2025 Brescia

A Roman statue of Victory, found in Brescia

14.8.25

On the Torre Coltrina, with a great view south across the city, the Loggia just visible. Huge castle here – I had no idea Italy had such large medieval constructions.  A high outer wall then another inner one, both daunting.  Built on a natural hill, this place must have been impregnable for centuries.

A view of Brescia from the Torre Coltrina

Waiting to enter the Roman ruins, which open at 10am.  Steep stairs down from the castle, great views across the city.  In the historical museum area, very quiet, lots of back streets, many doubtless following ancient ways.  By the Roman theatre, reasonable preservation.  Seats broken but visible.  Reached by a system of galleries called vomitoria.  Really.

Roman amphitheatre, with vomitoria

Waiting to be conducted to the Roman museum here, even though the ticket said to go straight in… Ah well, Italy.  On the non-guided tour (sic), to see the 1st century BCE frescoes.  Good video showing the rise of Brixia – rather impressive temple and forum plus city.  Amazingly well preserved mosaic floor and frescoes – all 89 to 75 BCE.  Interesting wall design – like book bindings.  Trompe l’oeil fabrics beneath.  Real columns and painted ones.    Frieze along the top with geometric patterns – Cretan swastika, nested squares.

Frescoes and mosaics from two thousand years ago

Up into the main temple, or a reconstruction of it.  Bronze winged Victory mid 1st century CE.  Very impressive.  Pleats of the dress, and feathers of the wings amazing.  Lucky it survived.  Interesting “air lock” system: two sets of doors between main temple spaces.  You enter a small space between them.  The door closes, and the other door opens to view the Victory.  Keeps air cool.  Very strict on enforcing it.

A curious inscription

Back to a hall with hundreds of inscriptions - most real, some painted because still in situ.  Impressive how many have been found.  One inscription seems to have Germanic runes on it…

Along to the old cathedral.  Naturally three metres below current levels (reminds me of Esna).  As a result, the inside looks much bigger than the outside – a medieval Tardis.  The round form is both powerful and simple; echoing the round Romanesque arches.  Huge pillars, immensely thick.  Unusual design, with choir off main space, deep crypt below.  To the crypt – that cold, dank smell.  From 838, as is the church, according to the inscriptions.

The old, circular cathedral

Coffee in Piazza Paolo VI.  Good view of the old and new cathedrals and Broletto tower.  New cathedral facade has rounded and square pilasters with composite capitals - Ionic and Corinthian.  Extravagant broken curved pediment over the entrance.

On the way to the Piazza della Loggia, via the suspended rhinoceros

Air humid, sky overcast but bright, gentle breeze.  Perfect for sightseeing.  To Piazza della Loggia.  I’d forgotten about the clock opposite – very like the one in Venice.  Eating in L’oste sobrio, where they have banged us up by the fridge and toilets.  Not happy.  Terrible service – forgot about my food completely.  Ironically, when it did arrive, it was quite tasty…

To Pinacoteca Martinengo.  We’re practically the only visitors, of course.  A room with some great frescoes – one with a huge, shaggy dog.  Another room, with two Raphaels – real ones.  Weird pic by Moretto – Last Supper.  Christ has a hippy hat with badges, and a shell pinned on the left shoulder. Pilgrim symbols, apparently. The maid is carrying a dish of what looks like roast monkey, and none too fresh.  Striking pic of Christ and Veronica, with lots of soldiers looking fearful.  By Il Cariani.  

Christ and Veronica, by Il Cariani

Into a big hall, walls covered in blood-red cloth (other rooms were a glorious cobalt blue).  Fab pic by Moretto of nativity scene - very grand, very effective.  With a triplet of angels floating above, holding a scroll: “deus homo factus est”.  Like the three boys in the Magic Flute.  A smaller Moretto of the passion of Christ: him grey and resigned, the angel convincingly distraught.

A melancholy beggar

A six-string double bass from 1610, majolica.  Two paintings by the Anguissola sisters, the one by Sofonisba very fine.  A room full of pix by Giacomo Ceruti, also known as Pitocchetto – scenes of popular life.  Two beggars in a wood – haunting gaze of a blind (?) beggar.  Another of a seated beggar, gazing with infinite sadness…

Abraham and Isaac

Amazing sculpture of Abraham and Isaac, copy of Simon Troger, in wood and ivory.  Brilliant use of vertical forms to capture the angel’s intervention.  Unusual meeting of Jacob and Esau by Francesco Hayez (1844).  Like one by Holman Hunt…  Beautiful marble version of Laocoön and his sons by Luigi Ferrari.  

Laocoön and his sons

To the Santa Giulia museum, big, modern inside – and with aircon.  Some fine bronze heads found on the Roman site – Messerschmidt, but not screaming.  Amazing excavations under the Santa Giulia monastery – a house with extensive frescoes.  Beautiful, an almost complete mosaic of Bacchus and his pards (just one).  This domus only discovered in 1967.  Too much to see here, in one of the best museums of its kind that I have visited.  We leave, delighted and exhausted.

Roman heads, not screaming

Now tanking up with coffee and carbs before the drive back after a great day.  Brixia/Brescia is just fab.

More destinations:

1987 Italy

1988 Venice

1992 Padua, Venice

1993 Urbino

1994 Venice 

1994 Bari

1994 Rome 
1994 Trieste, Ljubljana 

1995 Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza

1996 Torino

1998 Elba 

1998 Modena 
1999 Weimar, Venice

2024 Ravenna - with photos

Moody's Black Notebook Travels

1995 Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza

31.1.95 Siena

Sitting in "Il Palio" café – probably where I sat some 16 or so years ago.  Glorious view – clear blue sky, sun low with shadows long.  The harmony of this space: the buildings in all their disproportionateness, flow and rumple together.  Sitting by the fountain, children throw coriandoli (confetti).  One boy, typically Italian, with hard grey eyes, laughing.  Even the shop signs harmonious in their white on ochre.

Back in the Hotel Palazzo Ravizza (near Porta San Marco).  Lovely, old 18th-century palazzo – we have fine view south-west.  Tall room, narrow staircases, fading frescoes on the ceiling.  Outside, a grand piano in the library (hi, Venezia…).  Double doors – sporting the oak…

Wandering around the city.  Two things I remember: the main square (of course), climbing the tower and seeing its long shadow in the piazza below, and – crazily enough – memories of the square where the buses leave (I think – I also have a slight feeling that this was in Nerja…).  The Duomo I remember not at all; San Domenico, I recall better (but hideous).  The streets remind me of Bergamo (Alta), Urbino – and San Gimignano.  Especially the great high walls of the streets as they follow the roads.  And something I realised for the first time today – why these streets are so different: they are clothed entirely in stone, stone walls and stone pavements, and that there are no levels in the street -  which means that you walk along stone channels.

As dusk fell, so the Senesi appeared.  Few tourists in evidence here – why I love travelling at this time.

1.2.95 Siena

I lied: one other thing I remember from here: the entrance to the Pinacoteca, where we now are.  Bigger even than I remembered – nice to find the work of Sofonisba Anguissola.  The Domenico Beccafummi cartoons good.

In the piazza again: sun strong, air cool, happy buzz of people just sitting, talking.  A plane passes high overhead, a single prop swooping low round the space.  The reflected light of the Fonte Gaia shimmers on the marble (copies, but good enough).  The huge finger of the tower's shadow passes round the walls.  To the Café Victoria (tea room/American bar) for an overpriced cappuccino – but civilised surroundings – a bit like a café I recall in Bergamo (Città Alta).  Classic 12-bar blues in the background.

We finally find the Loggia del Papa – covered in scaffolding.  To the Campo, where the most delicate violet suffuses the western sky, and a sliver of moon hangs almost horizontally.  The ridiculous striped tower of the Duomo peeps over the girdling houses.  The sodium lamps look beautiful (or rather what their otherwise prosaic lights illuminate does).  Completely clear sky.  Magic.  One thing I can say: things here look different from what they were 16 years ago.  Then, everything was beautiful and strange; now they are beautiful and familiar.

To Osteria Le Logge.  Fine interior – one book on Primo Conti in the bookcase.  We have just moved – smokers joined us on our (big) table.  Wonderful making smokers unhappy…

2.2.95 Siena

To the Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, with Signorelli and Sodoma.  Glorious countryside – hilltop houses, lines of trees – art in nature.  "Come benedetto riceve li due giovanetti romani mauro e placido" – a riot of colours and faces and forms – the distant landscape.  Church rather dull.

Bagno Vignoni – Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (the church at the end is San Galgano).  Tiny village (no cars in centre).  There is almost nothing here: the baths, a square around them, hills, sun, sky, peace – my god, è bello qui… Down to the hot steam.  Greenish, with deposits everywhere.  Slight whiff of sulphur.  Glorious views – a handful of hilltop towns in the hazy distance.  A tower to the south, rolling bumpy hills everywhere.

To Pienza, rising through the perfect Tuscan landscape.  Sette Di Vino osteria – eating local pecorino et al.  Small, friendly.  The sun shining through the window.  Amazing, small, perfectly-formed classical town – that never grew.  Inside the Duomo – very sober, but very light (jet fighters screech overhead like devils).  Not very Italian, but nice – facade especially.  

To San Biagio – surely the most perfect church ever created.  The stone, living almost, bubbling in its stillness, that off-white/yellow/grey, the flecks and pocks like lived-in flesh.  The curves of the vault touch like figures in a geometric image.  Outside, in the sun, huge triglyphs, everything writ large and simple.  That stone.  Viva Sangallo.  The tiny rosettes on the external pilasters – that small, allowed vanity.  The balustrade – god's balcony over the altar…

In Al Marsili restaurant – couldn't eat – left rapidly – ill...

More destinations:

1993 Urbino

Moody's Black Notebook Travels