Luminous jubilee

I hope you’ve had a very good start for 2018. Here in Finland, the new year meant the closing of the centenary festivities of our independence. The year 2017 was filled with all kinds of events and happenings observing the landmark. Yet many celebrations both at home and abroad took place in early December just before or on our Independence Day the 6th.

Numerous monuments, buildings and natural sites around the world were illuminated in the blue and white colours of our flag, such as the Colosseum, the Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, etc.

A unique Luminous Finland 100 light art tour was also arranged domestically lighting up several historical and natural sites, such as the Olavinlinna Castle in Savonlinna and the Saana fell at Lapland’s Kilpisjärvi. Most appropriately, the tour culminated in our beloved Turku, the oldest town in the country believed to have been founded almost 800 years ago. And naturally, the venue was the Turku Castle, one of the oldest surviving buildings in the country.

We went to have a look at the lit castle on the first night. As if on cue, some slight snowfall started the very night painting the act all the more magical. By the entrance, scenes of winter landscapes with a few wild animals were projected onto the walls of the Renaissance bailey. The windows around the courtyard were shimmering in changing colours.

And so were those of the medieval main castle and of the towers at both ends of its courtyard. Light artist Kari Kola had turned the old stone structures with the old-style, although renovated, windows mesmerisingly beautiful. Some of these photos will definitely be on my Christmas greetings cards next time.

That night, access to the park in front of the main castle was denied because of preparations of a production for the second night. Despite the minus degrees I walked around the fenced area admiring the colours and marvelling the fresh snow. We haven’t seen much of that this winter. The facade of the main castle was decorated with a projection of a delightful summery seascape with two swans flying over it.

I returned the second night for the grand finale. It being the Independence Day it offered not only a walk through the courtyards of the colour-lit castle but also a five-hour nonstop spectacle of light, sound, dance, fire and acrobatics at the park with an ensemble of dozens of performers. The show titled ‘The Nature of Finland’ was designed and directed by the local circus artist Antti Kulmala, in collaboration with choreographer Iina Ahola and sound designer Ilmari Tiitinen.

As the weather felt freezing many people hadn’t followed the advice to arrive by public transport disturbing the traffic flow, not to mention the experience at the courtyards. I was very pleased we had paid the visit the first night as mass events most certainly aren’t our cup of tea, especially in hubby’s case. I stayed for an hour or so and actually chatted with a couple of fellow spectators managing to make it a memorable shared experience after all.

The first luminous visit to the castle was one of the rare highlights of this winter so far. We haven’t had any snow since early December until a few days ago so you can imagine it’s been depressingly dark most of the time. All our hope is not lost yet. Should we be lucky, even this time the season might develop into something radiant in the end. And if not in southwestern Finland there is always Italy...

Rainy Orta San Giulio

Late last year, I thought I’d spend the winter season busy posting travel stories. I should have known better. A glance at the blog archive revealed a clear pattern: it’s only in March that I generally revive enough to return to any systematic endeavour. I’d better get going then.

There is much more to tell about our holiday in Northern Italy I posted about exactly a year ago. One day when we were staying at the gorgeous little castle I described here the forecast showed rain. We decided to play it safe and visit a place that would be beautiful whatever the weather. So we drove to Orta San Giulio, a small lakeside town facing the pretty little island Isola di San Giulio in Lake Orta. We weren’t disappointed.

Lago d’Orta in Piedmont is the westernmost of the lakes in Northern Italy. It is less familiar to tourists than the great lakes although I am sure the adorable Orta San Giulio is getting its fair share of visitors during high season. We happened to choose entrance via the hillside road instead of the lakeside one. We stopped at the lookout by the lovely little church of Madonna della Bocciola for some foggy scenes before entering the serpentine road down to the town.

The centro storico is practically only a narrow strip by the lake with a fishbone-like plan. There is a single long alley parallel to the shoreline with a few short traversing ones leading towards the lake. As soon as you’ve descended from the parking lot to the stone-roofed buildings and zigzagged your way down to the artery of the old town it will take you to the most important sites of the place, the square Piazza Motta and the magnificent views to the Isola di San Giulio.

The boatmen were pacing by the lake with their umbrellas. It was a rainy October afternoon but they hadn’t given up hope to find tourists anxious to be taken to the island. We settled for the view as we are – still in our sixties – suffering from this we-can-always-return-for-a-closer-look syndrome. Nevertheless, it was hard to turn your eyes away from the picturesque island. Its skyline is dominated by the tower of the basilica believed to have been built on the site where hermit San Giulio lived originating from the 9th century; and the huge 1840s seminary building now housing a Benedictine abbey with a dozen or so nuns founded in the 1970s.

The square itself is also most charming. Whenever the weather is fine it is a perfect place to sit back at a table in front of one of the cafés and study the details of the surroundings. I was particularly fascinated by the neglected potential of the deserted hotel and restaurant at the waterfront in desperate need of some serious restoration. It was shut down by an administrative order of some kind, presumably issued because of safety concerns.

The Renaissance Palazzotto, the former town hall, by the square dating from 1582 is an amazing piece of architectural history. It rests completely on arched porticoes providing a great meeting point or shelter underneath. The exterior of the building is decorated with fabulous trompe l’oeil windows and frescoes of coats of arms, religious themes, and other decorative motifs. Access is through an external staircase. We took the liberty to climb the stairs to admire the views from the top landing.

I’ve understood the best vistas in town would have been from the nearby Sacro Monte di Orta dedicated to St Francis of Assisi. A path with 20 chapels leads from the square to the top of the hill which is one of the nine sacred mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy having a joint entry in the UNESCO World Heritage listing. The German philosopher and poet Friedrich Nietzsche reportedly counted the site among “the most evocative places in the world”.  Next time…

I must add a few words about a dilemma we always face when travelling in the Mediterranean: the mealtimes. By the hour we would be in need of some ‘bread breaking’ the restaurants are often either closed for lunch or not yet open for dinner. In Orta San Giulio, we were lucky to find Ristorante Edera, a rustic little family restaurant where we were served a nice late lunch of pasta and prawns while the staff were having their meal with their family around a long table by the kitchen. Their low-season ‘out-of-hours’ service couldn’t have been friendlier. We left the place most contented and ready for new experiences, that time a walk along the paved path circling the cape north of the old town but more about that here.