Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica was the location of the port of ancient Rome. The archelogical site is open to the public with a museum and an easy walking tour. It is easy to spend a day here. Both Dennis and I founnd wonderful inspiration here. Some of the sculpture is showing up in Dennis's prints. The site is a complete town with theater, baths, forum, temples, apartment complexes, wealthy homes and necrpolis or 'city of the dead'.

Theater corner stones

Bakery

Sarcophagus

Along the main road

Baths

Many of the mosaic tile floors are covered with tarps trying to keep the weather off them as they try to figure how to restore them.

The following pictures are from the indoor museum.

Ravenna 2

The tiny mausoleum Galla Placidia was astounding. I did not take pictures inside but there are many professional pictures on the web..check them out!

It is only lite with four tiny windows but the beauty of the glass and gold were breathtaking. This tiny space possibly impressed Charlemagne as he traveled south to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. It is thought to be the model for his tomb chapel : Palatine Chapel in Aachen, Germany.

 These are some more images from the mosiac floors of San Vitale.

Ravenna

We spent two days in Ravenna seeing the beautiful early christian and Byzantine mosaics.they are splendid!

The pictures below do not do them justice. I am including them just to give a sense of where they are in St. Vitale's apse.  

 

Venice

There will be a lot more ... we arrived yesterday and woke up here. This is the view from our window early morning.

Florence

We were only in Florence for two nights...I took just a few pictures because looking at paintings and sculpture takes eyes not cameras. I thought my friend David Maxim's paintings of museum goers. Most people ran up took a picture of the painting and one of the label and didn't even look at the painting, just ran off to the next picture. Everywhere there were hordes taking selfies.

From the Academia:

The Ufizzi is doing a big renavation project...many works are in different places or not on view. There were so many wonderful pieces. I think I'll write more later.

Took this of the Domo early morning before the tourist lines and hawkers selling selfie sticks.

Roma

We have spent time caughting up on sleep but walked alot. Frist to the Estruscan museum.

Than on to classic Rome

Roman Forum

Capititoli Hill

Pantheon

And the Adventure begins!

After visiting with Kristin Kohl and seeing her print in the print show Dan and Kristin delivered us to airport. What a beautiful 90 degrees in Portland.

Not a lot of sleep on the plane to Charlotte. Arrived at 5:30 am leave for Rome at 6:30. Charolette, NC was inetesting. Went to the Harvey B. Gantt Center saw Art of the New Deal African American Artists in the WPA. Also a great park with books and poetry themed sculptures, sheets of brass throughout the park with poems! (Pictures to come next week!)