Venice in Chicago

I have often been intrigued by this Venetian-style palazzo on north Lake Shore Drive, one of a very few old mansions left on LSD. While googling for more information, I discovered that it is for sale. For just $4.4 million (marked down from $5.8 million in 2008), you could own this gem, built in 1895 by the architecturally and historically prestigious firm of Holabird & Roche.

Real estate blogs talk about the rooftop deck, but I love that romantic balcony. Of course LSD isn't exactly the Grand Canal and you'll be treated to the sounds of traffic rather than crooning gondoliere, but I love the folly of the place.

current food obsession

Castelvetrano olives--bright green and tender, the taste the very essence of olive-yness. Even better with some olive oil drizzled over them to notch up the flavor.

In other news, I have scored a room at an agriturismo (with half board, so I don't have to worry about being the only single woman eating dinner in a restaurant) in the Maremma, an area of Tuscany I have always wanted to visit. It's known more for its  natural beauty than for art and churches. So looking forward to wandering around the Maremma Park.

Sweet new Italian ride!

No, I did not buy an Alfa Romeo. But a vintage ladies' Chiorda off Craigslist is almost as good!

I have been riding around in scarf and sunglasses, liberally dispensing "Ciao"'s to passersby.

got a ticket for an aeroplane

I'm going back to Italy for the first time in five years! That is really too long to go without re-experiencing the peninsula, but that's what buying a condo will do to your budget. I'm planning on staying in Rome for about half the time to reacquaint myself with the other city that is the love of my life and see some old friends (and hopefully meet up with some expats whose blogs I read regularly), and then stay at an agriturismo somewhere, probably in Tuscany, for the rest of the time. I'm thinking about somewhere near the water, which I didn't get to as often as I would have liked on past trips. I'd love to do a return to the Cinque Terre, since the weather was so disappointingly chilly, rainy, and overcast when I went--but I think that might be impractical and frankly kinda boring. I'd also love to go to some of the less-visited cities and regions in the south, like Matera and Puglia, but this trip is definitely for revisiting old places.

The photo is a Polaroid from some gardens in Rome. During the last few months of my stay in 2002, I decided to trade the digital camera for more old-school photography to try to see details and landscapes in a different way.

the old neighborhood

Here's a view of Via Buonarroti (as in Michelangelo), the street I lived on in Rome, courtesy of Google Earth. My building was the pinky-beige one on the left, by the green car. It was small and a bit institutional-looking--the landlord rented it out furnished exclusively to expats--but more than serviceable. My room looked over a walled-in little courtyard that the bakery next door used as storage. I would occasionally be woken up by the sound of bags of flour being flung into a pile--WHUMP! WHUMP!

That greenery in the distance is Piazza Vittorio Emanuele (not to be confused with the "wedding cake" monument of the same name). Although it's surrounded by gracious 19th-century covered colonnades, when I lived there the piazza was run-down and slightly seedy. Certain days it hosted a food market, which evolved to cater to the immigrants who settled in the area as well as native Romans; it was moved to a nearby location while the piazza was renovated and cleaned up. My friends tell me it's a nicer area now--I'll have to check it out when I go back in May.

contemporary Italian art

I managed to get to the exhibit "Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008" at the Museum of Contemporary Art before it closed yesterday.
This was one of my favorite pieces, Mario Ceroli’s Le bandiere di tutto il mondo (Flags of the Whole World). It's made of long zinc containers filled with different colored substances--bright red, pink, green dust; charcoal; glass, etc. I didn't see the title or read about it while I was looking at it--I just enjoyed its sheer existence, like a child's paint palette magnified 1,000 percent. There were several signs warning viewers not to touch but I did spy some finger impressions on one end.




Other works that caught my attention included a series of Polaroids by Carlo Mollino and little brightly colored, oddly cheerful doodles by Vanessa Beecroft that were like a combination of animation cels and Daily Candy-like, fashiony sketches--but featuring elongated women throwing up or involved in other vaguely disturbing actions. There was also a black-lit room criss-crossed in white thread that made me feel like I was in Tron.

It was good to see some Italian art other than the ancient and Renaissance-era stuff that the country is known for, although I can't say I came away with any sort of enhanced knowledge about the scene or the country, but perhaps that's because I already know a fair bit about it. I also took my standard approach when viewing art at museums: I just look at what draws my attention and ignore what doesn't. I don't believe you have to look at every single piece of art in a museum, or even that you should. It makes art into homework. Art is not always meant to be understood--it is meant to be experienced. And if the experience of a particular work doesn't mean anything to you--that's OK.

more tales from the past: a visit to Sermoneta

The courtyard of the medieval castle in Sermoneta, Italia

Here's another entry from the home page I kept while living in Rome in 2001-2002. I used to do little trips around Lazio with my friends Roberto and Rachel once in a while--this was one such excursion.

12/3/2001
This past weekend I went to the tiny hillside village of Sermoneta, not too far south of Rome, with Roberto and Rachel for Rachel’s birthday. It was good timing for me because I’d been wanting to get away for awhile. Surprisingly my guidebook says very little about the town, but Roberto says it is quite popular with Romans for day trips.

When we got in we were starving, so we went to the first trattoria we saw, called the Black Rose. It was good food but we were there for about 45 minutes before our first courses came! I had some really great tortellone filled with porcini mushrooms and truffles, and lamb for a secondo. Rachel had tortellone filled with vegetables and ricotta, but I liked mine better.

We walked about for a bit afterward. There aren’t too many people in Sermoneta, and we couldn’t even find an ATM! It’s very hilly so we did a lot of walking up and down. For dinner we went to Il Mulino, which advertised as its specialty ‘pollo Lucrezia Borgia,’ aka chicken a la Lucrezia Borgia. Roberto asked what it was but they said it was a secret. (Lucrezia was poisoned—yikes!) [Note: I got my facts wrong here--she was rumored to poison other people.] He did order it but I’m not sure we ever figured out what the sauce was—maybe egg and something else. I was still kind of stuffed from lunch and so had homemade fettucine with ragu, and a salad. For dessert I had crepes filled with ice cream with fruit on top. Mm. The proprietor was a sweet old guy and he gave us some amaro on the house. There wasn’t much to do afterward except walk around again and look at the stars. It was really quiet! You couldn’t even hear the highway too well, surprising since it’s not exactly in the middle of nowhere, like towns in Tuscany. It was nice to listen to owls hooting and bats clicking. Except in my room I kept hearing this weird tapping noise, which I became convinced was a ghost. Well, I thought it was probably my bed or the heater, but I couldn’t quite locate the source. It woke me up around 4 or 5 and I couldn’t get back to bed. Aside from being a little freaked out by the sound, I was bothered by the fact that it wasn’t on regular beats, so I was always waiting for another tap. I thought, if this gets worse I’m going to knock on Rachel and Roberto’s door, because they had an extra bed in their room! Instead I just dug around and found some earplugs. I did still hear some even louder sounds a few times but I was determined to ignore the ghost, and so managed to fall asleep until Rachel woke me up at 10 for breakfast. I was surprised she beat me up—R and R are always saying they sleep til 12 on weekends. But she had actually woken up at 8!

We ran up to the castle for the hourly tour. It was actually pretty impressive and well preserved. The Caetani family used to own it, and after they died out in the 1980s a private foundation they started ran it. I guess at some point it was also owned by the Borgias, and Lucrezia Borgia lived there (hence the chicken). There was a hole where they used to pour actual boiling oil on invaders, a covered passageway by which the soldiers walked from one lookout point to the other if they were under attack, some pretty frescoes in the private rooms by a pupil of Pinturicchio’s, etc etc.

When we left we decided to take a detour to the neighboring (and much larger) town of Norma. This was not very interesting; indeed it was a bit decrepit and grim, looking like it had just survived the war. So we headed over to Antica Norba, the ruins of the Roman settlement. This was actually quite nice. There are really only foundations and the like left, stones scattered all about, but there were some great views to the west, all the way out to the sea. Plus there were sheep, who every time I got withing 20 feet of them skittered away en masse, cowbells (or is that sheep bells) clanging, and hanggliders up there! That looked wonderful, like flying. One guy came quite near to us, so that we could hear him whistling.

Then we were starving, so we just managed to squeak in to a restaurant for lunch. I had some great prosciutto, salami, cheese, olives, and bruschetta for an appetizer, then some good veal. Dessert was torta al limone. Quite good. There were a few families having Sunday brunch there, including one that was an 80th birthday party for nonna, who at some points looked like she was going to plop face-first into her plate. Then it was a long drive home, and R and R were kind enough to drive me all the way home, even though I said they should just drop me off at the metro stop. Those guys are the best. We were all tired, and then they had to go right to Roberto’s mom’s house for another birthday fest for Rachel! Yes, being feted is tough.