Hot Chocolate

A few mornings ago while walking to class, Jon decided he wanted to stop and get a quick pastry. As coffee here is almost always too strong for both of us I assumed that the stop did not include any morning drinks. Somehow I missed that we had slipped into a Chocolate Eatery at 8:15 in the morning..... The woman asks Jon what type of pastry he would like, Chocolate (perfect Italian), and then he asks her about hot chocolate...many places in Italy do not serve hot chocolate because coffee is so popular and it was 80 degrees outside already however this place laid a menu on the counter with 32 types of hot chocolate to choose from.... Jon orders one from the first few pages and the woman looked at him like he was nuts, rightly so because she later gave him a huge cup full of thick pure nutella chocolate. Sugar high. He finished it all.

A small trick that our professors disclosed.. if you look up at the cornice lines of a building it will be easier to understand the ground floor plan geometry. This is a photograph shows the oval created by the buldings across from the Church of San Lorenzo.

Colleen sketching near Palazzo Spada among the motorcycles.

These flowers, Jasmine we think, are one of the first scents that I noticed in Italy and I am smuggling a plant home with me. They are everywhere!

Last week we visited the town of Caprarolla near Viterbo. The town was originally a midieval settlement and sat on a rolling hillside. Then the Farnese family came to town. They bulldozed a road right down the middle cutting and filling the land as they went to form this ridge through the middle of the town. The steep slope off of the ridge is taken up by bridges, drops, and winding staircases... another good calf workout. At the top is the Villa Farnese which is not shown in the picture below because that would have made too much sense.
Professor Vann came to visit us from southern Italy on this day. As Villa Madama is very difficult to get into this was his first time seeing the site. This structure, originially designed to be two or three times its current size. The arched windows connect the garden with large circular niches inside the room. Villa Madama is also significant because its column capital is one with the cornice line of the room. Architecture speak for, its old, big, and beautifully preserved.

The columns supporting the main arch of the room were treated differently than most other groin vaults that we have seen so far on the trip. The columns are treated in a splayed out V plan shape creating small seating benches perfect for sitting and sketching.

Last architecture thing of the day... This window, seen from a small courtyard, looks into a room that is off center with the courtyard. However, the architect wanted the room to appear to be centered. As a solution, he centered the windows to the room and then fake centered them on the courtyard by painting in a fake window. This was done all througout Italy and fake doors with painted wood panneling, and fake windows are really very common.