Postcard from Bologna, Italy: Reflecting on fine “finestre”

Wandering under the miles of sheltering porticos lining the streets of Bologna, it is easy to miss the wonderful attention paid to the architectural details a floor above. Bolognese architecture does not treat windows as merely functional holes in the wall filled with glass, but as sculptural artistic expressions.

And, yes, that is the Mister who slipped into Edward Hopper’s plain-old-American-style-windowed “Second Story Sunlight” at a major retrospective of the artist’s works at Palazzo Fava while we were in Bologna. The contrast between the architecture surrounding us in Italy and the slices of Americana portrayed by Hopper made us cast our eyes upward with even more appreciation.