

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graffiti, photography

Wall Wisdom

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your tv tells you lies bologna graffiti

I certainly don’t mean the wisdom of building walls. That’s another post at another time …

This is about the wisdom, the emotional outpouring, and the straight-up bizarre things I’ve seen written on walls around Bologna so far. They’re a different take on graffiti, relying on words, rather than pictures, to try to get their point across. Maybe some should have stuck with pictures.

Ho fame …
Bologna Words of Wisdom or Something

The beauty is your head. The beauty is lost in the English translation.
Bologna Words of Wisdom or Something

I cannot forget you! That’s your f&^% problem.
Bologna Words of Wisdom or Something

Children, TV only tells you lies.
Bologna Words of Wisdom or Something

Too drunk to … spell? Finish a thought?
Bologna Words of Wisdom or Something

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fast food, foto friday, photography, restaurants in Bologna

Foto Friday: Walking Potatoes

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walking fried potatoes chip shop patat fries
From year to year with my Utrecht blog, I’d do a Foto Friday series. They were either photos that I really liked, but just didn’t have much to say about, or they were photos that weren’t so great, but they amused me for some reason or another. I feel like starting that again. Today’s foto falls under the latter category.

It was a quick shot on the go, taken mainly because it reminded me of the chip shops in Utrecht (and the Netherlands in general). Both are essentially hole-in-the-wall places where you don’t go inside at all. You order right there on the street/sidewalk/portico. This one — one could say being stereotypically Italian — is called Amor di Patata/Love Chips, or perhaps more realistically love of chips/fries/friet/frites/patat. To be honest, I’ll take stereotypical Italian amore over the name of one of the more popular Dutch chains, which is Manneken Pis. Now, the potatoes are excellent at Manneken Pis, but the name (as they’re supposed to be Belgian/Flemish style) refers to that famous Belgian statue/fountain of a little boy peeing. Perhaps not the most appetizing association!

The other thing that amused me about this is the tag line written over the serving area. It says: patatae fritte da passeggio. Ultimately, it basically means “fries to-go”, but when you’re still learning the language and tend to take things more literally, it becomes “fried potatoes walking”. [Insert your own “Dead Man Walking” joke here.]

Hey, get your laughs wherever you can find them!

Also, apologies in advance. After spending the last eight+ years in the Netherlands (and watching a lot of BBC), having a British mother, but still being a native-born citizen of the US, I have no consistency in which term I use for fries/chips/patat/patatae fritte/frites/friet/etc. Most often, though, I will use fries, chips, or patat, but with no regard to the primary language or audience. It’s whatever comes out first!

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graffiti, photography

Wall art small and not quite as small

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madonna graffiti mustache bologna

small graffiti

Bologna is filled with graffiti. Some is fantastic; some is complete crap. I kind of like this little one. I find myself thinking of it as a skeleton mouse, but in a good way.

graffiti Bologna

This one is a little creepy and a little cute.

madonna graffiti mustache bologna

And some is probably every so slightly blasphemous.

Regardless, I see the graffiti in Bologna in all its forms as a topic I’m likely to return to on a regular basis, just going off the photos I’ve been taking already.

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graffiti, pets, photography

My partner in exploration

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charlie dog portrait staffy pibble

When I first moved to the Netherlands, I had a large dog and two cats in tow. Moving to Italy, I once again had a large dog and two cats in tow. The cats remained the same, but sadly our dog Pippo passed away around four years ago. He was my partner in exploring Utrecht and was an occasional model.

A little over a year ago, I adopted Charlie, my lovely brindle Staffordshire mix. He’s always up for a walk, the longer the better. His modelling is hit or miss, but he’s usually good for at least one posed shot if there aren’t too many other distractions.

Charlie is a Dutch dog, so he gets basic commands in Dutch, but he’s learning Italian dog terms of endearment (and mockery). He’s getting used to living in a household with three languages to one degree or another.

Bologna is full of dogs. Italy is full of dogs, probably! When G and I are out, we’re constantly interrupting our conversations with “doggy” or “puppy” exclamations. In Utrecht, I photographed the cats I’d see around town. In Italy, I think it will be the dogs.

Anyway, even if you don’t see him in my photos, he’s the one I’m usually talking about when I refer to “our walks”. I’m looking forward to many more with my handsome Charlie.

dog in front of graffiti

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architecture, Bologna churches, photography

Making Progress

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Bologna san petronio

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel of getting this Bologna blog of mine set up and running. Bear with me. Hopefully by the end of the week there will be some real content. In the meantime, sign up for email notifications so you know when I do actually publish a new blog post, follow me over at Facebook, and check out my Instagram account to see pictures of Bologna, my two black cats, Luna and Lola, and my dog, Charlie. My social media links are at the very top of the page.

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