milan.furniture.fair.and.gallery.crawl

I love these next products, as obviously everyone should have a wheel of lampshades...

...or a set of tufted pigs......or perhaps an inflatable fruit basket...

...or a storage table that's a giant puzzle...

window.shopping.at.the.galleria.

the.duomo.in.milan

The Cathedral of Milan was filled with all sorts of quirky character...






Apparently there was a children's festival in the piazza that day, so the area was lively and packed...




Most people know that I'm terrified of heights...therefore getting the above picture required a whole series of pictures of my height-induced whining and hysteria...


We finally reached the roof of the Duomo after climbing the small stairs literally attached to the back of the facade's pointed spires. And when they say the roof, they mean the roof, sloped and all. I managed to make it up here and this was my permanent vantage point, as I didn't move...

finally.some.modern.design

busy.busy.busy

Although I've added some pictures from our class trips to Villa Lante and the following week's journey to Siena, I haven't gotten around to writing the captions (as you will see)...

Things in Orvieto are just starting to pick up, as we're down to under 3 weeks left here in our little hilltown, and an architecture program just wouldn't be complete without the final crazy rush of projects at the end!

Just to add to the end-of-the-semester insanity, I took a personal trip to Milan for the weekend to accomplish my #1 goal of my Italian semester: a visit to the Milan Furniture Fair! Keep checking in for the greatest weekend of this lady's Italian experience...I'll get there eventually, I promise! But here's a lil' preview:

within 72 hours, Renae, Lydia + I managed to:

-visit Villa d'Este with our class on Friday (where apparently I ignored the architecture and took only pictures of pretty flowers)
-walk all of Hadrian's Villa with the class (and take home a souvenir sunburn)
-visit Richard Meier's Jubliee Church in Rome (which made me never want to leave)
-return to Orvieto to frantically and excessively overpack
-hop a night train to Milan
-take advantage of Milan's infinite shopping (without exploding my credit card, though I was tempted...)
-climb the Milan cathedral (where I photographed approximately 9 million gargoyles)
-meet up with fellow IA'ers Paul, Christa, and Melia from Coburg Germany for happy hour
-gallery hop across the Brera Design District
-make a valiant attempt at visiting 7000 furniture designers
-grab the Sunday night train home to Orvieto to head straight to Monday class
-fall asleep in every Monday class

Tiring weekend? Yes.
Perfect weekend? Heck yes.
Stay tuned.

siena:geese.bears.dragons...oh.my.

Welcome to the most interesting, quirky Italian hilltown you can possibly imagine. Siena is a hoot.

Let's start with a lil' background, with help from the wonderful world of Google Image search: Siena is the home to the insane, twice yearly Palio: a 3-lap horse race around the town's famous shell-shaped campo.



The winning jockey wins a painted silk banner called a palio which is given to the winning contrada. Each horse represents one of the 17 contradas, or neighborhoods, within the city, most of which are named after an animal. These contradas are EVERYTHING to the people of Siena...you are defined by your contrada and you're infinitely dedicated to your contrada. How much so?

You are baptized twice in Siena: once as a Christian, then again as a contrada member in the neighborhood fountain.

Each contrada has its own private museum to show off its palio banners and memorabilia.

Births are announced on the neighborhood bulletin boards by stating "a new goose/bear/eagle/worm/dragon/etc is born!"


The corner of two meeting contradas is always marked with the flags/colors of the 2 contrada and when the Palio is being run, the city is covered in flags.


Before the Palio is run, the horse is taken to the contrada church and blessed.
Everywhere you turn there are custom trashcans/flags/wall tiles/banners/custom light fixtures/etc to remind you of whose contrada you're in...We were fortunate enough to have a chance to see the "behind the scenes" of the Goose District with a visit to the contrada museum and church--a rare opportunity for someone who's not a contrada member. Our walk to the Goose District Museum gave us a preview of the contrada dedication...here are only a few of the contrada knickknacks that were stuck in the walls of the houses along the street...


Inside the museum we saw the Palio of the winning-est Goose District...from the 19th century traditional ones...

to the modern ones, now sometimes commissioned by the city from international artists...


These silly jockey/horse figurines illustrate the competitive contrada pride...while everyone is seriously watching for the start of the race, the dumb Tower district rider (the Tower district being the hated enemy of the Goose district) stares off in the wrong direction...this idiot is second from the right...

And of course, the Goose District museum had every sort of Goose memorabilia you could possibly imagine...

Siena's other identity is as the home of many famous saints and popes. In fact, the Goose District Museum and Church was the childhood home of St. Catherine of Siena, whose relics (her visible head!) are preserved here--along with the contrada banners, of course--in St. Dominic.

Siena also boasts a GIANT Gothic cathedral, which seems to dwarf the much more-charming Orvieto cathedral (I may be slightly biased...). The Duomo in Siena as it is today was actually only supposed to be a side transept of the originally planned Duomo, which was going to be the biggest church in the world...until the plague hit Siena and plans changed.


Much more ornate than the Orvieto Duomo, complete with mishmashy stripes of varying widths and a painted dome...Orvieto seems to prove that less is more! (again, perhaps some bias.)
We'll leave Siena with one of my favorite silly memories of this equally silly city. At the back of the famous piazza, the Campo, stands a white marble fountain. The aerobatic pigeons in Siena like to hang out here and are entertainingly skilled at climbing down the stone wolves and dangling there for a quick drink...