ROME – Tuesday, May 24, 2022 – I was dreading this day – in the best possible way – because I had bought a private tour for the Vatican that started at 7:15 a.m. and I had no idea what to expect, except that Will and Amy would likely be fairly grumpy to get up at 6 a.m. to see yet ANOTHER museum and church. It turned out to be absolutely wonderful – we had a guide for just the four of us, and she took us through parts of the vast collections of the Popes, seeing treasures from the ancient world – statues that changed the way we see – to the Renaissance and beyond. The ornate palaces of the popes, their self-aggrandizing art, their pillaging of ancient monuments, the famous Papal apartments of Pope Julius II with the amazing Raphael paintings, the Sistine Chapel! Rick was able to see his beloved School of Athens, which Will apparently was drawn to as well, with Aristotle holding his book the “Ethics,” a work Will has been wrestling with for the past year at Notre Dame. We also waited a half hour in the hot morning sun to see St. Peter’s Basilica, an awe-inspiring space the length of one and a half football fields and whose side arms are bigger than most churches. Rick commented that most of the churches we have seen on the trip would fit inside this one glorious space. Will perhaps gave it his highest compliment ever, saying it was like a movie.

Afterwards, we went to the Pantheon – how could we see two of the world’s greatest structures in one day? Did that really happen? It is a transformative space, with its beautiful oculus and coffered ceiling. We had some wonderful granita afterwards, and you could see the majestic structure peeking around the corner, and it really didn’t feel real. I was once skeptical when Yale University’s Diana Kleiner proclaimed the Pantheon was the most beautiful building in history, but I am now a convert. St. Peter’s may be spectacular, but the Pantheon is almost like one of Plato’s “forms,” the ultimate ideal of what a building should be. We will have to ask Will if I am totally off base on this one.

Tonight, we are off for Dim Sum at a well-known restaurant a 3 minute walk from our hotel. Three minutes is about all we can handle after a very long, hot day. And I didn’t even mention the Caravaggios that Rick and I squeezed in after the Pantheon – the paintings of St. Matthew at the Contarelli Chapel at the Church of the Francesi (near Caravaggio’s haunts) and those at the Santa Maria del Popolo – where we had to wait for 25 minutes to open, so we bided our time with an excellent museum on Leonardo, recapping all we saw in Milan two weeks ago. Rick was exhausted but a good sport. And we learned the trick to lighting up the Caravaggios – both churches required you to put a few euros in a machine to illuminate them – otherwise you can’t see much in the darkness. But the key is to let the lights dim, then the crowds leave, then you put money in and enjoy them in peace for a few minutes. We were transfixed by the Calling of St. Matthew – my new favorite Caravaggio, though Rick confessed his favorite is the still life of fruit we saw back at Milan’s Ambrosiana. It’s a fair choice.

Ok, my 15 minutes are up – actually 20 – so I must go. Tomorrow we will visit the Coliseum, the Palatine Hill with its view over the Circus Maximus and the Forum! Party on, Nero!

ON A TRAIN FROM FLORENCE TO ROME, Monday, May 23, 2022 – I love super-fast trains. Love them. From my first ride on a Shinkansen in Japan, I was hooked, and the Italian super-fast trains, the Frescciarossa, are just as smooth and fun as their Asian counterparts. Ok, so they don’t really run on time that much, but ours was only 9 minutes late, and now we are speeding along across the Tuscan countryside watching the hills and red-roofed houses flash by our windows. 

 We had a wonderful, if very brief, stay in Florence, where we met up again with Grazia, who drove the 1 ½-hour drive to brave the heat and the crowds of a Florentine weekend with us. Florence is a small medieval city, with narrow, winding streets despite the best attempts of the ancient Romans to set it up as a traditional grid-patterned Roman military camp – the traces of which still remain in the main (wider) streets and the piazzas, one of which was the old Roman Forum. But I digress. The fact is that Florence is small, so when it is filled with masses of tourists – as it was this weekend – it feels extremely crowded. Regardless of what you may read in the news, European travel is full-on this summer. There were many Americans among the throngs, many of them young, but we also heard UK English, German, Russian, Chinese and Italian spoken among the tourists. 

 The theme of our weekend with Grazia was art – very old and very new. I have been focused this trip on showing Will and Amy great masterpieces of the past, but Grazia pulled me into the present, taking me to an NFT art show (what???? Yes, my thought exactly) that was running alongside the Donatello exhibition at the Strozzi Palace. It is digital art, sold digitally, sometimes for very large amounts of money, apparently using crypto or something. I am rather skeptical, but perhaps I am just too old. Grazia’s friend, who deals in art, is taking notice of the trend however, so stay tuned when you hear about NFTs. Grazia and I saw a massive digital artwork in the entryway of the storied Renaissance palace – it was a huge white frame filled with swirling, psychedelic shapes that constantly morphed and seemed to spill out of the frame into our space. It actually made us think of the introduction of linear perspective I have been so obsessively telling W&A about – how Donatello in sculpture and then Masaccio in painting continued the revolution in art toward humanism and realism started by Giotto (and Pisano before him) in the early 14^th century. Maybe people looking at this new-fangled art perfected by Leonard da Vinci were met with the same skepticism. Unfortunately, my loyal gang of art lovers were worn out and missed the NFT show, as well as the tour of an amazing collection of modern, 20^th and 21^st century art collected by Grazia’s friend’s father. The collection included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, as well as many other artists I was not familiar with, but should have been. My friend Twink would have been over the moon. 

But lest I forget, Rick and I were also able to have an amazing experience examining, up close, the amazing 15^th century frescoes by Masolino and Masaccio at the Brancacci Chapel south of the Arno River. They are being restored, and visitors are allowed to climb the scaffolding to see the frescoes in small groups, for a half hour. It was amazing to be able to witness this transition from stylized to more realistic, between abstraction and realism – a tension that we saw play out in the modern art of the Casamonti collection as well. Oh yes, and we took W&A to the Uffizi late yesterday before joining Grazia again for a final Florence farewell dinner. Oh, just a few Duccios, Botticellis, Leonardos and Michelangelos before dinner. And we had some amazing food in Florence – the first night, Will and Amy sought out Chinese noodles while we had dinner with Grazia and a few friends from Florence and Rome at the 4 Leoni. Grazia also set us up for an amazing lunch at a hotel-top restaurant with beautiful views of the city – and the best truffle pastas.

Dinner last night was lovely, too, and it was funny, because we first said goodbye to Grazia Saturday night, because she was headed back home on the coast after spending the night at her friend’s house. But then she decided to stay, so we spent Sunday afternoon together at the modern art museum, and said goodbye again. Then she walked her sweet little King Charles Spaniel around a while and decided to stay for dinner! So we had the pleasure of a wonderful Florentine meal with her before she hit the road for home last night. So every time we said goodbye and see you soon, it was true. So hopefully, it will be true again. So we are off to our final stop – Roma! First on the itinerary is pizza, followed by the Roman Forum at night. Tomorrow morning we will get up at 6 a.m. for our early-morning breakfast tour of the Vatican

BOLOGNA, Italy – Friday, May 20, 2022 – We have been extremely remiss in our blogging, so much so that my mother called me last night to remind us to “keep sending those blogs!” It’s nice to know we have a loyal readership. 

Let’s see, where to start? Maybe with our daytrip to Padua, or Padova, a small city outside of Venice with perhaps the most important works of Western art, ever, frescoes by the Florentine artist Giotto di Bondone, in a small early 14^th century chapel next to an ancient Roman arena. Rick and I left Will and Amy in Venice to spend the day on their own, going to the Biennale, Venice’s huge modern art extravaganza, and shopping. But Rick and I opted for the medieval, traveling the 30 minutes by train to Padua, home of one of Europe’s oldest universities (Galileo studied there) and also the home this weekend to a saber Grand Prix, where several of Will’s friends and teammates are fencing. Will’s coach from OFA, Adam, and his daughter are here, and we are missing them in Venice by just one day. We joked with Will that his Notre Dame teammate and friend Jared Smith was going to take a break from the fencing to meet us at the Scrovegni Chapel, and that Jared just LOVED it. 

But all kidding aside, the Scrovegni chapel was breathtaking. I literally was moved to tears, not only by the beauty of the frescoes with their deep humanity – with pathos and humor instantly recognizable to a 21^stcentury observer – but also that I was able to see them in my lifetime. With Covid and all, I wasn’t sure I would ever make it here. We only had 15 minutes in the small chapel – entry is restricted to limit the humidity, which can damage the frescoes, dating from 1303-05, but it was so moving to see them in person. Apparently, Dante (whose tomb we saw yesterday in Ravenna) was a friend of Giotto’s, and they are said to have hung out in the chapel while Giotto was painting it. You wonder if the depiction of hell in Giotto’s Last Judgement inspired Dante’s Inferno. The main walls are covered with deeply colored panels, telling the stories of the life of Mary, of Jesus and of his Passion and resurrection. It was hard to see the detail from the floor, but I had studied them in classes with Dr. Rocky (see previous posts) so I knew what to look for – the funny “side-eye” glance of a shepherd sizing up Joachim’s mental state, the bulbous, wine-sipping priest whose shape is reflected in the nearby wine jugs, the look of despair in the eyes of Mary lamenting her son, or the angels above who mourn with their whole bodies. And who can forget the two kisses – that of the parents of Mary – the “first kiss in Western art” according to Rocky – and the kiss of Judas, in which Jesus looks straight into Judas’s eyes at the moment of betrayal and basically melts him with his laser beam. These frescoes were part of the pre-Black Death zeitgeist in Europe, when Christianity, art and literature were being humanized, brought down to human scale. Dante was soon to write the Divine Comedy in the vernacular, in the Tuscan dialect, so that common people could understand it, if not read it themselves. At the time, everything written – and spoken by the priests in church – was in unintelligible Latin. Giotto was doing the same thing in paint, making the stories of the Bible human, making the people human, with real emotions, rather than the distant, otherworldly, highly stylized Byzantine figures of the Madonna and Jesus. This paved the way, after the Black Death, for the Florentine Renaisance of the 15^th century. I tell you all this because it was incredibly exciting to see these frescoes, and think of all that came after, and before. They are just so beautiful, and even for a non-Christian, they are moving portraits of all the range of human emotion, and body language. People still make the same gestures, facial expressions, exclamations of full-body grief that people did 700 years ago.

Fast-forward to yesterday – when we went to another important city and art pilgrimage site – Ravenna, a long two-hour drive south of Venice. A professor at Stanford, Martin Evans, who has since passed away, said once in a class I was in that everyone should try to go to Ravenna once in their lifetime to see the incredible mosaics from late antiquity. So I did. Finally. This ancient capital of the Roman Empire as it was collapsing in the 5^th century has some of the world’s best preserved and most beautiful ancient mosaics  – probably because it is so far out of the way no one bothered to plunder them. Our favorite was the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia – the 5^th century AD daughter of an emperor who once wrote love letters to Attila the Hun – she was a scream. It isn’t believed she is buried here, but it is an absolute jewel box worthy of an imperial personage or a girlfriend of Attila. The deep blue sky of the small dome sparkled with gold stars looked like an ancient Persian rug, the beautiful plants, animals and Apollo-esque Jesus-as-Shepherd, all felt deeply tied to pagan antiquity. While the other monuments felt more political – the Emperor Justinian declaring his sovereignty (he had retaken Italy from the barbarians in the 6^th century) in his portrait in San Vitale, or the wholesale re-writing of the mosaics at Sant’ Apollinare in Nuovo, where the barbarian-yet-Christian Theodoric had his courtiers repurposed as Christian martyrs by later Catholic re-conquerers. If all that sounds confusing, don’t worry, it is. But it was amusing – or canny – that the mosaicists failed to airbrush out the hands of his courtiers, still stubbornly holding onto the columns of the palace. Their bodies had been “mosaicked” over with curtains. But everywhere, the colors of the tiny tiles and the skill of the unnamed mosaicists were stunning. We had let Will and Amy go their own way, dropping them at the beach, while Rick and I sped through the beautiful old town, hopping from mausoleum to basilica. We had intended to take Will and Amy to one last mosaic-filled church on the way out of town, but it got so late we had to skip that last church. So they will have to come back on their own, one day, and see these mosaics themselves.

 After loooooong hours of driving and perhaps 500 traffic circles, we arrived at Bologna last night, after driving from Venice to Ravenna, to the beach, to Ravenna again, to the beach, and then finally to Bologna. Bologna is a great city, with an estimated 40 km of covered porticoes – we had breakfast under a wooden one dating back to the 13^th century – and swarms of young people. It is crowded but not with tourists – yes, there are tourists too, but mostly it seems to be university students, and people rushing to work – many on the not-quite-sea-worthy bikes that are ubiquitous. It has a nice vibe, and tons of great food, and shopping, and energy. We are glad we had a quiet day here and are gathering our energy for our trip to Florence tomorrow, where we will meet up with Grazia again. 

 So Ma, look! I blogged! 

VENICE, Italy — May 17, 2022 — We arrived in Venice as dark clouds gathered at the end of an unseasonably hot May day, winding our way up a twisting ramp to the sixth floor of a parking garage on the city’s edge and then dragging our bags up and over a half dozen pedestrian bridges on a twenty-minute trek to reach our AirBnB. We tried to eat at a pizza place that sits just below our rooms on the edge of Campo San Polo, Venice’s largest and prettiest piazza, but were refused an outside table because of the possibility of rain. Grumpy and frustrated, we took our pizza up to the rooms, but quickly cooled off when the clouds opened up, and we sat watching the heavy rain pound down on the beautiful piazza, and sheet lightning flared over Venice late into the night.

That’s been the theme of our time in Venice — unusually warm weather, lots of walking, and some minor annoyances, but always a very cool reward, such a stunning 16th century painting, or a cup of pistachio gelato, or an unforgettable view, around the next corner.

A visit to St. Mark’s Basilica, for instance, required a considerable march across much of Venice, and when we finally arrived and presented our tickets, we were denied entry because Amy’s skirt did not cover her knees. Meanwhile, one male tourist after another trudged past us into the basilica showing their legs. Anyway, a nearby street salesman offered up a fairly garish scarf/wrap in exchange for five euros (such a deal), and we made our way into the basilica. Of course, it was hot in there, and crowded, and the scaffolding in front of the building took some of the shine off the bronze horses that overlook St. Mark’s Square. It wasn’t a great experience, and we came back out in the blazing sun slightly disappointed, but then, yet again, Venice delivered a welcome respite.

We hired a water taxi, one of those sleek, beautifully maintained wooden boats, to take us on a ride from St. Mark’s up the Grand Canal, under the Rialto Bridge, and then back down the Grand Canal and into the maze of narrow side channels that lead into the San Polo neighborhood. It was a fabulous experience, one of the highlights of our trip, just cruising up the main canal lined with fading palazzos, dodging the gondolas and overloaded water buses. The taxi driver gabbed on his phone the entire time, while we stood in the back of the boat, the breeze in our faces, and watched Venice go by and by. We were dropped off only a few yards from the Campo San Polo, our home away from home. That was cool.

MANTOVA, Italy – Sunday, May 15, 2022 – On our first day in the city best known to the English-speaking world as the place where Romeo fled after killing Juliet’s cousin, we tried to ease into an Italian frame of mind, with a late-night dinner in an ancient piazza, enjoying the still-warm evening air with an old friend.

Grazia, whom I have known since Will and her daughter Chiara started pre-school together at Catlin, grew up 45 minutes away in Asola, where her mother still lives. So she made the trek from her home near the Cinque Terre, almost 3 hours away, to welcome us to Italy and catch up after many months of only the occasional text or FaceTime call. She arrived looking glamorous, as always, in a white T-shirt and jeans – how does she do that??? – with her little King Charles Spaniel, Maya, at her heels. We spent the late afternoon sitting in trattorie, exploring the barrel-vaulted splendor of the Duomo, wandering the medieval historic core, stopping at shops she has known since she was young, as always searching for the best, most authentic foods typical of the region. As you may know, Grazia is an amazing cook (I still remember the lasagne she brought to the first preschool potluck) and an expert on Italian regional food. I helped her edit recipes years ago for an app and blog she was creating, and so I had actually learned about many of the specialties she pointed out – and tasted – as we walked – a rose-shaped cake, an almond confection. I had forgotten the Mantua connection! In any case, it was just wonderful to see her and catch up on her life, her family and her many projects.

We had a very special dinner on the Piazza dell’Erbe, near the old clocktower, after a day that was unseasonably hot and extremely crowded with tourists, many of whom were Italian. It felt more like a crowded Florence in August than spring in an off-the-beaten-path Northern Italian city. However, by the time we had dinner at 8 p.m. (late for us, early for everyone else) it had started to cool down and the sky turned a deep blue, and it was just lovely. Grazia managed to talk the maitre d’ into giving us the best table on the edge of the seating area, with the nicest view and the best air flow.

We ordered the Rice from Mantua, or Risotto alla Mantova, which has a special place in all our hearts. Grazia taught me to make this dish years ago, and it is one of Will’s favorite comfort foods. I always knew I wasn’t making it quite right, since I didn’t have the proper kind of pork, but I wondered how close I was getting to the authentic dish. When the waiter placed the dish in front of us, it looked, well, like Rice from Mantua – the rice had the right shape, the meat the right texture, the taste startlingly familiar. Will seemed astounded that it really was like our favorite dish – we were eating our home cooking in the hometown of Virgil, in a medieval piazza thousands of miles from home. To be having the authentic dish with Grazia herself made it all the more special. After two years of the pandemic, and several more before that of my own surreal cancer trauma, it felt like an experience I would never imagine I would have again in my life. And it felt so normal, to be sitting with an old friend, catching up, enjoying the food and the evening air. So simple. So precious.