Acqua e Arte in Venezia

The Grand Canal

        The first time I visited Venice I was using film with a couple of Holga's & my OM1. I arrived by public boat from the airport as most do, the Alilaguna pilot deftly cruising past the empty Zitelle stop, as no one was there to get on, and no one got off...I had come that March to celebrate a milestone birthday (a young maiden alone) meeting up with a couple of friends for the occasion. Discovering Calitri was more than a year away, a still unconscious dream ...

 Santa Maria della Presentazione (le Zitelle)

12 years & a Lumix/Leica later (not to mention a house in Irpinia) I am being whisked across the laguna on a private boat heading back to the Zitelle to view The Palladio Hotel & Spa the newest of Francesca Bortolotto Possati's creations on the once neglected island of Giudecca.  

Opened in March, The BAUERs Venezia has transformed la Chiesa della Zitelle, a former 16th Century convent for unmarried girls - with its lush Renaissance gardens, abandoned for a century - into a luxury oasis. Zitelle is Italian for silent ... young maidens, without dowries, too. Fountains tinkling along a light filled corridor, where the young women with no dowries once washed their linens, is the only sound you hear ... and that wonderful scent?

Aria di B ...

Apart from creating soothing environments, Francesca Bortolotto Possati has a sensibility for ARTE.  In March of 2012 alone she has supported and hosted a number of creative and literary events; from the Scuola Grande di San Roco to the Casa dei Tre Oci, from photographer with an Italian past, Elliott Erwitt, to Gustave Klimt and his muse ... so that the once silent and forgotten Zitelle stop on the Giudecca is now being hailed as the SOHO of Venezia

 



Omaggio a Piazza della Repubblica

This is hands down my favorite postcard of Calitri.  

I have admired it's vintage Kodachrome colors on the wall of Dorina Paolantonio's apartment for years. And it could easily be her in pencil skirt and white blouse strolling around the Piazza della Repubblica, while turning to glance at the guy on the vespa closing in behind her.

I say omaggio because today the Piazza is little like it used to be, and not only because of the 1980 earthquake. It has been left mostly abandoned, no more than a parking lot for the Comune. 

But the real omaggio goes to Dorina's family who had a Singer agency and repair shop on the Piazza for at least 3 generations; their Singer sign painted on a side wall still visible, though beautifully faded, as part of the general rubble.  

Dorina's father Vito Paolantonio was The Master sarto of the village.  Dorina herself would sit in the big front window of the shop and follow the comings and goings in the Piazza - who was strolling with whom etc - as she gave sewing lessons to young women about to be married. 

I can't help thinking that with a little imagination the Piazza della Repubblica could be transformed again into the lively center of town life, nay the center of Irpinian life, that it used to be ... 

'Ngimma cort!