More Bologna

Monday July 14

This morning we walked our luggage across Bologna to our hotel.  We are staying at the higher-end Orologia Art Hotel.  Bathrobes.  Street noise.

We headed for a church we found closed.  Then Bruce navigated us in circles to the Jewish Museum. It contained few things. Rather, it was text and videos.  If you knew nothing about Jews or Jewish history, it was pretty good information, but added little to our knowledge. Just the odd bit that only in the Piedmont were the reforms of Napoleon continued.

Mixed cured meat platter for lunch. Excellent, huge.  Cheese plate for dinner.




Tues July 15

The Archeological Museum is really excellent, with collections from around the Po Valley from prehistoric to late Roman times.  Especially impressive is the chronologically organized artifacts from Neolithic to early bronze age.



Everything seems to be on display.



The displays included coins with the portraits all the Roman emperors.



The church of San Maria delli Vita is known for its life-size terra cotta figures, a  new (and, frankly, unappealing) genre to us.  Here is the famous Il Compiato del Cristo Morto (Lamentation over the dead Christ)by Nicolo dell'Arca (circa 1480-90)  (temporarily in a plywood setting while its chapel is being worked on):



In another nearby church, San Pietro, Alfonso Lombardi, did another Compiato, around 1524, which was a bit more restrained:



Upstairs, in uneven lighting, is Lombardi's Death of the Virgin, commissioned in 1522:




So we learned a new legend surrounding the Dormition.  (The Dormition is the going to sleep or death of the Virgin.). This new legend traces to the 5th or 6th century apocryphal work of John the Theologian on the Dormition.  The story is apparently more familiar to the Orthodox Church. Part of the Dormition story is that all the apostles come to mourn. Jephonias the Jew, possibly a priest, tried to knock over the bier.  At that point, an angel cuts off his arms or, perhaps just his hands.  In at least one version, the hands or arms are miraculously reattached and he converts on the spot.  This sculpture appears to precede the amputation.  We are shown the angry apostles.
It's located in this upstairs room, the much-decorated Oratory:



Lunch:  bruschetta platter (tomato, zucchini, mortadella)

Speaking of mortadella....

First this is the sausage that became bologna in the US and degenerated to baloney.  In its original it is lovely.  Also mortadella was the first food to have a "DOP" (protected designation of origin), by order of the Pope in 1661.

Dinner at Gianni (gnocchi al ragu, chicken stew).

Each night there is a movie on a huge screen on the square.  \We face he square, so we get to hear the dialogue.  Last night it was some sort of musical.  Tonight as we came back through dinner, we had to pass through what seemed like a demonstration on the square.  We are told the subject of the movie is the 50th anniversary of the winning of some football title by Bologna.  The "demonstration" was a celebration.