I.viii. An Aperçu

“In the evening I managed to get away from the old, venerable, and scholarly city, from the multitudes who, under the arcades that line almost every street, are able to stroll, chat, shop, and gossip, protected from sun and harsh weather. I climbed the bell-tower and embraced the fresh air. The panorama is splendid!”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have been here for over a week, and I suppose I should provide some sort of overview, some sort of apercu, of what this city is. I have launched myself into the thick of an anecdotal narrative, gleefully recounting these trivial stories, without really situating them in any sort of communal space. The problem, I think, is that in my mind I have a model of what Bologna is that pervades all my experiences here, but like many things in my mind it has yet to make it to paper.
    Bologna has three famous nicknames: scholarly, fat, and red. All these should be interpreted in the widest way possible, and to them another dozen or so minor ones could be added. Scholarly is most straightforward, it refers to the nearly thousand year old University, its droves of students and professors, its hallowed halls, courtyards and corridors. It may even sarcastically refer to the Punka-Bestia, the juvenile delinquents who sport Che Guevara t-shirts and lead large packs of dogs, none of which seem to attend the University proper.
    Fat is the gluttony of the city, renowned for its cuisine and its position not above, not below, but on the olive oil-butter line that otherwise divides Europe like a culinary iron curtain. But fat is also more figuratively felt in the affluence much of the city exudes. True, it is a dirty city, with beggars, gangs, drugs, and other problems, but its civic consciousness is still a wealthy one. Grittiness and refinement, two of the best single word explanations of the place, mingle chaotically. In its centre Bologna feels rich, while at the same time the streets are stained with dog shit and urine, and graffiti is ubiquitous; it is like a Mediterranean Moscow or Buenos Aires.
    Red, however, is the truest nature of Bologna, seeping through not only the glowing brick and marble of the old city but also in politics; the civic government has long been dominated by communists. Even the street furniture is painted a bright fire-engine hue. I recall reading an explanation for this is a rather amusingly written guidebook; “Some urban planning official obviously had a very good sense of humour, or absolutely none at all!” Owing to the decided lack of appreciation for irony demonstrated by most Italians I have encountered so far, I would probably opt for the latter explanation. Still, it is champagne socialism, well meaning but a tad hypocritical, and I can see where the punks are coming from.
    Guido Piovene, an Italian novelist, once described all these things thus:
    Bologna is one of the most beautiful cities in Italy and Europe. There’s no other city that resembles it or that could ever replace it. The city is beautiful in its richness, in its abundance of colour; this, the colour that saturates the place, is first and foremost red or russet of the most physical kind, a red that is reminiscent of blood and the human body. Florence is emaciated and stretched out. In Bologna, however, the porticoes, arcades, and domes all speak of fleshy roundness. Even the dialect and the accent are exuberant, and have a certain roundness. Some of the small medieval laneways in the centre take one back to the real life of the Middle Ages more than in other cities where the past is an archaeological one… One doesn’t think of beauty in Bologna, one absorbs it and breathes it in; it is a consumable entity here. To put it in Freudian terms, going to Bologna is a little bit like re-entering the maternal womb.
    The only thing more complex than the interplay of these three forces (scholarly, fat, and red) is perhaps the layout of the city itself. To begin with, Bologna is large. The size of its historic centre is comparable to those of Paris, Barcelona, or Milan, though it is much smaller in population. By consequence, the city doesn’t sprawl; it has definite boundaries that are surprisingly close by, especially to the south, where the first foothills of the Apennines are just a few blocks away from the circolare, or ring road. Bologna, then, has a dual nature, between the hills that divide it from Florence and the broad green plain of the Po delta that continues northwards. It has never been of any particular strategic value, and that has served it well throughout the centuries, and even Petrarch remarked on how the city wall was more perfunctory than anything.
    The city is dense, chaotic, and noisy. Its physiognomy hasn’t changed a great deal since the Middle Ages, and so the streets are impossibly narrow but still heavily trafficked by buses, cars, and vespas. Everything is cobbled, which adds to the clamor, and there are few, if any, urban parks. The true respite comes in the form of arcades, great elegant covered sidewalks that line most of the streets here, and are usually wider than the paved road itself. Some obsessive must have had the motivation to count these, because in total I have been told that there are some thirty-eight kilometers of them, though in reality it seems as though there are far more, as I am always finding undiscovered ones. City life has forever taken place under the vaults and arches of these seemingly interminable arcades, and it is possible to stroll for hours protected from both rain and sun.
    The focal point of the city is of course Piazza Maggiore, overlooked by the mammoth unfinished raw brick façade of the unfinished Basilica of San Petronio as well as various other palaces housing various civic institutions. But Bologna is also a city of many centres, among which the University is certainly among the more important. Via Zamboni, the high street of the University, is an extremely straight, narrow road that at times seems almost canyon-like. It is an entirely medieval and renaissance streetscape, one that was never meant to host a university. It has, of course, arcades on either side that shelter student bars, bookstores, and banks. Several major bus routes run on the one-way, one lane street, and clouds of diesel fumes hang think in the air, choking the passerby and eating away at the crumbling renaissance columns that seem strained to the limit already, covered with adds for cheap accommodation, used books, or English lessons. The street is perennially lively. On its south side, a long portion of arcade that is elevated above the street by about a metre runs adjacent to the church of San Giacomo Maggiore and is thus devoid of commerce, though it makes a perfect place for students to sit and smoke, or drink a beer that has either been rushed across the road through the dense traffic, or purchased at one of the many nearby salumerie, most of which are operated by Pakistanis.
    But Via Zamboni is only one of many such roads, narrow and highly trafficked, that radiate out from the city centre. Most of these roads are Medieval in origin, if not Roman. In fact, it is still possible to distinguish the extent of Roman Bologna, or Bononia as it was then called, by the network of streets in the very centre of the city that is roughly quadrilateral. Arguably, the main thoroughfare is the continuous roadway that changes names several times as it runs its course through the city. This was once the Roman Via Aemilia, a road whose course still cuts a straight line across the northern width of Italy. This has been a major artery for the past two thousand years, and shows no signs of letting up.
    Where the ancient Via Aemilia takes a short jog (because, in fact, the Romans built Bononia two years before they built the roadway, and so it doesn’t cut through the city perfectly), there is a famous square named Piazza di Porta Ravegnana. This, in my view, is the true crux of the city. It is here that Via Zamboni and the University district begin, while the higher end shopping districts come to an end. In fact, Via Zamboni is one of four long, narrow, straight streets that begin here, along with San Vitale, Santo Stephano, and the Strada Maggiore. Each of these streets led to a medieval suburb, and each has its own distinct character. Together, these fours streets and the intricate system of laneways that connect them define the eastern section of Bologna, the district where the student’s life is centred.
    Dominating Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, and dwarfing a benign blessing statue of Saint Petronius, are the Due Torri, the two towers that symbolize Bologna. Both lean absurdly, making the tower at Pisa look relatively sturdy. These are each the remnants of medieval defensive towers, built by warring families à la Montague and Capulet. In the thirteenth century, there were over a hundred such towers in Bologna; now there are a mere twenty left. The Asinelli tower, the tallest of these, can be ascended by means of some five hundred steps. I decided I ought to attempt this at least once, and after climbing a rickety wooden stairwell up the hollow core of the tower, I was rewarded with a spectacular view, though the haze on the horizon prevented me from seeing the alps and the Venetian lagoon, as Goethe had done some two hundred and twenty years prior.
    From my perch I felt like the Master of Bologna, watching over all, above and beyond the chaos that is fat, scholarly, and red.


An overview of the University District, looking north east from the Asinelli tower, with labels


A view of the southern section of the city centre, showing the basilica of San Petronio and the Piazza Maggiore


A view of the northern section of the city centre, showing the Cathedral and various towers


A view southward, showing the basilica of San Domenico and the Apennine hills in the background


Some of Bologna’s famous arcades


View of the Piazza di Porta Revegnana


The Asinelli tower, which I climbed for the view


The Piazza Maggiore


The Neptune fountain in Piazza Maggiore


The marble colours that Bologna is so famous for


The Strada Maggiore, the ancient Roman Via Aemilia, which continues in a straight line for hundreds of kilometers

I.vii. Irnerio

Without knowing it we stumbled upon this ancient university city called Bologna, which alone has gone through more old parchments, more tablets, more ink, more pulpits, more doctor’s bonnets than any other city in Italy. The noble place has hosted the Church, the Dissecting Room, the Academy, and the Museum! It reeks of blood, oil, formaldehyde, and incense.”
- Jules Janin

Professor Muzzarelli was even more vivacious today, though in a much clearer and steadier Italian. The topic of the class was barbarism, then and now. Who are the barbarians, she asked? The other, in our vocabulary. But the origin of the word is Greek, of course, meaning those who speak a different language, but how has that definition changed over the centuries? The Romans let their Barbarians in eventually; they all received imperial citizenship in 212. What about our empire, our Union, she asked? She ceased with the rhetorical for a moment and posed us a real question:
   “Which of you are from Bologna?” she asked, then corrected herself, “Never mind. You are all studying here. You are all Bolognese.” I smiled, and took note.
   It was the best kind of history, because it meant something. As the course was let out and the students spilled into the cortile, I asked my American classmate what she thought of today’s lesson. “Much better,” she said. I couldn’t have agreed more.

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   I had noticed before class that there was to be a concert of musica sacra in the church adjoining the classroom buildings, so after Muzzarelli’s musings I waited around in front of San Giovanni in Monte, the Renaissance church that looks onto the square in front of the department of archaeology and medieval studies. At one point, two purple-robed men appeared at the door and beckoned me to enter. Inside the church there were thirty or so spectators, and a group of about sixty chorists, women and men mostly blonde, wearing the same dark robes with embroidered Tau crosses. This was either Opus Dei, or, worse, Protestants.
   It was protestants. Lutherans, in fact, a good sixty of them gathered in a Renaissance church filled with Papist images which I couldn’t keep my eyes off of (the pictures, not the Lutherans). It was a strange juxtaposition, the Christiansen Sacred Music choir from Norway singing English hymns in an Italian church. They had their talent though, and when they sung a rousing Vaughan Williams processional they gathered around the pews on which I and a few dozen or so others were gathered. This was definitely not Vatican II, but it had its merits.
   Still though, I found it difficult to concentrate solely on the music, as I often find. But unlike the concert I had been to the previous night in a stripped-down ex-baroque church (a few of Bach’s piano suites interspersed with Berio), there was much more to distract that afternoon in the Renaissance church. There were no four bare walls and a sermon to be found anywhere. My eyes began to wander towards little vignettes that were taking place; the organist, Scandinavian as well, with her son sitting next to her to turn the pages of her music; the two old women sitting in front of me, senile but not philistine, speaking too loudly and soliciting unnoticed dark looks from many nearby; the custodian in the side aisle carefully dusting the gold covered tomb of a cardinal, the sharp smell of the acetone drifting over even to where I was.
   And so, as the choir sang on, surrounded not only by the painted scenes of Francia, Costa, and so many other greats of the Bolognese school, but also by the domesticity that only humans can provide, I felt like it was all coming together. My courses were not entirely unintelligible, I had made at least a good start meeting people, and even my own cooking was improving. Perhaps best of all, that morning, having returned once more to the Segreteria for a final bout of paperwork, I had been granted the all-important Libretto, which was to record my marks come exam time. I had also been given a student card that rather amusingly displayed a photo not of me, but of Laurence Alma-Tadea’s Portrait of Irnerio, the legendary twelfth century jurist who was instrumental in establishing the renown of the University of Bologna. I wondered if he knew that nine hundred years after his death on an ugly street that bears his name a Canadian student would be saving money on groceries at Plenty Market.

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   When the concert had finished the purple Priests of the People went out a side door, and began to re-emerge as regular folk, and I began to wander about the cavernous church. It was only then that I noticed, in the transept, there hung a familiar looking painting. It was, of course, a fair copy of Raphael’s Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia. A chancel screen prevented me from getting any closer, and I could tell she was angry. What was I doing looking at this pale copy, and listening to Lutherans, for that matter? Why hadn’t I gone to visit her yet at the Pinacoteca, like she had asked me to do on my first day? I rushed out of the church, scared.



My Libretto and Student Card


My home-cooked meals, progressing quite nicely


My stock of food, courtesy of Plenty Market


Alma-Tadea’s portrait of Irnerio


The Instruments at Saint Cecilia’s feet in the picture I saw

I.vi. Coursework

Bologna is celebrated for producing popes, painters, and sausage"
- Lord Byron

“Questo corso è la Storia Medievale?”
    “Sì.” My reply. It was a strange reversal of roles, me being asked a question.
    “Sei Italiana?” I asked, a few moments later, after I had spotted the map of Bologna in her hands. No. She was an American, from Brown University, equally confused as I was.
   And so my first real acquaintance in Bologna, if you’re not counting saints, painters, and architects of course. No. My first human contact, and with someone in the same boat as I. What relief. What relief also to find that she, too struggled to comprehend professor Muzzarelli, the diminutive yet assertive Italian woman who was elucidating the salient themes of Medieval History.
   Muzzarelli, addressing those of us fortunate enough to have found a seat in the packed room, would mention that the Middle Ages are not what we think they were, that dates and people are important, that several North American universities are built in the Gothic style because it is a style of learning, and that for several weeks during the term she would be away for personal reasons. I liked her. At the very least, I liked what I could understand of her.
   I had to concentrate in that small but pleasant vaulted classroom, despite the view through the door onto the sun-drenched courtyard where students gathered around the wellhead to smoke. I couldn’t drift off and let my mind wander. I couldn’t ask myself what glorious things once adorned this ceiling, before some more utilitarian administrator decided that the walls of his palace, no longer the demesne of aristocrats but now a seat of Learning, should be painted beige. I had to concentrate on the Italian. If I didn’t make a specific effort, focusing on every word, every syllable, it would all just fly by like Arabic, Gaelic, or Chinese. I was not used to this, this beautiful but obtuse language. I can listen to anything in French or English, passively as I like, and it will register. But Italian is a marathon and my six months were strained to keep up.
   Had I only been learning it for six months? It seemed like longer. I remember in my freshman year a girl telling me that I knew Italian just as well, because I could pronounce things like Cimabue and Lorenzetti. If only it were that simple. I find myself now knowing how to say things like “brushwork” and “synthetic perspective”, without knowing how to conjugate the imperfect. But language grows on you, and I’ll figure it out. I can pronounce “Giotto” correctly, and that is half the battle.

I.v. Opposites in the plain

We soon believe the things we would believe"
-Ludovico Ariosto

What never fails to strike me about Italy is the extent of the variety one encounters. Not just between the businessmen and Punka-bestia (a rather unaffectionate nickname given to the mendicant punks who loiter around the university) in Bologna, and not just between the South of the country and the North. In Italy, you can be half an hour away and in a different world.
   I went to Ferrara today, my first excursion, my first venture beyond the fictive confines of Bologna’s old city walls, long since destroyed but a presence nonetheless. I went to Ferrara because it is close, it is storied, and most importantly, it doesn’t overwhelm. I need to give myself time before re-acquainting myself with the glories of Venice, Florence, and Rome. It has been six years since I have been to those three, and in the meantime all I have done is study them. Not that I was unaware way back then, thirteen years old and on a school trip to tour the glories of the Renaissance.

---

    “Quick sir, this way. They’re catching up”
    “Ah, the hoard. But they must see this Church, it contains a Piero.”
    “Honestly Mr. D., I don’t think it’s worth it, for the complaints we’ll get…”
   These are my memories of visiting Italy in grade eight, running ahead of the other students along with our teacher, a charismatic and cultured Italian, trying to see as much as possible before the others would catch up and lament having to see another Church. They wanted more time to go shopping, and perhaps they were right. Bernard Berenson once said that a human being could only spend an hour at a time absorbing art. I disagree with him (a lifetime, surely…), but many don’t.

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   Ferrara was a daughter of the Renaissance. Ariosto lived there and drew his inspiration from its courty intrigues. Its population now is about the same as it was in the fifteenth century, perhaps only a little larger. It was once on par with Venice, Florence, or Milan. It would have considered Bologna a backwater, but now the opposite is true. The d’Este family, ruthless sponsors of the arts, made Ferrara what it was, but they left it for Modena soon enough, and took most of their treasures with them. Such is the fate of cities; the rivers they were built on silt up, plagues wipe them out, and princes leave.
   But there are still treasures left in Ferrara. They need to be sought out. They had their school of painting, and it had its strange masterpieces. Second-tier artists like Lorenzo Costa and Cosmè Tura, who delighted in weird, contorted forms before it was the fashion to do so. But I am not writing exclusively to eulogize a few long dead scribblers, and I will spare you accordingly. But still, even in its art, Ferrara is Bologna’s reverse. It is a quiet city, broader and less dense, clean, visibly closer to the sea, noticeably closer to Venice. Bologna had its university where Ferrara had its court, and the two are opposites for it. Scholasticism versus Humanism. Academics versus the upper class. It’s a familiar story. Most of us know it too well.

I.iv. Alma Mater Studiorum

“In Italy under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce? The Cuckoo Clock.”
- Orson Welles

Today I enrolled at the University of Bologna. I think. As I am coming to understand, most things in Italy take time and effort, but remain definitely within the realm of attainability. Take this afternoon, for instance. As instructed in a series of emails from the University of Bologna’s general office, I undertook to present myself at the Segreteria di Studenti di Lettere e Philosophia, the nearest equivalent to a faculty of arts and letters, where I was to enrol as a single year, non-degree student. With the help of my Swiss passport and the legalised documents I had obtained at great inconvenience in Toronto, this was a supposedly easy task. Today, Thursday, the Segreteria was open from 2:30 to 3:30, shorter than their Monday-Wednesday-Friday hours of 9:15 to 11:15, but open nonetheless. Thinking wisely, I got to the place half an hour before it opened, just to be sure. I was greeted by a hoard of other, wiser students who had gotten there even earlier, and were now engaged in serious cell phone chatter and cigarette smoking. With tuition as cheap as it is in Italy, talk-time and nicotine are easily affordable by all.
   When 2:30 came the doors opened, and there was a steady rush into the building. Steady because it was regulated by the number dispensing machine, another great Italian stand-by (they even have them in bakeries), that printed one ticket at a time, then waited a requisite few seconds, then printed another. When my turn came around I received number 133, which was discouraging when I looked up and saw the agonizingly slow pace of the electronic display that indicated what number was being served. I was never going to be able to enrol in the next hour before the office closed! Discouraged, I walked towards the door where I noticed written in fine print that the Segreteria was open either for one hour, or for 150 numbers served, whichever came last. A sort of institutional mileage versus months car warranty. Now I would finally be able to make use of those troublesome documents I had to have translated and legalized at the Italian consulate in Toronto, at great emotional cost…

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    “Mr. Herman, are you listening Mr. Herman?” the voice on the phone said, “You must bring in these documents of enrolment from the University of Toronto, embossed with an official seal. Do you understand me, Mr. Herman? Embossed. So that it can be felt under the fingertips, yes?”
    “Yes, alright, I understand. Can I make an appointment?”
    “Yes Mr. Herman. When will you be leaving for Bologna?”
    “Monday.”
    “Monday? You must be joking Mr. Herman. These things cannot be done in a matter of days. Monday I do not work. Very well, come in to the consulate tomorrow and I shall prepare your documents. I am Spedicato, and I shall be waiting for you at ten o’clock.”
   Spedicato was waiting for me, along with additional reminders of my last name, and a large Tupperware contained on her desk filled with various sized consular stamps, almost all of which she applied to the various official documents I had obtained from the University of Toronto, not without troubles all their own. But Spedicato, a short, forceful Italian woman in her sixties who had learned her English from an even older Italian, was expedient, and these documents, laden with ink, signatures, and everything short of a papal Bulla, did their trick in Bologna.

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   So finally, after going for a coffee and doing some shopping, I returned to enrol despite the slightly bizarre modus operandi at the Segreteria. I even received what I think is a student card, that is to say a photocopy of my passport (stamped of course) stapled to a photo of myself. Of course, the Segreteria is practically a 24/7 establishment when you compare its hours to those of the Quaestura, the municipal police headquarters where all visitors of more than three months must go to register themselves and get a permesso di soggiorno, or residence permit. This was my next task, though getting to the tiny, fetid little office is only half the battle. First one has to phone the “Call Center”, Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 13:30-18:30 or Saturday from 8:30-13:30. Having done this, my appointment has been fixed for Tuesday morning. My name is to be announced by an officer at the door, who has the task of reading out the names of those with appointments amidst the sea of recently arrived individuals who, rather blamelessly, perhaps thought that one could go to the Quaestura without calling to make an appointment earlier. After all, the plethora of documents needed even to apply for a residence permit would surely weed out any fraudulent applicants.
   Nevertheless, for my purposes, the permesso di soggiorno is essential. Without it, one cannot be given a codice fiscale, a prerequisite for everything from bank accounts to cellular phone contracts. Luckily I haven’t been caught in any circles of red tape yet, something I had been warned about at the consulate in Toronto. I was even able to buy health insurance for the year at the post office, which is naturally the place where one would buy health insurance, and I am even pondering a trip to Ikea in the next few days lest my apartment not appear well enough grounded in the principles of Scandinavian design. So in the end these things get done, and all the cogs turn together, and I have promised myself that after all that is banal, ridiculous, and important I will get on with the business of Italy the Beautiful.



The Department of Visual Arts at the University of Bologna


The Department of Archaeology

I.iii. A Hundred Three-Hundred

“You may have the Universe if I may have Italy”
- Giuseppe Verdi

My landlord, Dr. Caramori, was wearing an expensive suit when I met him in front of the entrance to via Centotrecento 12 on a balmy Tuesday afternoon.
   “Nicholas,” he said, “I am happy to see you.” His English had improved.
   “Likewise, Dottore. Sorry I am so late. The train was delayed.”
   “You took the Eurostar? Ah yes. Usually it is on time, but sometimes there is a delay. Not a problem.” He shook my hand, smiling, both a great deal more friendly and stylish than when I first met him in May.
   Inside, the apartment had undergone the same changes as the Dottore, and I was amazed and delighted at the new paint, appliances, Ikea furniture. All white, with the only colour being in the buildings visible outside the windows, the familiar rich red of Bologna rossa, a city red on the exterior and, like the rest of Italy, more complex on the inside. The Italians will always paint inside walls white (barring the occasional fresco, of course), leaving them blank for greater things. You’d be hard pressed to find an Italian art museum that doesn’t have white walls, while elsewhere it is just the opposite. Exterior, or public walls are quite another story however, and Bologna is a prime example of it. The city is festooned not only with brightly coloured stucco (in the rare event that a building has not been built entirely of brick or marble), but there are whole multitudes of faded folk-baroque Madonnas that peer out at you with their saints from lunettes and niches, just good enough to warrant looking at a second time, just naïve enough to not solicit too much concern about their exposed state. An amateur looks at pictures, picks up a brush, and paints in the grande manière, nothing too special, but worth a glance anyways. In fact, there is even a Madonna, dusty and decrepit, in the hallway bellow my apartment. Not a painting but a bas relief actually, some second rate reproduction of a Della Robbia, with a plastic rose someone left for it, encrusted with dirt. I remembered that I had promised to do something about her, at some point.
   “Thank you again, and, welcome to Bologna,” said Dr. Caramori as he left through half of the double wooden door that is the entrance to my apartment, number 11. I was alone with my suitcases and my green Mountain Equipment Co-op knapsack. Well, not quite alone, because just down the street lived an old friend, and I went to pay her a quick visit before unpacking.



A view of my street, which was a red light district in the sixteenth century


My building has a certain amount of rustic charm


All my worldly possesions!


An Ikea showroom (My Apartment)


My Kitchen


My Bathroom


My bed/sofa

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   “Hi Cecilia,” I whispered softly as I looked up at her. She was tall for her age.
   “Hello Nicholas, I see that you have come to visit me rather quickly.”
   “Yes. I just wanted to say hello. Actually, I had a question. My Italian teacher back in Toronto said that in Italian people address saints informally, using the second person rather than the third. Is that true?”
   “Well, I suppose so, but you don’t talk to me in Italian, you talk to me in English. And furthermore you’re not even Catholic, so you shouldn’t be talking to saints altogether. At any rate, I’m rather busy right now, young man. As you can see they’re marrying me off to Valentinus, that handsome future martyr. Anyways, come back when you’re more settled. Not here, but at the Pinacoteca, where no one ever goes. It is much more quiet and we can have a frank discussion”
   “Yes, right. Good idea. Well, I’d best be going. Lots of things to do, you know. Goodbye.” I gently touched her foot (that was all I could reach from where I was standing) and the custodian gave me a strange look, but said nothing. Considering I had just pawed at one of the great treasures of the Emilian renaissance, I thought that the response was rather weak, but he was a friendly man, and he urged me to sign the guestbook before I left. I politely refused, telling him that I visited often and I would doubtless return soon.



Cecilia was busy, getting married and all

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   I should explain myself before going any further. I have a tendency to talk to art whenever I’m alone. Who knows what childhood yearnings or Freudian tendencies lurk below; all I know is that the pull of these things is to great to just admire from afar with the cold scientific eyes of an Art Historian. I have to get close to things, get attached to them. I’ll talk to the artist or I’ll talk to the saint, but I won’t go silent in front of a picture (nor will I hesitate from touching it, but that is another story altogether). Just then, for example, I had a conversation with the lead actress in the Marriage of Saint Cecilia, by Francesco Francia, a beautiful if not well enough known fresco in a little chapel called the Oratorio di Santa Cecilia, not two hundred metres from my apartment on Via Centotrecento. When I first visited Bologna, back in May, I wandered in there compulsively (as I am wont to do) on the first morning, putting off finding accommodation or familiarizing myself with the University until later. I found, on that glorious morning, a treasure that seemed all my own in the midst of a bustling, hectic university that was anything but familiar. Saint Cecilia and her elegant tribulations were the first of Bologna I ever saw, so I figured I owed her a visit upon my return. I’ll admit that saint Cecilia isn’t the most fitting of all: she’s the patron saint of music, not art; Bologna’s saint is someone else (boring old Petronius); and if the University of Bologna has a patron saint, which I’m quite sure it does, it is definitely not her. Catherine, Lucy, or Rose would have been more beautiful, certainly. But Cecilia is my host, and I would have a conversation with her any day.



Entrance to the Oratorio di Santa Cecilia


The Burial of Saint Cecilia


The interior of the Oratorio

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   Upon returning to my apartment, I was unpacked and settled in no time, with everything organized in a most Scandinavian manner. By then, I was getting hungry again. The last I had had to eat was a pre-packaged cheese sandwich halfway over the Alps courtesy of Lufthansa. Dr. Caramori had mentioned a low cost supermarket not fifty metres away and so I decided to investigate. To my delight, he was referring to Plenty Market, a no-frills type concern that had just opened up shop on Via Irnerio not five days earlier. It wasn’t quite as low cost as LIDL, the pan-European chain I had quite some experience with, but it seemed to be at least as cheap as the more notorious Canadian equivalents. The Common Agricultural Policy has its problems, but milk for forty five centissimi a litre is about as good as it gets. I bought myself the makings of what I consider a handsome meal for a newly installed “bachelor”: spaghetti, Genovese pesto, a bottle of table wine priced under Euro 1.50, and some fresh pears. Not too adventurous, but I was tired and I figured I had best start off with the basics, then work my way up. I had planned for this. In fact, I came to Italy armed with Simply Italian, a cookbook (not a grammar, though I have lots of those) given to me by a friend. By the end of my stay, though, I promise that my kitchen will be serving up the best of Bolognese cuisine, either by my hands or those of one of the many visitors I have scheduled in to my ten months, some of whom are decidedly gourmet.
   After eating my quiet meal I ventured out to find a payphone, just to call home and let everyone know that everything was alright. Bologna is frenetic at any hour of the day but on this Tuesday night it seemed more so than usual (though who am I to say, really). The opera had just gotten out and in Piazza Verdi the tuxedoed regulars were mixing with the more bohemian students, the full-time and rightful tenants of the square who can be distinguished by their dreadlocked hair, jeans repaired with eighties rock band patches, and large dogs roaming around them in packs. Luckily, the local police (as opposed to their federal or national colleagues) were wise enough to have opened a station right on the square, so the ruffians and the elites never fight. Such is Italy.



Centotrecento means "A Hundred Three-Hundred"


The entrance to "Plenty Market"


Piazza Verdi during the day, the heart of the University

I.ii. Franco-forte

“A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what is expected a man should see”
- Samuel Johnson

   I had been preparing to leave, or at least going over the process in my mind, for quite some time, so my departure seemed to have gone as well as I could have hoped. I had somehow managed to fit nearly everything I could possibly need in one year into a few suitcases worth. The first few months would be the most difficult, as they entailed getting along on my own with relatively little help. From November onwards, though, I would be having a steady stream of visitors who would form a vital lifeline for me between the old world and the new. For the start at least that lifeline would be tenuous, and I preferred things that way. The only thing between myself and Italy was a two hour stopover in Frankfurt. I presented my passport, said nothing, and slipped into Europe unbeknownst to anyone…

I.i. Self-Design

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page”
- St. Augustine

   From a very young age I had been yearning to read ahead. I had been lucky enough to travel a great deal as a child, though never for more than a few months at a time, so temporary changes are nothing new to me. The question of going for a year abroad had always been a given for me, and Italy, for a lifelong student of Art History, was a natural choice. Never mind the fact that I don’t, even to this day, really speak Italian. I had never settled for anything ordinary and spending another year at Trinity College in Toronto just wasn’t going to cut it. Difficult and complicated though it may be, I had to go away.
   One only gets as much as one puts in, anyway. All my life I had focussed on doing what I love and doing it best, and so this would be no exception. I was off to Italy for ten months, and I would return still Nick, but more so.
   And so I embarked on the greatest adventure of my life: spending an academic year in Bologna, at the oldest University in the world, learning Italian as I go, living on my own, and spending time with the things that have for so long swayed who I am.