What makes for an interesting day? Great art, good conversations and food, good, basic, high-protein food. Today's crappy weather, and I mean crappy -- lots of rain, high of 39! -- didn't get in the way, but I'm a Southern Californian now and a chilly day in the rain gets exhausting.
Great art: Dropped into the Palazzo della Regione on the way to the Scrovegni Chapel. Padova is a city of frescoes and the Palace of R was a feast of 'em, all walls covered in Giotto-esque panels including the signs of the zodiac, the seasons, angels and saints, wild beasts and more. The Palace also houses a giant wooden horse constructed by Donatello. Then onto the Scrovegni Chapel, the masterwork by Giotto. So Scrovegni was a usurer, a money lender, and his act of contrition was to build this chapel and commission Giotto to decorate it. In Giotto's vision of hell, there are money lenders aplenty being tortured by devils (and I imagine that there is an anti-semitic thread here because that was the Catholic Church's chief grievance against Jews in the middle ages -- untrustworthy money lenders). Of course the visions of hell are always more interesting than the ones of heaven, and that goes without saying here. Really beautiful chapel, almost too much to describe. I also met some students from Mass Art in Boston and it was fun to chat with some young Americans, in English.
The Museo Civico, where the Scrovegni is located, also hosts a fantastic archeological museum, with really interesting displays including a recreation of a pre-historic burial site with urns for the ashes of an important couple and other relics buried with them, and another burial site where a warrior was interred on the body of his horse. The museum focuses on the remains of all of the various groups of people who settled in the area around Padua, and how their cultures influenced the language and civilization of the region. Very informative.
And if that wasn't enough, the Pinoteca, or picture gallery, featured work from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Padua has always had a love-hate relationship with Venice and much of the collection is an attempt to highlight the work of regional artists, though much of that work is derivative of Venetian art. But don't tell that to a Paduan!
As for food and conversation. I've been getting my chat time with people everywhere, especially around trying to find galleries and interesting places, and, of course, food. Here's an example: My feet were cold and I was getting tired of the drizzle, so I came back to my b&b (A Casa di Chiara), took a little nap and then hit the road again. I found a place that served chicken and potatoes and devouring protein has become something of a mission for me since I've gotten here. But turns out the kitchen isn't open until after 7, which left two hours to kill. What am I gonna do? And pizza is a poor substitute for food. So I found a place with a poster of Galileo and decided to walk up the two long flights of stairs because it turns out Galileo was teaching at the University of Padua when his discovered the moons of Jupiter with his brand new telescope. Surprise! The exhibit was a show of needle-point art based on Galileo and astronomy and children's fantasies about the moon, and so forth. Not exactly what I was looking for, but it was a sweet exhibit and I picked up some information about the rivalry between Padua and Venice. The woman who was overseeing the exhibit told me that the room, which included frescoes and art about local historical events, was used by the city in the past, I think, as a meeting place for making decisions important to the well being of the city. She pointed out a shield with a figure, Padua, kneeling before a lion, Venice, with a dog nearby, bearing its teeth. She said, "That's Padua tell Venice, don't get too close!"
Alright, so that was good for a half-hour, but now I was starving. That's when I found a rotisseria, a shop where they sell baked pastas and fish and roasted chicken and potatoes. Hey, that's exactly what I wanted and now I didn't have to wait until after 7pm. So I chowed down on half a chicken, a pile of roasted potatoes and grilled zucchini. God, I was hungary! And it turns out the guy who waited on me had visited California and wanted to share his experiences with me. Really nice. And the food was inexpensive (about 9 Euro for all of that) and good.
So, on my way home, the last good conversation. I hear someone playing an accordion and I stop, put some loose change in the coin box and start chatting with him. His English is really good and after he tells me about all of the kinds of ethnic music he can play, I ask him for a song from Bulgaria and there he is, thumping away, singing in Bulgarian and then he says, "This is from Turkey" and now there's this amazing dance rhythm and he's going on, until his cell phone rings. "O sorry, I have to take this," he says. I drop some more coins in the box and head home. Finally I'm feeling fat and happy, warm and dry, ready to call it quits for the day. Yep, a very nice day in Padova!
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