Oslo, Norway

Coordinates: 59 54 N 10 43 E

Population: 808,000 (2007 est.)

I’m not sure if location, expense, or as the Onion’s Our Dumb World insinuates, a residual fear of Viking invasion is to blame, but Oslo, one of my favorite European cities, doesn’t seem to get its fair share of attention. By comparison, fellow Scandinavian capitals Stockholm, Copenhagen, and even tiny Reykjavik have all had more time in the spotlight than Norway’s chief city. Perhaps that will soon change however. In a matter of weeks Oslo will open a spectacular new National Opera House designed by Snøhetta, the same architectural firm that revived Alexandria’s mighty library in 2002.

Among smaller metropolises, Oslo has much to offer: a young, pulsing music scene, a number of excellent museums, plenty of green, spacious parks, and an easy-to-navigate public transportation system. It remains to be seen how much of a transformative force the opera house will be for a part of the harbor that has long been a working port, but a walk past the construction site last fall certainly left me hopeful. The sleek, angular form that rises from the fjord disguises its true size—at nearly 420,000 square feet the building won’t have trouble standing out, even with one or more massive cruise ships docked nearby. And for tourists arriving by water, it will be an impressive addition to the view that already greets visitors to Oslo. Slowly gliding past the Bygdøy peninsula and the wooded isles of Lindøya and Hovedøya, I can image it now: first the medieval Akershus fortress comes into view, with the hulking City Hall and the gleaming new opera house emerging on its left and right flanks. Behind them, protruding from the treeline beyond the city’s edge, I can faintly make out the arcing shape of the Holmenkollen ski jump.

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If you ever have the chance to visit be sure to carve out a full afternoon to relax there. Why exactly am I reminiscing about my Euro-trip? Because I have a copy of The Oxford Companion to The Garden on my desk. This hefty book is devoted to gardens of every kind and the people involved in their making. Below is an excerpt about Park Guell.

Guell, Park

Barcelona, Spain, is a public park designed by Antoni Gaudi. It has its origins with Gaudi’s patron the industrialist Don Eusebi Guell I Bacigalupi. Guell had studied the English Garden Cities and resolved to create something similar in Barcelona. He found a mountainous site north-west of the city centre and from 1900 work began under Gaudi’s supervision. The venture was a failure and only three of the projected 60 houses were completed. After the Second World War the site was acquired by the city of Barcelona and it became a public park. The south-westerly entrance is unlike that of any public park in the world and immediately proclaims Gaudi’s individuality. The boundary wall is decorated with repeated medallions, worked in a mosaic of broken china, with the words Park and Guell. The entrance is guarded by two rustic stone pavilions, as though made of gingerbread, and crowned with undulating roofs covered, again, in ceramic pieces and erupting in curious towers. A double flight of steps inlaid with white ceramic rises past a brilliantly colored dragon spouting water into a trough. At the head of the stairs is the monumental Hall of a Hundred Columns which supports in its roof a huge esplanade with, snaking across one side, a curving bench inlaid with mosaic. Further up the hill paths wind among naturalistic groves of trees - palms, umbrella pines (Pinus pinea), holm oaks (Quercus ilex), and thickets of scented Pittosporum tobira. Terraces in this part of the park are supported by arcades of tufa with occasional stalactites and columns sometimes breaking out into figures. Gaudi’s artistry restrains his decorative exuberance from tumbling over into kitsch and Park Guell is both immensely popular and much admired.

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Christ Church cathedral

The church of Holy Trinity (Christ Church) was founded c.1030 as the cathedral of recently Christianized Dublin—probably its first church. Nothing is known of the early form of Christ Church, as all traces were swept away in a complete rebuilding of the cathedral, which probably began in the late 1180s under John Cumin, the first English archbishop. The present form of the cathedral is based almost entirely on this late 12th-/early 13th-century rebuilding. However, this is largely due to extreme late 19th-century restoration, which removed many later features in order to re-establish the ‘original’ form. Among the features lost were the extended ‘long choir’ of the 14th century and the entire south side of the nave, which had been rebuilt (admittedly rather poorly) following the disastrous collapse of the original south side and nave vaulting in 1562. As a result, relatively little of what is visible in Christ Church today is original medieval fabric, but the restoration has at least provided a reasonably accurate impression of the cathedral’s form in the 13th century.

The earliest parts of the cathedral (c.1185–1200) are the transepts and choir, with the crypt below. Apart from the westernmost bay, the choir is a 19th-century restoration. The transepts and choir were built in a late Romanesque style with a clear south-western English flavour, reflecting the political changes in Dublin since 1171, when Henry II granted the city to the men of Bristol. Indeed, the very stones of the new cathedral reflected the political realities, for the architectural detailing was rendered in a fine, creamy limestone imported from Dundry, near Bristol. There was probably a crossing tower from the beginning, but the present tower is substantially a rebuilding of c.1600. The overall architectural design of this phase of building is undistinguished, but there are many well-carved capitals, especially on the north side. There is also a fine, substantially original round-headed doorway in the south transept, although it was moved here from the north transept in 1831.

The nave is later, although its date is less certain—previously dated c.1215–35, a date of c.1230–40 has recently been suggested. It is not particularly large—there are only six bays, of which the westernmost seems to be a slightly later addition. However, it contrasts with the choir and transepts, not only because it is built in Gothic style (again with definite west English influences) but because of its quality. Although the southern side of the nave is a restoration, the north elevation is almost entirely original and has rightly been described as ‘the most distinguished piece of Gothic architecture in Ireland’. It is a sophisticated design with an early and very successful vertical integration of triforium and clerestory elements above the arcade, outlined by dark marble shafts. The arcade arches are deeply moulded and each bay is defined by a wall shaft running vertically from floor to vault. Again there is substantial use of imported Dundry stone for architectural detailing, and Purbeck marble (also from southern England) is used in the banded shafts which adorn the nave elevation. The upper parts of the north wall of the nave still lean markedly out of the vertical—a dramatic testimony to the lateral thrust of the original vault, which pushed the walls out and eventually led to its collapse in 1562.

One of the most interesting features of Christ Church is its crypt, which—unlike most British cathedrals runs under the entire length of the cathedral (apart from the westernmost bay of the nave) and has recently been conserved. Its east end is almost certainly late 12th century, contemporary with the choir and transepts above, but the chronology of the west end is less clear. Most probably it was constructed after the east end, but prior to the construction of the nave overhead in the 1230s. Two other points of interest in the cathedral are the brass lectern at the east end of the nave—probably the only medieval lectern surviving in Ireland and the so-called tomb of Strongbow under an arch of the south nave arcade. Strongbow—Richard de Clare, lord of Leinster—is thought to have been buried here on his death in 1176, but the effigy of a knight, traditionally said to be his, is at least a century later. A late 16thcentury plaque on the aisle wall nearby records the destruction of Strongbow’s tomb in the roof collapse of 1562, and it seems that another effigy was subsequently pressed into service as a replacement, because of the importance the original tomb had acquired in the medieval city’s business life. Another monument of an important figure is in the chapel of St Lawrence (on the east side of the south transept)—a worn, early 13th-century effigy of an archbishop, probably the first English incumbent John Cumin (d. 1212). Outside the south transept are the remains of the 13th-century chapter house, the only visible remnant of the cloisters, which originally stood on the south side of the cathedral. The chapter house was originally a fine structure, with a three-light east window and elaborately moulded west doorway of two orders, flanked by smaller windows. There was also a ribbed vault in four bays overhead, supported by moulded wall shafts, parts of which survive.

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Rydingsvard, Ursula von (b Deensen, Germany, 26 July 1942) American sculptor of German birth. Von Rydingsvard was born in a German work camp, the fifth of seven children, to a Ukrainian farmer and Polish mother. After the end of World War II, she and her family were relocated to several different labour and refugee camps before migrating to the United States in 1950 and settling in Plainville, CT. From 1960 to 1962 she took art classes at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, before attending the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, where she earned a BA and MA in art education. She continued studying art education at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1969 to 1970, moving back to Connecticut and enrolling in art courses at the New School for Social Research in New York City during the summer of 1972. The following year von Rydingsvard attended Columbia University where she studied with artists and scholars including Ronald Bladen, George Sugarman and Meyer Schapiro, and graduated with an MFA in 1975. In 1982 she was appointed assistant professor and later associate professor of sculpture at Yale University. In 1986 she became a professor at the Graduate Division of the School of the Visual Arts in New York. Von Rydingsvard primarily worked with paint and sheets of welded steel before 1976, when artist Michael Mulhern (b 1940) introduced her to cedar beams. She is well known for sculptures created from 4×4 cedar planks whose forms and titles allude to a personal and collective history.

Von Rydingsvard’s sculptures echo architectural structures such as barns, altars and walls, as well as everyday domestic objects including vessels, utensils and tools. One of the most pervasive forms in von Rydingsvard’s works is the bowl—a utilitarian and timeless object that conjures associations of sanctuary and confinement, nourishment and sustenance, and transformation (e.g. For Paul, 1990–92; Mountainville, NY, Storm King A. Cent.). To create these monumental forms, some which tower over 4 metres high, von Rydingsvard carved, hacked and sliced cedar beams using a circular saw. With the assistance of staff, the pieces were assembled, glued and coated with an adhesive spray and graphite powder, which was then scrubbed into the wood with steel wool. Although massive in scale and universal in form, the sculptures are expressive, intimate and personal, with surfaces that appear gashed and lacerated, as well as weathered and worn. Von Rydingsvard merged the gestural marks of Abstract Expressionism with the geometric, repetitive forms of Minimalism, and has described her work as a dignified and reserved expression of emotions and feelings.

Von Rydingsvard attributed her affinity for wood to her heritage of Polish peasant farmers and her own memories of growing up in wooden barracks and churches. This familiarity with wood, along with the neutrality of the pre-cut beam, gave her the freedom to manipulate the material. Rather than preparing sketches of the finished sculpture, von Rydingsvard was guided by her intuition; a process she described as working through her anxieties and uncertainties. Using this organic, but manufactured material, her work explores the historical and ongoing relationship between humans and nature (e.g. Song of a Saint (Saint Eulalia), 1979; Lewistown, NY, Artpark, now destr. and Iggy’s Pride, 1990–91; Sonoma Valley, CA, Oliver Ranch and Skip to My Lou, 1997; Washington, DC, Microsoft Corporation). The rhythm and repetition in her sculptural forms, installed in outdoor spaces as well as in galleries, also relate to the daily rituals she witnessed as a child in church, to the seasonal cultivation of the land and to the domestic chores in the home. Mama, Your Legs (2000; New York, Gal. Lelong), a motorized sculpture in which wooden blocks strike the interior of wooden vessels in repetitious thuds, alludes to the churning of butter, or as the title may suggest, a worn and pained body that refuses to stop.

In the mid-1990s von Rydingsvard began incorporating cow intestines into her wooden sculptures. Maglownica (1995), a Polish word for the washboards farm women used to soften wet sheets, is a tall plank (3.65-m) sheathed in the transparent, delicate and organic material. This experimentation with lightness continued in katul, katul (2003), a five-storey sculpture of plastic and aluminum suspended in the glass atrium of the Queens County Family Courthouse, New York. With the title referencing a Polish children’s game, von Rydingsvard sought to create a light spiritual presence in a place burdened by troubled families. Abounding with multiple associations, her sculptures with their abstract and familiar forms resonate with a sense of timelessness and mystery.

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Mount Cuba was the home of Lammot du Pont Copeland and his wife Pamela from 1937 until her death in 2001. They sited their Georgian house (Victorin and Samuel Homsey, architects) atop one of Delaware’s highest hills with magnificent views across steep hills and deep valleys of the Eastern American Piedmont, to the Delaware river and the Coastal Plain below. Thomas W. Sears was engaged to lay out the drive and formal gardens which were almost completed as the Second World War broke out. Terraces for outdoor living and floral displays surround two sides of the house, with walkways leading through formal plantings, to the large cutting garden and out into the larger landscape. After the war, and on the advice of Henry F. du Pont of WINTERTHUR, Marian Coffin (1880-1957) was commissioned to complete the formal gardens. The Round Garden, a small, formal flower garden, with a dipping pool in the form of a Maltese cross, was designed for seasonal displays of tulips, delphiniums, lilies, roses, and a variety of annuals and chrysanthemums. Mount Cuba is most celebrated for its naturalistic plantings of native wild flowers, ferns, shrubs, and trees begun in the early 1950s, fulfilling a love of native plants Pamela Copeland had since childhood. In young tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) woodland, grown up on an eroded cornfield abandoned in the late 1920s, a series of ponds was created, connected by sounding rills, and accessed on paths surrounded by foliar tapestries and, in spring, a wealth of wild flowers, trilliums, wood poppies, foam flower, Virginia bluebells, and deciduous azaleas.

-Dr. William Richard Lighty

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- Barbara Blossom Ashmun

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When I sat down to compile my latest book From Stonehenge to Samarkand, I found my greatest inspiration in the writings of a virtually forgotten English writer, Rose Macaulay. Her classic book, Pleasure of Ruins, first appeared in the 1950s and was reprinted with evocative photographs by Reny Beloff a decade later. Macaulay got me thinking about the sheer excitement of seeing an archaeological site with your own eyes. She fell in love with ruins—something I have never been able to do—but, like her, I have been lucky enough to experience remarkably intense emotional connections with archaeological sites both ancient and relatively recent, spectacular and seemingly inconspicuous.

This kind of emotion is something that seems alien to a scientist, but it shouldn’t be. Archaeology is not the study of deserted earthworks and abandoned cities, of artifacts and statuary. It’s the study of people, people like us who loved and hated, were born, grew up, fell in love, got married, had families, and eventually died. Anyone who quests for the past, even scientists, is searching for the people of the past—and there’s nothing wrong about feeling an emotional connection with them. Visiting a deserted Great Zimbabwe in Central Africa during a full moon was a truly extraordinary moment in my own life. So was gazing over the ramparts of the Iron Age hill fort at Maiden Castle in southern England on a foggy, lowering day, a place with serried earthworks attacked by a Roman legion in 43 AD. I could almost hear the war cries of the attackers, the screams and yells of the defenders, and the crackling flames of huts torched in the melee. It was all a dream, of course, but for a brief moment the deserted hill fort came alive.

Modern archaeological travelers have a very different experience from those of their predecessors. I was lucky enough to visit many of the great sites in the 1950s, when getting to many of them was still a mild adventure and you were likely to have places like the Valley of the Kings, Petra, and Angkor Wat virtually to yourself. I find that solitude and antiquity go well together, for it is then that you can make an emotional connection with the past. Walking alone along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England on a winter’s day with a promise of snow, exploring the deserted lake beds and their chronicle of early human evolution at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania on a blazing hot day, finding Jean François Champollion’s name high on a column at the Temple of Amun at Karnak, Egypt—these rank among the many archaeological experiences that I will never forget.

In recent years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit many of the same sites again, only to find them completely changed. The experience is still unforgettable, but starkly different because of the sheer mass of visitors. Package tours and crowds transform these situations into events that are simultaneously less memorable and also rather sobering from a conservation standpoint. Instead of profound soundlessness, I now recall the roar of diesel buses in the Valley of the Kings, or standing in line in the defile of a royal tomb sweating profusely and literally watching the priceless paintings peel off the wall. Just last year I accompanied a tour to the Roman city of Ephesus in Turkey. We shuffled down the main street in dense groups, each with our own guide, each waiting for the group in front of us to move on. At Angkor Wat, a sacred complex on a scale that beggars the imagination, there are few facilities for visitors—the Cambodian government cannot afford them. The already-worn temple steps are slippery smooth from thousands of visitors a day, the magnificent friezes worn shiny by generations of massaging hands. Instead of exhilaration, I came away feeling deeply depressed. Yes, the Parthenon is still magnificent to behold, Machu Picchu high in the Andes remains an unforgettable place, but much of the magic is gone now that cultural tourism with its cruise ships, jumbo jets, and diesel buses has become a booming international business.

Over the years, I’ve developed an informal list of sites to avoid because of the crowds: the Parthenon (alas), the Valley of the Kings, Stonehenge (you cannot get near the stones), the temples at Sounion and Aegina in Greece, Ephesus (the most visited archaeological site in the world), the Colosseum in Rome, Pompeii (where you’ll swim through crowds in high season), and Mesa Verde, Colorado, (only in the summertime). However, there remain plenty of sites that still intoxicate me: Avebury (only a few miles from Stonehenge, where you can walk through the stone circles), Hadrian’s Wall, Palmyra in Syria and Petra in Jordan, Olympia in Greece, site of the original Games (an expansive field of ruins that is strangely moving), the amphitheater at Epidauros, also in Greece (in spring and fall, a place where the acoustics enchant), Chaco Canyon in New Mexico (which is truly spectacular), Ta Proem, a Khmer temple near Angkor Wat (where serpentine tree roots envelop the ruins in a romantic frenzy), the brooding moiae of Easter Island, massive ancestral statues that ring the coast, the huge city of Teotihuacán on the edge of the Valley of Mexico (much visited, but large enough to swallow crowds and a brilliant statement of ideological and supernatural power that humbles you) and, finally, well off the beaten track, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar on the Orkney Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean north of Scotland, where you will step into the heart of a deeply evocative ancient landscape.

From Stonehenge to Samarkand recalls more leisured times when archaeological travel and enjoying these famous sites still involved a modest degree of adventure. I hope the writings therein will encourage a new generation of archaeological travelers to wander away from the familiar and overcrowded to places where our forebears still haunt the landscape and even unspectacular archaeological sites can come alive with a little imagination.

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He continues:

There were balconies, of course, but they were shallow and uninviting, a grudging acknowledgment that the ocean might, after all, be worth an occasional glance. The façades were regularly punctuated by roll-down hurricane shutters, which looked like garage doors. The architectural style was neither comfortably stodgy, like the nearby Breakers Hotel, nor fashionably chic; no one would mistake this for South Beach. Instead, the architecture veered from no-frills, Days Inn functionalism to a forced tropical glamour that verged on kitsch. It was, in a word, ugly. One ungainly building followed another.

Rybczynski concludes that while “‘good design’ has become a mass phenomenon,” the wealthy have been forced to show off their splendor in new ways. In other words, bad is the new good.

LINK to the story at Slate.com.

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