Monday, July 25, 2011

Yeah! The worst is over (...for now...I'm such an optimist...)


Whew! That was quite a long and intensive stretch of nonstop work.

I'm exhausted. Sent the draft of the translation to the author in the wee hours of the morning. She has to fill in some missing footnote citations, look it over, see if she has any questions, and then the final touches can be done.

In the meantime, here's...More......

...an architectural detail snapped at almost 4 P.M. on the 25th of April, 2011, on via Pagano for your personal, non-commercial enjoyment.

Very simple, Neo-Classical, but very balanced. Almost like a mantlepiece over a fireplace, it's a nice touch over a street level window to basement quarters.

Milan is a beautiful city, even in the details. Yes, it's got problems like any large metropolis. Yes, it's not Florence, or Rome, or Venice, but no other city is like these, so why does Milan have to be, in order to be beautiful?!

Milan has it's own kind of beauty: snippets of its ancient Roman past sprinkled like a bit of fresh rosemary, snippets of its ancient medieval past added like a hint of garlic, chunks of its Renaissance past like diced carrots (I love carrots!), while Baroque, Neo-Classical, Eclectic, Liberty, Novecento and modern elements liberally blend into a marvelous and varied hearty soup.

And there's always so much going on, I hardly know where to start telling you about it. Aside from the museum scene, more interesting to me, there are contemporary art galleries, music concerts from Gregorian chant to hard rock and anywhere inbetween, summertime fun, plays, activities for kids, and...yummy (really yummy) food (and ice cream).

All in a very do-able area: the historic downtown area inside and just barely outside the traces of the mid-sixteenth century (Spanish) walls, which, with the ancient Roman and medieval walls, have left their mark on the current urban state of the city. (The city even used to be criss-crossed by canals... sniff sniff... I wish they'd bring them back!)

From one side of the first circle of ancient Roman walls to the other (remember, Milan is structured like a wheel within a wheel), you can walk more or less briskly in about 35 minutes. Double that plus a smidgeon for the Spanish walls.

Furthermore, then public transportation is easy to use and handy.

And we're having marvelous weather (don't look now, but alternating waves of heat and rain are on the doorstep, though), so...

...what are you waiting for?

Come to Milan!

If this architectural fragment looks like just the frame for a needlepoint, or cross-stitch, that you're designing, it inspired today's "Milan Monday" on my needlepoint blog, Ars acupicturae stellae - Star's Needlepoint Art: http://arsacupicturaestellae.blogspot.com/2011/07/milan-monday-36-frame-for-your-own.html

Enjoy!

1 comment:

Margaret said...

Sounds like a fun place to be. Lucky you, especially now that your chains have been unlocked.

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