Summer

“While the navigator may not show you, the best route to Milano from Interlaken is via Kandersteg.” That was our ever helpful Interlaken hotelier on beating the perennial route 19 traffic jam. “I always take this route to go to Milano,” she declared. Given the number of excellent detour tips she offered us during our stay, including the wonderful Ballenberg, we were glad to take her advice.

The route has two ferry crossings. One at Kandersteg known as Lotschberg tunnel, and the other near Brig known as Simplon tunnel. You pay a nominal charge, drive and park car on to an open train carriage to get ferried across. Given the length of these tunnels, being ferried across makes sense. It’s easy to lose one’s bearings due to tunnel fatigue — continuous driving through without an end in sight.

Milan

From Hotel Marconi on Fabio Filzi street, it’s about 15 minutes to the Duomo di Milano by Metro — from Repubblica to Duomo on the M3 line. We freshened up, and walked down to the Repubblica station at 5pm.

Just as you climb from underground up, and on to the Duomo’s terra firma, the imposing visage washes over you. Duomo di Milano, the gothic styled marble sculpted magnificence, defies any pre-conceived notions of the artistic bounds one may have imagining. The view in the evening is best as the Sun hits its towers full-on, turning its façade golden.

Milan is Italy’s high-street in fashion, and from whatever little we saw, it revels in being a Cosmopolitan. It’s hard not to notice in air. On hindsight, we underestimated the stopover, and would have loved to spend at least another day.

Cinque Terre

We packed our bags the next day and proceeded towards Cinque Terre. It’s about 3 hours drive via the Autostrada A1. As the road got narrower, and steeper, the view on the side began changing.

Cinque Terre, i.e., literally five villages — Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso Mare — are all connected by rail and ferries, and the transportation is cheap. Villages sit on an incline with much activity near the water front. The coastline is rugged, and it looks absolutely spectacular from the sea. So are the views from Via dell’Amore, the lover’s walkway. It’s also a great place for trekkers.

It is harder to accept that sometimes pictures of certain places develop a lot better than they are in reality. A unique geographical location, in utter contrast with a bad paint job, together with plenty of light and shade perhaps make that possible. Cinque Terre with its unordered array of higgedly-piggedly houses atop each other on a hilly terrain most definitely fits that profile.

Florence

Seeing buildings after buildings — all modern, “where is it?” she asked, exasperated eyes searching for a glimpse of the ancient city. This was unlike Prague or Vienna that open up to you like a slight brush of hand. Impatience grew as we traversed through the maze of Florence and its traffic, even on a Sunday. We checked into Hotel David before heading out to the old part of the city on the other side of Arno river.

Visiting a new place, knowing very little of its history, can sometimes be exhilarating, in a way that everything you see, smell, sip or swallow elevates your sense of the place when it’s devoid of expectations. Aside from fringe knowledge about the Italian Renaissance, I knew next to nothing about Florence until much after my wife planned our summer holiday; and that was the problem: Florence isn’t one of those places where one can just walk-up and take it all in. Without context, it’s just spectacular stone walls, unreal façades, and larger than life sculptures. Want my advice? Read all up, soak it in, then step out. Be your own guide, and you’ll see a different world when you do.

The object of my fascination, as we began our first day exploring Florence, was the eleventh century San Giovanni Baptistery in the Piazza del Duomo — one of its oldest and most beloved works of the Renaissance art. No amount of reading about it would do; and for good reason too. Nobody in their right frame of mind takes Michelangelo’s admiring words — that its east doors, carved by Lorenzo Ghiberti, were worthy of being the gates of paradise — lightly. No, this one had to be seen and admired. One can see why.

The master goldsmith condensed the Old Testament into ten flattened perspective panels, over twenty-seven incredible years, describing key scenes that adorn the east door of the baptistery.

Sculptures, in general, are monolithic figures, but they are not scenes, or at least not in a monolithic sense when you consider Michelangelo’s David or Pietà for example. Whereas paintings are three dimensional scenes that utilize optical illusion techniques, such as the perspective, and sfumato on a two dimensional surface, but they contain no objects.

But this is different. These panels combine the best of both — objects and scenes in a single sculpture. Not only are these scenes designed to look like they are alive from nearly any viewing angle, but also most objects actually also have a near three dimensional form. This combination, I think, is what makes Gates of Paradise truly remarkable.