Where there is Man there is art, and where there is art there is graffiti

The Vézère Valley in the Dordogne region of France is littered with limestone caves, 25 of which are decorated with paintings estimated to be up to 20,000 years old, the earliest known example of painting.  The most famous of these is the Lascaux complex of caves, discovered in 1940 by some boys looking for their dog (actually, it was discovered by the dog himself, Robot, who had fallen in).  Comprising nearly 2,000 figures, primarily of horses but also of stags, bison, and aurochs (ancestors of modern cattle), it has been dubbed "the Sistine Chapel of Prehistory" and includes the famous Painted Gallery and the Great Hall of the Bulls.

The only other polychromatic paintings discovered in the valley are in the Font-de-Gaume cave, depicting bison and horses again but also mammoths and, the principle food source of the time, reindeer.  The best known images from this cave are a frieze of five bison and "the sexual parade of the reindeer," where a stag is smelling the head of a kneeling doe.  The natural contours of the cave walls were exploited to emphasise the hump of a bison or the belly of a horse.  (Photography is disallowed, so here's a picture from a government website.)  Sadly, yet again this is artwork defaced by graffiti, this time from the 19th century, where bison paintings at the fore of the cave have had names carved into them.  It's difficult to excuse, but it has to be said that the paintings had not been scientifically observed at the time and there was no comprehension of their age or significance.

Another site, Grotte de Rouffignac, is sometimes called "the cave of a hundred mammoths."  An electric train takes visitors into a ten-kilometre deep complex of painted mammoths, horses, ibex, and even rhinoceros.  I hugely regret that I missed this.  On 30 October, I set out late to see both Font-de-Gaume and Rouffignac, but had to wait for over an hour at Font-de-Gaume because they limit the size of the tours.  This is understandable; when Lascaux was discovered there was no such limitation, and the change in air quality from 1,200 visitors a day caused the development of a green fungus, la malaise vert, and a white calcite crystal, la malaise blanc, to damage the paintings.  This in turn led Lascaux to first limit numbers of visitors, and then to close permanently in 1963.  Indeed, there is suggestion that this may happen with Font-de-Gaume; the tour guide showed us an example of a white fungus growing on the wall.  The only way to appreciate Lascaux today is to visit "Lascaux II," an impressive centimetre by centimetre three-dimensional reproduction of the cave built into the hillside beside the original, with the paintings exactly reproduced using the same pigmentation and techniques.  Of course, knowing it is a facsimile unavoidably detracts from the awe, and the experience becomes a slightly carnivalesque appreciation of the facsimile itself.  Nevertheless, it is sympathetically and tastefully executed.  But with the delay at Font-de-Gaume and the closing for the season of Grotte de Rouffignac on 01 November, it was too late to return another day.

High water and fresco vandals

I experienced the acqua alta—high water—in Venice after all, and I'm glad I did.  Having occurred for hundreds of years, it is a quintessential part of life there.  It is not a result of rising sea levels (though this will severely exacerbate it).  Of course, it was nowhere near the magnitude of the 1966 floods, but locals were wearing their colourful gumboots (Venice is the place to shop if you're a fashion-conscious pig farmer), wading obliviously through six inches of water in the lower-lying areas.  More commonly it was less than an inch, most places were in fact dry, and the water table dropped again with an hour.

For four nights in Venice I lost track of the days, like I had taken a vacation from my holiday.  The city feels unmoved by the passage of time, like it is still its own republic, separate from Italy, the rest of the world, and modernity.  It's a strangely affecting place and, in all my travels through Eastern and Western Europe, incomparable.

So when I arrived in Verona, only an hour away, I was rather too bedazzled to fairly assess one of Italy's prettiest little cities.  That it was raining again dampened my enthusiasm, too, but the second day was beautifully clear and sunny, a cool, Autumn day (as in fact, they all have been since), and I discovered the stunning Romanesque Basilica of San Zeno.  If you remember your Shakespeare you'll know that Friar Lawrence married Romeo and Juliet in the crypt (looking on would have been the preserved body of Zeno who died in 380 AD).  Also preserved are superb frescoes, dozens of them, dating back to the 12th century.  They are still brilliant and in large sections intact, despite being damaged by time, war (Allied bombing), and 18th-century snot-nosed brats—there is a great deal of graffiti, often dated, etched into the plaster.  The architecture of the building is reknowned, with a beautifully decorated ship's keel ceiling as well as a stunning facade.  Apparently.  It was masked by—that's right—scaffolding for restoration work, rendering it unsuitable for shooting.  At least the scaffolding screens were sympathetically painted with the facade's likeness.

How to find a Bird in Space

The layout of Venice, evolved over a thousand years, was unplanned and has grown organically by the needs of the city, the district, and each street itself, resulting in numerous short, narrow medieval lanes that dog-leg and reticulate between canals and campos.  There are umpteen ways to get from here to there, yet surprisingly, it is not that easy to get lost.  Heading in the general direction of somewhere will get you there, guided by signs tacked to the buildings pointing to Rialto, San Marco, or Alla Ferrovia, and a glance at a map now and again is enough.

I found my way to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection today, which includes a number of Picassos (I don't care much for Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc, but I do like On the Beach), Jackson Pollocks (meh), Salvador Dalís (pff), and three of my favourite pieces of sculpture in one place, which I was very excited to see: Giacometti's Standing Woman, his Piazza, and Brancusi's Bird in Space.  Standing Woman is about four feet tall (130cm), but I was very surprised that the figures in Piazza are only about eight inches tall (20cm).  Things look so different in books.

Wow.

Venice is fantastic. I don’t know where to begin.

The 1500-year old city is vast—when you wander the sprawling sestieri (districts), it just keeps going—yet it never feels bigger than a large town. And there is not a single modern building in sight.

Venice is a tourist’s feast. The canals are as picturesque as you have been led to believe, and are never clichéd. The art is such sumptuous gluttony that another Tintoretto invokes an offhand, “oh, more paintings.” And the shopping (for those inclined) is comparable to Paris (both in scale and price).

Yes, Venice is expensive. The average price of a simple trattoria meal is €20. I was fortunate to find accommodation in a resedenzia for €50 per night—a simple room with no breakfast—because it is off season, and that is as cheap as you’ll find.

Visiting in the off season is the way to go. There are still plenty of tourists, but they don’t overpower the city as they do in peak season. Trying to pilot the narrow streets swollen to bursting with mile after mile of people is an arduous way to relax, as Mai Li and I found in Florence one year when we unwittingly arrived on a long weekend.

After catching a vaporetto, a public ferry, down the length of the Grand Canal the first morning of my arrival, I spent the entire day in Piazza San Marco. I took some furtive photography—disallowed—of the dazzling golden mosaic-tiled ceiling of the Basilica San Marco, now the cathedral of Venice but which for 700 years of gobsmacking opulence was the private chapel of the doge (duke and elected head of state).

I depleted the next three hours spending not enough time wandering the warren of rooms in the doge’s palace, the seat of the Venetian government. The walls and ceilings of every room are filled with paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian, culminating in the cavernous Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Grand Council Hall) which hosts Tintoretto’s Paradiso, one of the world’s largest oil paintings. It is a mindboggling experience. One room that did stand out for me was the Chamber of the Magistrato alle Leggi, which, to my surprise, is today used to exhibit several works by Hieronymus Bosch.

Museo del Prado

A tip for those planning to visit Madrid’s Museo del Prado: buy your ticket online. I was able to completely bypass the more than 100-metre long queue. My main reason for going was for Goya’s Black Paintings, including “Saturn Devouring his Children” and “The Cudgel Fight.” All fourteen are on permanent exhibition.

When in Bruges, I saw Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Last Judgement” and thought how small it was. In Madrid’s Museo del Prado, I saw Bosch’s triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” and it’s huge! The central panel must be 2m x 3m. There were also numerous other Bosch works, several of which I was unfamiliar with, and another version of Hans Memling’s “Adoration of the Magi” triptych, which I saw in Bruges.

Bruges, Belgium

Bruges is beautiful, but bordering on fairy tale and very touristy.

Medieval buildings of brick and stone rise straight up from green canals of water lilies and vines.  Cobbled streets traverse canals over stone bridges.  Narrow laneways lead to small squares lined with trees and churches.  Chimes from the carillons in the UNESCO listed belfries chorus through the streets, playing “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and “Danny Boy,” and the sound of horses hooves as they pull buggies full of tourists mix with the clatter and bells of locals on bicycles.

It is possible to avoid the tourist kitsch altogether and see authentic Bruges in quarters like St Anna, a quiet, mostly residential district nicknamed Verloren Hoek – the Forgotten Corner – where I found the Jerusalemkerk, a 15th-century church purportedly based on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (though the two don't appear to share a great resemblance) and still owned by the same family.

The Groeningen Museum houses a permanent exhibition of the Flemish Primitives, a school of painters in the 15th & 16th centuries who were emulated all over Europe for their modern, realistic style.  They include Jan Van Eyck, Hans Memling (known for his exceptional detail), and Hieronymus Bosch, whose triptych "The Last Judgement" is included in the collection and which I specifically planned to see.  Imagine my disappointment when discovering the museum is closed for reinstallation!

Fortunately, the Musem St Janshospitaal is temporarily hosting Bosch's triptych (which is surprisingly small—the central panel is only about 100cm x 70cm).  While I did also see some of Memling's works at the museum, I missed out on the Groeningen collection of the Flemish Primitives.

I drank beer every day through Germany and Belgium – and why wouldn’t you?  My last night in Bruges was spent in a little beer-specialist pub called De Garre, hidden down a tight lane between the town's two tourist-packed main squares, Markt and Burg. I started with the 11% strength house beer and moved onto Satan Gold.  It was Heaven.