Italy History - For Dummies

Volleyball Tour Members Italy for Dummies.... (most of us....) smile..... Many of you are just starting to realize that ….  “WE ARE GOING TO ITALY…. “ Yes we are…. And to help you better understand a bit about what you are going to be seeing… one of our tour coaches Professor Gene Burt… (who is also an art history professor…) has put together an easy reading… brief…“Readers Digest version” of Italy .  Or in my case… “A dummies guide to Italy” . (Smile… )  Hope this inspires you… and gets you ready for your wonderful trip to Italy. No matter how many times one visits Italy… the experience is always exiting and new… We hope you enjoy the brief overview of our tour… A short guide to Italy. Everyone on the Sports for Youth Foundation tour to Italy is here because of their involvement in volleyball. During the tour there will be many opportunities to play the game, both indoors and outdoors. While that is the focus of the tour, traveling in Italy is also a unique opportunity to experience a different culture, explore new foods, shop for unusual items and see things you’ve never seen before. It is hoped that you will appreciate this opportunity and will help to expand your understanding of the world. Every day will include time for volleyball, time for touring, and free time for you to shop and enjoy yourself. The SFY staff have arranged for you to have many cultural and historical experiences, which are summarized below. Rome - You will see three Rome’s, in one city – Ancient Rome, Renaissance/Baroque Rome, and Modern Rome. Ancient Rome (200 BC - 400 ad) Popularly known as the Eternal City, Rome has existed for over 2500 years. As the capital of the Roman Empire, Rome was once the largest city in the world with a population of over a million people. It was truly a city in the modern sense, with multi-story apartment houses, piped water, flushing toilets, parks, shopping malls, fitness centers, and sports arenas. Most of the monuments that we will see were public buildings (like the Coliseum, courthouses, baths, etc.) and religious temples all had the same message - “Rome is POWERFUL, DOMINATING, CONTROLLING” and don’t you forget it! All the buildings were designed with a limited visual vocabulary - tall columns with decorative capitals (tops), support arches (something they did not invent, but which they mastered), engraved text messages, and relief sculptures. The Romans were the greatest engineers in the Ancient World and some of their achievements were not matched until the modern era. For a sense of what Rome was like you could take a look at the movie “Gladiator,” which did a remarkably good job of recreating the look and feel of ancient Rome (even if the story is definitely fictitious). Adults might rent the HBO series “Rome” (season one is best) to get an even more accurate recreation of Ancient Roman life. Renaissance/Baroque Rome (1400 - 1750) From about 1500-1700 Rome, as the seat of the Papacy and center of the Catholic Church, transformed the appearance of the heart of the city by being the patron to the best architects and artists. As a result, hundreds of churches were built and decorated. Like our modern American cities which try to outdo each other with the size and elaborateness of their sports stadiums, Italian cities and neighborhoods competed to have the biggest and most decorative religious buildings. The greatest of these was the Vatican, which was first designed by Michelangelo as a large, but austere Renaissance style church (basically symmetrical in form from all points of view). However, the leaders of the Church became attracted to the new Baroque style, which is much more decorative and flamboyant. The new architect designed the largest Church in the world with a huge plaza in front with long embracing arms of two curving colonnades. Inside, most of the greatest Renaissance and Baroque artists decorated every room. You may recognize some of their names, like Michelangelo and Raphael (no, not the ninja turtles). Perhaps the most famous part of the Vatican is the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo who had never painted anything before (as he had until then been a sculptor), spent over 4 years lying on his back painting the entire ceiling. It depicts the major stories of the first book of the Bible in large rectangular panels, surrounded by other figures representing Old Testament and pagan predictors of the coming of Christ. For most people life was focused on a neighborhood centered on an open space known as a piazza (plaza) which originally was the location of communal water wells (which you can still see as all over Rome as masonry cylindrical structures with metal domed tops about the size of a Volkswagen Bug. During the Baroque period wealthier neighborhoods competed by adding huge water fountains with elaborate sculptures which showed off new engineering techniques to build water pressure. Modern Rome (1850 - present) Most of central Rome was built in the 1800s and early 1900s. Many of the apartments and houses are from that period, but incorporate into their design elements of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Most commonly you may note that windows have above them alternating triangular and curved forms (known as pediments). That style was developed by Michelangelo and his contemporaries in the Renaissance. Before World War II, the fascist leader Mussolini sought to rebuild Rome in a manner which was supposed to be a stylized version of ancient Rome. The most famous of those buildings is the central Train Station. More recent buildings are in the current International style which you will easily recognize because it is not much different from what you see in American cities. Marina di Grosseto A beach resort. A lovely, sandy beach resort on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the Tuscan region very popular with Italian families. The modern province of Tuscany was the heartland of the people who ruled much of Italy before the rise of Ancient Rome (from about 800-300 BC). They were known as Etruscans (from which the word Tuscan is derived). Those Etruscans really enjoyed life, as they appear to have focused on the pleasures of life, especially food and partying. In fact, their religion taught that life after death was one continuous banquet. That love of the good life still defines the Tuscany lifestyle. This is where we can enjoy the sun, the sand, swimming in the waves, eating good food, and playing beach volleyball. Adults might enjoy looking at the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” to get a sense of that part of Italy. Pisa The tour only makes a brief stop here to see one thing, the Pisa Duomo (Cathedral) and its companion structures. What most people know about this place is the famous “Leaning Tower of Pisa.” That tower is actually the bell tower (or more accurately the Campanile) that were set next to most major churches in Italy in the Late Medieval and Renaissance periods (1350-1500). Later the bell tower was incorporated into church itself, think of steeples on many American churches). Unfortunately, that tower began to lean soon after construction began about 1380 due to the swampy nature of the ground it was built on. Almost immediately the builders tried to solve this problem - if you look closely, you will notice that some of the upper stories rise at a different angle than the lower ones as the architectures tried to counter the effects of the leaning. Even in modern times efforts have been made to stabilize the tower. More historically important than the tower is the Cathedral itself and the Baptistry. Italian cathedrals always had three components - the church, a separate baptistry, and bell tower. Originally, only people who had been baptized in the Baptistry were allowed to enter the church (later baptismal fonts near the entrances of churches replaced the separate building). The Pisa Cathedral is important because it is the supreme achievement of the Italian Romanesque architectural style. Romanesque means ‘Roman-like’, you should note that the same basic forms seen in Ancient Roman buildings - lots of columns, arches, and the use of white marble - are used in Pisa. If you walk around the Cathedral you will even see parts of Ancient buildings (with the Roman texts) which were recycled into the walls of the church. The inside of the Baptistry has some of the most amazing acoustics in history, singers standing in just the right place create echoes that last so long, that one person can produce 3 part harmonies. The inside of the church is one of the most richly decorated in the entire Christian world. The size and splendor of the famous Cathedrals you will see are still spectacularly impressive, but even more so if you can imagine you saw them when they were first built. In those times the vast majority of people lived in small mud huts which they shared with their farm animals. The houses were crowded, dirty, smoky, and certainly smelled with all those cows, sheep, and chickens. To go from that daily experience to the interior of a Cathedral like the one in Pisa must have seemed to them like entering a vision of heaven! Florence The home of the Renaissance and the modern world as we know and love it. After emerging from the Dark Ages and the Black Death (about 1350), Florence became prosperous as a center of the textile trade. Certain families became fabulously wealthy and became the patrons of scholars and artists who had new ideas about the world. Those ideas included the study of the natural world (which lead to the development of the science and technology that makes our way of life possible), the importance of the individual (which inspired not only the great artists of the Western world, but helped inspire the American Founding Fathers to craft our constitution and Bill of Rights), and the importance of cultivating of the mind and creativity. These trends can be seen in the Dome of the Florence Cathedral designed by a man named Brunelleschi, it was the largest dome constructed since the time of Ancient Rome and demanded the use of advanced mathematical concepts and the invention of new machines to build it. Nearby you will see famous works of art like the Doors of Paradise on the Baptistry by Donatello and Michelangelo’s David. Venice Long considered one of the world’s most ‘Romantic’ cities, Venice is famous for its canals. In fact, there are no land-based motorized vehicles anywhere in the city, for transportation there are two choices - walk or take a boat. As Ancient Rome’s power faded, Italy was invaded by so-called barbarians who attacked, pillaged, and looted everywhere. A group of swampy islands seemed like a good place for people to hide. Eventually, communities developed and Venice emerged as the largest. Due to its location Venice became prosperous in the late Medieval and Renaissance periods as a trading center linking Europe and Asia. Some of the buildings in Venice have Asian details, especially the use of Arabic style windows. The heart of the city is San Marco Square (St. Mark is the patron saint of Venice) dominated by the highly decorative cathedral, palaces, the Laurentian Library, and civic buildings of the Renaissance. Everywhere there are small shops selling clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, and goods from around the world, much of it high-end merchandise. Nearby are islands famous as centers of glass making and lacework. Venice even has a connection to early American history as Thomas Jefferson greatly admired a famous Venetian architect whose ideas inspired the look of Washington, D.C., including the Congress building and the White House. Hope you are getting excited…. Thank you, John Littleman Director, Sports For Youth Foundation  6101 110th Ave SE Bellevue WA 98006  425-255-8102 jlittleman@sportsforyouth.com