Barcelona Barcelona

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This past Thursday-Sunday I went to Barcelona. I saw lots of Gaudi stuff and a few museums. I saw the Picasso museum which had a fascinating collection of Picasso's early work and also the National Museum of Catalan art which spanned Gothic/Romanesque up to around the present. The works from the 19th century and Gaudi's time were extremely great to see. Gaudi sort of dominates his era as a historical figure so it was helpful to see what else was being created and thought about. Also on the Gaudi note, it seems everything constructed in the city after him has some sort of reference to him. It was great to see his stuff but it seemed all more of a novelty. The methods of trying to construct his structures were not nearly as innovative or provocative as the structures themselves.
Anyway, I tried to see as much as possile and so today my feet ache and my legs are sore. Lots of walking. Barcelona is a grid city and also has a simple metro so it was pretty easy to get around.
One of the most interesting things I saw were these large irregular geometric blocks in the Sagrada Familia (pictured below). Basically Gaudi's building blocks and the breakdown of the shapes that make up Sagrada Familia.
I also saw the Barcelona Pavilion which I had to draft for Manuel Representation last year. It was origianlly constructed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as the German Pavilion for the International Expositition in Barcelona in 1929 and was torn down after the Exposition. It is now an icon of modern architecture and was reconstructed in the 1980s.

Here are some photos from our southern tour. Each year EHP takes its students on a tour of some places in Northern or Southern Italy. We stayed 1 night in Paestum, 3 in Matera and 2 in Naples. Paestum has monumental Greek Ruins. The old part of Matera is built into a mountainside and is both carved into the mountain and built up from it. The town was so isolated that by the 1960s the people were still living like Medieval Times and the Italian government declaired it the "shame of the nation" and esentially closed down the town building fascist style apartment rows nearby. In the late 1980s the old part was opened up again and since then is becoming a place to live again for a new generation. There are still many abadoned looking structures but much renovation is happening and a 5 star hotel has just moved in. Mel Gibson filmed "The Passion" in Matera.
Finally, Naples was pretty intense. It was a very active and alive city. In Rome Vespas will stop or swerve around you but in the part of Naples we were in, they would just go and it was your own problem to move out of their way. It was, however, a lot of fun and the food was excellent. We realized while we were driving out of the city, just how large it was and how much we didn't have time to see. Naples felt more like NYC then the part of Rome we are living in. Just before we left we saw the Naples Archaeological Museum which was fantastic. Many famous mosaics and a great collection of bronze statues from Herculaneum.
In between cities, we stopped at Pompeii, Vesuvius, Oplontis (ancient villa), Aberobello (little round white houses with stacked stone dome tops), amoung others. The Capodimonte Museum on a hilltop overlooking Naples was also fantastic for its collection of paintings and drawings including Raphael and Michelangelo sketch and a Caravaggio.
We also saw "Naples underground" which was a network of underground cisterns and stone quarries dating back to before Roman times. In order to get stone, people used to quarry way underneath buildings and lift the stones up. This created a cistern and space under the city. The larger the building on top, the bigger the underground area.
Anyway, we saw a lot and kept moving the whole time. It was a pretty informative and inspiring week. This blurb is probably 1/100 of an explanation.

also: yesterday we felt an aftershock from Monday's earthquake. It was completely harmless but felt pretty eerie. It wasn't like a jackhammer next door, but a slow sway.

Earthquake

Everyone on EHP is ok. We were actually traveling as a group away from Rome and luckily didn't feel a thing.