An Italian castle

Thursday 28th June

When I asked Rob what other photos I should include, he said what about the Mille Miglia photos,  so here they are. Also a photo of the inlaid marble at the duomo in Brescia.

A slow start to the morning but eventually headed in to Trento (about 12k). We weren't sure what to expect from this town so headed for tourist information. Our first challenge was a car park (and avoid the ZTL). Turned out it was market day so took us a while to find a park that allowed longer than an hour.

The first thing we found at tourist info was that there is a hillclimb on this weekend. More later.

On the advice of the girl in the office we visited the Castello Buonconsiglio. The palace covers several periods starting with a medieval castle from the 13th to 15th century, and added on sections covering 16th to 18th centuries. This place was pretty amazing in terms of the frescoes on the ceilings and also the woodwork. It was not furnished like other palaces we have been to but every room we went in to had wow ceilings. We took the added tour into the Eagle Tower where there are 12 frescoes around the walls representing each month of the year - 11 actually, March was at some point destroyed by fire. These frescoes were painted between 1391 and 1407.

Castello Buonconsiglio.

View from the castello - some of the old walls of the city.

Beautiful ornamental grapevine arbour.

Odette warming her toes in the 'black fireplace'.

These tiles are a partial restoration of one of the floors in the castle.
Folk art quilt?

Just one example of the frescoed ceilings - this one in the loggia.

...and a wooden ceiling

...and some of the remaining frescoes on the walls.

Some of the 'month of the year' frescoes in the Eagle Tower.

Walking the streets of Trento in the historical centre there are lots of palazzos with beautiful facades from different periods, and at each palazzo there was an information board about the palazzo and what period it was from. Very well done by the city. Unlike some places we have been to in Italy, Trento seems to have money - clean, well laid out, information boards around the town, generally good roads. The city has a pedestrian only area so it is easy to wander slowly and take in all the sights. Some beautiful piazzas with many restaurants.

One of the palazzos in town. Loved the facade with the balconies.

Part of the Duomo in Trento.

We're still not too sure, but this roof certainly looked like it lent back.

Neptune fountain in the main piazza.

This bronze statue (2007) represents the typical Trentino family.

The altar in the duomo
- we took the photo to show the marble columns and their colours. 

While excavating under the theatre in 1999 to do renovations, they came across roman ruins from the year 240. Even back then the romans had underground sewerage, toilets (hole in the floor but same purpose), and the stuff was really built to last. They have unearthed some beautiful mosaic tiled floors where the tiles would be about 1/2inch square.

There were a few partial mosaic floors - this was one of the better ones.
This reminded us of the underground roman site we visited in Ravenna,
also in Italy.

Hillclimb - thanks to a wrong turn on the way home we found ourselves on this weekends hillclimb course. It is apparently around 20k and we travelled most of it - lots of new bitumen for the competitors. Rob was in heaven to be able to get a close look at it, but lots of other looky loos in both directions, and a bus route, and me, meant that he couldn't have a play.