Week 6: Part 3: Day 39 – 41
19th – 21st January, 2017
Addio Venizia
We awoke to our last morning in Venice, packed out gear and left our beloved Venice apartment. With a little time on our hands, we stored our bags at a nearby hotel and took our chance to explore the nearby famous Rialto Markets.
The Rialto markets have been going for seven centuries and is at the very heart of Venetian local life. People watching – as locals stocked up on fruit, spices and wet fresh seafood – whilst watching the boats drift past, made for a pleasant morning.
Then we returned to haul on our bags and had our final walk through the narrow streets to the station. For now it was good bye to Venice as we headed onwards to new adventures with old friends…
Heading to Pesaro
The sandwich names at the railway station whispered Italian traveling tales…
This time we were delighted to be reacquainted with Anna, Fabio and their two children, Oliver and Amelia. We had first met them when they had kindly hosted us in Greenwich London in 2014. Since then they had moved to Pesaro, Marche’s second largest city and we were looking forward to seeing their friendly faces plus their neck of the woods.
We were happy to be greeted with open arms.
Amelia and Oliver had kindly given us their lovely room and it made us laugh that their curtains featured Hughy, Dewey & Louie – so appropriate for our travelling trio. Perhaps the weary Donald represented us too? he he. So it was in the proceeding days we settled into the deep warmth of this wonderful family …
and the adventure of exploring this UNESCO “Creative City”, birthplace of the composer Gioachino Antonio Rossini; from it’s seasonally busy seaside – now devoid of tourists – to it’s 14th century castle Rocco Constanza, to it’s magnificent art nouveau villa’s.
Of worthy note is the stunning Ruggeri villa. It is a particularly fine example of the Liberty style and is considered the best example of art nouveau in Italy. It’s stunning ornate stucco ornamentation and decorative wrought iron, took our breath away. It was commissioned by Oreste Ruggeri, a rich pharmaceutical industrialist and designed by Urbino born, Giuseppe Brega in the early 19th century.
In a magazine article, Paolucci has explained that “in the beginning, the Villino had a verdant garden that provided a luxurious frame for the splendid beauty of the building, and was decorated with an artistic wrought iron gazebo and a fountain with lobster-shaped details, similar to the ones under the cornice. Flower beds and pathways completed the garden’s texture.”
Furthermore, Paolucci continued, “the four façades were designed to be different from one another, and were harmonized through dense, stylistically aggregating decorations and, most importantly, a varied naturalistic color palette (not visible today because it was replaced in 1952 with the monochromatic light gray-green).”
As regards the interiors, “the first floor is the best preserved at the moment. Each of the four main rooms still maintains the predominant color and naturalistic motif that originated its name: so you can still admire the horse chestnut room, the wisteria room, the narcissus room, or finally the sunflower room.” – Paolucci, “Un classico dello Stile Liberty”, in “Ariminum”, May-June 2010
It was a pleasant unexpected discovery, whose memory lingers…
