Arrezzo

So our weekend trip with Professor Ingersol included 2 cities: Arezzo and Perugia.  Perugia, which you have already seen, we did later that day.  We definitely stayed a bit longer in Arezzo, and is my favorite between these two cities.  Although you can take this course (100 cities) for architectural credit, we also have some art history students, and I feel like he focuses our tours (and lectures) with a more historical lens than just strictly architecture.  Which is nice - I feel like I'm watching the discovery channel or something and he is telling us all these stories.

Here is a map of Arezzo that was just outside the train station.  It's your typical walled city.  One of the reasons we came here was to see the churches and frescoes of San Francesca, and works by the architect Vasari.  

A view of Arezzo outside the city walls, which consist of agriculture and the suburbs. 

Top images are of the main square (Piazza Grande).  It was a pretty grand space, and on an interesting slope, which ended with stairs down to a fountain (left). The loggia above the fountain were supposedly designed by Vasari.  

These are images of one of the San Francesco churches.  A lot of the churches here were of a very simple design, and dark inside, to focus more on prayer and reflection.

There's Professor Ingersol, in the purple scarf, as he leads our group into one of the churches. 

A model done my Vasari, perhaps one of the oldest in history. 

Perugia's mini metro

So here is the video I promised! While we were in Perugia, we took the mini metro to the end of the line. Our professor pointed out to us how the car turns 180 degrees at the end so that it can go back on the same line.  I thought it was pretty cool, so I took a quick video.   I thought it was quite clever. 

Perugia

Ok, so here is one of the cities that I traveled to, while taking the 100 cities class from Professor Ingersol.  This trip was great, because we had microphones, so we could easily hear him talk while we could explore the city with our eyes a the same time.

I'm just going to show you a few images of the city, as we didn't spend a lot of time here, but here are a couple things that I found interesting.

Above is the mini metro designed by Jean Nouvel in 2000.  Cute car! 

I have a video of the metro moving, but I will post that up later. 

Main street (corso) of Perugia

model of Perugia, when we were underneath the city

Some of the tunnels as we were walking underneath the city.  It was pretty dark (obviously) and was previously used as a jail.  It was overall pretty treacherous and gloomy, although I am surprised how tall the spaces are here. 

 City town hall.  I love the stairs up this building.  We spend a lot of time roaming around inside, which was a lot of fun, too. 

Inside "court house" where decisions are made. 

Some great vaulting on the first floor of the city hall (left).  

We went to the museum on the upper floors and there were just a labyrinth of rooms (right)

Cooking Adventures!!! chapter 1

Actually, I had wanted to write more about this topic when I first started this blog, but I am finding with everything else that I'm doing, that documenting the stuff that I cook to be the hardest.  Half the time I just want to make something quick, and the recipe I used gets somehow destroyed or thrown away in the process. Or maybe that's just an excuse of saying that I'm not a super good cook or I can't say with great confidence that I can produce great food (if it was architecture, I would say yes...).
I also want to point out that I don't really measure when I cook, like with exact cups or teaspoons.  I just read recipes on-line and kind of follow it.  Actually, if you want some of the resources I go to, I will post them at the end of this entry.
There are two places where I get groceries: Esselunga and Sidis.  Esselunga is like your big grocery market that has everything, which I would say is about 5 blocks away, 10 minute walk.  Sidis is your local deal with your essential items, which is like 2 minutes from me.  I usually try to alternate between the two, because even though I like getting things at Esselunga, the other one is just so much more convenient.

The image above is basically me experimenting cooking with wine.  The chicken I pan fried with a little bit of red chianti wine, which turned out even better than I expected. With just a little bit of tomato sauce, the richness of this dish really came out. Pretty simple to make, too. ^^

some useful links: 

http://www.italianchef.com/spedini.html

http://lacucinaitalianamagazine.com/

http://www.artofcookery.com/

Last of the hilltowns: Siena

Siena was also very beautiful.  I think I one of the reasons I love Seattle is because of its varying geographic features, from the Puget Sound to its surrounding Olympic Mountains.  Siena's geographic features may have not been as dramatic, but it sits in the middle of three mountains and it makes you (or at least me) really aware of the changing geography, especially when you walk through some of these narrow streets.  I won't talk a lot about this city, but I'll just say that in terms of size and scale it is really similar to Florence (as also goes with its culture and arts).  In fact, when Florence was building its Duomo, which was going to be the greatest in Italy, Sienna also made great attempts to make a church larger than theirs.  Although this church did not finish completion, you can see remnants of it in the city, and I actually found them more interesting than the Duomo in Florence.

Here is what I mean about topography - the change of the street level was pretty dramatic.  

I don't know if there is a terminology for this kind of building, but I am calling it a "pocket church".  As we have our "pocket parks" in Seattle, I consider this to be a "pocket church" because it is a small void that was cut out of a street that we happened to walk by. 

 The arched passageway that leads to the Piazza del Campo (Square of the fields)

 Above is the town hall that sits in the Piazza del Campo.  Most town halls have a tower like this one that overlooks the city.  And most of them, as you walk in, has a central courtyard, open to rain, snow, etc.

View of Siena from a level inside the town hall.  The landscape is just amazing.

Here's a panorama of Palazzo del Campo.  I am standing in front of the town hall looking the other way.  The space was shaped sort of like a semi circle.  The palazza is at its lowest point where I'm standing and gradually slopes up in all directions to the buildings on the other side, like a shell.  

This is the Cathedral of Siena.  The geography here was pretty intense here too; I had to stitch these images together so that you could see the whole facade.  The stairs to the left are also pretty steep and leads you up to the other side of the church. 

Here are the remnants of the much larger church Siena was planning to build.  There were some structural and construction errors that led to this unfinished piece.  The red bricks is what got built over the remains; some of it became transformed into a building (I forget what it is being used for) but it makes for a pretty interesting space.  The image to the right shows the contrast between the unfinished marble and the bricks that were put in later. 

 This church has one of the most decadent facades that I've ever seen.  There's something like 4 or 5 columns lined up against each other in the entryways to create such a depth.  I'm actually glad that we weren't asked to draw this facade, because that would just be crazy.  The detailing is just overwhelming. 

(Interior of the Church of Siena) As an afterthought, I don't think too much highly of this building.  I understand that the horizontal pattern in the columns is a special technique of stonework, but it really jut made me dizzy and again, too much detail.  It was also really dark and hard to take pictures, despite being such a huge space. 

Last picture as we're leaving Siena.  All of these hill towns really take advantage of these rolling hills.  The landscape of Italy really gives me a kind of romantic, almost nostalgic feeling as we drive by them in the bus.  Perhaps it is because of all those old films I've seen, or it is just my imagination. 

advice?

As I keep going, I am just wondering if you have noticed changes with my new layout...? Well, I didn't change that much, aside from changing the background, tidying up the general layout, and adding a side tool labeled "topics", which when I place more posts you can navigate better in the blog.  (the background pic is one that I took in Rome ^_^)  If you want me to add other features or come up with other ways to make my blog better, please do so.  Like I said, this is my first time making a blog, so if u see room for improvement let me know by posting a comment below!  (I haven't seen anyone post any COMMENTS, btw.. :/)
Also, if u guys know of any good webpages that gives good tips to blogging, that would b great too.  ^^

Pienza

Our next stop was Pienza: another beautiful city in its own way.  This city was also relatively small, probably about 3 times the size of Monteriggioni.  I forgot to mention that we are required to do readings about these cities before we visit them. (well, I guess this is technically a class, too!) Anyways, I read this article on the design of Pienza, particually its main square is distinct from other cities in that it has a very irregular shape.  This has to do with the fact that it was built in the Early Renaissance, which was considered to be a time related to the ideas of Humanism - designs that emphasize variety and richness in types of styles.  Rather than the uniformity and formal symmetry and geometry seen in the Renaissance, Pienza's square is an eclecticism of different facade styles and a discord of building arrangement (for one thing, its main square isn't "square"; its a deformed trapezoid).  The article I read by Christine Smith ("Varietas and the Design of Pienza") claims that humanistic values also incorporate ideas of movement; that because the spectator cannot not see everything in the square, one has to move through it to see certain things.  Therefore, there is a continually changing relation between the object and the viewer.  These ideas are kind of abstract and hard to grasp, but I think they are so characteristic of what we talk about now in contemporary architecture and so I was incredibly fascinated with this reading.  And it was great to go see it, even with the snow.

Here is a plan of the city - I photographed it because I was too lazy to scan it.  The orange represents the square I'm talking about, and the orange line represents the route we took to walk around the city.

Here's the snow I mentioned to u about...it was so weird how the landscape suddenly went from green to white as our bus took us here.  

Here's the church that faces the main square.  Apparently, the distance between the bottom of the facade to its middle line (highlighted by the lintels of the columns, above the middle door arch) is the same distance used in the grid marked on the ground with lighter tiles.  The idea being that if you rotated the facade to lay flat on the square, the lines would match up.  Image to the top right is the building beside the church.  Notice all of us trying to sketch in the snow...

 The snow there was so beautiful!

The two photos above show some apartment units that all sit in a rectangular block.  They are all the same size and design, as noticed in the repetitive stairs and windows.  Each unit is so cute, but I guess pretty small and tight.  

Left: view of church from behind.  Snow is continuing to fall

Right.  view inside church.  At least it was a little bit warmer in there.  A lot of us found this refuge to sketch.