Buongiorno:
Today is Friday and this is the final leg of the Italy trip. The church bells of Santa Croce (where Michelangelo and Galileo are buried) are ringing and the sun is going down.
I arrived in Pisa on Sunday. I drove for the first time on Italian roads and actually made it to Volterra in about an hour. The day was beautiful and there were many tourists walking around the old medieval city, which is high in the Tuscan Hills. This city is also known as the place where the Etruscans had a thriving metropolis, centuries before the Romans came along.
After arriving at the SIAF, unpacking and get just a little rest it was time for the evening opening reception. Deborah McCreery brought in the group from Rome safely and Dean Joe Tomain of the University of Cincinnati who would be the primary facilitator and his wife Cathy drove up from Florence. Justice Randy Holland (the other facilitator) and his family were also among the group. We had dinner and then a group of musicians from Volterra performed for us. They played Jazz on instruments made of alabaster, drums and guitars. They also had a flute made of the same material. Marcia D’Antona and her husband, Giacomo Cresci, a couple I met when visiting Italy in March, joined us for dinner and Marcia interpreted for Giorgio Pecchioni the artist, who made the instruments, explaining that the alabaster flutes date back to the days of the Etruscans. There is a video clip of just a little of musician’s performance.
The classes for the week were organized around four topics: law and justice, law and culture, law and politics and law and the legal profession. Monday morning classes began and Joe lead us in a discussion of readings from Virgil’s Aeneid and Cicero’s The Republic and their riveting discussion about natural law and the rule of law.. During lunch I met Professor Massimilano Granieri, who had just completed teaching his course on the EU for our summer school in Venice. He was surprised we were here and we were surprised to meet him. When the day’s classes were ended and after lunch, we headed to Volterra about 5 minutes up the hill by car for a city tour. It had been beautiful all morning. Just as we arrived in Volterra, the heavens opened and it poured. We could not get all of our outside tour in, but, what we did see, the church, the baptistery, the Etruscan ruins in the floors of a major conference center and the ruins of a roman theatre and bath house was fantastico. Wladek Fuichs, a polish architect, who has spent some time teaching in Michigan, allowed us to get out of the rain and take cover in his studio whose walls were lined with his beautiful watercolors of Tuscany. Fuchs has recreated in 3d animation the roman theater whose ruins we had just visited. The presentation was incredible. Then there is the alabaster art everywhere. Artisans were in the town square showing how they carve this beautiful stone.
The week went fast with classes in the morning and with visits to Pisa, Siena and Florence. The Thursday night dinner was special. Held at a vineyard, the daughter of the owner ( who is an architect by day) explained the origin of the vineyard and how her family’s brand of wine is made.
Friday’s trip to Florence capped the week. While we waited, some of our group got to see an Italian court in action. Marcia had a case before it, defending a man who had problems with being abusive to his mother. She had the full attire of robes. Those who attended said they enjoyed it.
Back at City Hall, we stood on the spot where the bonfire of the vanities took place that we read about in one of the assignments.
This same place is where Girolamo Savonarola, who had been responsible for the burning of art and literature, was later hung and burned. From there it was a visit to the Uffizi museum All along the façade of the building are sculptures of Leonardo Divinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and other great artists. Inside, arranged by our friends Marcia and Giacomo, the guide led us to a museum tour of the private hallways and chapels of the Medicis. Paintings by Chagall and Delacroix not on display in the main galleries lined those hallways. We looked out of small windows down on Ponte Veccchio and ended up in the private section of the Pitti Palace.
Later, Michelangelo’s David was just as impressive as it was the first time I saw it at the Academia. There is a Mapplethorpe photography exhibition, “La Perfezione Neela Forma” mounted along side sculptures by Michelangelo.
I could not end my visit without going back to Santa Croce. Inside this Franciscans basilica is buried Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli. We read Machiavelli’s “The prince for this trip.” There is also a large tomb dedicated to Dante, although he is not buried there. In Italy, there is celebrating the 500th birthdates of Galileo, who had been buried in Rome, but now resides in this massive church.
AS the group leaves for Rome in order to return home, I am headed to our summer school in Kenya.
Ciao.
