Italy in May 2012

May 25–28, 2012

Italy is one of the best countries in the world. You can come here endless times.

All the car windshields have vehicle inspection decals on them.

Every windshield also has an insurance certificate combined with a turning disc on which the driver sets the time the car was parked.

A gas station sign.

Buses on Italian signs consist of a series of elements. Studying them is quite engrossing.

In case of fog, maintaining a following distance of at least three pavement dash marks is recommended (like in Morocco).

The parking lot shade canopy also serves as a solar panel array, which doubles its utility.

Scaffolding joints are covered with plastic casings to prevent them from scratching passers by (like in New York and Barcelona).

Rome

A police transport exhibition was taking place here, featuring everything from police Segways to police Lamborghinis.

The timetables at bus stops in Rome are incredibly irritating due to their dumb appearance. Absolutely every last detail about them is atrocious, from the design to the color.

The gray switchboxes also can’t exactly be called masterpieces, but at least they have an interesting top lid.

The Tiber River waterfront remains unsightly since ancient times.

But at least there are plenty of old insurance plaques on the walls (see also Spain, Ganja and Tbilisi).

The trash dumpsters are reminiscent of Barcelona.

A Roman trash can parking lot.

A corner with everything on it at once: a post box and a trash can and a sign and payphones.

Pompeii

Not far from Naples is the fascinating ancient city of Pompeii, which perished as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. A layer of ash several meters thick preserved the city in its original state. Almost all the buildings are still intact.

Some of the streets are closed off, but the city is so big that visitors aren’t missing anything by not being able to go behind the ropes.

Stone zebra crossings. Pedestrian crossings helped keep the feet of the ancient Pompeiians out of the muck and manure which flowed down the streets.

The homes of the rich, shops, squares, temples, streets—everything is still here.

Even the wall paintings in some of the homes have survived.

This picture is 2000 years old.

Lots of writing on the walls.

Only the trash cans are contemporary.

The eruption of Vesuvius was so powerful that no one had time to escape. The hot ash spread at speeds of up to 60 kilometers an hour. People burned to death, leaving empty cavities in the solidified ash where their bodies once were. If you pour plaster into such a cavity, you can recreate the forms of these bodies. In fact, this is very similar to the process for making sculptures, only in Pompeii it was living people that formed the sculpture molds.

Venice

You park your car on the eighth floor of a garage, and then continue on foot or by boat.

A Venetian hydrant.

The trash floating in the canals doesn’t deter romantically inclined visitors from dipping their feet in the water.

Ferrara

A quiet, sleepy sort of city.

Here, the pedestrian crossing sign is painted right on the pavement immediately before the crossing.

The giant rectangular metal dumpsters are the most interesting thing there is in the city.

Bologna

For whatever reason, I had previously always passed Bologna by. I’d assumed it was just a provincial industrial city with nothing worth seeing. Turns out, it’s an excellent city. It even has its own leaning tower.

What makes Bologna different from every other city in Italy is that the first floors of all the buildings have porticos along their entire length, like in Cuba.

There are trolleys here (and bad cities never have trolleys).

The downtown area turns into a pedestrian-only zone on the weekends.

A Bolognese traffic light.

The traffic signs are the same as everywhere else in Italy, but the fixtures on the back are uniquely elaborate and complex.

A trash can with an ashtray.

A trash can consisting of a plastic bag in a metal mesh enclosure (like in the Faroes).

Bolognese phone booths come in pairs. One of them often has an additional cap on the top, which probably houses electrical fixtures for the integrated advertising lightbox. No ads are displayed on the phone booths, however—just private flyers.