Siena- a must see!!

Piazza del Campo

Piazzo del Campo

City Hall at Piazza del Campo- refuge in the sttorm

City Hall in Siena

Refuge during a hail storm in August!!

Synagogue in Siena

Siena- charming hill town

Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. The historic center of Siena has been declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.  It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions. Siena is famous for its cuisine, art and its medieval cityscape.

The Jewish community dates back to the 13th century. It is very small now but they maintain a synagogue.

Visiting on a hot August day, we were surprised to be caught in a hail storm with hail stones the size of dimes!! Luckily we took shelter in the arches of the city hall for the 40 minutes it poured and rained hail stones at us.

Ferrara

Ancient walls of the city of Ferarra

Town Hall built in15th century

Imposing buildings but by the Este family

The town's synagogue established in 1485

tombstones in Jewish cemetery

The National Museum of Italian Hebraism and the Shoah (MEIS)

Ferrara is a city in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, not Tuscany but included on our tour. It’s known for the buildings erected by its Renaissance rulers, the Este family. These include the moated Este Castle, with its lavish private chambers. The family also built the Diamanti Palace, which is clad in diamond-shaped marble blocks and home to the National Picture Gallery. The Romanesque Ferrara Cathedral has a 3-tiered facade and a marble bell tower.

The Jewish community of Ferrara is the only one in Emilia Romagna with a continuous presence from the Middle Ages to the present day. It played an important role when Ferrara enjoyed its greatest splendor in the 15th and 16th century, with the duke Ercole I d'Este. The situation of the Jews deteriorated in 1598, when the Este dynasty moved to Modena and the city came under papal control. The Jewish settlement, located in three streets forming a triangle near the cathedral, became a ghetto  in 1627. Apart from a few years under  Napoleon and during the 1848 revolution, the ghetto lasted until Italian unification in 1859.

The National Museum of Italian Hebraism and the Shoah (MEIS) opened and we got to visit it. Amazing information so well presented 1000 years of Jewish history in Italy.

San Gimignano- Town of Fine Towers

 

San Gimignano is the epitome of a Tuscan hill town. About 25 miles from both Florence and Siena, it's the region's glamour girl: Visually striking and perfectly preserved, it gets all the fawning attention from passing tour buses. But despite its tourist-trap feel, it's still worth slotting into your Italian itinerary — especially if you can sidestep the hordes who descend during the day.
San Gimignano is beloved because of its skyline of medieval towers. Though a unique sight today, pointy skylines were the norm in Tuscany in the Middle Ages, when feuding noble families ran the hill towns (think Montagues and Capulets). Each family had its own private army that would periodically battle things out from the protection of its respective family towers. While some were built as a refuge against attackers, others were empty, chimney-like structures built only to boost noble egos.

In the 14th century, San Gimignano, like other hill towns, fell under Florence's control. The Florentines usually asserted their power over the local nobles by ordering them to lop off their towers. But for whatever reason, some of San Gimignano's original skyline was allowed to remain intact. Today, 14 of its original 72 towers still stand.

Pitigliano- Little Jerusalem

Scenery from Pitigliano

Hilltop towns dot Tuscany

 

Hill Town View in Tuscany

Aquaduct in Pitigliano

Typical street in Pitigliano

Synagogue in Pitigliano

Pitigliano is a town in the province of Grosseto, located in Tuscany. The quaint old town is known as the little Jerusalem, for the historical presence of a Jewish community that has always been well integrated into the social context and that has its own restored synagogue.

Pitigliano and its area were inhabited in Etruscan times but the first extant written mention of it dates only to 1061. In the early 13th century it belonged to the Aldobrandeschi family and by the middle of the century it had become the capital of the surrounding county.

In 1293 the county passed to the Orsini family, signalling the start of 150 years of on-again/off-again wars with Siena, at the end of which, in 1455, a compromise of sorts was reached: Siena acknowledged the status of county to Pitigliano, which in exchange placed herself under the sovereignty of Siena.

From then onwards the history of Pitigliano resorbs into the gradually wider ambit first of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany  (1562) then of the united  Kingdom of Italy.

For several hundred years Pitigliano was a frontier town between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and, to the south, the Papal States.  For this reason, the town was home to a flourishing and long-lived Jewish community, mostly made up by people fleeing from Rome during the Counterreformation    persecutions. Jews of the town used one of the caves for their ritual Passover matzah bakery, the "forno delle azzime" described in detail in Edda Servi Machlin's "Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews." After the promulgation of racial laws under Nazi influence, all the Jews of the town reportedly escaped capture with the help of their Christian neighbors. Although there are almost no Jews left in town, not enough to provide a minyan, the synagogue (1598, with furnishings of the 17th and 18th centuries) is still used from time to time. It was restored in 1995.

Returning to Tuscany

Walls of San Gimignano

Piazzo del Campo in Siena

Ponte Vecchio in Florence

Statue of David by Michelangelo at Galleria dell'Accademia

View of Pitigliano

Tuscany is a region in Central Italy with an area of about 8,900 square miles and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (Firenze). Tuscany is known for its landscapes, traditions, history, artistic legacy, and its influence on culture. It is regarded as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and has been home to many figures influential in the history of art and science, and contains well-known museums such as the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. Tuscany produces  wines and olive oil. Having a strong linguistic and cultural identity, it is sometimes considered "a nation within a nation".

Tuscany is traditionally a popular destination in Italy and the main tourist destinations by number of tourist arrivals are Florence, Pisa, and Montecatini Terme.

Seven Tuscan localities have been designated World Heritage sites: the historic center of Florence (1982); the Cathedral square of Pisa (1987); the historical centre of San Gimignano (1990); the historical centre of Siena (1995); the historical centre of Pienza  (1996); the Val d'Orcia (2004), and the Medici Villas and Gardens (2013). Tuscany has over 120 protected nature reserves, making Tuscany and its capital Florence popular tourist destinations that attract millions of tourists every year. In 2012, the city of Florence was the world's 89th most visited city, with over 1.834 million arrivals.

I have been to Tuscany three times before, but visited some places I had not been and returned to others. This trip I visited San Gimignano,  Montecatini Terme, Monte San Sevino, Chianti, and Ferrara for the first time. I also returned to Florence, Siena, Pitigliano, Venice (not really in Tuscany but always worth a visit)

More details to follow in new posts. Stay tuned...

ART Inspired By Travel To Japan

Moon Mountain

Light Through The Forest

Through The Woods

Winter Sparkle 1

Winter Sparkle 2

Woodlands 1

Woodlands 2

 

 

 

Green Landscape With Trees

June 2017 we took a wonderful trip to Japan and saw so many amazing things. Refer to previous blog posts to read about the trip. Here is the art I created inspired by my travel to Japan. I used traditional printmaking techniques as well as some digital imagery. I used Japanese papers for all the collage work.

Art inspired by trip to National Parks

Glenn Canyon Patterns

Glenn Canyon- Dawn

Grand Canyon Reflection

Moon Glow Canyon

Yellowstone Mystery 1

Yellowstone Mystery 2

Yellowstone Mystery 3

This series of mixed media monotypes was inspired by my trip to the National Parks. I started with an image from an iPhone which I manipulated in Photoshop and had printed by Van Gogh Again. I then used traditional printmaking techniques as well as collage in layers to get the effects I wanted.

They were first shown at Da Vinci Art Alliance in May 2018 in Through Our Eyes. Several of them have been chosen to be in an invitational show at the Brandywine Workshop this summer.