1990 Munich

9.11.90

Well, what a surprise.  I find myself in the gloriously appointed Altes Residenztheater, all cream and light Baroque.  I have come (foolishly perhaps) to see Schnitzler’s “Zwischenspiel”.  Inevitably the programme tells me nothing – even going so far as to reprint “Die griechische Tänzerin" – which I have read several times.  His prose is so good, so smooth, so inevitable – I wish mine were.

Despite my tiredness, and my activities of the past days/weeks (more anon), I think I’ll be OK, if only because I kipped from 5 to 6.30pm  Everyone very formal here – glad I didn’t come in trainers… Inside to the theatre.  A glorious riot of gilt, cream and maroon – a very regal feel.  Very High Baroque (Asam brothers etc.).  Real armless chairs – I have a whizzo one, No. 72, DM41.  Royal box amazing: central, with huge drapes et al.   A real find – I tried first for the opera – “Ballo in Maschera” – but sold out.  I just hope Schnitzler’s dramatic prose equals that of his short stories.

In front of me one is confronted with the stage curtain, “Zwischenspiel” written thereon, a wind-up gramophone in front.  Hmm… (NB: there sill soon be kids who have never seen gramophones, or understand their principles…) 

Halftime.  Out with the throng as they rush to their Sekt and various raw meats.  An interesting experience.  I catch perhaps one sentence in 10 – but it is enough, and I shall definitely stay to find out what happens.  The story so far (cf. “A Life for the Tsar” in Moscow and “Le Donne Gelose” in Venice).  The composer Amadeus teeters on the brink of an affair with a singer (Friederike).  He has a long talk with his wife Cäcilie – another singer – and they part (though I dunno why she agrees).  He meets C. again some time later, and they seem to be getting back together… (?)

The German is lovely, though not very well projected, especially from downstage – the acoustics don’t help.  The direction rather static, but this is partly Schnitzler’s fault.  Like me, I fear, he’s a bit of a talker, not a virtue in drama.  Unlike Canada, some attractive bints here – with a characteristically hard look to many of them.  But what a contrast to Toronto… Acting generally feels high quality – and judging by the papers, there’s quite a lot of it – again, cf. Toronto…

10.11.90

I sit in the Hofgarten, under a gentle sun – we are leicht bewolkt – the air cool but pleasant.  Bustling Müncheners everywhere.  1.45pm strikes.  Selig?

I salved my conscience this morning by trolling along to the show for an hour or so.  But never before have I rubbed blisters from a show.  Then back to change, out to try to buy tickets for Vermeer at Herkulessaal (sold out), then along to St. Matthäus for a concert (on the door).  But it’s too pleasant now to do much except walk around.  I have had an odd lunch (ish) – roast chestnuts and dried bananas (à la Lakes).  Then along to the Ägyptische Sammlung – rather disappointing, small, nothing special.  For me the most exciting thing there was the map of Egypt, with all its evocative names.  Ah, "Egyptian Romance"….

Along to the Staatsgalerie for Kaffee and Kuchen.  Then: roomful of Kirchner – some quite nice.  Great Nolde: “Nordermühle” blazing orange and complementary greens and mauves.  Two good Kandinsky: one early, the other (abstract) later, but organically growing out of it.  A Max Beckmann I know well – “Still life with telescope” – but why?

Interesting effect in Dali’s “Apotheosis of Homer”: he put big gobs of paint on, lets them dry, then paints on them.  His ants only have four legs on some of his pix.  Magritte’s “Third dimension” – shows birds perched on the veins of a leaf – fractals…  “Sie können niemals wissen” – eerie pic of half human/half android…  Collection quite good, though upstairs is naff.  Also rather quiet.  The Tate et al. gain from the people.  Perhaps modern art is otherwise rather lonely.

Along afterwards to Die Neue Sammlung – exhibition of newspaper cartoons, happily fairly comprehensible, if only because the images were rather obvious [kids going by, shuffling their feet through the yellowing leaves – something I loved doing up Downs Road – and still love doing here and in Canada][I have been sitting for a while, trying to remember the Greek word for otherwise/altrimenti/autrement/sonst – αλλιώς?  These words – but I’m pleased how quickly my German seems to have come back.  Though last night I failed to grasp the ending of the play – I’ll have to read it when I return].

So now I sit in the Englischer Garten – named after its Capability Brown freeness, I suppose (ich vermute), the sun low and weak, sinking through the light cloud which has threatened all day, but mercifully held off.  People out walking in pairs, people playing with kids (but far fewer than in London), running with dogs, sitting and watching (like me).  

A few notes on this and that.  The river through the park is in some state of spate, roaring through.  Walking across the grass, I saw molehills – and immediately thought of the smell of anti-mole poison as smoked in by my father.  A lovely way to go, I always thought.  Other childhood smells: plasticine (a slightly rude, stinky smell), crayons.  Furs seem far more acceptable here than in the UK.  Half the world seems to be wearing glasses – all the trendy new shapes (that also look very old-fashioned, for obvious reasons).  People playing with frisbees – delighting in its simple grace – and the joy of catching it effortlessly.

Money begets beauty.  Not directly, but a wealthy city has far more attractive men and women than a poor one, if only because they are well-groomed and well-dressed.  Also noticeable is everyone eating out at lunchtime today – another sign of wealth.  On the U-bahn here, a man rubbing his daughter’s cheeks, quite hard, superficially in play, but it went beyond that.  The girl, eight or nine, also reacted to him in a very grown up way – not like a child.

The bells sounds with a quirky, deep-throated old-world clangour.  Only time can do this.  An AC/DC video on the TV: the ultimate Dionysian music for the 20th century.  Also the obligatory “erotic” programmes – even at the Sheraton.  Annoying how sex – of this rather laughably (but dangerously so) soft kind – has been normalised.

A lovely day today – and a week ago I was at the Niagara Falls.  Amazing.  The sun reddens to the right of the Dom’s towers (Dom closed for restoration).  Why do the words “tub of lard” keep going through my head?  All around me a few remaining trees with full foliage in various stages of turning.  Lovely smell of sap and leaves.  In the distance, a bloke practises juggling with Indian clubs (what a nice name for an object).

A long walk through the park, the temperature dropping now that the sun has disappeared.  U-bahn back to the hotel, where I put a jumpy on for the evening.  On the TV a programme about Computer Associates, narrated in that ultra-clear German accent – with lovely uvular fricatives – that I know so well from my previous Munich trip.

Which brings me on to something I have omitted to mention: that I recognise barely anything of Munich.  Marienplatz (just), Odeonplatz, the Staatsgalerie – but barely anything else.  It would seem that – like a baby – I had not evolved my full city mapping machinery.  Now when I visit somewhere, I soon lock in and retain its basic outline – as well as details (e.g. Torino rears up in my mind, even though I took just one early morning walk there).  Interesting.  But it also awakens a desire in me to visit München, um sie besser kennen zu lernen (Deutsch really is pulsing through the old Gehirn).  Not to mention Paris, Berlin, etc. – perhaps a weekend every month or two.  I think that "Egyptian Romance" will demand much of my time next year.  Also, I am pretty certain I’ll go to South America – therefore I must brush up my Spanish, therefore I must do Germany first, lest (μήπως) I become confused.

I am eating in a place just down from the Kaufhof at Marienplatz.  Like the Peterhof we ate in on Thursday night, it has a real buzz about it.  The Dirndl-skirted waitresses fit, as does the décor and the music.  Nudeln and ox soup to start (nice), some pork job to follow.  

Pork job was pretty gross (as was to be expected of German food): roast pork, boiled pork, pork sausages, pork dumplings (?) sauerkraut and tatties.  Some of the flavours distinctly odd – but surprisingly pleasant for being so.  I have not drunk beer since I was last in Munich (12 years ago), when I tasted two.  Given this is the centre of beer making, I almost wish I drank the stuff.  Perhaps I should try it?

11.11.90

Up late (I missed my alarm), checked out, on circuitously to the Alte Pinakothek.  I vaguely – but only vaguely – remember this.  Downstairs – lots of old German stuff that does very little for me.  Also an exhibition of early Italians – what a contrast – there seems so little humanity in the German by comparison.

Upstairs to the real stuff.  Mabuse’s beautiful “Danae and her golden shower”. Rogier van der Weyden’s wonderful Madonna painted by Luke, in a big triptych (the faces…).  Dieric Bouts – Christ’s face.  Altdorfer’s “Battle of Issus” – totally different shape from what I recall.

Of the main Rubens hall I still find his style overblown, if virtuosic.  However, I have a better appreciation of the lusciously endowed women of this period.  Wonderful series of Rembrandts – the tiny early self portrait, and the Biblical series.  I wonder what he saw in the darkness which surrounds the image?

To the cafeteria for a quick cake and coffee – the latter very Italian, tasty.  Once again, I find a Munich gallery good but rather unsatisfactory.  It doesn’t really hang together.  The National Gallery is far better balanced – but then Munich is not London.

Over to the Neue Pinakothek.  It is everything that the Alte Pinakothek isn’t: light, friendly, busy in the right way.  A few comments.  I must just note a masterpiece by a minor painter:  O. Achenbach’s “Italienischer Park” – the effects of light are gob-smacking – a beautiful Tiepolo pink, but so true it emphasises how rarely other pix achieve this justness.  Also “Don Quixote” by Daumier here, and very noticeable how utterly English Constable looks.  Beautiful metaphorical landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich.  Looks daft to see “Strasse in Upper Norwood” by Pissaro… Another pic I remember well: Segantini’s “Das Pflügen” – though before it was upstairs by a stairway (in the Alte Pinakothek?)

Along to the Staatliche Antikensammlungen.  I pass through an open space I have vague memories of: that of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen and the Glyptothek.  I remember things as grander, perhaps raised up more.  It looks more like Downing College…

Lovely and light inside.  Greek things now send a certain frisson through me.  The stone facing of the halls reminds me of Khufu’s tomb…  This place is beautiful, partly because it is so well designed.  The floors are black stone, the walls pitted and creamy, the chairs butterscotch – the perfect match and background for the red and white patterns. 

Downstairs, totally mind-blowing gold crown – so delicate and well preserved.  I don’t normally go a bundle on earrings, rings, bracelets, etc., but this lot is gob-smacking: I have never seen such workmanship – and from 700BC sometimes.  In fact, I’ve no idea even how some of it was done, the tiny weaving of gold braids together – these were hardly primitive civilisations.  This is quite simply the best collection – and display – of ancient treasures I have ever seen.

To the Glyptothek – a name that has been floating in my brain for 12 years.  Hall XI: a sea of bobbing Roman heads viewed from the ramp.  Magic.  All of them looking out to the courtyard, as if yearning for Rome…

Great use of the same blistered stone as a partial lintel.  Otherwise lightly whitewashed bricks.  Very cool spaces.  Perfect.  Amazing mosaic: not only does it have a Möbius strip, but also a portrait of Hitler…

Again, this really is the perfect example of how this museum should be done.  I sit now in the lively café – brill coffee and cheesecake, spoilt by the smokers around me.  I sit in a canvas and wood chair.  Selig again.  Very attractive women about – art certainly does it…

The Glyptothek reminds me of something out of Piranesi, of the yellow church by Sangallo outside Montepulciano (when was that…?).  High barrel vaults and Pantheon-like corner rooms – all very appropriate, perfectly classical, perfectly muted.  Collection well-spaced out as it should be.  People sketching, sitting on thoughtfully provided stools (canvas again).  Also a book showing how Eduardo Paolozzi and others exhibited here, stimulated by the works.  Great idea.  Should do in the UK.

Happily, this trip seems to have panned out well..  This is a great ending.  I have got the hang of Munich (only 12 years late), and discovered the Neue Pinakothek, the Antikensammlungen, and – vor allem – the great and glorious Glyptothek.

A fine Weston differential pulley hangs over the eaters, drinkers – and smokers.  Its massive coiled chains look almost alive.  But what is it used for? [The pull of the pulley…]  It is amazing how national characters linger.  A man next to me sports a monocle; elsewhere, I have seen many people in ankle-length leather coats – à la Gestapo. Surely this stuff is still loaded…

Once round as fond farewell, then outside into the gentle drizzle.  Across to the Propylaea, which reminds me of Dendera. To the U-bahn.

More destinations:

1989 Zürich 

1991 Berlin

1996 Vienna, Venice

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

1987 Italy

30.8.87 San Gimignano

The sort of place you could spend a lifetime in – looking at every stone: The Stones of San Gimignano. Every part of every building seems to have a history: like Venice, where every stone is part of its palimpsest.  Everything has been fitted over, on top of, together: you can see windows filled in, old arches, lintel lines, roof hips.  And the vertical rules.  The towers: they are the essence of rectangularity, verticality.  Medieval they may be, but time has not softened their edges.  It is said they were built partly because of noble rivalry: that pride endures.  They conquer all horizontals; they lift the town.

The faces of the buildings are ancient, timeless and modern.  Ancient in that they are old and crumbling, weathered; timeless because they suggest granitic immanence; modern because their rich textured patchwork looks like nothing so much as some modern art – a sort of cross between a happier Soulages, the Boyle family, and Giacometti.  You could easily imagine them as cut up and hung on cool impersonal museum walls.  This denies their substantiality: they could be all surface, albeit with a rich impasto.  The piazzas become like those Western towns built for films: all facade.  Except that San Gimignano is, through its massive stony solidity, anything but surface.

Towers mean bells.  And bells are perfectly suited to a stone city.  It is the perfect hard acoustic, sending off scads of sharp reflections.  And against that sharpness there is the sheer unplaceability of the bell's tone.  We tend to forget that although bells were for centuries one of the few instrumental sounds, that sound is of an impossible richness.  The overtones cause the note to shift and sway dizzyingly.  And the physicality.  No other musical instrument requires so much effort, total bodily input.  And the striking of the bell is brute force: a literal blow.  Which makes it easy to attribute something magical to the disembodied sound which ensues.  Thor's hammer.  Watch the bells in the bell-tower: they loll like huge puppies' tongues, languorous.  The sight is as hypnotic as the sound.  San Gimignano is built for bells.  

You need the blue Tuscan sky to define the towers: it acts as a perfect seamless backdrop.  With clouds or any blur in the air you would lose that unique edge.  And you need the piazzas.  The towers loom from behind buildings.  Without open spaces height does not exist.  

In its medieval purity, San Gimignano is like Venice.  Apart from the postcards outside the shops, there is little to disturb the illusion.  There are no roads, just streets.  Cars are practically non-existent – making San Gimignano uniquely quiet – like Venice.  But San Gimignano has something that Venice can never aspire to: hills.  It is built on a hill and its streets wind and wheel away, up and down, taking the buildings with them.   

From the tower: roofs, harmonious yellows and ochres – everything very flat.  Sounds rising up from the piazzas which form gaping holes in the sea of roofs.  The herringbone patterns of the bricks look almost too neat.  There is a violinist with accompanying tape: his clear, acidulous tones cut through the hum of the town sounds.  Roundabout, a patchwork of rolling hills and fields.  And trees – woods, forests almost.  This is another Tuscany.  From the tower: people's verticality is emphasised: as in Florence, from Giotto's campanile.  Towers of San Gimignano answer this.  But with very little sensation of height.  That comes inside: there you have the fragile metal staircase, which maps out height.  It is also possible to see through it – so you are more conscious of being suspended in the air.

This is Benozzo Gozzoli's town.

31.8.87  San Gimignano

In the early morning, the low glancing light catches the rough face of the main tower.  The surface boils with rock and its texture. 

Most people know the Tuscany of Florence.  Some perhaps know the Prato-Pisa-Lucca railway line.  A world of neat but midday-dead stations; hot and dusty; airless cities sweltering in the Po valley.  There is another Tuscany, a hidden Tuscany.  It lies to the south, among the rolling hills and mountains.  It is not a flat, arid plain shimmering in the heat; scrubby vegetation on one-street town along the main routes.  Fields are hunched shoulders of land, their coarse rich earth ploughed in huge gobbets of mud; from a distance they look like crops of boulders.  Gaunt square farmhouses like castles stand in isolation amidst the fields, the land cultivated to the doorstep.  The roads are quiet and wind endlessly around hills.  Trees abound.  And along the way, as you pass ridges, there are hilltop towns hugging the rise of the land, spilling down slopes.  Volterra is the king of these,  San Gimignano the queen.

There are two main piazzas in San Gimignano: Piazza della Cisterna, and Piazza del Duomo, secular and sacred centres.  In both you need to be an artist to capture them, or even part of them.  The windows are stacked three or four high; they form a kind of contrapuntal essay, with now one, now another voice dropping out.  As the threads of the windows move round the square, so the tonality of the buildings changes: rusticated stone, brickwork, crumbling plaster, dark green creepers; but just as a fugue will modulate and vary its themes, so the essential, organic unity remains.  It is squares like these which rudely expose the crass insufficiency and poverty of modern buildings.  First, they lack detail, and in particular the human scale; secondly, they arrogantly fail to acknowledge their older neighbours.  Such discourtesy always gets its comeuppance.

Towers need piazzas: but piazzas benefit from local towers.  As the sun moves round, great slabs of shadow creep across ground and walls, varying the scene constantly.  And generally, the old stone facades turn like flowers in the sun, changing their face in response to the shifting angle.  Especially when the sun is high: all the joints and scars of the bricks and stones are picked out as if with black ink.  The scars of seemingly impossibly high buildings, testimony to the other one hundred or so towers that have been lost.  The verticality of the towers is emphasised because their lines descend fully to the ground.  Just as the height of Gothic spaciousness in cathedrals was achieved by running pillars from floor to ceiling in one long swoop.

San Agostino has the simplest possible brick exterior.  It is in a small hot square which gives back the heat San Agostino radiates.  Inside comes as a delicious shock: cool, slightly suffocating air, the smell of old incense, old wood, old religion.  Gozzoli rules OK.  The frescoes of Augustine are extraordinary.  Nearly invisible – especially in the neck-craning upper regions, in the small apse behind the altar are certainly some of his best works, and in expression and humanity rarely matched elsewhere.  Above all, it is the faces which linger: so completely personalised and individual.  Timeless and thus modern, surely they were all done from life.  And Saint Augustine himself: a noble-looking man – not your usual bumptious self-righteous prelate, or wimpy proto-martyr.  Thus San Gimignano matches (almost) the great frescoes of Arezzo.

The cloister of San Agostino is delightful – so nice to come across living green in this stony place.  Even the park at the Rocca is poor stuff. Here there is a rich privet hedge, four majestic trees, and Mediterranean palm trees.  Birds chirrup – no hunters here – and there are even huge dragonflies.  

Details: the front-on staring at us; the man with a canker and boil; the small dog.  And the men have shaved – real men.  And the last San Augustine: I have never seen anyone look so calm and mature – except perhaps in Michelangelo.  

Songbirds' cages fixed permanently to the wall – like prisoners exhibited – just food and water, no shelter.

San Agostino's bells – two completely out of sync – like a holy Steve Reich composition – only better.  The way they tail off – then the long plangent reverb. 

Room with a view.  The sun has started sinking westwards: my room faces east, and is now in the shade and delightfully cool.  Before me, the wonderful patchwork of irregular fields.  A noisy cranking combine harvester finishes off a field – most have already been ploughed up for next year.  Others are neatly planted with rows of various bushes.  Now the familiar Da Vinci sfumato thickens, casting a deepening haze over the landscape.  This morning it was real mist.  The sun, rosy-fingered dawn, lifted through it, sending huge horizontal rays between hills.  It reminded me of Kashmir…

A musical city – for buskers, anyway.  Violinists, flautists – and now a virginalist.  This one in the courtyard to Museo Civico.  A delightful place: herring-boned bricks, frescoes everywhere.  And also a performance artists.  With whited face, and to the accompaniment of a rather random recorder, a youngish lady strikes a histrionic pose – and holds it for several minutes.  Her main achievement seems to be keeping her eyes open.  Ah, all this easy symbolism in a city barely changed for 500 years…

Sala di Dante – a good presence helped by old wooden furniture.  Lippo Memmi, a terribly stern Mary in state, with flocks of unbending saints around.  Rather Spanish.  The sprung floors bounce delightfully: truly a spring in your step.  In the pinacoteca, various Byzantinesque numbers: one by the "master of Clarissa" quite fine.  Other bits and bobs: two by Filippo Lippi, an unusual separated Annunciation in two tondos; a very Peruginoesque Pinturicchio – with 'orrible disembodied cherubs plus two quite impressive figures, a pope and a saint.  A Benozzo Gozzoli – rather dark – but the men's faces are individualised again.  Otherwise just anonymous lot vaguely connected with San Gimignano: Sebastiano Mainardi, Memmo di Filippuccio (what a name).  

Best of all is Taddeo di Bartolo's polyptych with San Gimignano himself.  Confidence is not inspired by the first scene: "during prayers San Gimignano is forced to leave the church for a call of nature; the devil, who is waiting for him outside, is driven away with a sign of the cross".  Some saint.  His other miracles seem to be driving out the devil from the Greek Emperor's daughter, an apparition of the Bishop of Ravenna, Saint Severus, at San Gimignano's funeral, and a couple of salvations from Attila the Hun.  Still, San Gimignano is only a small city…

At the northern corner of La Rocca, an old woman has a tiny, tiny house.  Outside, she has a small lemon tree.  It is all totally picturesque.  When she comes out, she glares at the tourists who presume to peep into her life.  As the sun sinks, the furrows in the fields deepen and darken; the chaotic and coarse tiles on the roofs echo; the contours of the land show themselves more fully.  

Even down San Matteo, traces of former glory remain: the impressive, monumental remains of a palazzo, scarred by all the siblings it has lost around it.  From the tower of the Palazzo del Popolo: Via San Giovanni and its smaller siblings cut through the roofs like clear swathes to the main gate.  I'm the last down from the tower.  Bells ring, voices command.  A warm evening breeze stirs.  At the bottom, the virginalist is still there.  Typically Italian: an Avanti-PSI festival, held in the entrance hall to the town hall, Piazza del Duomo.  

The best rear view of the towers is from La Rocca, at sunset.  As the sun sets behind the high hill to the west of San Gimignano, only the flat gaunt towers catch the light.  They shine out like slabs.  Their grey stone picks up every hue, and gradually turns pink.  And with the night, the swifts come out, like something out of Leopardi, swooping elegantly and unoriginally in the air among the towers and palaces.

1.9.87 San Gimignano

A different sunrise.  The sun comes up as a cool pink disc, turning paler as it rises through the bands of invisible clouds.  Great pools of mist hang in the valleys, making the most distant mountains white.  Cocks crow, but unlike yesterday, there is no morning chorus of dogs.  Smoke rising from odd fires throughout the landscape produce a white, coarser veil.  

The dogs have started, as have the bells.  Obviously very religious, these dogs.  The sun is now an almost perfectly white, perfectly round disc.

Piazza Luigi Pecori – nestling behind the big tower, alongside the duomo – a tiny haven of pure peace.  Yet more buskers – a plangent guitarist, with a shrouded harp in waiting – is there no limit to the varied musicality of this place?  It must be the stone: a perfect acoustic.  The Museo Etrusco.  Signposts on squared notepaper.  Handwritten notes of explanation stuck on with sellotape.  Italia, a roomful of paintings by "ignoti" – who clearly couldn't paint.  Long explanations about the Etruscan collection – mostly to do with who the superintendent was, all in long, flowing, parenthetical Italian prose.  Il Duomo – a very Catholic church.  Every surface within covered with gaudy frescoes and designs.  The arches black and white like La Mezquita.  A big Gozzoli – San Sebastian.  

Can you know a town?

I have a problem with experience: too easily it feels like a memory.

2.9.87 Volterra

Volterra is as if San Gimignano made the mistake of growing up.  It has the same impressive position, the same sense of antiquity – greater, since the Etruscans were here for centuries more.  But it is a dump.  All the grace has been worn out of it: instead, it is dusty, hot and smelly.  It surveys the surrounding landscape wearily.  The old Palazzo dei Priori is impressive in its gnarled glory: the square that surrounds it is fairly squalid.  The old duomo is gaudy inside and unspectacular outside.  The poor old battistero looks woebegone and battered.  Even the great Etruscan gate is rather pathetic: four stumps of worn stone.  The main pinacoteca is similarly threadbare – but provides a wonderful ambience for the motley collection of paintings.  Below a certain level early Italian renaissance stuff looks gawky and lurid.  The best things there were two Signorellis; but even these looked ill-proportioned.

As it turned out, the heart of the city lay in its Museo Etrusco.  On three floors and filled with an enormous collection of funerary monuments, it is a testament to the scale of Etruscan Volterra – over three times the size of the present-day town.  But however wonderful they are, you can only see so many.  Questions arise too: why are most of the inscriptions in Latin?  And why Latin myths?  Perhaps the best thing there was L'Ombra della sera: a curious, very thin statuette – with a face of extraordinary frank and childlike simplicity.  The description – as of a shadow before you – is d'Annunzio's. 

3.9.87 Montepulciano

If Montepulciano is hell, San Biagio is clearly a vision of a perfectly-ordered heaven.  This masterpiece is so unexpected, its clarity such a shock after Montepulciano: it is like a perfect exposition of classicism.  Half pillars and pilasters, various cornices to the windows – and all done out in the amazing, pitted, living stone.  The campanile fits snugly into one of the Greek cross's gaps; it too is perfectly balanced, standing miraculously as if held by magnetism there.  Inside is less spectacular.  Things have been spoilt somewhat by the over-ornate decorations over the altar.  Like San Giorgio Maggiore, pure cool simplicity is needed for such a building.  Externally, everything is on a massive scale: even the triglyphs.  Everything is perfectly proportioned: double cubes and a square cross.

Where San Gimignano appears finite and knowable, Montepulciano is like some maze, a monstrous joke on the hillside.  Getting in is no problem – but getting out is.  There are no roads, just paved streets; few signs; and everything is steep.  A crossroad may present you with a choice of five narrow paths.  Imagine this place in the rain, at night.  During the day it was deathly quiet.

Montepulciano itself seems attractive enough – an imposing situation, a neat main square (Piazza Grande).  But it lacks the purity of San Gimignano.  The palazzo municipale is of the standard Tuscan design.  Its chief point of interest is the tower.  You can go up inside – if you dare.  No modern appurtenances: it was like climbing back 500 years.  Rotten wooden rails, crumbling stairs, little light, old bricks.  Wonderful.  And the whole things was free.  You just walked in – past all the administrative offices, and up the stairs to the top.  The duomo had a unornamented west front, a bit like San Lorenzo in Florence.  Inside it was cool, bare and simple.  The square outside looked very suitable as a scene for the music festival.  Opposite the church, a loggia by Sangallo – obviously the patron artist of Montepulciano.  Quite a nice building – except that the man put square columns above round ones – which doesn't work.  

From Montepulciano to Lago Trasimeno.  Unfortunately, by now the weather had turned entirely to heat haze, with thunder in the offing.  The lake itself is not particularly impressive.  The surrounding hills are more so – though rather obscured.  The general effect is of an enormous pond.  But pleasant enough to have a cappuccino or two by.

For the drive back, mostly mini-motorways – no crash barrier, which is disconcerting – especially as I passed one car which seemed to have managed to end up on the wrong side.  Soon the rain came.  Great big splodges of it.  This suddenly made all those boring signs about "pericolo in gelo o in pioggia" terribly relevant.  My entire route seemed to be filled with them.  But worse was the lightning.  This was none of your namby-pamby British "one clean bolt and let's call it a day".  This stuff forked around the sky – horizontally even.  And I was climbing up the landscape in my little tin car.

I obviously made it, but it was interesting.  As was the view from my balcony when I got back.  The eastern part of the Tuscan hills from San Gimignano were laid out before me.  A huge thick pall hung over it.  Great nets of lightning – often multiple – flickered over it all like a serpent's tongue.  You could see how myths were formed.  It looked like El Greco's picture of Toledo.

More destinations:

1988 Venice

1994 Rome

1994 Trieste, Ljubljana 

1995 Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza

1996 Torino

1996 Vienna, Venice

1999 Weimar, Venice

Moody's Black Notebook Travels