San Giovanni in Canale

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San Giovanni in Canale
Via Croce
Piacenza, May 2024

“San Giovanni in Canale is a Gothic-style Roman Catholic church located on Via Croce 26 in central Piacenza, formerly associated with a Dominican monastery. The Dominican order, newly founded in 2016, arrived in Piacenza in 1220 and patronage soon found them a suitable site next to the Rio Beverora (an Ancient Roman canal that flowed into the Po River, that allowed them to establish a monastery and a church. They dedicated the church to St John the Baptist. This church was called ‘in canale’ to distinguish it from a similarly dedicated temple in town. With the enlargement of the San Giovanni in Canale, a nearby small church belonging to the Templars (Santa Maria del Tempio) was converted into an oratory attached to San Giovanni. This Dominican complex once housed the Inquisition tribunal. The structure, including the facade were rebuilt in 1522 in a Gothic style, with a large rose window. The church was suppressed by the French in 1797.” (San Giovanni in Canale, Wikipedia)

Petersbogen Leipzig

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Petersbogen Leipzig
Petersbogen
Leipzig, September 2024

“On 3 levels, there are about 28 stores that promise customers variety and a relaxed shopping experience, including well-known tenants such as Decathlon, Lidl and Rossmann, but also regional concepts such as the RB and Lokomotive Leipzig fan stores and a DDR store. Petersbogen is located directly on Petersstrasse, one of Leipzig’s busiest shopping streets. On the upper floors there is a hotel of the NH Group, a CineStar multiplex cinema and the Casino Leipzig. Visitors have 550 parking spaces at their disposal, which are operated by the parking garage operator Apcoa.” (Petersbogen Leipzig, HBB)

Santa Maria del Quartiere

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Santa Maria del Quartiere by Giovan Battista Aleotti, 1604
Piazza Picelli
Parma, May 2024

“Santa Maria del Quartiere is a Baroque-style church in the quarter of the Oltretorrente of the city of Parma, Italy. The church was built inside the medieval walls from 1604 to 1619, on the site of a prior chapel dedicated to Mary, adjacent to the quarters for troops of the Duchy, hence its name. The design has been attributed to the Ferrarese architect Giovan Battista Aleotti. Atypical for most post-Reformation rectangular church naves, and more consistent with its role as a votive church built to honor an icon, the nave of this church is a centralized hexagonal plan.” (Santa Maria del Quartiere, Wikipedia)

Yenidze

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Yenidze by Martin Hammitzsch, 1909
Weißeritzstraße
Dresden, September 2024

"Yenidze is a former cigarette factory building in Dresden, Saxony, Germany built between 1907 and 1909. Today it is used as an office building. It is notable for its Moorish Revival exterior design which borrows design elements from mosques and the Alhambra in Spain. The Yenidze Tobacco and Cigarette Factory (Orientalische Tabak- und Zigarettenfabrik Yenidze) was a tobacco company started by the Jewish entrepreneur Hugo Zietz, which imported tobacco from Ottoman Yenidze, Thrace (modern Genisea, Greece). The ‘Oriental’ style of architecture recalled the exotic origins of the Oriental tobaccos it processed and functioned as advertising for the firm. It has 600 windows of various styles; the dome is 20 metres (65') high. It makes great use of tiles for decoration: both complex colour patterns and unusual three-dimensional forms." (Yenidze, Wikipedia)

Fontana del putto con l'oca

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Fontana del Putto con l'oca (Fountain of the Putto with the Goose) by Giuseppe Graziosi, 1931 (copy 1980)
Piazza XX Settembre
Modena, May 2024

“Between Piazza Grande and the Covered Market lies Piazza XX Settembre: an urban “void” that was created by the urban ‘reclamation’ projects undertaken between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, aimed at demolishing blocks of dilapidated and unhealthy buildings with narrow courtyards. Here, until 1903, there was a network of medieval streets close to the square, with houses of minor construction, such as Vicolo del Bue and Via delle Vaccine, whose names convey an ancient activity of buying and selling livestock. Piazza XX Settembre, until a few years ago the site of a permanent market mainly selling clothes, rediscovers its vocation and colour as a place close to the market in the fountain that stands in the western sector, commissioned by the Municipality of Modena for public utility as well as for street furniture: it is the fountain with the bronze statue of the Cherub with goose performed by Giuseppe Graziosi, the well-known sculptor and painter from Savignano sul Panaro, in 1931. The people of Modena have always admired with sympathy the child who tries to save the fish he is holding in his hand from the attacks of the goose, an example of the naturalistic streak of Graziosi, whose vast figurative culture does not extinguish, but rather revives the spontaneity and freshness of the invention. Originally the fountain was in the centre of the square, and consisted of a tall column with a Cherub at the top and a circular basin at the base. The reconfiguration of the fountain then saw the statue placed on a small column, between the two characteristic oval basins taken from the Piazza Grande: the very shape of an old salt cellar, or rather a ‘salino’, from which the dialect nickname of ‘salein’ comes.” (The four fountains to discover when visiting Modena, Modena & Dintorni)

Nová scéna Národního divadla

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Nová scéna Národního divadla
(New Stage of the National Theater) by Karel Prager, 1983
Národní, Nové Město
Prague, September 2024

“The New Stage of the National Theater is a modern postmodern theater building that was built in Prague's Nové Město on Národní třída between 1977 and 1983. Sometimes it is also referred to as brutalist. In 2021, the New Stage building was declared a cultural monument.” (New Stage, Wikipedia)

Antonio Fontanesi

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Bust of Antonio Fontanesi by Renato Marino Mazzacurati, 1939
Parco del Popolo
Reggio Emilia, May 2024

“Antonio Fontanesi (23 February 1818 – 17 April 1882) was an Italian painter who lived in Meiji period Japan between 1876 and 1878. He introduced European oil painting techniques to Japan, and exerted a significant role in the development of modern Japanese yōga (Western style) painting. He is known for his works in the romantic style of the French Barbizon school.” (Antonio Fontanesi, Wikipedia)