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The Monster Park at Bomarzo
One of the unknown treasures of Italy is a bizarre private park built by a Renaissance nobleman. The Italians don’t approve of it. When I told a guy in Florence that I was spending a day in Bomarzo, he made a face and said, “Well, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you...”
The park sat derelict and unknown for several hundred years, and has only recently been restored. It’s between Rome and Florence; get off at the Attigliano-Bomarzo station. It isn’t in most of the standard guidebooks.
- >> Parco dei Mostri, the official site
- >> Photos of Bomarzo
Amazing Chicago
The most stolid and unyieldingly practical American city harbors some peculiar things.
- >> Chicago weather.
- >> The amazing Gyros Project. This might be a unique Chicago phenomenon — at least, I’ve never seen it in other cities
- >> Ghost signs of Chicago. Another enduring interest, here exhaustively documented.
- >> The Hooker Motels of Lincoln Avenue. A row of seedy motels a few blocks away from where I live — I have no idea whether their nickname is deserved, but they did have tons of atmosphere. They’re mostly gone now, boarded up or soon to be, but something of their aura is preserved at this site.
Florence
One of the many reasons I loathe Ridley Scott is that “Hannibal” makes Florence look sickly blue. Well, it isn’t. It’s golden. It’s the most beautiful city in the world. It makes Paris look merely pretty. Go in the spring when you can get gelato millefolie.
- >> A haunting mask shop
- >> Buy his book, The Masks of Prof. Agostino Dessi
- >> Photos of Florence
Paris
Still, Paris. OK, yes, Paris. And it’s not just that everything is pretty. Where are the ugly people? I think the streets are swept each morning and the ugly people are put on a bus to Marseilles.
- >> Photos of Paris
China
These are street scenes from the industrial cities of northern China. Chinese urban planners think “Blade Runner” was an okay blueprint for the future but just wasn’t intense enough.
- >> Photos taken in Beijing, Harbin, Daqing and Shenyang.