Tag Archives: Cemetery

Aiming for Pisa mind

Friday 9 May 2025 – Our target today was to get to Pisa, meet our friend Caroline, who will be joining us for some of our walk on the Via Francigena, and meet a guide at 3pm in order to have a guided tour. We weren’t quite sure of what; of course there’s the famous leaning tower*, but the guide was due to meet us at the hotel, which was some 15 minutes walk from the site of the tower. Was there anything else worth seeing in the town of Pisa apart from the tower? In the end, it didn’t matter, as you’ll find out of you stay with me, here.

To get to Pisa, we took the train, buying tickets online from TrenItalia for a very reasonable €9.30, and finding that one could add them to Google wallet – overall a very neat way of handling the ticket. Then we hefted our cases down the really rather awkward steps leading from the hotel to the ground floor and trundled them, a ten minute walk, to the station.

Inside, it was what a supercilious Brit might call a typical Italian scene – mobs of people all trying to get somewhere else through the press surrounding the departure info board.

Apart from people getting in my fucking way all the time, getting to the train was fine and the rest of the journey proceeded uneventfully for an hour, until we detrained at Pisa. The platform was black with people, but we eventually found our way out to the station forecourt and trundled our bags a further ten minutes to the Hotel Bologna, where, delightfully, both Caroline and our room were waiting for us.

We spent a few minutes sorting ourselves out and then joined Caroline on an expedition to seek coffee. Since we were due to see the tower that afternoon, we didn’t see much point in heading that way, but somehow seemed inexorably to be approaching it. We passed a small but delightfully gothic church, of Santa Maria della Spina,

before crossing the river (the Arno, which also flows through Florence) which offers quite a nice vista,

looking for somewhere to serve us coffee. Having got on one side of the botanical gardens, we couldn’t deviate from the path that was leading us towards the site of the tower, but eventually managed to make a right turn, which led us to a street with lots of restaurants and bars.

We stopped at the first place that looked like it might serve us coffee. By this stage, as I say, we were quite near the campus where the leaning tower is located. The tower is not the only building there; I vaguely remembered from a previous visit, some 23 years ago, that there was a church there, too. From a distance, it looked like there was a decent amount of restoration work going on

and I hoped that  this wouldn’t detract from our visit later.

After coffee and a couple of drinks, we decided that it must be lunchtime, and so went in search of somewhere appealing to eat. The street we were on was wall-to-wall restaurants, but they all seemed to have pictures of food outside them, and we are followers of the A A Gill gospel that says any restaurant displaying pictures of their food is best avoided. On a side road, we eventually stumbled across Grano Libero Ristorante senza Glutine, which just seemed to emit the right sort of vibes, so we settled in for some lunch.

And a very fine lunch it was (even though they didn’t have gin). The gluten-free bread they served was really excellent, and vastly superior to any GF bread I’ve ever sampled. We had a plentiful lunch of excellent meats, cheeses and vegetable-based dishes. It would have been nonsensical to walk back to the hotel to meet our guide, so Jane contacted her and arranged that we should meet by the tower.

During my last visit, the tower was closed to visitors because the Powers That Be were worried that the leaningness might imminently turn into falling downness. So I was really hoping that the restorative work that had been carried out over the last quarter century would allow us to climb the tower. As we approached, the auguries were hopeful.

We arrived at the site

and, prompt at 3pm, met the delightful Ilaria, who was to be our guide. It was immediately clear that she knew a vast amount about the history of Pisa. She showed us a map, similar to the one below, which highlighted the historic walls of Pisa.

I hadn’t known about the walls, or indeed much of the history of the place at all.  On the map above, our hotel was just south the the river, and the site of the tower, the Piazza del Duomo, is some 15 minutes brisk walk from the hotel. So you can see that this historic Piazza is really very small, and formed only a tiny part of the original city. But, tiny as it is, Ilaria was able to spend three hours giving us an engaging, intensive and educational tour round it.

The site has basically five buildings: the cathedral (consecrated 1118), the baptistry (1363), the tower (started 1173, finished 1372 – long story), a cemetery (1277 – late 15th century) and a hospital (founded 1257, modified at times up to 20th century and now largely used for administrative purposes so we didn’t venture inside). Because it was due to close first, we started in the baptistry.

In contrast to the one in Florence, this is round, rather than octogonal, which was the conventional shape for a baptistry. But the republic of Pisa decided that they wanted a building that was larger than Florence’s – part of a pretty intense rivalry between the two cities. At one stage, Pisa was far richer and more powerful than Florence, but Florence eventually grew to the point where it usurped the power and the position as the principal city.

It has twin domes, actually – an open, conical one and, outside it, a more conventionally-shaped one. This is illustrated in drawings inside.

It’s a wonderful ambience inside the building, and one that can’t really be conveyed photographically.

The conical inner dome gives the place an amazing accoustic, which we were lucky enough to hear demonstrated by a singer,

Ilaria gave us a huge amount of information about details that can be seen in the building. I won’t bore you with too many of them (OK, I can’t remember them that well, either) but there are carvings of exquisite detail, such as these in the central font.

Some of the stained glass represents significant people, typically donors, but one stood out;

Pope John Paul II, of course.

After the baptistry, we went into the church. From my previous visit, I knew there was a church there, but I hadn’t realised what a wonderful facade it has.

Again, Ilaria provided huge amounts of information about the history and details that can be seen both on the outside and

the inside, which is very opulently appointed. The wooden ceiling was destroyed by fire, but was restored in gilded wood, largely with the help of money from the Medicis…

hence the Medici symbol on the coat of arms at the centre of the ceiling. There are many fine things to look at

and again Ilaria provided bewlidering amounts of detail on the history of the place and the provenance of the decor.

Our next visit was to the cemetery.

Along each side are galleries with what were once fine frescoes

but which have been badly affected by a fire caused by an accidental bombing by US forces during the second world war. The fire melted the lead in the roof, which destroyed much of the fresco work and scarred the marble floors; the ongoing restoration is a full time job for 30 people.

Above, you can see an example of the damaged fresco work as well as sarcophagi by the walls and tombs with identifying coats of arms on the floor.

Finally, Ilaria took us to the famous tower and gave us a short history of its construction. It was built in three phases. Even after the first phase, it was clear that the tower was leaning, and the developers of the second and third phases took this into account as they added storeys to it.  The result is that the tower is not actually straight – it has a very subtle bend in it away from the direction it leans.

 

Again, it’s difficult to convey this photogaphically, but you might just be able to discern the bend in the photo above.

Ilaria also gave great detail about how the famous lean developed, shifted from left to right, became dangerous and was eventually tamed thanks to a proposed solution from an Englishman, John Burland, who suggested that the lean could be controlled by (carefully!) excavating the ground from underneath the tower. This was the solution which meant that the tower could be re-opened for people to visit it. So we did, of course. Caroline and I climbed the 251 steps, which run up the inside of the tower in a staircase just wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic. I have to say that it was quite a weird experience, as sometimes the steps tip you one way, sometimes the other; and the very final steps to the top are up a very much narrower spiral staircase, and are potentially quite trappy.

The tower is a bell tower, and there are still bells at the top, though it’s clear that there is no mechanism for ringing them.

There’s a decent view over the city of Pisa from the top,

but to view the church from the top required some awkward squinting into the sun

(Jane had decided not to climb the tower, and, sitting in the museum cafe, was able to take that photo of me trying to get this photo).

Since the tower is hollow, one can look up the central column, where a plumbline has been installed, to emphasis how much the tower leans.

Ilaria’s command of the details of the history and religious significance of the intricacies around the site was truly impressive; our time with her was very concentrated and I haven’t done it any kind of justice above; but I hope you get a flavour of the site.

We had only today in Pisa; tomorrow we travel on to Lucca, which has a reputation of being a very fine place to visit. I hope to be able to demonstrate that in these pages, so stay tuned to find out, eh?

* I couldn’t let this opportunity pass without reviving an old joke about a famous painting of a three-legged dog relieving himself against a lamppost. It was called “The Leaning Pee of Towser”. I’ll get my coat.

Overwhelmed by Buenos Aires

Thursday 14 March 2024 – Bloody hell, Buenos Aires!  We’ve had a whistle stop tour which took five hours and done a couple of other things and I am completely overwhelmed by the place, and not always in a good way.  We’ve seen a huge amount in a very short space of time and I’m struggling to piece together a coherent story, so please bear with me as I flit from topic to topic in a disorganised way.  For a city which has only been in existence for 200 years, there’s an awful lot of history and culture to take in, and I’m not sure my brain’s up to it.  This will be a loooong post, with lots of pictures. Be warned.

By the way, this is just the city tour.  We also did Other Stuff, which I shall expatiate upon, probably at length, in at least one separate post.

Our guide for our whistle-stop tour was Mariana, who (you remember, of course) had greeted us on our first arrival three weeks ago and who was looking after us for our time here.  We discussed our overall schedule for a few minutes and then went out – in the rain, which still hadn’t really abated after several days of persistent pissing down – to get in to our car with driver Eduardo.

The car had seen many, many better days. There was a crack from left to right across the windscreen, the fuel filler flap was missing, and the SERVICE light was illuminated on the dashboard. Every so often the car would make the special Citroën alarm noises with which I’m so familiar, since I own one at home.  However, mine only complains when there’s something legit to complain about; Eduardo’s would bleep away and he would fiddle with door locks and other controls to try to make it shut up.  However, it got us to where we needed to go, which felt like it was was all over the bloody place but was actually only in about four areas, while Mariana pointed out government buildings, university buildings, churches, embassies and other points of interest while maintaining a stream of comments about Buenos Aires’s history and culture which was very difficult to keep up with.  But now, for example, I know that most citizens in Buenos Aires are into psychoanalysis and most go to a therapist, to the point where if you don’t, people think you’re a bit odd.

Anyhoo….

The basic geography:  BA is divided into 48 neighbourhoods, or barrios.

Our hotel is in Recoleta, a nice neighbourhood.  We also spent a lot of time in Palermo, which is also nice – most countries appear to have their embassies there. We also visited San Telmo (there was no fire there) and La Boca, the last of which is jolly fun during the day but, we are told, is not a place to visit in the evenings. There is also a downtown area, around Retiro and San Nicolas, also Not Safe After Dark, reportedly.

The city is one of contrasts – fine buildings in Nice Areas and clearly griding poverty and homelessness in others. With the ridiculous levels of inflation that the country is undergoing it was never clear to me how to get any local currency (it’s best, apparently, to go to a money changer recommended by someone you respect) and so whenever I was Out And About I felt exposed. I had no clue about the geography or distances and would have been exceedingly reluctant to take a taxi anywhere for fear of being ripped off or worse. It’s a shame that I never really felt relaxed here, and that contributed to the overall sense of being overwhelmed by the place.

Our first stop, which kind of summed up my image of Buenos Aires and Argentina, was “Floralis Genérica“, a gift to the city by the Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. Catalano once said that the flower “is a synthesis of all the flowers and, at the same time, a hope reborn every day at opening.” It was created in 2002. The aluminium sculpture, a thing of beauty, was designed to move, closing its petals in the evening and opening them in the morning.

Sadly, it’s fucked.

The electronics employed in opening and closing the flower were disabled in 2010 to prevent damaging the sculpture, and it remained permanently open until 2015. One of the petals was incorrectly installed during its assembly, as noted by Catalano himself. The company responsible for its construction, Lockheed Martin Aircraft Argentina, provided a 25-year warranty, but as the company was nationalised in 2009, its repair was delayed. The mechanism was functional again by June 2015. In the early hours of December 17, 2023, parts of the sculpture (including a main petal) fell due to a strong storm. And now there’s (a) no money, expertise or political will to repair it and (b) because of the parlous state of the area’s economy, people keep stealing bits of it to sell illegally. Such a shame; it must have been a thing of joy in its time – something once rich and fine, now in decline, matching my view of the city and country.

Our next stop was at a statue of General San Martin, who is regarded as a national hero of Argentina, Chile and Peru and one of the liberators of Spanish South America.  He (and a couple of his mates) liberated Argentina from Spanish rule in a war from 1810 to 1816. The British were involved in fighting around this time, too and I haven’t quite understood who was fighting whom and for what.  I think the French were probably angling for a fight, too, but I can’t honestly be sure.  The history of Argentina and Buenos Aires is hideously complicated.

Suffice it to say, though, that the practical upshot of all this buggering about is a city that is just 200 years old and with a rich heritage of European architecture.  As Jane and I noted in our first visit here before we went south, there are vast numbers of elegant 19th century European buildings here.  The embassies of foreign countries tend to be palaces, like the British Embassy

and many neighbourhoods (particularly Recoleta, where our hotel is), have a lot of buildings which would not look out of place in Paris.

So when someone wanted to build an art deco house

it was not welcomed among the neighbours.  But it got built anyway.

It could not possibly have been long before the name of Eva Perón cropped up; and we passed the Plaza Evita, where there is a monument to her.

Having never been to see the show or the film about her, I didn’t really know much about her except for the “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” thing.  Apparently, actresses in her day (1930s) were held in lowly regard, with most people lumping them in with prostitutes and other low-lifes.  So her and Juan becoming an item was pretty scandalous, but one has to admit she made a pretty good fist of things despite this. More on her later.

Next stop was the cultural centre of Recoleta, which included the Basilica Nuestra Senora del Pilar

which we popped into for a quiet moment to admire, among other things, the lovely tiling work there.

I was amused, as we walked out, to see the longest feather duster ever in my experience.

Nearby is a huge, and very old, fig tree.

It is so old that its branches reach out a considerable distance.  Someone had the bright idea of including one of them in an art installation.

Also nearby is a building which used to be a convent but its frontage been gussied up a little.

I think it’s wonderful, but apparently people are a bit sniffy about it.

We called in at a café in the area, called La Biela.

At one of its tables there’s another art installation; wax models of two famous writers and intellectuals who spent much time in La Biela,

Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Next, we visited the cemetery in Recoleta. I begin to wonder if you, my loyal reader, are worried about our preoccupation with cemeteries, which figure not infrequently in these pages.  This one, morbid fixation or not, is an SSSI – a site of significant sightseeing interest. It is vast,

 

covering 5.5 hectares, or 14 acres in old money, and packed – 4,691vaults, all topped with statuary and other mausoleum-type materials, You can see from the above shot that there is a central spot from which avenues radiate out.

and there are some astonishing mausolea there.  To spare you an endless litany of photos, I’ve put a set on Flickr for you to look at if your pro-cemetery inclinations match ours. Click below to view them, if you like.

Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina

I will share one photo, though, which is the main reason for people to flock to this place.

“Duarte?” I hear you cry. “Who the actual?”.

Evita. Her full name was María Eva Duarte de Perón – Duarte was her maiden name. That’s why people come here.  Frankly, I’m buggered if I know how to find it, but Mariana led is there deftly, via some of the 94 other figures of national importance who are also buried there – and pointing out that some mausolea are abandoned, disused and in a poor state.  It’s not possible to cram any new sites in, and existing sites that are for sale fetch huge amounts of money; but the ownership of some of the abandoned sites has been lost and so they moulder away.

After the cemetery, the cathedral.  From the front, it doesn’t look much like a church.

but if you look carefully, you can see a dome just above the pediment, which is a clue. It looks large, and it is.

You can see the beautiful tiling in the photos above, and there’s lots  of it.

and it’s encouraging to note that there’s some restoration work going on in places which need it. There are many, many chapels (I lost count after six) but the main, suitably impressive, one is dedicated to that chap San Martin.

It’s guarded. By guards. Two of them.

but it’s utterly impossible to get a decent photo of the area because of the photographic feeding frenzy going on around it.

At least they weren’t taking selfies, which is the only redeeming feature of the scene.

One of the reasons for the vibrant and varied cultural scene in BA is the amount of immigrations that’s happened over the years – Russians, Polish, French, Italians and more.  A significant aspect of the Italian influence is visible in the bakeries.  We visited a posh one

which has a counter-intuitive name despite its very clear Italian heritage.

(We visited another, less posh, one later, so stay tuned.)

Just nearby is Plaza Mayo. This is nothing to do with a spread, a clinic or an ageing radio DJ, but a place of much significance to the Argentinians; its name come from week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, The result was the removal of Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros and the establishment of a local government, the Primera Junta  on May 25. The May Revolution began the Argentine War of Independence. As similar events occurred in many other cities of the continent, the May Revolution is also considered one of the early events of the Spanish American wars of independence.

Several of the city’s major landmarks are located around the Plaza: the Casa Rosada (home of the executive branch of the federal government)

which features the famous balcony from where Evita gave her “don’t cry for me, Argentina” speech*;

the Cathedral, which you’ve already seen; the May Pyramid, the oldest national monument in the city, celebrating the first anniversary of the May Revolution.;

and the Equestrian monument to General Manuel Belgrano.

The stones surrounding the statue were placed in commemoration of Covid victims during the pandemic, as the people were dissatisfied with the government’s response to the pandemic.

Since 1977, the plaza is where the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have congregated with signs and pictures of desaparecidos, their menfolk (husbands, children, sometimes fathers), who were subject to forced disappearance by the Argentine military in the Dirty War, during the National Reorganization Process.  Their protest is permanently marked by the images of white headscarves in the black mosaic.

There’s  a lot of street art in Buenos Aires.  I took a photo of some

whose relevance will be revealed in due course – and lots and lots and lots later – stay with it.

Argentinians love their markets; that’s where they buy most of their food – there are no big supermarkets in BA. Mariana took us through the very considerable San Telmo market, where you can buy produce and also eat at the many establishments there.

Neighbouring San Telmo is La Boca, “The Mouth”, where the port is.

It’s also a place where the buildings become the street art.

It’s an extraordinary outpouring of colour. To save you having to scroll through dozens of photos, I’ve put them in a separate Flickr album, or you can click the image below.

Street Scenes at La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

One building is a popular attraction; Caminito.

On (queueing up and) payment of the requisite sum, you can go upstairs and have your photo taken beside Lionel Messi.

(It’s not the real Messi; just another fine Messi you can get into.)

Other street art in La Boca is plentiful – it even extends to the sides of buildings

and a local football stadium.  When the builders were choosing the decor, they decided to use the colours of the next ship to arrive.  It was

Swedish.

La Boca is also where we visited the non-posh Italian bakery.

Among other things they offer “amarchistic” baked goods.  I’d show you them, but that would be a picture of food and therefore Not Allowed; but bakers slyly created items that mocked the police, education, church and other elements of society – pastries called “facturas”, the word means “bill”, so emphasising the need for crafts such as baking to be recognised at their full value.

The above hits the highlights of our five hours of touring Buenos Aires.  It’s not exhaustive, but I hope it gives an impression of how varied it is; we only covered a few areas, and there would be much more to see had we the time.

We did do a few other things in the city, and the narrative at this point turns non-linear; a couple of days later, we visited one of Buenos Aires’s most famous buildings – El Ateneo. It was only a 10-minute stroll from our hotel and on the way I took some snaps of a couple of the street kiosks which are everywhere in Recoleta

and one of the rather stylish poster stands that dot the place as well,

reminiscent of the sort of art nouveau street décor one might find in Paris.

El Ateneo is a remarkable place – a theatre which has been repurposed as a book shop – an enormous, enormously stylish bookshop.

Just entering it shows what a stylish place it is.

Then you go through to the main area and get hit by a simply awesome sight.

This is the view from the second floor over the main part of the building as you look towards the stage.

Isn’t that just – fantastic?

It is.

And yet people can’t set eyes on this vision of wonderfulness without thinking that it would look better with them in it.

Bloody hell, it annoys me. Not only is it vapid but it delays people who just want to capture the scene for its awesomeness.

The stage

is a café

where we had coffee and alfajores, served by a nice local lass called, counterintuitively, Brenda. The ceiling above is a thing of joy

and other theatreish areas are used for other bookshopish things.

The place is simply stunning, and a decent way to end a post about what we’d seen in touring around this remarkable, scruffy, stylish, imposing, disorganised city.

We also did a couple of evening things in BA, since we had three days here. I will write about them in my valedictory post from this trip. But the middle day of our three in the area held the prospect of another Thing To Do in Buenos Aires, which is – to leave it.

Come back later and find out what that means, eh?

 

  • No, she didn’t.  That speech is a fiction from the show and the film, based upon the fact that in her latter days, before she dies very young from cancer, her speeches ran high in emotional content.  I found it very educational to read her Wiki entry. The balcony of the Casa Rosada was used for a powerful speech in front of a quarter of a million people; but the appearance was by Juan Perón, being released after 6 days in prison, in front of the gathered throng, who had demanded his freedom.