Merry X!

(X=Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever). Season Greetings! or Happy Holidays! if you prefer. This is an oldie I made some months ago, but since it was the end of the summer I've taken now the licence to post it again (with some photoshopping) for this season.
Merry X to you all!

Bologna, Sala Borsa Library

La Sala Borsa (literally Stock Exchange Room) is a fantastic library with a huge ammount of batches, specially on the children and teenage section. But it's also an outstanding building which entrance is situaded about 20 meters far from the famous Fontana del Nettuno. As you can guess from the name, it has not always been a library: from 1870s (in which it was built) to the World War II it was Bologna's stock exchange room . Afterwards it became a sports arena till 2001 in which the library was inaugurated. But the most amazing thing about this places is that, under the transparent floor, it's still possible to see some remains of Felsina, the name that the etruscans gave to the city when thsy founded it on the 6th century BC.

Bologna, Piazza Minghetti

This was one of our stops on the last SketchCrawl (october 25).
Piazza Minghetti is not one of my favorite places in Bologna: it's the center of the financial, posh and snooty Bologna, anyway (as the whole Bologna) it has some elegant, romantic and decadent charm.


This first sketch shows a fat man that said rude nonsenses to everyone that passed near him, seemed not to be in his right mind. The following one is a detail of the huge plane tree in the center of the square. It always take my attention much more than the buidings.

Brush drawing has its own grammar and its own rhetoric, the hand holds the brush but it immediately takes the floor (I'd better say it takes the paper) and tells most of the message.

Street concert in Cremona

A couple of months ago I've been in Cremona with family and some friends. Cremona is the hometown of Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati... let's say it's the hometown of the violin. Music, mainly string music is everywhere. In other towns the signs in the street corners lead you to monuments, churches, museums... in Cremona signs lead you to the different luthiers' workshops. There are many of them, from many countries. Some of them keep the doors open so you can enter the workshop, see them at work and take some photos. Musicians from all over the world come here to commission their instruments.
At some moment we obviously came across with a bandstand in which a little group of young musicians played (really fine) Haendel's "Lascia ch'io pianga"...