sabato 13 marzo 2010

Pavia

After going out for an enormous pizza and my first limoncello of the year on Friday night, I stayed with my friends J and L in Milan and we got up early enough on Saturday morning to go to Pavia. Pavia turned out to be another one of the places that I couldn't believe I hadn't discovered in a whole year of living in Italy. For anyone in Milan who feels as if they are missing out on the experience of living in a proper little Italian town, Pavia, only half an hour away on the train, is the perfect escape. It had a busy market, but the rest of the town was quiet, even on a Saturday afternoon. It does have a university though, and there were hints of some lively student life going on. It also has lots of beautiful churches, some of which were very different from any I had seen in Italy before, and is famous for its towers, which stretch up tall and straight to look out over the plains that surround the town.




The church of San Michele Maggiore. It was built of sandstone and a lot of the detail of the carving has been eroded, but it still looks amazing.


Sunken church. Unfortunately it was closed, so we couldn't go inside.


Santa Maria del Carmine. Lots of the old buildings in Pavia are built from these red bricks, often arranged so that they stick out in funny ways from the facades of the buildings.



The Torre Civico. It collapsed in 1989 and, tragically, several people were killed.




Towers


Towers and the university gate. I would have happily studied here!

2 commenti:

Karen ha detto...

Pavia really is a lovely town. San Michele is one of my favorite churches in Italy, thanks for sharing those photos!

Canedolia ha detto...

I'm glad you liked the photos, KC, but I bet you could have written much more interesting things about these churches than I did. Sometimes I feel very ignorant!