Category: Miscellaneous

Normally travel for work is a less than enjoyable experience but this week I’ve been to Trento*, and it was very pleasant. Sadly I only had my mobile phone to take photos.

Trento is in the north of Italy, the bit that is positively Germanic. The second language appears to be German and the cuisine is more alpine than pizza. It’s a small town with a substantial university. It sits  in a broad, bottomed steep-sided valley an hour on the train from Verona on the line that heads up to Bolzano, the Brenner Pass and Austria. I’d not heard of Trento before, I’d heard of the Council of Trent (which refers to the Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church which was held in Trent between 1545 and 1563).

A short walk from the railway station and you are in the heart of the old city, narrow streets with marble pavements faced with buildings which in large part seem to date from the 16th century. The majority of the shops, restaurants and bars embedded in the lower floors are rather swish and classy looking.

The heart of the old town is the Piazza del Duomo, featuring the city’s cathedral, the fountain of Neptune and other fine buildings.

The cathedral seems to date to some time around the start of the 13th century. It’s been well conserved and the square itself is largely in character. The most similar British cities I know in terms of old architecture are probably Wells and Canterbury most other British cities either never had substantial buildings of such age, or they were replaced at some point since.

The fontana del nettune is quite blingy:

Next door to my hotel, Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore:

Alongside the ecclesiastical buildings are some fine townhouses. Romeo and Juliet was set in Verona, an hour down the railway line – I wonder if this is how the balcony Juliet stood in looked:

This is the Palazzo Quetta Alberti-Colico. There’s also the rather nice Palazzo Geremia (pdf)

On the edge of town, close to the bridge over the river, the Torre Vanga, erected originally in 1210, is palimpsest of masonry and brick.

And as well as that there are some impressive entrances:

Definitely worth a day trip if you are in the area, and great if you have business as the university!

*Unsurprisingly the Italian wikipedia entry is much more extensive.

I’ve been working in Liverpool for a few months now, I take the Merseyrail train into Liverpool Central and then walk up the hill to ScraperWiki’s offices which are next door to the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral aka “Paddy’s Wigwam”.

The cathedral was built in the 1960s, I rather like it. It looks to me like part of a set from a futuristic sci-fi film, maybe Gattacca or Equilibrium. Or some power collection or communication device, which in a way I suppose it is.

To be honest the rest of my usual walk up the Brownlow Hill is coloured by a large, fugly carpark and a rather dodgy looking pub. However, these last few weeks the Merseyrail’s Liverpool Loop has been closed to re-lay track so I’ve walked across town from the James’ Street station, giving me the opportunity to admire some of Liverpool’s other architecture.

As an aside, it turns out that Merseyrail is the second oldest underground urban railway in the world, opening in 1886 and also originally running on steam power according to wikipedia, which seems to contradict Christian Wolmar in his book on the London Underground, which I recently reviewed. (Wolmar states the London Underground is the only one to have run on steam power.

Returning to architecture, I leave James’ Street station via the pedestrian exit on Water Street, there is a lift up onto James’ Street but I prefer the walk. As I come out there is a glimpse of the Royal Liver Building, on the waterfront.

Just along the road is Liverpool Town Hall, for some reason it’s offset slightly from the centre of Castle Street which spoils the vista a little.

Down at the other end of Castle Street we find the Queen Victoria Monument, she stands in Derby Square in front of the rather unattractive Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts.

On the way I pass the former Adelphi Bank building, now a Cafe Nero. I like the exuberant decoration and the colour of the stone and domes.

Raise your eyes from ground level and you see more decoration at the roof line of the buildings on Castle Street:

Once I’ve passed the Victoria Monument it’s a long straight walk down Lord Street then Church Street which has a mixture of buildings, many quite modern but some a bit older, often spoiled by the anachronistic shop fronts at street-level.

I quite like this one at 81-89 Lord Street but it’s seen better days, it used to look like this. It looks like it used to have a spectacular interior.

Further along, on Church Street, there is a large M&S in a fine building.

By now I’ve almost reached my normal route into work from Liverpool Central station, just around the corner on Renshaw Street is Grand Central Hall, which started life as a Methodist church.

It’s a crazy looking building, the buddleia growing out of the roof make me think of one of J.G. Ballard’s novels.

We’re on the final straight now, heading up Mount Pleasant towards the Metropolitan Cathedral. Looking back we can see the Radio City Tower, actually we can see the Radio City Tower from pretty much anywhere in Liverpool.

A little before we reach the Metropolitan Cathedral there is the YMCA on Mount Pleasant, another strange Victorian Gothic building.

I struggled to get a reasonable photograph of this one, I was using my 28-135mm lens on a Canon 600D for this set of photos. This is a good walking around lens but for photos of buildings in dense city environments the 10-22mm lens is better for its ridiculously wide angle view – handy for taking pictures of all of a big building when you are standing next to it!

So maybe next week I’ll head out with the wide angle lens and apply some of the rectilinear correction I used on my Chester photographs.