The charming town of Spilimbergo, with a population of about 12,000, is among other things known for its Saturday market. We had more or less accidentally picked a Saturday to visit it and the streets were simply crowded with people. Fortunately we managed to find a spot to park our…
In the centre of the small town of Cividale del Friuli all attractions are within walking distance of each other. I have already dedicated separate posts to some of these attractions. This post will be used to cover the remaining ones all at once. Our walk starts just south of…
The national archaeological museum in Cividale del Friuli has a very long history. It was founded in 1817, and at the end of the nineteenth century it was housed in the Palazzo de Nordis, a nice palazzo from the fifteenth century just north of the Duomo of the town. Nowadays…
The museum next to the Duomo of Cividale del Friuli is fairly small. It consists of no more than four rooms. It would nevertheless be a pity to skip the museum, as it has beautiful Longobardic sculptural work from the eighth century on display, as well as paintings from the…
The Duomo of Cividale del Friuli, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, is strictly speaking not a cathedral, as Cividale does not have its own bishop anymore. The area surrounding the building is interesting and tells us a lot about the history of the town. The Duomo for instance faces a…
No matter where we were driving on the roads around Perugia, there were yellow signs everywhere that gave directions to the Hypogeum of the Volumni. With so much encouragement it was obviously impossible not to visit this Etruscan funerary chamber. The hypogeum can be found in Ponte San Giovanni, just…
Of all the Italian cities that I have visited in my life, Trieste has to be the most un-Italian. Trieste was an Austrian city for ages, had many non-Italian inhabitants and has only been part of Italy for a relatively brief period of time. Together with Trento it was the…
In Antiquity, Trieste was known as Tergeste. It is not entirely clear who the original inhabitants were. Perhaps they were part of the Histri or the Celtic Carni, but it is also possible that they were Veneti. The name Tergeste (Terg-este) in any case seems to support the Venetic hypothesis,…
The signs in the streets of Trieste not only give directions, but also mention the number of steps to take before reaching an attraction. I must say the signs are very helpful, but if it is 37 degrees centigrade outside and one has to climb the hill where the Duomo…
In the summer of 2017 we visited Aquileia, once a prosperous Roman city with perhaps over 100,000 inhabitants. In the fourth century, the Roman poet Ausonius (ca. 310-395) placed the city ninth on his list of the most important cities of the Roman Empire. That fourth century was a turbulent…
There was a simple explanation for the long, motionless queue in front of the Palazzo Te in Mantova: there had been a power cut, so it was momentarily impossible to print tickets. Paying by card was also not an option as long as the problem had not been fixed. Fortunately…
The city of Mantova is surrounded by water on three sides. The river Mincio is so wide here that three lakes have come into existence: the Lago Superiore, Lago di Mezzo and Lago Inferiore. When we first visited Mantova in 2019 we parked our car on the other side of…
From the Palazzo Te it was just a short walk to the church of San Sebastiano. The church was designed by the famous Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Its construction started around 1460 and it was completed by Luca Fancelli (ca. 1430-1502) well after the death of the original…
The cathedral of Mantova is dedicated to Saint Peter the Apostle. In Italian the building is therefore known as the cattedrale di San Pietro. It is a peculiar rather than a beautiful building, a remarkable mixture of styles, combining a Romanesque bell-tower, a Gothic flank, a sixteenth-century Renaissance interior with…
People who approach Mantova from the northeast and cross the Ponte San Giorgio to get to the city will see the enormous dome of the church and co-cathedral of Sant’Andrea rise up behind the lower buildings. The Sant’Andrea is by far the largest church in the city. From a religious…
The somewhat curious circular church of San Lorenzo in Mantova is also known as the Rotonda. It is possible that the roots of the building go back to the fourth century and that the church was built over the remnants of a Roman temple (perhaps dedicated to Diana) or a…
“Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces.” (“Mantua bore me, Calabria took me away again, Naples now holds me; I sang about pastures, fields, leaders”) These famous words, which according to tradition are from the epitaph of the poet Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE) and…
Between the ruins of ancient Ostia we still find many beautiful mosaics. In a previous post I already discussed the mosaics in the mithraeum of Felicissimus, which are not just impressive, but also provide us with a lot of information about the mystery cult of Mithras. Ostia’s many complexes of…
Unfortunately no precise figures are available for the population of ancient Ostia. Perhaps the city had just over 20,000 inhabitants, perhaps some 50-60,000. However, we do know one thing for certain: the people of Ostia had ample opportunity to take a bath. Public baths were omnipresent in Ostia, and these…
The mystery cult of Mithras must have been very popular in Ostia. The city had at least 17 mithraea or places of worship.[1] It should, however, be noted that these mithraea were not that large: they could perhaps accommodate twenty to thirty people each. Twenty to thirty men actually, as…