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The Grand Tour

Started by Savonarola, July 16, 2023, 05:35:27 PM

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Savonarola

I was recently back in Detroit and visited the Detroit Institute of Art.  One of the sections they have is called "The Grand Tour," which has a collection of 17th and 18th century paintings and objet d'art from (or inspired by) Rome, Naples, Florence and Venice that would have been typical for a young man on his grand tour to have collected.  At the end there was a "Your turn" place which asked the visitor to describe his own Grand Tour on a three by five card and place it in a binder.  I wrote:

Paris- to study culinary arts
Florence- to burn secular vanities to study the Renaissance
Fez- to study sacred music
Southern Spain- to see the old Moorish kingdoms and study their architecture

(Yes, I realize this misses the point of the Grand Tour, which was to get drunk and collect venereal diseases.)

How would you answer that, assuming you could pick any four cities for your Grand Tour, (not necessarily near each other, or in Europe) which would you pick and what would you do there?
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Maladict

Great question. My younger self would have gone for the more classical Grand Tour (and did). But now that I have already spent a couple of years in Italy and travelled extensively in Europe, I'm drawn more to the other parts of the old world.

- Peloponnese: seen the highlights, but there is infinitely more to study on that small bit of land.
- Egypt, simply because it would take months to take in the sheer amount of history on display.
- The Levant, preferably Syria but any of the four countries really.
- Iran, to correct my woeful lack of knowledge on all things Persian.

Josephus

hmmm....without thinking about it too much.

Japan. To witness its culture.
St. Petersburg, Russia. To read Russian lit on the banks of the Neva
Iraq. (With guides, handlers and security). To correct my knowledge of all things Babylonian
Chechia. For a Bohemian ending

Civis Romanus Sum<br /><br />"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

mongers

New York
Istanbul
Delhi
Beijing
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

The Minsky Moment

Mar-a-lago: to move my arms back and forth to Elton John
The Titanic: I hear all the cool kids are doing it
Hong Kong: John Lee assures me its great now that they've cleared out the democracy rats
Moscow: lunch with Prigozhin at Ruski, a lovely windowed restaurant on the 85th floor with spectacular views.  What could go wrong?
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
--Joan Robinson

garbon

New York
Berlin
Florence
Rome
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

grumbler

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 17, 2023, 08:29:28 AMMar-a-lago: to move my arms back and forth to Elton John
The Titanic: I hear all the cool kids are doing it
Hong Kong: John Lee assures me its great now that they've cleared out the democracy rats
Moscow: lunch with Prigozhin at Ruski, a lovely windowed restaurant on the 85th floor with spectacular views.  What could go wrong?

Let me guess: your wife/NOK suggested this itinerary.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

Savonarola

I was back in the 313 a couple weeks ago and visited the Detroit Institute of Arts.  They still have the "Your turn" part at the end of the Grand Tour exhibit.  This person has clearly put some planning into his or her ultimate trip of a lifetime:



:o :o :o

Kendama is a ball and cup type game.  I had never heard of it, but it looks like some people take it quite seriously:

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock