The Whale Rib

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The Whale Rib
Arco della Costa
Verona, May 2025

“Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, is mysteriously home to a centuries-old whalebone. The trouble is, Verona is located about 75 miles (120 km) from the sea, and no one is quite sure how it got there. The bone, believed to be a rib, hangs in the center of the medieval Arco della Costa (Arch of the Rib), the entry point between Verona's Piazza Erbe and Piazza dei Signori. It's been hanging there, suspended from an iron chain, since at least the 1700s, though some estimates suggest much longer, possibly since the 15th century. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance era, the walkway above the arch provided a safe passage for judges and magistrates between the city hall and their living quarters, so that they needn't associate with the common or ‘corrupt’ people below. This may be the ironic origin of the myth of the whalebone's magic: It's claimed that it will fall on the first innocent or truthful person to walk under the archway.” (Whale Bone of Arco della Costa, Atlas Obscura)

DuMont-Brunnen

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DuMont-Brunnen ‘Zeitungsbrunnen’
DuMont Fountain (Newspaper Fountain) by Theo Heiermann, 1986
Hanns-Hartmann-Platz
Cologne, September 2024

“The DuMont fountain was erected in 1986 on Breite Straße at Hanns-Hartmann-Platz by Theo Heiermann in bronze and granite. It was sponsored by the publishing house DuMont donated on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. The fountain reflects motifs from the newspaper world: a street vendor, a reader engrossed in reading, and a girl folding a hat from a newspaper. Next to it, a sculpture of the founder and publisher of the Kölnische Zeitung Marcus DuMont (1784-1831) to the newspaper house. The sculptor himself has immortalized himself in a very Cologne way: At the edge of the fountain he has placed a 5-mark piece, a ‘Heiermann’, in the mosaic of a hand.” (DuMont Fountain, Stadt Köln)

Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello

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Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello
Piazza Castello
Vicenza, May 2025

“The Palazzo Porto is a palace in Piazza Castello, Vicenza, northern Italy. It is one of two palazzi in the city designed by Andrea Palladio for members of the Porto family (the other is Palazzo Porto, for Iseppo Porto, in contrà Porti). Only two bays of it were ever built, beginning shortly after 1571. Why the patron, Alessandro Porto, did not continue with the project is not known. For completing the scheme, which was probably intended to have been seven bays wide, the Porto family's 15th-century case, still standing to the left of the great architectural torso, would have been incrementally demolished. The structure was completed after Palladio's death by Vincenzo Scamozzi. The project seems to have been initiated immediately following the publication in 1570 of Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura, in which its design does not appear.” (Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello, Wikipedia)

Minerva-Brunnen

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Minerva-Brunnen (Minerva Fountain) by Friedrich Schierholz, 1894
(1983 copy from the original, destroyed in 1944)
Römerberg, Altstadt
Frankfurt, September 2024

“The eastern part of the Römerberg is also called ‘Samstagsberg’ (Saturday Hill) because, in the 15th century, public court was held here every Saturday in the open air. Later, weekly markets were also held regularly at this location. In 1481, the first open well was built here. Its early existence is documented by a document relating to the house Zum Ullner. In 1750, the fountain was converted into a pump well, and the old well trough was replaced with a smaller one. Further changes took place in 1893/1894. Since then, the figure of the goddess Minerva has stood on the cornice of the fountain. She is considered a symbol of wisdom, warfare, the arts, and crafts. The sculptor Friedrich Schierholz created the design but was never able to complete the work. The sculptor Fritz Klimsch completed the figure and fountain. The figure of Minerva gives the fountain its current name. On her head, she wears a helmet, holds a spear in her left hand, and a shield in her right. The shield depicts the severed head of Medusa. Rococo reliefs adorn all four sides of the pillar. An inscription on the back reads: ‘Renovated 1887’. The Minerva Fountain was destroyed in the war in 1944 and removed from the Römerberg in 1951. A largely historically accurate replica was reinstalled in 1983.” (Minerva-Brunnen, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Frankfurt)

Casa della Dogana

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Casa della Dogana (Customs House)
Via Euganea
Padua, May 2025

“Considered one of the most beautiful Romanesque houses in Padua, the so-called Palazzo della Dogana has been fully recovered through careful restoration. Built in 1294 near the medieval gate of San Giovanni delle Navi, under the podestà Nicolo Morosini, the Casa della Dogana had the important function of controlling traffic coming from Monselice. The building, which falls within the 13th-century typology of porticoed houses, is attributed to the architect Leonardo Zise Bocaleca from Monselice, who was also active at the time for the Municipality and for the Basilica Antoniana, who took inspiration, in the high portico, from the 13th-century structure of the Palazzo della Ragione. During the restoration of 1611, documented by the date inscribed on a window, the original mezzanine with wooden floors was replaced by a brick structure supported by a portico with lowered arches. Among the single-lancet windows on the first floor, an elegant double-lancet window stands out, closed by a relieving arch and decorated with a perforated pattern of small diamonds on the lintel. The motif, derived from the Tomb of Antenor, also by Bocaleca, is present in various private buildings from the second half of the thirteenth century. The façade towards Riviera San Benedetto is enriched by the coat of arms of the Municipality of Padua and that of the mayor Morosini.” (Casa della Dogana, ZonzoFox)

Leibniz-Denkmal

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz by Ernst Hähnel, 1883
Leibnizforum, Universitätstraße
Leipzig, September 2024

“The Leibniz Monument in the courtyard of the new campus of the University of Leipzig (Leibniz Forum) honors the mathematician, philosopher, physicist, politician, and diplomat Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who was born in Leipzig on July 6, 1646, and studied at the university there. He is considered the polymath of his time, one of the most important philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, and an important pioneer of the Enlightenment . Leibniz stands as a larger-than-life bronze statue on a square, bronze pedestal. The base of the monument is made of granite. Although only associated with Leipzig as a young man, in contrast to Goethe's monument on the Naschmarkt, Leibniz is not depicted as a youth, but as a mature man in the costume of his time as a ‘Prince of Science’ who strove to unite theory and practice in all scientific fields. On his right, he leans on a globe as a symbol of power and holds an open book as a scholarly characteristic, which characterizes his historical scope of action.” (Leibniz Monument, Wikipedia)

Lungarno delle Grazie

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Reflection with a yellow buoy
Lungarno delle Grazie
Florence, December 2024

“The Lungarno delle Grazie is that stretch of the northern bank of the Florentine Lungarni that goes from the National Central Library of Florence (Piazza dei Cavalleggeri, near the Canto dei Tardiboni) to the Ponte alle Grazie, from which it takes its name, on the corner of Via de' Benci and the Lungarno Diaz. The Volta dei Tintori is inserted along the route. The name is linked to the nearby presence of the oratory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, today on the Lungarno del Generale Armando Diaz, but once placed on one of the pine cones of the bridge of the same name (to preserve a miraculous image of the Madonna), and destroyed in 1876 to widen the roadway and allow the tram line to pass through.” (Lungarno delle Grazie, Wikipedia)