This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://european-cities.euroresidentes.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://european-cities.euroresidentes.com/feeds/posts/default.

Liverpool ( again)

We are just back from a weekend visit to this splendid city, staying with dear friends who add to their many distinctions the fact that they live in the house where the great Victorian statesman William Gladstone was born in 1809. In many ways we were re-visiting the information on my blog of July 4th. 2008, as well as catching up on family news in a friendship that has lasted 50 years.

There is a large picture of the craggy politician in the entrance to their flat. He was a remarkable man. Prime minister of the U.K. four times, and Chancellor of the Exchequer on three occasions, Gladstone was a keen advocate of home rule for Ireland, and a bitter rival of the urbane Conservative leader, Benjamin Disraeli who referred to him as ‘God’s only mistake’. (There is a vague but interesting comparison in my mind between those two rivals and between dogged Gordon Brown the present P.M. and waspish David Cameron, the Conservative who yearns to succeed him).

As we visited the dock area of the city, a mist lifted from the sea and partly enveloped the surrounding area on a fiercely cold morning. We found the Afro Modern exhibition at the Tate Gallery – an exploration of black cultures around the Atlantic – illuminating and moving, though the journey through many cultures was sometimes a little confusing, and information at knee height wasn’t helpful. There were some wonderful sculptures, and at no times were we able to escape the city’s baleful legacy as a centre of the slave trade.

Our visit to the Walker Gallery was even more impressive for me. Designed by a local architect, the museum was opened in 1877 and named after its founding benefactor, Sir Andrew Barclay Walker who made his money as a brewer. It’s a beautiful building in itself and houses one of the largest permanent exhibitions in the U.K. outside of London. I would like to spend a day there! We used our time visiting a special exhibition of work by women artists from the 18th century to the present day. This superb exhibition lasts until 14th March.

Liverpool’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra must be the pride of the city and, under its brilliant young Russian chief conductor, Vasily Petrenko, is amongst the very finest of British orchestras. We heard them in an eclectic programme of music by Hindemith, Bartok and Rachmaninov. A privilege to be there.

In characteristic bronze brick, Liverpool’s buildings are a constant delight to me, and add to the sense of its substantial personality, even if some of the newer experimental buildings seem to wage war against them. And always there are surprises. We went for a walk in the park beside and below the Anglican Cathedral with its own spring in a corner. Mysterious and magical, even on a freezingly cold morning.

Bryan

A Traveller's Cities

That inveterate traveller, Jan Morris, has published 40 books and now at 83 years of age, yet another is in the bookshops. In it she confesses that her books have concentrated more on places than people, and now in this new book, ‘Contact’, she remedies that with glimpses of some of the people who have illuminated her travels. In yesterday’s Sunday Observer she reflects on the cities she has known. ‘Preoccupied as I have always been by the look of places, their histories and their municipal postures, I have all too often neglected to write about their citizens.’

‘To my mind cities are distillations of human life itself, with all its contradictions and anomalies, changing from one year to another… changing above all in one’s personal responses.’ She considers such cities as Sydney, Trieste and Indian cities, but then reflects on two of the cities referred to in the small list on these blogs. London, for example.

She says.’ When she steps off the train in Euston she finds herself entering a different city altogether than the one that used to thrill her, but strangely although she loves London less than she used to, she likes it more. ‘‘I like the glitter and fizz of it, the jumble of manners, the pace and the bitter brilliance and the kaleidoscopic parade of faces…when once it welcomed me like a dowager to her run- down stately home, now its greeting is more like the air-kiss of a tabloid celebrity’.

She has second thoughts about Venice. ‘Physically, by the nature of its geography, few of the world’s ancient cities have changed less in my time. Its shape is the same, most of its buildings are unchanged, you must still walk about it, or take a boat to supper…’ but now stepping on to the Piazzetta you ‘find it enveloped in a caterwauling nightmarish jam of fellow visitors, blocking the bridges, drowning the café orchestras, all but hiding from view the facades of the Basilica’. She is tempted to leave it all and ‘go home to Wales; but no, love conquers all, and I never do.’

In our long experience of London – as work place and home –and our brief visit to Venice, her opinions underline how I feel about both, and perhaps cities in general. They are alwasy changing. So much depends on the moment and the mood. But on our visits I think place and people have always been interwoven. As I have reacted to a place I have watched the faces of people, not visitors as we have been, but residents. We shall do the same next month when we visit London again. And a second, proper visit to Venice? Perhaps never.

B.R.

Krakow

At last another city! We spent five days here at the beginning of May, arriving at the end of a lightning storm and leaving on a warm sunny day We stayed in the medieval part of the city – once the seat of Polish kings - still with some of its old city walls built for its protection, the moat which surrounded them now the site of a delightful park ringing the old pear shaped city. Krakow is a favourite venue for city breaks because of its accessibility. It is said that it has become the stag party centre of Europe, a claim we were not in a position to authenticate. Nor wished to!

Krakow is a tourist trap. Even at this early time of the season, it was very busy with masses of visitors and crocodiles of children, many of them Polish. We wondered if as well as them having a holiday, this was an educational exercise in honouring their inheritance, for Poland, after its tumultuous history has only been an independent state in the last 20 years. Beggars abounded – some elderly and wearing national dress, others trying to do something to attract attention. One man we saw more than once half lying on the ground doing clever things with a football, moving it from head to feet to chest. We saw two little boys who couldn’t have been more than eight years old with a small dog at their side and pretending to play a piano accordion – one either side of the road.

We climbed the 12th century tower which was once the town hall in the huge market square, but itself dwarfed by the vast two tower St. Mary’s Basilica, to us more impressive outside than inside. In the 12th Century a trumpeter warned the city of a Turk invasion from the highest of the towers, but was shot by an invader’s arrow half way through his warning call. So – and you can’t get more touristy than this –to commemorate the event a trumpeter appears at one of four windows high in the tallest of the towers to replay the occasion, - though without the arrow -and repeats this at the other three windows. A ritual that continues every hour, night and day.

The old city is an A to Z of architectural styles – gothic, renaissance, baroque etc., There are more than 30 museums; we managed eight: the National, and two Jewish museums in the old Jewish quarter and one devoted to the artist, poet, dramatist and theatre producer Stanisklaw Wyspianski being the most memorable. He was part of the New Poland art movement (comparable to the Rennie Mackintosh era and at the same time). One astonishing aspect of his work was his decoration of the whole of a huge gothic Church with patterned and floral paintings on the bare stone and ceiling, and some stunning stained glass windows, hardly done justice by the gloomy religiosity of the building. We saw a lot of his portraits and some endearing ones of his own sleeping children. Sadly he died before he was forty. He is virtually unknown beyond Poland it seems.

A fascinating place to visit, excellent food at good prices, courteous and quietly friendly local people, impressive buildings, lots of history and a good introduction to a much abused but brave nation.

B.R.

Liverpool

Liverpool is one of Britain’s great cities. Still a major port, much of its 18th.century wealth and expansion was due to traffic with mainland Europe and close links with the Atlantic slave trade. By the early 19th century as much as 40% of world trade passed through Liverpool docks. Technically part of the county of Lancashire, the city has a powerful sense of itself, its inhabitants often referred to as Liverpudlians or Scousers, named after a traditional meal of meat stew. Although its population is drawn from across the world and particularly from Ireland, local people have a characteristic accent and dialect. Without looking at the great buildings and the two companiable cathedrals which greet each other across the city, once you hear a local person speak, you know where you are.

The city was badly bombed during the 39-45 war and there is a fitting link with the German city of Cologne, also devastated by aerial bombardment. The city remained in a desolate state for many years afterwards and clearance and re-building was slow. There is a movement marked by many disappointments for using the partially derelict St. Luke’s Church as a Peace Centre. Enthusiasm for the scheme by the local branch of the United Nations Association has gained the interest but so far insufficient financial support of Liverpool Council.

In the sixties the city was famous for what became known as the Merseybeat, with loads of pop groups composing and playing music that became widely popular, the most notable group of course being The Beatles. Their popularity continues to be a magnet to tourists, as do the many other cultural attractions of the city, which for me include the Tate Liverpool and Walker Art Galleries and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under its charismatic Russian conductor, Vasily Petrenko.
Liverpool is sharing with Stavanger in Norway, the distinction of being the 2008 European City of Culture.

I see that the Liverpool Playhouse is currently staging a musical, named after the city’s most famous hotel and called ‘Once Upon A Time at the Adelphi’. Reviewing it today, The Guardian’s critic suggests that the musical’s theme song ‘Once in a Lifetime’ should be ‘designated the official anthem of the Capital of Culture forthwith’. Certainly no life is complete without a visit to Liverpool.

B.R.

Barcelona

At least I have been there, however briefly, and so Barcelona can be included in ‘my’ European cities. But our visit to this distinct Catalan city was only a matter of hours, and yet it was long enough to confirm Barcelona’s great reputation as a beautiful, lively and vibrant city. It was a wonderful sunny day and as we strolled through the streets, observed the famous art deco buildings and those of Gaudi, visited the Picasso Museu situated in medieval mansions, and of course sampled the famed Catalonian cuisine, we responded to the immense attraction of a city which is now home to people of many nationalities.

Barcelona has had an eventful and often painful history. Romans, Visigoths, Moors and Franks, occupied the area in the first millennium until it became the key city of the Catalonia region under a dynasty founded by a ruler with the evocative name of Wilfred the Hairy (Count Guifre el Pelos) that lasted almost five hundred years. The Catalan connection helps to define the city, which is no doubt why the Bourbon King Felipe V banned the writing and the teaching of Catalan in the early eighteenth century. The demands for autonomy however were never suppressed and remain today as a unifying element in the culture of an otherwise cosmopolitan city. In fact during the brief Second Spanish Republic created in 1931 Catalonia declared independence. During the Spanish Civil War the city was governed by anarchists and Trotskyists. Churches were destroyed and more than 1,200 priests, monks and nuns were shot. The city was frequently bombed by Franco’s forces. Under Franco counter violence continued and many purges and executions took place.

The 1992 Olympic Games marked a new beginning and confidence for the city with an international affirmation in dramatic contrast to its violent history. Its extraordinary tradition of fine buildings was given a new lease of life, right down to the coastal area, and the completion of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral continued, despite the disapproval of art specialists who believe the original extraordinary design is being undermined. But the realisation of Catalan independence is still a political objective for many traditionalists, even though they are now joined by new arrivals from Europe and notably from South America, in search of the good life.

Barcelona has deservedly become a major if not the major Spanish city (Madrid would not agree) and attracts an enormous number of tourists, of which my wife and I were numbered for a little while. We have ambitions to return for a longer visit. See the euroresidentes Guide to Spanish Cities for much more information, and get in touch if you can with my youngest Anglo-Spanish grandson for the know-how on what is ‘the best football team in the world’!

B.R.

Cordoba

Like our previous city, Cordoba was founded by the Romans and had a strategic importance as a port on the Guadalquivir River, which was used for shipping Spanish olive oil, wine and wheat back to Rome. The Romans built the mighty bridge crossing the river, "El Puente Romano" which despite many changes is still standing and in use, and we have walked by it. Cordoba's hour of greatest glory was when it became the capital of the Moorish kingdom of El-Andalus, and when work began on the Great Mosque, or "Mezquita", one of the largest in all of Islam.

When the city was re-claimed by the Christians in 1236, the new rulers of the city were so awed by its beauty that they left the Mosque standing, building their cathedral in the middle of its rows of arches and columns, and creating the extraordinary church-cum-mosque we see today. It is quite an astonishing building. If it wasn’t real it would be unbelievable! The beauty and the grandeur is overwhelming. Though the Church won’t have realised it at the time, its occupation of the great space makes a powerful statement not of possession, but of the two faiths meeting each other. One with a gentle, elegant presence and the other with a dominant, aggressive one.

As well as the unique mosque-cathedral, Cordoba's treasures include the Alcazar, or Fortress, built by the Christians in 1328; the Calahorra Fort, originally built by the Arabs, which guards the Roman Bridge, on the far side of the river from the Mezquita, and the ancient Jewish Synagogue, now a museum. Cordoba's medieval quarter, once the home of the Jewish community, is called "La Judería" (The Jewry), a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets, shady flower-filled courtyards and picturesque squares such as La Plaza del Potro. In early May, homeowners proudly festoon their patios with flowers to compete for the city's "most beautiful courtyard" contest.

Now a moderately-sized modern city, the old town contains many impressive architectural reminders of when Córdoba was the thriving capital of the Caliphate of Cordoba which governed all of the southern Iberian Peninsula. It has been estimated that in the tenth century Córdoba, with up to 500,000 inhabitants, was the largest city in Western Europe and, perhaps even in the world. As one strolls around the accessible city one is conscious of that legacy, but not intimidated by it.

We have been reminded of our visit some years ago as we watched on BBC 4 TV last night the first of a series of programmes on the art of Spain. Despite the patronising self-projection typical of so many such documentaries, the influence of Moorish culture epitomised by Cordoba was vividly represented.

B.R.