The Spanish Steps, Rome, Italy

Can a flight of steps be considered a building?  Yes, if you define "building" as part of the built environment and not just a structure with four walls and a roof.  If bridges can be "buildings," steps can too.  Especially when we're talking about the Scalla di Spagne, or Spanish Steps, of Rome, the widest staircase in Europe and a masterpiece of baroque design.
      Why are they called "Spanish?"  During the 17th century, Spain maintained an embassy by the piazza now at the foot of the steps.  The piazza became known as the Piazza di Spagne, the Spanish Piazza.

Trinita dei Monti

   Rome, as both tourists and visitors will attest, is a city of hills.  Sometimes steep hills.  High on a hill overlooking the Piazza di Spagne sits the Trinita dei Monti, the Church of the Trinity on the Mount.   Built by the French in the sixteenth century on a former vineyard, the Tinita dei Monti is an architectural gem in its own right.   The twin bell towers were added to the facade in the seventeenth century, creating the view from the  we still see looking up from the piazza today. (Interestingly, the church and the land surrounding it remain French property.  Two clocks, one on each bell tower, tell the time in Rome and Paris, respectively.)

Design by di Santis

For over a hundred years getting from the Piazza di Spagne to the Trinita de Monte and back again meant traveling a steep path along a rough, wooded hill.   Once more the French "stepped" in and offered to finance the construction of stone steps.  The original French plans called for an enormous statue of King Louis XIV, France's great "Sun King," astride a horse as the focal point of the steps.  Fortunately, at least for Romans, most of the people involved in the original planning, including Louis XIV himself, had died by the time the Italian architects Alessandro Specchi and Francesco di Sanctis won the commission to build the steps in 1717.  Di Santis had submitted the winning design to the architectural competition, though Specchi, the better known of the two, received most of the credit.

Engraving by Pinini, 1756

    Di Santis based his design on the terraced gardens popular in country estates.  A total of 138 steps rose in tiers from the piazza to the entrance of the church. The finished staircase was actually a bit off center from the church towers, which gave it an even more graceful appearance, as can be seen in the engraving by Giovanni Panini, made around 1756, about thirty years after the steps had been completed.  Officially, the steps commemorated a peace treaty between Spain and France. Unofficially, they became the place for Romans and visitors to meet and greet for generations.  The neighborhood bordering the steps was a favorite haunt of writers and artists. One of Romes oldest coffee shops, the Antico Cafe Greco, opened beside the steps in 1760 and is still going strong.

Keats-Shelley House

    Among the cafe's more renowned literary patrons was the English poet John Keats, who spent the last days of his young life in a house right on the east side of the steps.  He died there at the age of 25 in 1821. In the early 20th century his former residence became the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, a museum devoted to Keats, his friend Percy Busby Shelley, and other romantic poets.  Today it possesses one of the largest collections of manuscripts and letters devoted to English romanticism in the world.  What better location for such an collection than one of the most romantic locations in one of the world's most romantic cities?

Fountain of the Boat

And speaking of romance, no description of the Scala di Spagne can end without including a bit about the Fontana della Barcaccia, the Fountain of the Boat, located right at the foot of steps.  Designed by Pietro Bernini and his illustrious son Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the fountain predates the steps by about 90 years; it was completed in 1627.  The lyrical shape blends in so perfectly, though, it almost seems as if the two were made for one another.  According to legend, the fountain commemorated the story of a boat that was carried up to the piazza when the Tiber River flooded in 1598.  After the waters receded, Romans saw the abandoned boat as a symbol of God's mercy and hope for a better day.  There's also the theory the Berninis chose the sunken boat motif because the low water pressure in the area would not support the more spectacular jets of water that distinguished some of the city's larger fountains.  No matter.  The Fontana della Barcaccia may not be one of Rome's biggest fountains, but it is one of the most beloved.
  Every spring the steps are decorated with pots of flowers to welcome the season.  Needless to say, they are packed with people too. Few historic sites get such rigorous daily use.  The Spanish Steps remind us that we don't always have to look up to see great architecture.  Sometimes it is right beneath our feet. 

Links:
You can learn more about the Spanish Steps from Great Buildings on Line or watch a panoramic video at Italy Guides. The Keats-Shelley House has an online tour of the museum as well as some e-cards featuring the house and the Spanish Steps.  If you want to read more about Gian Lorenzo Bernini, this biography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will give you a start.

Photo Credits:
Wiki Media Commons
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
National Library of Art and Archeology, Rome

 

Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum, New York

Top of the Edridge Street Synagogue

From the late 19th through the early 20th century millions of East European Jews immigrated to the United States.  Thousands of them congregated on New York's Lower East Side and among those who congregated on the Lower East Side, hundreds congregated (literally) under the roof of the Edridge Street Synagogue. Completed in 1887, the Eldridge Street Synagogue was anything but ordinary frotm its beginning.  With its combination of Romanesque, Gothic, and Moorish elements, the dramatic new building swiftly became a neighborhood treasure and source of pride.
    Oddly enough, the architects, Peter and Francis Herter, were known largely as designers of tenements--the stolid, and even grim, apartment buildings that became the symbol of struggle and poverty to generations of immigrants.  Yet, at Eldridge Street they spared no expense to create a genuine work of art, from the stained glass window facing the street, to the intricate carving on the interior pillars, to the magnificent chandelier. 
   In part, this opulence reflected the prestige of the synagogue's leader, Rabbi Eliahu Borok, otherwise known as Eliahu the Blessed, who had been the Head Rabbi of the entire Jewish community in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Eldridge Street Synagogue was not just a show piece, though.  It functioned as a community and religious center for Jews from all countries and social classes.
     As the children of those people grew up, however, most moved from the Lower East.  After 1920, the population of synagogue gradually declined. By the 1960s, the main building had been closed and only a small congregation still met in the basement.  In 1971, New York University professor Gerald R. Wolfe founded the Friends of the Eldridge Street Synagogue in an attempt to restore the building. Progress was slow.  For the next fifteen years it seemed as if little could be done to save this wonderful building.

Interior Detail

Enter Roberta Brandes Gratz, journalist, urban historian, and preservationist  When she visited the synagogue in the late 1980s she saw pigeons roosting in the rafters.  She also saw enormous potential.  As head of the Eldridge Street Project, she marshaled all her fundraising resources. The Project conducted architectural surveys, contracted craftspeople, and launched an outreach campaign. The ultimate goal was two-fold:  To revive the synagogue as a house of worship and to create a museum that would be open to all.  In 1996, the Eldridge Street Synagogue was named a National Historic Landmark. Eleven years later, in December 2007,  the synagogue's 120th anniversary, the Eldridge Street Synagogue and Museum was opened to the public.
One of the new "jewels" of the restoration was a stained glass window designed by artist Kiki Smith with the assistance of architect Deborah Gans.  It is situated above the sanctuary and opposite the original rose window of 1887.  Today museum receives thousands of visitors every year and the synagogue is actively used by an Orthodox Jewish congregation.  The two functions support and enhance each other.  Once more, the Eldridge Street Synagogue is the center of a thriving community that continues to care for this architectural treasure as it enters its second century as one of the great buildings of New York's Lower East Side.

The Ark

 

Links: You can discover more about synagogue and museum at their main site.
For information on the history of immigration and the Lower East Side, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is a great place to start.  And the New York Times Artsbeat blog has a great video on the Kiki Smith window.
          

Photo Credits:
The Museum at Eldridge Street.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt

Bibliotheca Alexandrina

The original Library of Alexandria was one of the wonders of the ancient world.  Constructed around 300 B.C.E. under the rule of Ptolemy Sotar, it must have contained hundreds, possibly thousands, of scrolls in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, and other languages.  Unfortunately, the Library was burned to the ground during the Roman conquest of Egypt in 48 CE.
  After that, the Library of Alexandria existed only in history and legend for nearly two millennia.  Then, in 1974, a group of scholars at the University of Alexandria approached UNESCO with a proposal to establish a new library and cultural center on the site of the ancient library by Alexandria's Mediterranean shore.  

Bibliotheca Alexandrina from above

  Building the new library took over a quarter of a century. The wait was well worth it.  Designed the Norwegian architectural firm, Snøhetta, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is an awe-inspiring structure.
   The roof, slanted at an angle, appears both ancient and modern. Some people claim resemble a sundial, others say it looks like a  micro-chip. Measuring 160 meters in diameter (525 ft.),  rises 32 meters (104 ft.) at its highest side to accommodate a main reading room 11 stories high. 

Main Reading Room

In addition to housing millions books, visual media, and audio tapes, the library also includes four museums, a conference center with over a thousand seats, 15 academic research centers, and VISTA--the Virtual Immersive Science and Technology Applications system that allows researchers to create "virtual reality" environments.  It even has its own planetarium.

Detail of outer wall

The architectural centerpiece, however, is the outer wall of Aswan granite covered with inscriptions in 120 human languages.
   Three years after its opening, the Bibliotheca received the 2004 Aga Kahn Award for Islamic architecture.  The judges lauded the library as "truly global in its outlook."
 But while the outside world may have loved the library, some Egyptians were not so sure.  Why have such an impressive building in a country where nearly half the population was still illiterate, the asked.  Was the library going to become just another show piece for the dictator Hosni Mubarak and his government?

Protestors join hands to protect the library

     The answer came with the Arab spring of 2011.  That February, millions of Egyptians gathered in public squares and streets to protest Mubarak's rule.  Mubarak dispatched the army to quell the protests.  Violence ensued. Despite the risk to their own lives, many protestors rushed to save Egypt's landmarks from potential destruction.  In Alexandria, they locked arms on the steps of the library and unfurled an Egyptian flag to deter looters.  The Library of Alexandria had proved truly a library for the people at last.

   As of 2012, Egypt is still politically volatile.  The revolution remains a work in progress. Not all the news is good, yet much of it is hopeful.  And the library stands as a beacon of hope amid all the strife and controversy.  A place where all Egyptians can meet, and the world can meet Egypt, too.

Links:
You can visit the Bibliotheca Alexandrina  online. E-Architect has further details on the building and its history.  If you want more pictures, Egyptian photographer Fady Zaki has some wonderful images of the library's wall of languages  for you to peruse and even use free of charge.


Images:
Carston Whimster, Wiki Media Commons
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
UNESCO