Skip to main content

Monday Dec 18. Wandering. Ferrara.

 This is my second full day in Ferrara. Why Ferrara? Well, I badly wanted to see the mosaics in Ravenna, but staying in Ravenna was crazy expensive. I’m going to fly from Bologna to Paris, but Bologna didn’t seem all that interesting. Ferrara is conveniently in between those two cities, so here I am!

Ferrara is mainly known because the Este family rose to power and wealth here and played an important role in the Italian fifteenth and sixteenth century Renaissance. The Este family built castles/palaces throughout the region, but their main one was here in Ferrara.  It is gorgeous from the outside, but inside somewhat disappointing, as years of neglect and damp have damaged the interiors, and the artistic treasures have nearly all been sold and are in major museums in Italy and beyond, but no longer here.


The castle is completely surrounded by water.

The prison cells in the dungeons were awful - dark and cramped. Yet another reminder that all was far from glorious in the past.  Upstairs there were some fabulous sixteenth century wooden ceilings. Just what I would love in my own house!




A monkey on a chimney…

And a few other nice sights…

Ercole Drei. Brezza. 1914.

Ferrara is a city of bicycles. Riders are young and old, dressed in fur coats or adorned with long wool scarves. The bikes all seem a bit old and many clank along… 


Leo Contini. 1985. Ferrara cycle city.


Another Renaissance palace, Palazzo dei Diamanti, late fifteenth century.


And an elementary school, built in the 1930s. I was sure it had to be a post office! 


The Carthusian monks had their charter house here until Napoleon, having conquered northern Italy, ordered all the religious houses closed. A few years later it was converted into the city cemetery.  It is immense.



Comments

  1. LindaJanuary 1, 2024 at 10:52 AM

    I was interested to read that you were in Ferrara, as I remember so well the dramatic monologue that Robert Browning wrote, "My Last Duchess," which is supposed to be spoken by the Duke of Ferrara. The notes for this edition of the poem suggest that it is about "Alfonso II (1533-1598), fifth duke of Ferrara, in northern Italy, from 1559 to 1597, and the last member of the Este family." See the poem here: https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/my-last-duchess

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

September 5

 I landed at Heathrow this morning at 6 am, a very inconvenient time to get a room and rest! But my student residence accommodation includes a common room with handy couches for a short snooze. The neighbourhood abuts on Regent’s Park, complete with gorgeous flowerbeds.   The Queen Mary’s rose garden in Regent’s Park. My neighbourhood wandering took me to the Wallace House which used to be one of the homes of the marquesses of Hertford.  The Hertfords were fabulously rich, mainly from extensive land holdings, and in the 18th and 19th centuries avid art collectors.  They obviously had Trumpian home decorating tastes. Here are two of their many clocks, all of which need frequent ‘fine tuning’, it appears. I particularly liked two 18th c British paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds in their collection: Mrs Carnac and the hauntingly strange Strawberry Girl.
4 comments
Read more

Sat Oct 4. London.

19 days walking on pilgrimage paths for a total of 395 km or 245 miles on foot (not that arduous - an average of 20.7 km per day, and lots of ‘rest days’ staying put in one place).  All of that undone in 1.5 hours on a Eurostar train.  I’m not entirely sure what conclusion I’m drawing from that comparison, but I’m back where I started, in London.   On my way to my lodgings (I’m staying in a Buddhist retreat centre) I decided to visit the first visitable place to cross my path, which turned out to be the Foundling Museum.  Horrified by the sight of infants being abandoned on 18th c London streets, a prosperous seaman, Thomas Coram, spent 17 years raising awareness and funds, as well as obtaining royal permission to build London’s first children’s charity. Opened in 1739, the Foundling Hospital continued its work until the 1950s, and actually is still active as a non-institutional resource, under a different name. Here is a photo of it in 1935. So many similarities to ...
1 comment
Read more

Saturday September 6

 I have given myself today and tomorrow in London before starting the walk. A good thing because I’m having technical difficulties getting on to the AirB&B site that I need to access for my Monday night accommodation… Today I had a lovely walk to Canary Wharf along quiet streets bordering the Thames. The tide was high and the water a bit agitated, but the sun was warm and the strollers happy.  Over 25,000 bombs fell on this area of London in WWII as the Germans fully recognised the importance of maritime trade to British resilience. Some warehouses have survived (or been rebuilt) and the extensive blocks of post-war flats are very attractive (and very very expensive.) I had a pleasant break in a sixteenth century pub, the ‘Prospect of Whitby’, where Charles Dickens would come to listen to dock folk - original flagstone floors and a pewter counter on the bar.  From the waterfront balcony patrons in earlier days could watch as pirates and smugglers were hung from a gibb...
2 comments
Read more