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

1993 Urbino

19.7.93

Urbino: a name that has hovered strangely in my consciousness for more than 20 years (at King’s, an article referred to “The Urbino”). The reality – as opposed to the vague image of a hilltop town – is perhaps more striking than I thought.  Seen from afar (as we drove up in the car after someone had to pick us up when we had failed to catch the original train, after misreading the orario) – it was muted, but as soon as we had taken the lift up from the car park (300 L.) and were greeted by the amazing facade of the palace, it was clear that the place was a bit different.

Walking along the fine arcade opposite, we came to the main Piazza della Repubblica, an irregularly-shaped space, and then we turned left along Via Raffaello, up the hill towards Raphael’s birthplace, then moving off to the right towards a classical facade, a primary school that stood in for the music summer school registration office.  That smell of paint, that sound of high, hard rooms.

Then back to the car and we sneak into the city – closed to non-residents’ cars – to leave our luggage.  The place we are staying at in Via Saffi, on the edge of the city (not that this is far).  From here (and where I now sit in the living space of the mansard) there is a stunning view over the Marche hills (or maybe Umbrian?), now blue with haze, and not so much rolling as tumbling.  Not much sun – great fleecy clouds.  Everything in the attic rather low in height for us grandi.

Yesterday evening, a lovely stroll to the antipodes and restaurant (Ragno d’Oro, Viale Don Giovanni Minzoni, 2) that serves a characteristic dish: crescie, made in the open kitchen with pig’s lard and panache, twirling the pastry round into coils, and then spirals – cooked, they are cut in two and have various savouries put in them – verdure, rucola and cheese etc.  Yummy.  Then to the piazza for an unsatisfactory (bottled) juice.  But the situation made up for it, the night falling, the lights coming on, the people gradually filling the tables.

Strange to be here, if only because now I feel in an odd, rather frightening prepartum stage, with Doing The Business about to come.  I have with me printouts (Word, XL, Project) of the various plans; I hope to work a little on it, since I am only down for one course – clavicembalo with Rinaldo Alessandrini – had to practise for the last week, 2/3 hours a day: Byrd’s "The Carman's Whistle", Couperin "La Couperin" (Ordre 21ème de clavecin in E minor), Scarlatti F major sonata and Bach C major 48 prelude and fugue (the lush, not pretty, prelude).  

I have woken reasonably early at 6.30am, showered, and smell heavenly coffee from somewhere… Walking around the city (the sun now strong) after breakfast in the Piazza della Repubblica.  The particular quality of the bricks: they look like carefully treated masterpieces themselves.  The Piazza del Rinascimento: stunning set piece.

20.7.93

A strange day.  To the cembalo class with Rinaldo Alessandrini – where I sit for four hours on my bum and listen to others.  But this afternoon in the main church (cathedral) by the palazzo (great facade) working on Doing The Business which is coming along.  Before, a walk, rather hot and sweaty in the city.  The narrow streets, with their brick pavements, a little oppressive.  In some ways, Urbino is Siena upside down, everything falling where Siena rises.  Last night very civilised meal at Ristorante Oxford.  

My position here is rather ambiguous: playing the harpsichord briefly yesterday and today is the first time for two years (since 1991 Dartington) – most of this music for the first time ever on the harpsichord.  Strange too this school with its hard seats and semi-desperate musicians.  Rinaldo impressive technically, but rather down – shyness apparently.  Musicians give so much and yet generally receive (from this world, at least) so little.  Like actors, but the latter are more extrovert – when they’re not playing, musicians are almost invisible.  A world full of musicians would have to live in harmony - they couldn’t risk damaging their hands/throats/mouths….

21.7.93

On the hill opposite Urbino, looking across to the palace.  What a view...the whole city at a glance, almost.  Strange, but rather like Mowley in Doing The Business, I find myself increasingly worried by the state of international affairs: things are really going to get worse, I fear.  

A bell rings – that clangorous after-sound, hollow, other-wordly…

23.7.93 

A day off.  (Interesting night before last – trapped by torrential rain, very impressive lightning.)  At the Palazzo Ducale. In the library – rather bare.  Always interesting to see third-rate pix – reminds you how good the others are…

Finally Piero – The Flagellation: much smaller than I expected – also very grey, not brown with age.  And the Madonna too – very grey.  With the strange stillness in the figures – very modern.  The Flagellation – the extreme perspective of the marble floor.  The isolation of the spaces.  The blue of the sky.  The very low viewpoint.  That stillness again – as if caught in a moment of pensiveness.  Strange to see the naked wood around the outside. The Madonna – the angel with folded arms like a heavy.  The imperious gesture of the child.  The moulding on the wall behind.  The mother’s downward glance.

To the study – the smell of wood.  Like painting by numbers – but in wood.  The music in the wood, the lute strings.  The Tempietto delle Muse with 88 putti, all different, in the ceiling.

La Città Ideale  – possibly Piero, or by Luciano Laurana – reminds me of Canary Wharf – all the grey marble and classical forms.  Strange that in the ideal city there are no people.  Just the hint of them: a door half open, a few plants, paths in the hills.  No animals either.  At once serene and disquieting.  

Odd: pic of Giusto di Gand (Ghent) - apostles and Federico with his nose…  The Raphael tapestries.  Unusual colouring of Giovanni Santi saints.  Weirdest – Signorelli – two pictures – what drugs was he on?  The space very odd – god outside.  Raphael – La Muta – very unusual – big-jawed woman, like a horse-faced Gioconda.  Two dull Titians.

24.7.93

Work today – more on "The Carman’s Whistle" – and nothing on "La Couperin".  Also played the Prelude and Fugue in C, Book II.  Very incorrectly, it has to be said.   Trouble is, I am not built for practising, and tire quickly. 

To the concert: Roy Goodman and the Euro Baroque Players.  Roy looks like a pint-sized Dennis Hopper, and jigs around in a very unbecoming way.  Good play of the Rameau and interesting Dutch bloke – Hellendaal.  Vivaldi awful – very muddy.  Left before Handel.  Pity about the acoustics of the church (San Domenico).

More destinations:

1988 Venice

1994 Rome

1994 Bari

1994 Trieste, Ljubljana 

1995 Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza

1996 Torino

1998 Elba

1998 Modena

Moody's Black Notebook Travels