Castles in the Piacenza area, 27 Aug 2016
This week there was an earthquake in Amitrice and other small villages east of Rome, which are not in our mission. We answered calls and emails from worried parents of missionaries, and assured them that all the missionaries and members were safe, although I believe about 300 people were killed. I made Amitrice spaghetti sauce on Wed for lunch, and wrote about that. I ate leftovers on Thursday, and it was better. Our mission president and wife went to Germany this week for training, so we petty much minded the store. This is the last week of Ferragosto, or the national holiday when many people go on vacation for about a month. You can certainly tell it when you go to the stores and on the roads, they are not very busy. Today, Saturday, our local supermarket, Coop, was busier than it has been all month. We were ready for a P-day, since it was Saturday. The office anziani left this morning for Lecco, up north and wanted us to go to Bellagio with them, but we already did that. My sister, Jan, and her daughter and husband are coming in a little over a month and we need to find things for them to do, including day-trips, so we decided to see what we could see today by going south. On Thursday we drove down to a nearby castle, but it was closed until after the first of September.
This is the castle, Mediceo, from the 1200s, which is probably the closest to where we live and takes only about 20 minutes to get there. We went there Thursday evening after we closed the office.
This is the town square, with the castle to the left in the pix.
In what was the moat, they now have a running track and there were people running. So we decided we might want to check out castles on Saturday, in case Jan is interested in seeing them.
In Google there are about 25 or so castles south of us in the area between and to the south of Piacenza and Parma (where Parmesian cheese comes from). If this pix does not come out so you can see it, just Google castles in Piacenza, Italy, that 's all I did, and saved this image. Piacenza is about an hour south of us, so this morning we headed south, although we first stopped at a church that we had previously visited to see if I could play the organ. Unfortunately and organist nun was not there and I was told to come back, so we just continued south. We tried to find the addresses of the castles so we could put them in our GPS, but that was not all that easy, and our GPS does not work all that well, but I won't go into that here.
We stopped by a church by the side of the road, to check out the organ.
Of course, it had an old one, in the back, but they also had an electronic in front, which is a sign that the old one does not work. No one was in the church or around it.
Then we stopped at another church, again with an old organ, but also a new electronic one, so we were 2 for 2 on non-functional old pipe organs.
At the end of this lane we found the castle we wanted to see, San Pietro,but it was closed, and we didn't see that on the website.
This sign says it has a "Museum in Motion," or Museum of Contemporary Art, and is open on Sundays and holidays from March to October, from 11 to 12 and from 3 to 6 pm. Bummer.
Across from where we parked, in a little church parking lot, it was interesting to see three front doors to the old house, each with canvas curtains to keep out the sun from going in the open doors. This is out in farm country, and they were harvesting corn and tomatoes, lots of tomatoes. I've never seen so many being hauled in such large trucks. I suppose they make canned tomato sauce or something with them, the way they were handling them, not very carefully.
Of course, I went in the old church, probably as old as the castle across the street. I see this saint, I can't remember his name, everywhere showing off the wound he had in his thigh. This fresco is at least 700 years old.
That village church had this organ in back. I asked the caretaker lady if it plays. She said she is 70 years old, I replied that I am almost that old, and she has gone to this church all her life and has never heard the organ play, so I suppose it is also broken (rotto). So many old churches with pipe organs, nearly all rotto. These pipes even looked sick, especially the one to the left of the largest one in the middle, which is for the C below middle C.
But about a half mile down the road was a larger church, which, near the back had this icon board, which reminded me of pictures from Russia. I had never seen one like this before in Italy.
That church, a minor bascilica, had a nice looking old pipe organ up front, but also an electric toaster organ, which, again is a sign that the old pipe organ does not work.
It was a pleasant church in a very small village in the middle of tomato (no grapes) farming country.
This pic was taken standing on the steps of that last church, and you can see two more church towers down the road. We were headed to another castle, so we didn't stop to check these two out, because we saw the largest of the three. Again, this is the "downtown" of a farming village out in the middle of "no where" Italy.
So after driving on a narrow country road with tomato fields on either side, with ripe tomatoes (If I would not have been driving, I would have taken pictures), we came to the town with the castle, Arquato. The first thing we saw on entering the village with this sign which says that on the 10th and 11th of September they will Re-live the Medieval, which would be fascinating. We parked near this sign and decided to walk up to the castle on the hill, because we didn't see a road to get there.
All the time I was walking up the very steep with switchback trail, with some stairs, I thought of Jan, as I was huffing and puffing. As we got past the hillside we could see there was apparently a road up to the castle, as there were cars parked up there. The piazza even looked medieval. (Castle is the dark shape on the left.)
We crossed over what was the moat.
And the guide told us the castle closing in a half hour, but he would let us in. Normal prices were €5, but €4 for the anziani (elderly, which my name tag says I am). We were somewhat surprised to see that this castle, the Rocca Visconea (Viscount family--we have a sister Viscount in our mission who I think is a descendant) specializes in instruments of torture during medieval times of the martyred saints. In other words, some of the Catholic saints were tortured, at least according to legends, and the castle had rooms with methods of medieval torture.
The views from this castle are stunning, and, in spite of being a warm day, there was a nice breeze. You can see the countryside through which we had been driving. Rolling hills with lots of farms. They are now plowing up the ground after harvest. This view is from the lowest level of the castle.
Myrna was stopped right under an ancient fig tree.
With lots of ripe fruit, which can be messy.
This castle is not for the faint of heart, it displays medieval methods of torture, both in pictures and through some of the instruments used.
Flesh scratchers, and these wouldn't tickle either.
This would not be too much fun either.
Ouch.
I am not sure why this suit of armour was there, but it was impressive.
Basically the museum had pictures of people being tortured, along with the instruments (some real, some facimilies) used.
The beheadding or decapitation block. I think this is what I would choose, fast death.
They also used a big hatchet to do the job.
Now, this is just down right nasty.
But apparently, there are saints that were tortured this way.
The head chopper guy, with the axe, hopefully sharp.
I guess for minor things, you could just have your fingers chopped off.
More actual medieval instruments of torture. I think they used something like this on Jesus.
The views out the window were wonderful. This is the view towards the medieval town or borgo.
This is the way we came in, through farmland.
The town below on the other side.
The tower got narrower and the steps steeper as we climbed. Myrna went to the top and started down, seeing the rooms of torture. I started at the bottom going up, but I did make it to the top, again huffing and puffing.
The stairs changed from stone to wood, which creaked, I though I could hear groans and an occasional scream..
Then to the room with the rack, for making people longer.
Which you could look down on--what a sight for sore, which mine were, eyes.
But outside was beautiful. I am glad I don't suffer from fear of heights, too much.
The other side of the valley, with the river flowing down from the mountains. This is late August, so the river ran low.
On the way down we saw a few ugly sights we had not seen before. Apparently this was a real saint, i.e., his halo. The sign said they eventually died of gangrene of the crotch,
And they printed books about them, when they finally learned how to print books. This may have been from the time of the Spanish Inquisition.
So we left the castle and went into the medieval church, which the sign said was closed, but the door was open, upon pushing, and there were a few tourists inside.
In true medieval times, they did not have many decorations, things were pretty plain for many centuries, as well as dark inside. There were three windows in back of the altar, but not much more light. You could put a euro into a box and the lights came on for about 30 seconds.
Another electronic organ, now there was no pipe organ. They did not have pipe organs during medieval times.
An ancient fresco in the church, showing a saint being tortured, as we had seen in the castle.
Scripture study.
Jesus washing the apostles feet, notice that Judas has no halo.
The Last Supper with John, perhaps, leaning on Jesus, and Judas, again sans halo, holding the money bag. This fresco was painted several hundred years before Leonardo painted his most famous one in Milano. It appears there is water damage to this one. This is in a very small town, so I doubt there is much money for restoration work.
This church had a baptismal font that was big enough two people could have climbed into it. I have no idea how they use it now, although there were chairs around it. It was pretty pain and simple.
There was a museum just outside the front door of the church, but it was closed for mid-day, which is a shame if they want tourists to see these things. This is, in my American opinion, a big problem with Italy. People come all this way and spend all this money to get here, just to find the whole country shuts down for two or three hours at mid day.
And back down the steep steps to the bottom of the hill, where our car was parked.
By then we were pretty hungry, so we stopped at a little grocery store and bought two fresh panini (rolls), ham and cheese and a cold bottle of red orange juice from Sicily, made lunch and sat on the tail gate of our car in the parking lot, under a tree, for lunch. (We also bought a chocolate bar with hazel nuts and some hazel nut cookies, which were pretty good.)
Then we told the GPS to take us to Cremona, specifically to the middle of town, to the duomo, or cathedral. Cremona is the town where Antonio Stradivari and his followers made violins, which is not far from the castles. This is the backside of the duomo, cool in the heat of the August day.
When we got there at 2:30 pm, the duomo was still closed for lunch, but the adjacent baptistry was open, for a €2 euro entry fee, so we went in and saw, in the middle of a very large octagonal building, a baptismal font, which had been covered over in the 1500s, although, without a cover, it was certainly big enough for immersion baptisms. I don't know why most baptistries are 8 sided buildings, separate from the church and generally built before the church was completed. Baptism must have been a pretty important ordinance to the ancients, although now it isn't.
Among the other artifacts in the baptistry was this medieval age bull, but not quite strong enough to support the font, even with 11 of his brethren.
The ceiling was very high, with two balconies, where people could watch from above. It would have been quite the baptismal service.
The lighting, from small windows, made it hard to take pictures, but they were permitted.
So out the front door of the baptistry was the front of the duomo and bell tower. We still had to wait a few minutes for the big church doors to be opened.
Across the piazza you could see the Popular Bank of Cremona. Every Italian city has a bank for that city, which were apparently began in medieval times.
It was hard to take a picture of the front of the cathedral and the bell tower, which I think is one of the tallest in Italy. The doors opened right on time, and we entered into that cool, but fairly dark, ancient bishop's church, where the family of the master maker of violins also worshiped.
These lions were to scare the unworthy, and perhaps children.
The duomo of Cremona is very impressive inside.
The ceiling is well decorated, with ancient frescoes, but newer than medieval.
The organ was still there, where I played it 50 years ago. I asked if I could play it and the caretaker said I would have to get permission from the organist, who, of course, was not available on a Saturday. This one is still playable, from the console just under the pipes, to which you have to climb stairs to reach. (50 years ago they didn't seem to care so much about the organs, and they all played.)
The side opposite the organ.
This Grande Croce (great cross) was made (according to this sign)
between 1470 and 1478 for the high altar, and may have been there for a few centuries, but is down down on the floor (behind glass ) so it can be seen by the people, not just the bishop and priests.
One of several side chapels. (The red lights on mean the host is inside the safe.)
In the back wall of the duomo are some very large, well known, works of art.
The ascension to heaven of Christ. (Catholics also believe that Mary ascended to heaven, they celebrated that on Monday of this week, a national holiday.)
Christ's removal from the cross. Again, these are very large frescoes, painted on fresh plaster (like Leonardo painted the Last Supper), but these were not painted on dry plaster and have remained fairly bright for over 600 years.
The street behind the duomo, dodging a girl on a bike--they are everywhere, as are motor cycles.
The street behind the duomo, where we parked our car. You can see another church at the end of the road, which will be for another day. Another church, another organ, probably broken.
So this trip took from about 10 am to 4 pm, and we were pretty tired, so he headed home, using the freeway. We went past Opera, where we live, to go to Metro to check out prices for food and things we need to buy. I will put that on another blog.
