Thursday 5 October 2006
Ryan and I toured the Palacio Barolo today, a very famous old building here in Buenos Aires. Quite a quirky one, too, as the Italian architect designed the entire building to represent Dante's Divine Comedy. The three basements and ground floor are hell, complete with bronze fire-flowers and dragons snarling at you from above. The next fourteen floors are purgatory, and the eight floors after that, heaven. The entire building is 100 meters tall, for the 100 songs of the book, with 22 offices for the 22 verses in each. Every color used, every measurement, even the shapes of the tiles are all symbolic in some way. And Latin inscriptions from the text are engraved on the walls and ceilings.
The real kicker, though, is that in a little glass box above all of this, sits God, in the form of a giant lighthouse lamp. They've only lit it a few times, and never do so anymore, but it sits up there, looking over the city.
They wanted to bury Dante's ashes here, under a large statue of him that went missing and turned up in various unexpected places. I guess that the building was not impressive enough, however, and the ashes remain in Italy.
The real kicker, though, is that in a little glass box above all of this, sits God, in the form of a giant lighthouse lamp. They've only lit it a few times, and never do so anymore, but it sits up there, looking over the city.
They wanted to bury Dante's ashes here, under a large statue of him that went missing and turned up in various unexpected places. I guess that the building was not impressive enough, however, and the ashes remain in Italy.
1 comment:
Most interesting. Thanks for the "history"?? lesson.
GLenn
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