Random Neighborhood Stuff

At the Penny Market they are taking down the wall to the parking lot part-way to get more visibility, which means they are destroying some of the cool street art that's there. Sad.



At the Politecnico campus closest to my house, they have some great industrial relics. These wooden "wheels" are molds for sandcasting up on one of the buildings. They look pretty cool!

Novecento

Novecento is the "new" modern art museum of Milan. It's down on the Piazza del Duomo, connected to the Palazzo Reale. Blake and I visited last Sunday in the late afternoon and early evening. The place is pretty huge. This piece below is one of the first we saw, part of a sort of mixed media introductory exhibit. Motor oil drowning a clay city.



I had always known the museum was there on the square because of this large neon sculpture you can see quite easily.



The main exhibit of permanent collection works is grouped by movement. There's a small international works grouping, but the whole thing is very Italian focused, with rooms dedicated to individual movements or even individual artists. The museum started at Futurism, and got up to 70's-ish in the timeline. The last room or so was Arte Povera.

Naviglio Grande

Last weekend I took a visit to Naviglio Grande with Blake. The Navigli district is a bit of a party neighborhood, with tons of restaurants along the Grand Canal.



Even during the day there's lots of people out drinking and touring. The area has a lot of graffiti and art. This particular wall mask was kinda creepy, but kind of cool.

Duomo!

On Miranda's last day in Milan, we did what one must do... go to the Duomo. The insides were lovely as usual. The crowds are up since tourist season is starting, so there were lots of people lighting offerings.



The stained glass was Miranda's favorite thing, and rightly so. The grand windows in the back are just awesome.



The stained glass comes from a variety of periods, some are even modern! I wish we were able to puzzle out the ages for the big ones in the back, which were clearly older, but... didn't look like they were original to the earliest period of the church. This pic below has a great detail, of Moses and a tiger.



By the stained glass in the back is a good spot to get a picture of the marble floor patterns unencumbered, too!



And we did head up to the roof. The oncoming clouds were actually a benefit for picture taking!



As always, seeing the roof is inspiring, and you notice random details you've never seen before. And you get to take sweet pictures!

OK, I Lied

One more post about Verona. As Verona is part of the Veneto, they have a lot of stuff you typically associate with Venezia, like masks and fans. I bought this little decorate pill box to use in my purse. It's tiny, an inch in the largest dimension at most!

Verona 5

This is the last of it! We finished our Verona day in the Giusti Gardens. There were lots of cute turtles in the fountains.



They have a pretty good hedge maze, though since it's short, it's not too difficult.



I always love the face on the belvedere! During parties they used to spray fire out of the balcony's mouth! Pretty awesome. And the view from up there is pretty awesome too.



On our way to the train station, we passed the props for the opera in the arena. They just store all of them on the square, so you have sphinxes from Aida next to dragons from Turandot!



And then we were on our way home...

Verona 4

We headed over to Teatro Romano, to enjoy the ruins and see the cloister built on them, the Jesuits had a convent to St. Gerolamo there. The theater itself is still sometimes used for performances.



I'm going to have to try to get to one of the shows here, or at the Roman arena of Verona.



The cloister hosts an archaeological museum of Verona. Mostly Roman stuff but some older. The buildings themselves are quite pretty, too!



The objects include mosaics and marble sculptures, but also little bronze knickknacks.