Thursday, 28 November 2019

A storey and a half

Quite a few lovely courtyards among the old streets of Bergamo - like this one.  I had to poke the camera through some rather impressive wrought iron gates to get this, mind you.

HP5+ on Ilford Warmtone fibre paper
So what’s going on here then? Tradesman's entrance vs Gentleman’s entrance? Who knows...but the doors are very close together and only one half-storey apart. If I’m being honest, at the time I just liked the scene in front of me.  Looking at it now, I’m intrigued - What’s the inside like?

The Old City (Citta Alta) sits high atop a promontory (as the Italian suggests) - the newer city (Citta Bassa lies below).  The old part reminded me of Bath a little - beautiful to walk around but I'm not sure I'd want to live there.  Mind you, the transport is so good there's no real need to - the bus journey from Bassa to Alta is frequent and cheap.  For the likes of us tourists, there's a funicular railway linking the two parts as well - which we used but it's a very short ride in small, cramped carriages.  It was impossible to see anything other than fellow tourists so it was a bit disappointing.
Posted by at

4 comments:

  1. Jim Grey29 November 2019 at 14:12

    That's a really lovely photograph.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Marcus Peddle5 December 2019 at 22:37

    Getting lenses through gates is not always easy, so well done. It's a very nice photograph and intriguing, as you say. Maybe the lower door opens into a storage area?
    Funicular is one of my favourite words, mainly for the sound. Funicular, funicular . . . . My favourite word is defenestration for its very strange specificity. What madman thought to make up a word for something that can be very easily expressed in common language? "He was defenestrated by the Reverend Mother" can be more easily expressed as "The nun put 'un through the window!"
    Oh, I've gone off topic . . . .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael McNeill8 December 2019 at 16:24

      Thanks Marcus. There's always a risk of bumping the lens against the iron railing, so care has to be taken!

      I had to Google defenestration - what a cracking word it is! Not one you hear every day, more's the pity. Or maybe not, for the person on the receiving end of the act...

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)