For the next week, I will be showing sites around the northern Italian city of Milan, which is famous for many things, but not so much for its ancient Roman and Paleo-Christian past. I often feel that cities, such as St. Louis, are known for the “same old thing” oftentimes, just like Milan, and by…
Tag: Italy
Tree Lined Roads, Palestrina, Italy
Sorry about the bad picture, but I was just thinking about this: in America, these trees would be toast, cut down and burned or thrown into a shredder so the road could be widened and people could speed recklessly. But in Italy, on this busy road leading up to the beautiful suburb of Palestrina in…
Sant’Andrea Delle Fratte, Rome
One of my favorite architects is Francesco Borromini, and when I was in Rome, I sought out the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, famous for the architect’s designs for the campanile and tambour over the crossing. Try as I might, I realized that the urban fabric of the city around the church was far too…
Santo Stefano, Bologna, Italy
I had the opportunity to visit a truly spectacular religious and historic site in Bologna the last time I was in Italy, the Complex of St. Stephen, which is a series of seven churches meant to be a recreation of the churches of Jerusalem, with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre being the most prominent….
Arcades, Bologna, Italy
On a recent visit to Bologna, Italy, I was intrigued by the social contract, perhaps backed by law, where all building owners on major streets over the course of centuries have constructed their dwellings so as to cover the public sidewalks, sheltering pedestrians from the sun or rain, depending on the weather. There is still…
Baths of Caracalla
Read enough about St. Louis or American architecture in general, and eventually someone will make an offhand reference to a building being based off of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. But what were the actual Baths, or Thermae, of Caracalla? They were begun by the Emperor Septimius Severus (thus some old maps called the…
Rusticated Stone
The former Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, built and dedicated between 141-161 AD provides an excellent example of how Western Civilization has responded to its ancient past. After falling into disrepair, it was converted into the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda, strangely occupying the center cella of the old temple. But at one time,…
New Architectural History Category
Starting tomorrow, I’m introducing a new type of post where I focus on the history of architecture, in particular focusing on monuments that influence the built environment of St. Louis. I’ll go back and add a couple of older posts into the new architectural history category, but for the most part, these will be new…