Random thoughts and photos of my journey through life…
It was a welcome joy to be able to go for a walk after my afternoon volunteering at Attingham Park. It was my first walk at Attingham for several weeks. Due to planned surgery mum has had several medical appointments each week and a stay in hospital after the surgery. Mum is home now but the appointments continue…
This means I am a little behind on my Walk 1000 miles challenge but I hope to retrieve the missing steps before the end of the year.
7 Comments CherryPie on Sep 24th 2024
Spanish Steps, staircase in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna that climbs the steep slope between the plaza and the church of Trinità dei Monti above. It consists of 135 steps and was built between 1723 and 1725. Though it was funded with a bequest left by a French diplomat, it was named for the Bourbon Spanish Embassy to the Holy See in the plaza.
After decades of debate over what to do with the slope between the Spanish and French plazas, the idea to build a staircase originated in the 17th century, and planning began with the diplomat’s bequest. The original design included an equestrian statue of King Louis XIV of France at the top of stairs. Papal opposition and a challenge to the bequest called a halt to the project until a compromise was reached, allowing the building work to continue. The stairway was designed by Francesco de Sanctis and Alessandro Specchi. The compromise between the papacy and the French is evident on the staircase itself, which contains carvings of the fleurs-de-lis of the Bourbon family along with the checkered eagle coat of arms of Pope Innocent XIII.
At the bottom of the staircase lies the boat-shaped Fontana della Barcaccia (Fountain of the Old Boat), believed to have been designed by Pietro Bernini, father of architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and completed in 1629. The fountain is said to have been inspired by the flooding of the Tiber River in 1598, when a small, flat-bottomed boat used to carry people to safety was found on the spot after the water ebbed.
6 Comments CherryPie on Sep 24th 2024
Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.
Khalil Gibran
6 Comments CherryPie on Sep 22nd 2024
We got absolutely soaked on our day trip to Hay-on-Wye. Just after lunch the heavens opened and we were drenched by rain of Biblical proportions. Driving home was a little tricky to start with due to standing water on the country lanes.
Wearing soggy trousers made me feel unclean so when we got home I had a lovely refresshing soak in the bath.
12 Comments CherryPie on Sep 21st 2024
Represented on the valves of a huge shell, with the erect torso and scaly legs of a sea monster, the Triton stands imposingly with his head bent back in an effort to blow into the large buccina (or twisted shell) that he supports with his arms raised upwards and from which the water that irrigates the whole work comes out copiously. Expression of the new Baroque conception of space, in the fountain the sculptural part includes and completely absorbs the same architectural structure: the shell on which the triton rests is in fact the upper basin of the fountain, and the baluster at the base is replaced by four dolphins with intertwined tails, between which are placed the papal coats of arms with bees, heraldic symbol of the Barberini family.
4 Comments CherryPie on Sep 19th 2024
Its original location was on the corner of Palazzo Soderini, between Piazza Barberini and Via Sistina. In one of the rooms on the ground floor of the building, Bernini had in fact designed a “booty” for water, that is, a system to collect the return water from the Triton fountain, which he had designed a few months earlier on commission from Pope Urban VIII Barberini (1623-1644).
The artist’s imagination, however, gave a service structure the unusual shape of an open bivalve shell. The lower valve served as a basin, while the other valve, modeled to adhere to the corner of the building behind, was decorated at the base with three bees (heraldic symbol of the Pope’s family). An inscription recalled the pope’s intervention for the construction of the fountain and the fountain as a “public ornament of the city”.
The fountain was dismantled in 1865 for traffic reasons and deposited in the municipal warehouses. Rebuilt between 1915 and 1916, it was located at the corner of the square towards Via Vittorio Veneto, in an isolated position. Fragments of the central bee and the portion of the valve on which it rests are the only original parts of the work.
The fountain was restored in 2000. In 2004 the head of a bee, which was lost following an act of vandalism, was replaced with a copy.
10 Comments CherryPie on Sep 18th 2024
