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travel · Italy · Sep 19, 2023 – Sep 26, 2023

Italy, end of September

Florence, then Rome, then a day in Pompeii: a week of looking up at bronze and marble, and down at walls painted nineteen centuries ago.

The outer wall of the Colosseum, three tiers of arches, seen from below against a blue sky
The Colosseum on the last morning, looking up from the walkway.

Florence first, for the sculpture. The Loggia dei Lanzi is an open-air room full of it, and you can stand under Perseus for as long as you like without a ticket. The cathedral's marble is green, white, and rose, and every arch has a face keeping watch over it.

Rome was mostly walked at night. The Pantheon after midnight, with the piazza wet and nearly empty, is a different building from the Pantheon at noon.

A carved lion's head above an arch on the green, white, and rose marble facade of Florence cathedral
Florence, first afternoon: the cathedral's marble, and a lion keeping watch over one of the arches.
Cellini's bronze Perseus holding up the head of Medusa under the arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi, with a crowd in the piazza behind
Perseus under the Loggia dei Lanzi, with the whole piazza going about its afternoon underneath him.
The Ponte Vecchio and its stacked shops across the Arno, with red geraniums in the foreground
Ponte Vecchio from upstream, geraniums in the way on purpose.
A bronze tree with its roots exposed, set into a round stone opening in a wall, against a blue sky
A bronze tree, roots and all, growing out of a stone ring.
A winged marble figure on top of a stone plinth, photographed from below against a clear sky
Looking up in Rome. Most of the city's best sculpture is above eye level.
A church ceiling painted with figures and clouds, framed by gilded architecture, photographed straight up
Straight up, in a church whose name I did not write down.

Pompeii took the last full day. What stays with you is not the scale but the paint: red and blue friezes still on the walls, patterned ceilings, a doorway that frames the hills the way it did before the mountain buried the town.

The last morning was the Colosseum, and a line somebody had written on a wall on the way there.

A painted frieze on a Pompeii wall: figures on a red ground with a blue band above, weathered but clear
Pompeii: a painted frieze, red and blue, still on the wall after nineteen centuries.
A bronze figure on a tall pedestal silhouetted against dramatic afternoon clouds at Pompeii
Late afternoon at Pompeii, the sky doing most of the work.
The Pantheon's columned portico lit at night, reflected in the wet stones of an almost empty piazza
The Pantheon at half past midnight. The piazza had emptied, the stones were still wet from the evening's rain, and a building that has stood since Hadrian had the square to itself for once.
A Pompeii ceiling painted with repeating circular medallions in red, blue, and ochre
Pattern on pattern, overhead in Pompeii.
A stone doorway in Pompeii framing a view of green hills and sky, with a stone pedestal in the opening
Through a doorway in Pompeii, out to the hills.
Handwritten words on a pale wall in Rome: fight that urge for peace that does not give you peace
Found on a wall on the way to the Colosseum: "Fight that urge for peace that does not give you peace."