The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Travel Postcard: 48 hours in Siena, Italy Posted: 09 Dec 2011 08:15 AM PST SIENA, Dec 9 — Often overshadowed by its bigger and more powerful ancient rival Florence, Siena has always been a jewel in Italy's rich crown of cultural heritage and an ideal place to immerse yourself in the history of Tuscan art. Old Siena, spread over three hills in southern Tuscany and surrounded by medieval walls, is relatively small and can be easily explored on foot. But its magnificent churches and palaces contain such a wealth of art that a weekend is hardly enough to discover them all.  Pantera (Panther) parish flags are tossed into the air during a parade in Del Campo square before the Palio horse race in Siena, July 2, 2011. — Reuters file pic Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors get the most out of a 48-hour visit. FRIDAY 6 pm — Choose a place to stay in the historic centre where options range from modestly priced hotels such as Pensione Palazzo Ravizza (www.palazzoravizza.it) to the luxury Grand Hotel Continental (www.grandhotelcontinentalsiena.com) If you also want to enjoy peace and quiet and reconnect with nature on your break from the stressful city life, book yourself into one of many farm resorts that dot the rolling hills around Siena. Secluded Villa Ferraia, a 13th century hamlet turned into an exclusive resort, offers star-watchers its own astronomical observatory. (www.villaferraia.com) 7 pm — Kick off your holiday with a glass of local wine, traditional Chianti or its upscale cousins known as super-Tuscans, such as Ornellaia or Sassicaia, at one of the numerous wine bars lining meandering cobbled streets of the old city. To enjoy a stunning view while sipping your wine and nibbling on traditional Tuscan appetisers, head to Enoteca Italiana, a public wine promotion body based in the 16th century fortress overlooking Siena, whose cellar boasts more than 1,500 wines. 9 pm — Continue with a classical music concert at Accademia Musicale Chigiana. A palace that hosts the academy, a musical instrument museum and an art collection dates back to the 12th century and is worth a separate visit. 11 pm — Those looking for a wild night life could be a bit disappointed by Siena, where locals prefer to spend a night out in a cozy restaurant or wine bar. Private parties are often organised by Siena's 17 contradas, or historic districts within ancient city walls, which are still the pillars of local life. A few bars stay open late, to the joy of visitors and university students. Casa del Boia bar, based in what used to be the local executioner's house connected to the execution site via an underground tunnel, is among the most popular hangout places. SATURDAY 9 am — head to Piazza del Campo, Siena's main square and its beating heart since the Middle Ages. The unique, shell-shaped square is a favourite gathering place for locals and tourists and the stage of Siena's famous Palio horse race. The race, which traces its origins back to the Middle Ages and celebrates the Virgin Mary, is held twice a year, on July 2 and August 16 with 10 of Siena's 17 contradas competing for a banner called palio. On some very rare occasions a third palio in a year has been held, and locals joke that if the euro survives Europe's unfolding sovereign debt crisis it would be a valid reason for an extraordinary Palio. Cross Piazza del Campo to its lowest point to visit Palazzo Pubblico, Siena's old town hall, which hosts the Museo Civico with famous frescos by artists of the Sienese school, including Simone Martini's Maesta and Ambrogio Lorenzetti's series of allegories representing Good and Bad Governments. Climb more than 400 steps to get to the top of Torre del Mangia bell tower, which rises nearly 100 meters high next to Palazzo Pubblico, to enjoy a 360-degree view of the city. 11 am — To restore energy after climbing the tower, take a creamy cappuccino or an espresso with traditional Sienese sweets, almond cake panforte and almond ricciarelli biscuits, at the elegant cafe Nannini, one of the oldest in town. Once your batteries are recharged, keep walking along swirling narrow streets and pop into old churches full of frescoes and paintings by famous Tuscan artists and richly decorated palaces. Teatro dei Rinnovati, which is based in Palazzo Pubblico and dates back to the 16th century, opens its doors to visitors on days when there are no performances there. 3 pm — After a lunch at one of numerous small restaurants in the centre that serve pasta with hare or wild boar and grilled steak and other traditional Sienese cuisine, it's shopping time. Pop into elegant small boutiques selling locally made clothes, shoes and souvenirs that seem to be successfully competing both with omnipresent Italian fashion brands and foreign rivals. 6 pm — Grab a table at a sidewalk cafe to drink an espresso or a glass of wine and watch locals on their traditional evening stroll, or passeggiata, in the town centre. Watch entire families dressed to impress and marvel at the glamorous women who manage to remain elegantly balanced on stiletto heels while traversing Siena's steep cobbled streets. 8 pm — If you visit Siena during the truffle season in November or December, don't miss the various dishes, from pasta to chocolate, sprinkled with truffles unearthed using dogs in the nearby forests. Head to Antica Osteria da Divo (www.osteriadadivo.it), which claims that its dining rooms are carved out of caves dating back to the Etruscan era more than 2,000 years ago, or to La Taverna di San Giuseppe (www.tavernasangiuseppe.it), which traces its history back "only" to the 12th century. SUNDAY 9 am — Start your day by heading to Siena's cathedral, or Duomo, one of Italy's greatest Gothic churches with its towering white, green and red marble shape. Begun at the end of the 12th century, construction of the Duomo had been largely completed in the 13th century though some works on its magnificent facade continued well into the 14th century when Siena's rulers decided to enlarge the cathedral and build the biggest church in Italy, challenging Rome's dominance. The ambitious project to build the new Duomo that was to engulf the existing one, was stopped by the plague of 1348 that devastated Siena, but its uncompleted great facade still stands erect and visitors can climb 130 steps to get yet another stunning view from there. The most famous feature of the original Duomo is probably 56 inlaid marble panels depicting biblical and historical scenes and known locally as picture Bible. 11 am — Cross a square in front of the Duomo to visit a vast museum complex of Santa Maria della Scala housed in a former hospital, the city's oldest with more than 1,000 years of history. While restoration works are still under way, you can visit more than half of its 40,000-square-metre area to admire its halls, chapels and an internal church. The complex hosts several museums and various temporary exhibitions. 3 pm — After lunch, time is left for the final stroll around the old city. If you are still close to the Duomo, head to Pinacoteca Nazionale picture gallery, which houses numerous masterpieces by famous Sienese artists such as Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Climb a nearby hill to visit Chiesa di San Domenico, the imposing Gothic church known for its links with Italy's famous saint, Santa Caterina di Siena, whose head is on display there. Standing next to the church, you can enjoy a magnificent view of the Duomo and the rest of the old city, an ideal place to say goodbye to Siena and make your promise to return. — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| China’s stone workshops silenced by European crisis Posted: 09 Dec 2011 07:07 AM PST  A bust of the Chinese philosopher Confucius lies on the ground in an abandoned stone carving workshop. — Reuters pic Dangcheng applied the traditional stone-carving skills of this rocky part of Hebei province to boom as an exporter of ornate statues, busts, reliefs and fountains to Europe and North America. Now the town is struggling with the deep slump in once vibrant markets, especially Italy and other euro zone countries. "The boss ran away, they say," said Lu Jiguang, a brawny mason from a nearby workshop who stopped by the locked gate. "He went broke a year or two ago. Don't know where he went. "There haven't been that many bankruptcies here. Most people find a way to get by, but business is certainly hard going," continued Lu, with the same stone dust-covered features and gnarled hands as nearly most other residents of the town. "I've seen reports about the financial crisis in Europe on television," he said. "It's also had a bad effect here." Dangcheng, a town of 20,000 people 240 km southwest of Beijing, is a microcosm of the risks that slowing exports pose for China — risks that a commerce official laid out this week. Reuters visited Dangcheng in 2009, when the downturn was beginning to bite. A return this week showed that the extended euro crisis and US in the doldrums have mauled business, forcing some workshops to shut and many more to scale back or move. And all surviving ones to court customers at home. DEITIES, SAINTS AND HEROES  A woman washes a statue in an outdoor workshop. — Reuters pic Asked about their deepest worries, sculpture workshop bosses here almost always named rising wages, the growing cost of stone, and transport charges. "I'm more worried about labour costs than about the euro," said Lu Xuhui, a 34-year-old owner of a sculpture company that has relied on orders from Italy, France and the United States. "The European market is very, very tough. Prices we can charge are very low, but wages keep going up, and prices for stone are way up too, so our profits are tiny," said Lu, as he sat in a stuffed leather sofa bought in better times. "We're trying to turn more to domestic buyers, but they're feeling the rising costs as well." STATUES OF JESUS — BUT NOT FOR EUROPE  A woman washes a statue in an outdoor workshop. — Reuters pic He started his business a decade ago, specialising in religious statues for churches in southern Europe and the United States. But this order for 40 Jesus figures was, he said, a sign of the times: they were for Chinese customers. Growing domestic prosperity and some loosening of Communist Party controls on churches have offered an escape route from disappearing foreign orders, Lu said, above a din of electric grinding and chiselling. "We haven't had a foreign order since summer. Europe was our biggest buyer, but not now," said Lu, who like nearly everyone in the Dangcheng sculpture trade is a local. "We used to focus on exports, but they're no good now, so now we're focusing on domestic buyers," he added. "I've paid attention to the European crisis. That means we'll have even fewer exports, but domestic orders keep us going." Other workshop bosses along Dangcheng's unpaved main street said sales to Europe and North America had picked up a little this year, after a grim slide two years ago. But many feared the latest euro crisis would again sap demand for carvings. Quyang county, where Dangcheng lies, traces masonry skills back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), and that tradition survived war and revolution until traders from Italy arrived in the 1990s, hunting for cut-price copies of antiquity. Dangcheng's carvers set themselves to mastering foreign tastes, cribbing from sculpture books to recreate Renaissance and classical figures. Their skills, increasingly rare and costly in Europe, and the ease of the Internet brought plenty of orders from Europe and North America. By 2008, exports accounted for over 90 per cent of sculpture sales from Dangcheng, a county official told Reuters in 2009. "Italy is dead for us now," said Wu Huanzhen, a co-owner of the Shuangfei Sculpture Workshop in the town. "When business was good, we exported about 900,000 yuan (RM443,000) a year," she said, adding that most of those orders went to Italy. "This year we might clear 300,000 yuan, if we get some more orders soon," she said in a yard strewn with statues. GO DOMESTIC OR GO BROKE Wang Shixiong, a deputy director of the Quyang county office for the sculpture industry, said he could not give recent statistics for exports. They had fallen so far that his office had given up trying to collect numbers, he said. "The financial crisis has been a huge blow here," said Wang. "The impact has been so bad that the businesses won't tell us their export numbers anymore, because they could look too bad in front of their competition. So we can't collect them."  A sculptor surrounded by uncompleted statues as he works in an outdoor workshop. — Reuters pic "Now it's basically all domestic," he said. A dozen business owners interviewed in Dangcheng, however, also said their biggest worries have more to do with domestic pressures in the hands of Beijing, not Brussels. "Our biggest pressure is rising wages and rising costs for materials," said Lu, the sculpture businessman making the 40 statues of Christ. "It's just hard to find and keep workers." Masons and stone workers in the town mostly said their incomes had risen from 3,000-4,000 yuan three years ago to 5,000 to 6,000 yuan or more now, depending on their level of skill. A cubic metre of white marble hauled from Hunan province in southern China now cost about 3,700 yuan, compared with 2,000 yuan three years ago, largely due to rising transport costs, said Lu Xuhui, the sculpture trader. But workers, too, said they were feeling economic chills. "Wages have gone down again, because orders are down," said Li Erhu, a 35-year-old mason taking a short break from carving a bust of an ancient Roman soldier. He explained that workers were paid piece-rate, reflecting how much work they finished. "When business was good, I'd easily make 4,000 yuan a month. Now I'm lucky to make 3,000, even with higher piece rates." The works sell for hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on their size, intricacy and quality of stone. For now, domestic sales and a trickle of export sales had helped offset rising costs, but profit margins were dangerously thin, said the trader Lu. "I'd guess about 10 to 20 per cent of the workshops here have gone out of business in the past three years," he said, then running through the names of neighbouring businesses that had shut their doors. "The pressure is tremendous." Those pressures could worsen if, as some economists believe, torpid growth in rich nations reinforces slowing growth in China. Many Dangcheng sculpture traders voiced confidence that the country's growth and middle-class love of European style would keep up business. But some saw gathering clouds too, as government stimulus spending and real estate markets cool. "In 2009 we switched our focus to domestic customers, but that's starting to fall off too," said Peng Xuefeng, as he supervised workers grinding away at seven statues of Jesus Christ. He wasn't sure if the order, made through a trading agent, was destined for home or abroad. "Before, local (Chinese) governments and real estate developers were ordering lots, but domestic orders have been falling off too," Peng said above the screech of grinders. But not even the latest euro crisis would end orders from Europe, insisted Lu Xuhui, the trader. "Churches will always have orders, even if there is a financial crisis," he said. "They will always need Jesus and Mary statues." — Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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