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HISTORY OF BIG SUR COAST

  A new dawn:              Locals had long called for a road along the coast to aid shipwreck victims and improve access to isolated communities.  Construction started in 1919, and 18 years, 32 tonnes of dynamite and 33 bridges later, the Big Sur stretch of California Highway One was complete.               The implausible route, with its myriad twists and turns and dramatic drop-offs, became an instant classic.  The author and painter Henry Miller fled to Big Sur in 1944 and stayed for nearly two decades.  Photographer Edward Weston and Beat Generation bard Jack Kerouac fell under its spell.  By the late 1960’s San Francisco’s counterculture revolution had swept down to Big Sur, and the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell performed on the cliff tops.              ...
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Arena Chapel FRESCOES

 Arena Chapel FRESCOES:

Arena Chapel FRESCOES


                A fresco cycle of unmatched beauty and humanity adorns a small chapel in Padua.  Painted more than a century before the start of the Renaissance, it set a standard for others to follow.

                In the early 1300’s, wealthy Paduan banker Enrico Scrovegni asked the Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone (who lived around 1267-1337) to decorate the newly completed Scrovegni family chapel.  Giotto chose for his subject a series of scenes from the New Testament, then set about his task using the fresco technique, which involves painting directly onto wet plaster.  In a decisive break with the art of the immediate past, which favoured subdued colours and stylised figures, Giotto injected an unprecedented degree of realism and emotion into his retelling of the Christian story.  In doing this, he blazed a trail for the great Renaissance artists who followed.

Where on earth?


                Padua is an attractive walled city on the Bachiglione River 50km (30 miles) west of Venice.  The Arena Chapel is an easy walk from the train station and from the medieval town centre with its churches, palaces and cobbled streets.  Visits to the chapel must be booked in advance.      
Location: Piazza Eremitani, 8, 35121 Padova PD, Italy

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