When you are in Bologna, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to choose your next step: will you go east to the seaside and Ravenna? will you go south to Fiorenze? or maybe north-west to Modena and Parma? Well, I chose to go north-east to Ferrara, and I could have gone even further to Padua, Venecia, but I just had two more nights to spend in Italy.
Not Antonioni's but definitely Italian.I chose Ferrara first and foremost because I was able to find a couchsurfer there who agreed to host me, which is always nice (especially after a less than impressive hostal in Bologna). But I also remembered that Ferrara was the hometown of Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the master of the Italian cinema, so I kind of wanted to pay my respects to the master by visiting the town where had grown up and where he was resting in peace.
Ferrara is much smaller than Bologna of course, which makes its community of students even more visible and impressive, but no less interesting. It was controlled for much of the Middle Age and Renaissance by one family, the "D'Este", who - like the Sforza in Milan or the Medicis in Fiorenze - gave the city its most fabulous and rich monuments. In those times, Italian cities were competing against each other to have the most magnificient cathedral, the greatest palace, the fanciest artists at their courts and so on, and Ferrara was at the vanguard of it all.
I am unfortunately unable to show you any good picture of the cathedral other than its campanile, because the facade was being cleaned up and entirely covered by scaffoldings.
However, here are a few photos of the city center, where you can still have a sense of how the life in Middle Age was going on.
At the center of it all, there is of course a castle. Surrounded by a moat (now a pond for carps), adorned with a quartet of sturdy towers (now the seat of a museum and tourism office), it has not lost however its sturdy and stern appearance.
However, as soon as the customs and the fashions became milder, the D'Este family shunned it for another house - more in tune with the architectural tastes of the time: the Palazzo de Diamanti.
You'll ask me: what have diamonds to have with it? It's just the nickname which was given to it because of its external walls covered with pyramid-like cones which give to it this appearance of a huge albinos hedgehod (in my humble opinion) and that make for some great abstract photos.
After the bustling atmosphere of Bologna, walking around Ferrara was like entering a peaceful dream. The town has a melancholic atmosphere, but also the heat and humidity are exhausting and quite oppressive. And it was not even June! I can't imagine how it is like when it's full summer.
One day is perfectly enough to visit Ferrara, so as soon as I was done, I said goodbye to my host and headed back to Bologna and its airport. I had a second plane to catch, direction... Bucharest!