1. Venice, natch. I blogged about that before, though I have since found this list of things to do there by afficionado John Julius Norwich, the acceptable face of cooing over Venice. I am going to go back in November (not necessarily this year) and look at the Old Testament mosaics in the atrium of San Marco, and the capitals of the doge's palace, and nothing else. At least I won't plan anything else before I go, I shall just wander with a good guide book.
2. Parma. Eat ham! A huge plate of ultra-thin slices of squidgy red ham! Also, grainy parmigiano. "Affetati misti" is a plate of mixed cured meats, which often comes with some cheese. The duomo here is likeable enough, but the baptistery is great, espcially if you like iconography. My friend who was with me always wins at competitive iconography because he's a proper art historian while I have only many years of Sunday School to guide me.
3. Padova/Padua. Nice city to wander around, with many squares and the sort of architecture that it's pleasant to pass by at leisure. On the north of the city is the Scrovegni chapel, with a complete scheme of decoration by Giotto. It's definitely worth seeing. I think it's possible to turn up and see if there are tickets, but that's a bit risky, and you should really book at least a day in advance online. There are 20-minute slots, and you sit for 15-20 minutes in a climate-controlled ante-chamber before going in in groups of no more than 25. It's only just long enough to have a good look at it. I think I prefer, in my very limited knowledge, Giotto's frescos to his panel paintings. I remember particularly Joachim and Anna kissing at the gate of Jerusalem, and Elizabeth smiling at Mary in the Visitation. The art in the main museum is pretty underwhelming; I wouldn't bother unless you're keen to see all the art you can. Again, there's a nice but dull duomo and a really excellent painted baptistery. We also went to San Antonio, but because we were pushed for time we only looked at one part where the artist was a possible influence on an illuminator my friend is working on. I really wanted to go on a river trip, but it turned out to be annoyingly impossible to arrange despite our efforts. But by the river-bank at dusk there were coypu, which made me very happy. I've never seen any before. Apparently they suckle their young from teats on their back!4. Verona. Nice city. Worth getting the tourist bus which climbs up a hill to look down on the city, which is in a bend of the river Adige. (We got the Padova bus too, also interesting, but to get the full use from a bus it ought to climb a hill.) We didn't go to any of the places associated with Romeo and Juliet because they are fictional characters who did not exist. There is a bronze statue of Juliet in the Capulet house the breasts of which one is supposed to rub if you want a new lover. I overheard someone saying that in consequence it has quite immensely shiny breasts, because many people want a new lover and are prepared to grope a statue to get one.
We went to the opera at the Arena, the Roman amphitheatre built early in the first century A.D.. All summer they stage several operas here in turns, storing the scenery for the other productions in the huge Piazza Brà outside. They say the Arena seats 15 000 with modern health-and-safety issues and part of it used as a stage -- that's down from 30 000 when the whole circuit was used for seating in Roman times. It's an unusual experience, and I'd recommend it. Unless you're very flush you'll want to buy non-allocated seats on the steps rising round the amphitheatre. These open two hours before the performance, which has to start after dusk, and it might be worth nabbing a seat on the very top of the steps so that there's no one behind you, or finding a seat behind an entrance so there's no one in front of you. There are people sat on every row of steps so you can't lean back because someone's legs are there, and you can't stretch your legs out because there are people in front of you. It's a little cramped but atmospheric. We were there on a very hot day, and were very high up in the seating, waiting for the sun to set and the performance to start, when over our shoulders appeared a fast-moving wall of black cloud, lit with flashes of lightning, and there were sudden blasts of wind from different directions. It made it suddenly obvious how much nearer we were to the sky than the ground, and was very dramatic. We only got a little wet, but it wouldn't have mattered if we had got soaked in that heat. Still, checking the weather report might be wise. The storm went right over our heads and then moved off into the distance, where we could still see the lightning flashes getting fainter and fainter all evening. The opera was Aida, done very traditionally: big scenery and big scene changes; very substantial singers -- they looked like if you pushed them they would wobble but would not fall down; and a cast of thousands. Or not thousands, but I estimated that there were around three hundred people on stage in some of the big set pieces, plus bowing horses. I enjoyed it. It's not an opera I know well, but I found myself humming bits of it later. It was nearly one when it finished, but lots of hotels do a bus shuttle service, and ours was one of them, which was very handy.
Also in Verona: S. Zeno, an excellent church with a portal and these great bronze doors, twelfth-century I think. Inside there are lots of wall paintings, some with very old graffiti. S. Lorenzo was also a nice church to stop at. The Castelvecchio is fantastic as a building but a disappointing in its paintings. There was an exhibition of the work of a late manuscript-illuminator there, which was a tad depressing because it was almost all cuttings of illuminated letters painstakingly removed from their context with a sharp knife. I'm not that fond of that florid, pink and blue style, with its fleshy acanthus-like leaves, and I think it needs the space on the page and the counterweight of grave black script to make it bearable: without it it's like eating just the icing and marzipan off a fruit cake, plus I prefer my fruit cake plain anyway. In Verona there were no boat trips at all and the Adige is abandoned to the swallows who skim off its insect life.5. Ferrara. This is an excellent city with most of its medieval walls surviving. Lucca also has its walls -- I think quite a few small Italian cities do, with distinctive ramparts coming out from the walls in the shape of flat arrow-heads. Right in the middle of Ferrara is this fantastic castle surrounded by a great moat, home of the Este and scene of Browning's Last Duchess. The cathedral is quite nice. The whole city smelt of drains when I was there, but not unbearably.
6. Ravenna. I completely failed to revisit this, but it's fantastic, a little city which was once the capital of the Western Empire, which has an air of nothing happening between the sixth century and the 1930s. The mosaics are amazing. Unlike other art of that era they haven't faded. The really famous one at Ravenna has the portraits of Justinian, the law-maker, and his ex-dancer girl empress Theodora, wearing exotic Byzantine crowns with strings of pearls hanging down on either side, but there's also other sites like the tomb of Galla Placidia. That era of Roman/Byzantine history is full of dramatic stories and odd characters, in particular rather sinister women; John Julius Norwich's History of Byzantium has a pleasingly Tacitus/Robert Graves deadpan delivery if you want to find out about it.
7. Modena. I was there with my parents, which was an odd experience, because they see very different things from me. My mother would say, what's that? And I'd look and see some interesting building and start to get out my guidebook to see if it's mentioned; while my dad would correctly answer that it was abies heliocanthii in its shrub form, or some such. Or my dad would point out that of three trees by the road the outside two were the same genotype while the middle was different. Modena has a lovely duomo. The orto botanico is nice too, and a good deal more to my parents' taste. The Palazzo dei Musei has some excellent museums in it, especially a really good gallery of medieval manuscripts, with old sea charts of the mediterranean. It's quite a nice strolling city.
I think Bologna had better have a separate entry.
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