Heraldry Helps Me to Date the Restoration in Salerno

There are news in volunteer's activity in Salerno. The municipality opened the "throne room" of our site for some days. I took my photo-camera to snapped photos but the girls wanted to play with it and changed the settings. I noticed the bad quality of the photos when I came home but that room was closed the same day and I can't take better photos, unfortunatelly. So, with my excuses I offer you what I have with the hope, they will open that room once.



This is the S.Anna's chapel in the open part of the site. There are 2 frescos made by Filippo Pennino. We said, the chapel was build about 1720.

The next photo is of the picture in the actually closed upper room. There are arms in the corners of this picture. They belong to the Pignatelli family. They managed this room together with an other noble family of Salerno.



This is the photo of the arms that are picted on the canvas over here and carved on the marble altars. It tells, the "owner" was a cardinal/ archbishop devoted to the cause of the church and he was from Pignatelli family. The only archbishop of Salerno from Pignatelli served the church from 1783 till 1794 there.



From other side, Filippo Pennino worked in other places in 1720 and 1750. So, as for me, we can attribute precise date to both picture and frescos.

What do you think I'm interested in now? I snap photos of every arms I found in Salerno and everywhere I happen. :0))) Maybe I'll have enough dates to write an interesting report about it one day.

The Roman Ship Museum

The ship museum in Oslo is not the only museum of the ships. One of them you can visit if you have to pass some hours in the airport of Rome, Fiumicino, where you can see the Roman ships. At the beginning it was built for the ships of the Emperor Caligola, found there in 1929. Those were the palaces on the water because the Emperor liked to organize feasts on the water. The 2 ships were burned in 1944 but actually the museum is open and there are many interesting pieces to see there.

This museum (Via Diana, 15, Nemi, Tel/Fax 06 9398040) is open from 9:00 till 18:00

Naval archeology had different successes in the last time in Italy. They found very rare ships not far from Venice, I know. I'll write about it, if I find more information about it.


«Арго и золотое руно» на Яндекс.Фотках

Wine Tourism In Italy

I wrote different posts about the wines of Campania, Italy in my other travel blog (listed in the bottom) and plan to describe some of the wines in next posts. That is why I was attracted by the news notice about strange use of the wine in Nord of Italy. One of the enterprises decided to attract persons offering them baths of wine (not wine-wine but extract from the must), massages with creams made with wine/must, rooms made inside the "barrels" (not natural). They say, there are queues months and months long to enjoy this invention. Yes, it's interesting.



I wonder if the wine-makers from Sud Italy, those that love their wines so much, those that make everything possible to occupy their good place among the world known leading figures would create something similar if they could. Speaking with some of them in the testing I understood, they are very proud of their wines because they are born there, because they continue the millenary tradition, because their vines are so special while growing in the National Park of Vesuvius... I think, this, from North Itlay, attraction, devalue the high level of appreciation that wine-makers wanted (at least I understood it so) to create.

What do you think about it?

These are my articles:

• Wine And Ceramics
• Genuine Products From The Slopes Of Vesuvius
• Great Vegetarian Diet -Wines From Campania, Italy
• Passion For Wines From Vesuvius
• Sanctuary Of The Modern Pompei
• Wines Of Sud Italy
• Healing Drink -Liquor China China Pisanti

Your Breakfast In Italy

I just wrote about the breakfasts in Italy and practically now I'll repeat my opinion. It is because different persons claimed the breakfasts in Italian Hotels, this time. Personally I don't like hotels because they seem to me ...I don't know how to express it... they have not a soul. They don't like you. Hotels -buildings, not the persons. That is why I do everything possible to avoid them if I can. But the brekfasts in hotels are a special side of the story. They are terrible. It's not only my opinion, it's what different persons think about this theme. And not only about the low cost but middle-high level hotels too.

The solution, if you are in Italy, is very simple.
Go out in the street. Look right and left. Find a bar. Look inside if they have "cornetti" and, if those they have, you like them. It's besser if they are warm like in this photo.



Enter in the bar and ordine "un caffè (cappuccino) e un cornetto ( con marmellata/chocolata)" -about euro 1,00-1,40/ 1,80 in our zone.
If you want more coffee, ask "caffè lungo makkiàto (it's pronunciation, you have to write "macchiato") -on my second photo (the same price of normal coffee), a coffee cup full with coffee with a drop of milk. "Kapuchchìno"(cappuccino) is coffee with milk in a little tea-cup. You can ask milk with coffee and it will be a big glass with much milk and some coffee ("latte con caffè").

Believe me, it will be a great breakfast specially if you found a bar with very good "cornetti". If you want more, eat the second "dolce" ("sweety") that you like.

Pompei, Italy: Explanations On The Streets

This post continue the talk about my trip in Pompei, Italy (region Campania) Now I want to show you an interesting peculiarity of this town. I liked it very much.



On the main streets that diverge from the Sanctuary I found great signs with the descriptions from the life in the Roman age. Written in Italian and English but with beautiful and clear pictures if you don't know both of them. I think, it's very good innovation (it did not exist when I was there last time). Every visitor of the excavations, like me, could not imagine what was here before. The ruins are only the ruins -they are the same in all the times, they are not interesting if you do not understand what it is.

I invented this photographing of the signs when I have not time to read them, than I come home and can read them clearly with zoom. They are full of interesting information normally.

How To Be Sure To Take Bus Or Train In Campania, Italy

When you travel in other country or in an other region of own country, you have to solve a problem with tickets. I just wrote, it's comfortable to buy all the possible tickets online, if tere is this possibility. Tickets of trains, airplains and museums-shows-exhibitions are often avilable online. It's completly different, if you have to waste time looking for a ticket office and than wait your turn to buy that ticket, or when you just have a ticket and can only explore the timetable and the place where you have to take your bus/train and maybe visit the toilet or a bar.



I could not understand the system here, in Campania, where to find that damned ticket, so I'll describe it here if you suddenly need this information. You will read my next posts about the wines of Campania and will decide to come here urgently to taste them together with me. ;-))) Well, if together, you don't need to read this post because you will have me as a guide, and I just know everything.

On the photo over here id the railway station of Pompei. It was my latest trip, so, this is the most fresh photo I have. Why I did not take a photo of the railway station of Nocera Superiore -is a mystery that nobody could explain today.

In any case you hacve to know that many of the stations DO NOT HAVE ticket offices. That of Pompei has it, but that of Nocera Superiore has no ticket office neither timetables. Here you have to know just what train you have to take and to be just with a ticket.

If there is a ticket office, you have not to be toooooo happy about it. Because you have to be sure that it will be open when you come there.

Once I had to visit one of the near villages. It was the period when the new system to buy tickets was introduced here. I had not tickets. The bus driver waited for me till I bought the ticket in the bar, and I could happily arrive in that village I had to go. About an hour later I finished all my tasks there and wanted to go home... when I discovered all the shops, bars, offices etc etc were closed for lunch. And they will be open at 17:00. Point. It was at 13:00. This village is about 10 km far from my home... I stopped the bus (the same -I was happy that day) and prayed the driver to take me on board. I don't want money, he said, I'm not a ticket collector. But he allwod me to enter.



These are the new (for today) tickets you can use in most busses and trains of the region. The same for the bus and for the train. Valid for that period of time written on it. It means, if you need to take first bus than train, than another train (if you go from Nocera in Pozzuoli for example), you can use one ticket till you reach the place where you are going.

If you don't find a ticket office in the station, you have to look for "Tabaccaio" or a nearest bar or news stall. Look for a such sign:

The Madonna of the Rosary Sanctuary of Pompei

I told you, I wanted to visit a manifestation where were presented the wines of Campania that took place in Pompei on Marz, 25. It happend so that I came an hour earlier and had time to visit Sanctuary too.

This Sanctuary is very important for all the residents of Campania and there is a day in May,I think, when they go to visit it at feet. A sort of pelgrinage. I know persons that walk 12 km till Pompei every year to thank Madonna for received grace. Once I has to go in Naples with the bus that passed through Pompei on that day and there were hundreds of persons walking in Pompei long all the road.



I just described the sanctuary in my post Sanctuary Of The Modern Pompei and invite you to visit it for more information and photos.

Oracles And Haruspices To Visit

When I wrote the post about the oracle lake in Tibet (Searching For The Revelation of the Future) the theme seemed to me very interesting, so I wanted to explore it deeper.
If you are interested to learn more about oracles and similar, you will surely appreciate the idea to visit places where they operated.

There is a cave not too far from here, antro della Sibilla, where it was possible to ask gods to answer the questions, too. I was there but actualy I have not photos from there. Such places were numerous in Ancient Greece and in Etruria in Italy. Etrurians, by the way, were known as the best haruspices, those who knew to interprete the will of the Gods observing the natural events, birds, the entrails of sacrificed animals etc. The last record of a haruspex comes from year 405.

In Piacenza, a city in Tuscania, Italy, you can see a special tool for haruspices, a life-sized model of liver with explanations written in Etruscian language. (the Municipal Museum of Piacenza, in the Palazzo Farnese on the photo)



The most important places, where there were oracles, were listed by Herodotus:
Delphi, Abae, Ioannina, Dodona, Klaros, Buto -in Greece, one other was in Libia. It's the plan of the posts for the next times.

Impermanence As The Travel Destination

Everybody of us is afraid of changes in the life. The old, usual world goes away and something unknown comes on it's place. We can't know, if it is good or bad, we don't know, if it will take benefits or sufferings. We think, sufferings are more frequent in this life, and we don't like them.

Well, you are not right, I don't want to open courses of philosophy here. I want to suggest you a new way to choose the aim of your next trip. Impermanence. What I mean with it? Now I'll explain the idea to you with the photos.


«Мессинский пролив. г.Мессина. Вид на материк, часть региона Калабрия (самый-самый мысочек итальянского сапога)» на Яндекс.Фотках

On the photo over here is Messina/Sicilia and the strait between it and the Italian peninsula. This is the classic view that remains so for years and centuries. But it will not be so forever. The Italian government wants to build a bridge here, connecting the island with the mainland. This way, they say, the cars will arrive the ports and the life on the island will be not so expensive.

The problem is that just in this strait, between these parts of earth there is a place where 2 big parts of the earth crost meet and move. What will happen with the bridge over them?

In any case if you visit Messina today, before they begin to build that bridge, you can see it so as the Earthfather created it. If you will come some years later, you will probably find i new bridge -or the rests of it. (the bridge in Istanbul on the photo)


«Стамбул-Константинополь» на Яндекс.Фотках

San Pietro A Corte and Archeological Group of Salerno

You ask me from time to time, what I do in our excavations site in Salerno. Now I'll try to tell you about it .

«Сан Пьетро А Корте И Салернитанская археологическая группа» на Яндекс.Фотках
San Pietro A Corte is one of the 3 most important sites in Salerno. Here you can meet the story of the town from Roman times through the Early Middle Ages, Normann period till today.

We, volunteers of the Archeological Group, try to do all the possible to open this site every day. If it was not so, the site was close for visits as all other interesting places are. The town and the region has not funds for it. Actually we open it every day except monday.

To the persons that come to visit the excavations, tourists and residents, we tell the story of the town, of this site.
Not only we tell many interesting things to them but we learn from them too. Specially when residents remember what they have seen with their eyes and what they heard from their parents and grandies is very interesting.

Here, Felice Pastore, our president, with a group of tourists


«Сан Пьетро А Корте И Салернитанская археологическая группа» на Яндекс.Фотках

Pietro Crivelli, one of the eldest members of the group.


«Сан Пьетро А Корте И Салернитанская археологическая группа» на Яндекс.Фотках

Aurora, an other member of our group, with the tourists in the part over the Roman bath and Paleochristian church.


«Сан Пьетро А Корте И Салернитанская археологическая группа» на Яндекс.Фотках

The other part of the complex is the St. Anne's chapel


«Сан Пьетро А Корте И Салернитанская археологическая группа» на Яндекс.Фотках

When nobody comes to visit us we speak about everything. I love to listen to other members when they tell peculiarities from the story of Italy and this region. I ask allways and everytime. So, the shifts in S.Pietro are very informative and interesting for me.


«Сан Пьетро А Корте И Салернитанская археологическая группа» на Яндекс.Фотках

Places Remembering Giordano Bruno

With this post I want to continue to follow the pathes of very important characters of the human history.

Here I begin with Giordano Bruno, a rebel monk. He teached different ideas that were against the doctrine of the church. First of all, he thought, the Earth turns around the Sun and not contrary. He thought, there are many planets similar to our Sun and the Universe is very big (Read this post too: What We Are In The Universe? )

The life of Bruno beginns not far from the place I live, near Nola, a not very big town behind Vesuv.

He studied at the monastery in Naples and 17 years old entered the Dominican Order. He did not want to follow the philosophy of the church and had his own point of view. For this heresy he had to run away from the church all his life. He changed many places but finished his life in Rome, where was burned at the stake by Roman Inquisition after 7 years of the prison.

Here you see the view on the zone where he was born with Vesuv in the background.

«Vesuvio» на Яндекс.Фотках

And this is the palace of the Inquisition in Rome, piazza dei Fiori, where Bruno was prosecuted. He was burned here too. The statue you see over here is situated in the same square too.

Посмотреть на Яндекс.Фотках

Neapoletan Christmas Cribs

Happy Christmas!

One of the traditions in Campania are the visits of "Presepe", the representations of Christ's birth. The idea comes from S.Francisc that wanted to explain the Bible to the simple persons. But it seems, the greatest diffusion it became in Neapoletan area. There are entire streets in Neaples dedicated to sell pieces of Presepe. And many of them are really works of art. To visit Presepe is a sign of auspice. And there are different possibilities. There are, for example, alive representstions where the persons show a sort of theater. There are little and large size pictures.

I visited one of them, exposed every year not far from Dom. The scene is crated on a round table, so I made some photos walking around it. Hope, this visit will bring you fortune too! :0)))

Many persons probably create a Presepe in their homes too. There are many places and even special shops where you can buy everything you need for it. All the figures seem to be alive. Made with great attention and love.

What is interesting, the image of Christ-child they put it on it's place only AFTER the birth. And in some cases all the "partecipants" like visitors of the Holy Family "come" every day nearer and nearer to the place of birth. Every day when you visit Presepe you will find other situation.

Meeting Of Those Who Promote Archeological Tourism

Our Archeological Group participates every autumn on these events. These are meetings of all those who wants to promote archeological tourism. Archeologists and tour operators, archeological groups and governors of the regions where there are many archeological objects -persons from many countries come there.

I had not much time for the photos. From the moment I came there I had to stay near the stand with the books -to sell them. So I have only these photos to give you a little source of this feast.



It is interesting. You can take many maps, special books for tourists etc. You can look at the dancers and listen to the folk musik, taste regional foods and sample wines from different countries. Hundreds of persons go from one stand to other, speak with specialists, take part on the conferences.

One of the conferences was about Longobards this year. And there I had to present our books. The most known archeologists from all Italy told what they discovered about Longobards in their regions. On my photos you see the images of the women of that period -presented by Chiara Lambert, an archeologist of Salerno.



This is a Longobard woman

Discovering Sardinia With Sardinia Open Voucher

Sardinia is a very intreresting to visit part of Italy. I have friends there and know they have normally better weather conditions as we in Campania. Now there is a possibility to plan and organize a trip round the island using servises of Portale Sardegna that offers special search engine to customize your itinerary online so as you are communicating with a travel agent.

The service called Sardinia Open Voucher is composed from a hotel and rental car formula. You can choose from 60 three and four stars hotels situating in any part of Sardinia and pick up the car and drop it off at the airport. This will cost you euro 29,99 a day. This price is for the period from October till March. It will change surely according to class and seasonality. In other periods the price is higher but it is very interesting the same. Control the price list on the site when you plan your travel.

Sardinia travel is an unforgettable experience in any season. I told you just about very nice weather conditions all year round. But you will surely enjoy not only beaches, mountains and air. There are many important historical places there. The population often conserves it's ancestral traditions and you can partecipate on the folkloric feasts.
Once visited the island, you will return there.

Longobard's Women

This year I decided to partecipate on the manifestation promoting archeological tourism "Borsa Mediterranea Del Turismo Archeologico". Our Archeological Group partecipates on it every year but it is too far from the place where I live, so it is too complicate for me to go there. This year there are different conferences, and they need more persons, so I said I'll come too.

I (with other women of our group) have to present the typical plates coming from Longobard period. Those have to be cooked by Archeological groups of different regions of Italy. I'll write about it in my later posts. Now I wanted to inform myself about the clothes and hairstyle of the women of that period. That is why I did a great research in internet.

What you see here, on the photo from Wikipedia, is the picture of Theodolinda, a queen with Longobard roots. I found only one other picture of a Longobard queen -with similar hairstyle. So, sunday I'll try to make something like this on my head too. :0)))

What is interesting about the Longobard's women: it seems they had important role in their society. We notice it from the very first legend about the future Longobards. When they have to fight against the Vandals, the 2 brothers leading the group go to their mother, G'ambara, to ask what to do. The mother asks to help them Freja, the wife of Godan (Odin). Freja turns the bed of Godan in the morning (!), so that he sees first Winnilies with their wives under him (Winnilies were not very numerous, so the women were there to show great number of persons to Godan).

I read about different Longobard queens, and all they had very active role near their husbands.

S. Peter At Court -A Monument To Visit In Salerno

One of the most interesting monuments you can find open in Salerno is S. Peter At Court. A must to visit for those who wants to see in one place all the history of Salerno from the time when it was a building of Roman public baths, than Paleochristian church and cemetery, than a private chapel of Longobard Prince Areki II, than oratorium...

You see the entrance on the photo. The building is on the right. We are voluntaries of the Archeological Group of Salerno and come here every morning to open the monument. It is difficult for many of us, for those who studys or works. But it is really very important for the town where only 2 or 3 other monuments are open every day.

There is other room over the place of archeological excavation where we are but this room is closed for visits.

When the visitors comne we tell them the story of this building and what the archeologists discovered in the site. Most persons are very impressed not only to have a free guide but to meet so much dedication of the volunteers.



Here, 7 meters under the actual street level, are the rests of the Roman baths. The ceiling is reconstructed, but it was it's natural hight and form. In the attached S. Anna chapel we expose books, magazines etc.

The Bronze Door Of The Cathedral Of Salerno

What you see on the photo is the yard of the Cathedral of Salerno. And one of the most important manufacts of this Dom and of the Middle Ages generally is it's bronze door (in center).

This door was made in Constantinople at the end of the XI century. There are not many similar doors in Europe and the first of them were made in Constantinople.

The very first was the door of Pantheon in Rome made by Romans in 125. This one inspired merchants resident of Amalfi, Pantaleone and his son, and they donated similar door to the cathedral of Amalfi in 1060. The other they ordined for the abbey of Montecassino in 1066. The cathedral of Salerno was a copy of that of Montecassino. It's clear that it had to have similar door too. So one of the rich donators, Landolfo Butromile, ordined this door in Constantinople . This last is more beautiful as previous. It contains figures of the Saints. Near S. Mattheus you can see the figures of the donators, Landolfo and his wife, Gisana.



I was very curious why there are so many churches in Salerno and so many donated pieces.
In Middle Ages the people believed they will go in the paradise if they donatre something important to the God. The cathedral needed this door and so Landolfo and his wife could live happily insured their places in paradise.

After the death both were burried in the cathedral, and you can see their gravestones preserved near the door they donated today.

St. Andrew In Amalfi

The Cathedral of Amalfi is built over the crypt with the relics of St.Andrew. I don't want to tell you the story of this Apostel, you can read it in Wikipedia. The only thing I want write here:

Cardinal Pedro born in Amalfi took the relics there in 1208 from Constantinople. They ar in this crypt behind the grating you see on the photo.







Read interesting articles about many different things all over the world in my other blogs:
General "Diary"
about Animals
about semiprecious stones
money making articles
Yungdrung Bon Blog