"A" for...
Lion, eagle, peacock – peacock, eagle, lion
This is the order from left to right of the animals that guard from above the entrance to the Pomposa Basilica. Exemplary elements of the Middle Ages and Romanesque art that form a sequence of meaning that is not purely…
Evergreen pink
It could be said that the colour pink never goes out of fashion at Pomposa. We find it in the frescoed shades of the flesh tones of the figures and in the scenes inside the Abbey, we find it in…
The eight points of a star
The church of Santa Maria Abbazia in Pomposa brings heaven to earth in many ways.An arch in the interior colonnade houses the image of a star with eight points, alternating its eight elements with as many letters of the name…
Lifetimes of Pomposa
Pomposa Abbey, which can be seen today when travelling along the busy SS Romea coast road, is all that remains of an ancient and more complex abbey complex that was perhaps built as early as the 7th century AD on…
Steps of the Archive
The tall bell tower of Magister Deusdedit rises from the abbey castle to reassure the silent pilgrim who walks with his staff along the Via Romea through the insula on his long and perilous journey to the Holy Land. Dawn…
Cautionary potholes: scaffolding holes
Often, when looking at historical buildings and monumental complexes, especially from the Middle Ages, one can see that their outer walls are studded with rectangular holes. They are not an oversight of the builders of the time, but correspond to…
Landscape stories
The landscape has good memory and narrates itself. Interpreters of this tales: land reclamation, river floods and the breaking of banks, marshy expanses of water, hydraulic constructions to regulate and channel river water, land that advances or retreats.Today, the Codigo…
How much water has passed under the bridge?
The landscape that characterises the Po Delta today is profoundly different from the one that presented itself to travellers in past centuries and is the result of the uninterrupted activity of the Po River in the Po Valley and the…
To avoid a bitter liver
Between May and June it is not unusual to see the banks of the canal near the Abbey dotted with the rustic inflorescences of Silybum marianum, the milk thistle. It sprouts among the tall grass and lake reeds. It owes…
“Regula”, straight board for drawing lines…
It is no coincidence that the etymology of the word 'rule' comes from the extension of meaning of the tool used to accompany the hand in drawing straight lines. A rule is nothing more than a norm (derived from experience…