We’ve been here over four weeks now, we’ve settled into routines. One of them is going for a walk around 3:30 or 4:00, 
a welcome interruption to the work day, when the light is often good for photography.
For the first few weeks, we were gobstruck by the beautiful – pretty – aspects of Ortygia, the medieval island enclave of Siracusa where we’re living. And it is very pretty in many ways – the sea, the baroque architecture, the boats, the light. And I’ve taken lots of postcard photos.
But Ortygia is no heaven. For one thing, it’s a city under construction. Generations of Ortygians abandoned the place for the “new” city on the mainland, across 100-meter-long bridges. The old buildings mouldered.
More recently, enterprising folk and the city itself have been renovating historic structures, in part to help foster the tourist industry. But slowly. We are constantly wandering by buildings that are absoltuely gorgeous but abandoned and in terrible need of work, and others that are wrapped in scaffolding, undergoing a much-needed make-over.
Ortygia has also unfortunately been touched by the modern, especially along the sea wall and near the bridges. We are absolutely mystified by a current construction project over near the marina. It appears to be a totally unnecessary blight. Giant, unidentifiable concrete block structures are blotting out the water view from a lovely little park under the shadow of the sea wall.
It stinks of the corruption that we understand from all we read is rampant in Italy. We must ask our landlord, Giorgio, about this project to find out what it’s all about. Why would you destroy this lovely part of the city, as they are surely doing?
And then there is the breakwater and raised promenade on the other side of the downtown – on what we call the wild side, the Ionian Sea. It too smacks of a municipal project sullied by corruption.
The elegant-looking park benches on the promenade, for example, are made of steel – which has rusted badly. If you sat on them you’d end up with brown stains on your clothes. What idiot thought of that idea? Or let it pass.
The VP finance, given the chance, would also rail against the grafitti (which I rather like) – no conincidence perhaps that it’s an Italian word – which is everywhere, especially on the new modern structures.
Anyway, to view some of the less picturesque side of Ortygia, see my latest post at Flickr.
a welcome interruption to the work day, when the light is often good for photography.For the first few weeks, we were gobstruck by the beautiful – pretty – aspects of Ortygia, the medieval island enclave of Siracusa where we’re living. And it is very pretty in many ways – the sea, the baroque architecture, the boats, the light. And I’ve taken lots of postcard photos.
But Ortygia is no heaven. For one thing, it’s a city under construction. Generations of Ortygians abandoned the place for the “new” city on the mainland, across 100-meter-long bridges. The old buildings mouldered.
More recently, enterprising folk and the city itself have been renovating historic structures, in part to help foster the tourist industry. But slowly. We are constantly wandering by buildings that are absoltuely gorgeous but abandoned and in terrible need of work, and others that are wrapped in scaffolding, undergoing a much-needed make-over.
Ortygia has also unfortunately been touched by the modern, especially along the sea wall and near the bridges. We are absolutely mystified by a current construction project over near the marina. It appears to be a totally unnecessary blight. Giant, unidentifiable concrete block structures are blotting out the water view from a lovely little park under the shadow of the sea wall.
It stinks of the corruption that we understand from all we read is rampant in Italy. We must ask our landlord, Giorgio, about this project to find out what it’s all about. Why would you destroy this lovely part of the city, as they are surely doing?And then there is the breakwater and raised promenade on the other side of the downtown – on what we call the wild side, the Ionian Sea. It too smacks of a municipal project sullied by corruption.
The elegant-looking park benches on the promenade, for example, are made of steel – which has rusted badly. If you sat on them you’d end up with brown stains on your clothes. What idiot thought of that idea? Or let it pass.The VP finance, given the chance, would also rail against the grafitti (which I rather like) – no conincidence perhaps that it’s an Italian word – which is everywhere, especially on the new modern structures.
Anyway, to view some of the less picturesque side of Ortygia, see my latest post at Flickr.
No comments:
Post a Comment