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Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

Here you can browse through my blog posts prior to February 2022. Currently I'm sharing my travel experiences, candid opinions, and what's on my mind solely on my Facebook page. — Rick

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Venuses Through History

As Europe starts opening up to travelers again, it’s more exciting than ever to think about the cultural treasures that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

Beauty can take many forms. But since the very beginnings of the human species, the most popular subject for artists has always been the female body. Long before the end of the Ice Age, Europeans were fashioning small statues of women. 

The chubby Venus of Willendorf (c. 25,000 BC), found in modern-day Austria, is shown resting her spindly arms on her ample breasts. At just 4.4 inches high, this statue is like many such statues of the day. Most are no bigger than a smartphone. They’re carved out of stone or bone, or molded from clay. They’re generic females, with no face or feet. The hips are wide, and the breasts and butt are exaggerated, with a prominent vaginal slit. This focus on women’s life-giving attributes has led scholars to suggest they’re symbols of fertility. Living at the mercy of the elements, the early Europeans who created these may have worshipped Mother Nature. Scholars have dubbed them “Venus figurines.” 

During the long journey from Paleo- to Neo-lithic times, statuettes of Stone Age women shed some 20,000 years of fat to become so-called “Cycladic figures” (c. 3,000 BC). These ladies from the Greek Isles are skinny. They’re always naked, with stylized breasts and folded arms. Because they lack distinct features, it’s suggested that they may represent the Everywoman. But no one knows the exact purpose: Was she a fertility goddess, funereal figure, good-luck charm, spirit guide, prehistoric Barbie doll, caveman Playboy Bunny . . . or just art?  

These “Venuses” were only the start of a 25,000-year tradition of using the beauty of women — yes, you could say objectifying women — to express society’s deepest-held values. 

The word “beauty” can apply to harmonious concepts as well as physical beauty. During the days of classical Greece and Rome, a statue of a perfectly-proportioned person — like the Venus de Milo — epitomized the harmony and geometrical order they found in the divine cosmos. 

In Christian times, “Venus” became “Mary.” Just as Venus represented earthly love to pagans, the Madonna was venerated by Christians as a symbol of divine love. Images of Mary welcomed worshippers into the church, promising love and forgiveness. Because medieval art was rather rudimentary, artists used symbolism to communicate this. A vase of lilies might represent Mary’s chastity, and Baby Jesus might hold a symbol of his prophesied death. By Renaissance times, artists could portray Mary with such human realism that she radiated her spirituality through her physical beauty.  

And so it went, as each era created images of beautiful women to express abstract concepts. Mona Lisa is not merely a portrait of a businessman’s wife; it’s a visual treatise on a geometrically perfect universe. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus embodied the Platonic ideal of the quest for enlightenment. In more modern times, a secular Venus nicknamed “Marianne” (in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People) carried the torch of France’s revolutionary spirit.  

Throughout art history, artists have used beautiful women as a way to convey deeper meanings. The women of art, which you’ll see featured throughout “Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces” — whether in their role as life-givers, warriors, sensuous vixens, perfect models, symbols of an era, or forthright workers — have always represented the “beauty” of humanity’s greatest ideals. 

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Venice’s St. Mark’s — A Treasure Chest of Wonders

It’s clear that as we, as a society, get vaccinated, we’ll soon be free to travel again in Europe — and it’s more exciting than ever to envision the great sights and slices of culture that await. For me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:   

Stand in the center of St. Mark’s Square — the center of Venice — and take in the scene: the historic buildings, the cafés with their dueling orchestras, the sheer expanse of the square, and all the people — Italians on holiday, Indians in colorful saris, and Nebraskans in shorts and baseball caps. Overseeing it all is a church that’s unlike any other in the world — the Basilica of St. Mark. 

St. Mark’s is a treasure chest of wonders acquired during Venice’s glory days. The facade shows off the cosmopolitan nature of this sea-trading city that assimilated so many different cultures. There are Roman-style arches over the doors, Greek-style columns alongside, Byzantine mosaics, French Gothic pinnacles on the roofline, and — topping the church — the onion-shaped domes of the Islamic world. The gangly structure has been compared to “a warty bug taking a meditative walk” (Mark Twain) or “a love-cluster of tiara-topped ladybugs copulating” (unknown). 

One of the facade mosaics depicts the scene when the body of St. Mark — the author of one of the four gospels in the Bible — was interred on this spot. In 1063, this church was built over Mark’s bones. As Venice expanded, the church was encrusted with precious objects — columns, statues, and mosaics — looted from their vast empire. Their prize booty was four bronze horses, placed in the center of the facade. It’s little wonder that the architectural style of St. Mark’s has been called “Early Ransack.” 

When you step inside St. Mark’s Basilica, the entire atmosphere takes on a golden glow as your eyes slowly adjust to the dark. The church is decorated, top to bottom, with radiant mosaics. It’s as intricate as it is massive. (Imagine paving a football field with contact lenses.) They tell the entire story of Christ and the saints in pictures made from thousands of tiny cubes of glass (with gold baked inside) and colored stone. The reflecting gold mosaics help light this thick-walled, small-windowed, lantern-lit church, creating a luminosity that symbolizes the divine light of heaven. 

As you explore deeper, you’ll discover the church is filled with precious and centuries-old objects: jewel-encrusted chalices, silver reliquaries, and monstrous monstrances (for displaying the Communion wafer). An urn holds the (supposed) holy DNA of St. Mark. The priceless 1,000-year-old Golden Altarpiece is a towering wall of handcrafted enamels set in a gold frame and studded with 15 hefty rubies, 300 emeralds, and 1,500 pearls. Exotic objects like these date from an era when Venice was almost as oriental as it was European. 

The church’s symbolic message culminates at the very heart of the church. There, up in the central dome, Christ reigns in the starry heavens, riding on a rainbow. This isn’t the agonized, crucified Jesus featured in most churches, but a vibrant, radiant being gazing solemnly down, raising his hand in a blessing, as the Pantocrator, or Ruler of All. His grace radiates through a ring of saints to the altar below. As the central spot in the church, the Pantocrator dome is the symbolic center of the Venetian universe itself, with Christ blessing it all. God’s in his heaven, the faithful are on earth, Venice is central, and all’s right with the world. 

Standing under the dome of St. Mark’s, it becomes clear: Among Europe’s churches, there are bigger, more historic, and even holier churches. But none are more majestic than St. Mark’s Basilica. 

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Artisan Europe: Worth Seeking Out

Even though I’m holding off on visiting Europe for now, I believe a regular dose of travel dreaming can be good for the soul. I hope you’ll enjoy this travel tale from my book For the Love of Europe, a collection of 100 of my favorite stories from a lifetime of European travels. 

 

When you’ve traveled in Europe as long as I have, you experience changes big and small. And more and more, I notice traditional, local businesses making way for cookie-cutter chains and synthetic conformity. In historic city centers, as rents go up, longtime residents, families, and craftspeople are pushed out. Small hotels, one-of-a-kind shops, and individual craftspeople simply don’t have the scale to compete with the big guys. And that, coupled with the impact of COVID sending mom-and-pop shops out of business, makes me want to celebrate my memories of these venerable craftspeople. 

In Florence, the end of rent control made costs spike immediately, driving artisans and shops catering to locals out of business — to be replaced by upscale boutiques and trendy eateries. The same thing happened in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. As landlords evicted long-term renters to make more money off short-term Airbnb rentals, mom-and-pop shops lost their traditional clientele and went out of business. In Istanbul, the city wants to move the iconic gold-and-silver workshops from the Grand Bazaar to a place outside the city center, while “Made in Taiwan” gift shops are able to pay higher rents and take their place, changing the character of the market. 

Craftsmen lament that the next generation, drawn to the energy of big cities and lured by the opportunities of big corporations, won’t be there to carry on the traditions. The artists who craft handmade guitars in Madrid, the family winemakers of Burgundy, the fishermen who sell shrimp on the Oslo harborfront…these have all been fixtures in my lifetime of European travel. What will become of these rich facets of local culture if the younger generation opts out? Of course, I can’t blame the children of artisans for jumping into the modern rat race; I’m not an old-school piano technician like my father. But it’s worth considering how the future will look when economic scale and efficiency trump artisan values.  

It’s a real joy when I stumble upon true artisans who are committed to doing things the traditional way, by hand — and communities that understand the importance of keeping them in business. I urge travelers to seek out and support artisan experiences while traveling — before it’s too late. 

In Rothenburg, Germany, I visited with Peter Leyrer, a printmaker who proudly showed me his etchings. He makes his prints using the copper-plate technique, just as Albrecht Dürer did 500 years ago. Peter prints the black-and-white etchings, paints them with watercolors, and sells them in his shop. Peter is getting older and will soon retire. He told me that with no one to take over for him, his 3,000 copper plates will likely end up in a museum. One of his etchings hangs in my office. 

In the Tuscan hill town of Montepulciano, my friend Cesare is a proud coppersmith with a spirit as strong as the oak-tree root upon which his grandfather’s anvil sits. For Cesare, every day is show-and-tell, as steady streams of travelers drop by to see him at work, fashioning special ornaments for the town cathedral and pounding out fine cookware. 

In nearby Orvieto, Federico Badia is a young cobbler who’s passionate about preserving the art of traditional shoemaking. After apprenticing at a leather shop in Rome, he set up his own studio, where he patiently crafts fine leather shoes for an appreciative clientele. Federico says that “Made in Italy” doesn’t apply to mass-produced factory shoes — it’s a label that rightly belongs only to the fine products hand-crafted by artisans like him. 

Back in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, Dikran is a silversmith who uses hand tools to create finely designed, one-of-a-kind pieces. For a decade, he worked as an unpaid apprentice, studying under a master until he himself became one. In the past, a volunteer apprentice had to work hard to persuade a master to accept him. Today, it’s a struggle to get young people to enter a field in which training takes years and incomes are limited.  

Guiding a tour group through eastern Turkey, I once dropped in on a craftsman who was famous for his wood carving. We gathered around his table to watch him work, appreciating the pride he took in his art. Suddenly, he stopped, held his chisel high into the sky, and declared, “A man and his chisel — the greatest factory on Earth!” 

As we emerge from this COVID crisis, the big mystery for me is how many artisans, mom-and-pop shops and eateries, and creative little business ventures will still be standing. After all, these are what make our travels (and our hometowns) so easy to love. 

I don’t have the answers on how to sustain Europe’s age-old traditions, but I’m inspired whenever I meet the artisans who lovingly carry treasured and endangered crafts into the future. And it always feels right to buy a piece of their work. 

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The Perfectly Posed Artemision Bronze

Even though I’m holding off on visiting Europe for now, I believe a regular dose of travel dreaming can be good for the soul. And for me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:

One of the jewels of the ancient world is the Artemision Bronze, a perfectly posed statue of a god at war.

The god steps forward, raises his arm, sights along his other arm at the distant target, and prepares to hurl his weapon. (Or is he about to serve a tennis ball? Or pound a nail? Or maybe he’s riding a surfboard?)

If the statue is meant to be Zeus (as some think), he’d be throwing a thunderbolt — if Poseidon, a trident. When the statue was discovered — in a sunken ship off the coast of Greece (Cape Artemision) in 1928 — no weapon was found, so no one knows for sure who it represents. (For simplicity, I’ll call him Poseidon, and hope jealous Zeus doesn’t strike me down with a thunderbolt.)

Poseidon stands 6 feet 10 inches tall, and has a physique like — well, like a Greek god. He’s trim, graceful, and muscular.

His hair is curly and tied at the back. His now-hollow eyes were once white, made with inset bone. He plants his left foot and pushes off with the right. Even though every limb moves in a different direction, the overall effect is one of balance.

The statue’s dimensions are a study in Greek geometry. His head is exactly one Greek foot in length. He stands 6 Greek feet tall, or exactly one Greek fathom. The entire figure has an “X” shape that would fit into a perfect circle — his navel at the center, and his fingertips touching the rim.

The unknown artist has frozen Poseidon’s movements in time, so we can examine the wonder of the physical body. He’s natural yet ideal, twisting yet balanced, moving while at rest. With his geometrical perfection and godlike air, this figure sums up all that is best about the art of the ancient world.

Sculpted around 460 BC, this statue is an example of the so-called Severe style, describing the style of Greek art between 500 and 450 BC. Historically, this is when Greece battled the Persians. During this time of horrific war, the Greeks made art that was serious and unadorned, and expressed naked, muscular strength. Severe-style statues celebrate the nobility of the human form and the heroism of the individuals who carried them through these tough times.

Shortly after this statue was created, the Greeks emerged victorious from their wars, shook off tyrants at home, and took control of their own destiny through democracy. This Poseidon shows Greece poised at the dawn of that new era of prosperity and enlightenment, his gaze fixed on the coming future. That future would be known as the Golden Age…an age that would inspire Western civilizations to come.
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Vigeland’s “Monolith of Life”

Even though we’re not visiting Europe right now, I believe a regular dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine. And for me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:  

In a park in Oslo — where children play, couples embrace, and old people reflect — you’ll find nearly 200 statues of people engaged in those same primal human activities. It’s a lifetime of work by Norway’s greatest sculptor, Gustav Vigeland. 

In 1921, Gustav Vigeland struck a deal with the city. In return for a great studio and state support, he’d spend his creative life beautifying Oslo with this sculpture garden. From 1924 until his death in 1943 he worked on-site, designing 192 bronze and granite statue groupings — 600 figures in all, each unique. 

Vigeland’s sturdy humans capture universal themes of the cycle of life — birth, childhood, romance, struggle, childrearing, growing old, and death. His statues laugh, cry, jump for joy, and hug each other in sorrow. The bittersweet range of human experience was sculpted by a man who’d seen it all himself: love, failed marriages, children, broken homes, war, death — a man who did not age gracefully.  

For generations, the people of Oslo have made Vigeland’s timeless people a part of their own lives. The park is treated with respect: no police, no fences — and no graffiti. Vigeland created an in situ experience that is at once majestic, hands-on, entertaining, and deeply moving.  

Vigeland was inspired by Rodin’s naked, restless, intertwined statues. Like Rodin, Vigeland explored the yin-yang relationship of men and women. Also like Rodin, Vigeland did not personally carve most of his statues. Rather, he made models that were executed by a workshop of assistants.  

Strolling the park, you’ll cross a 300-foot-long bridge lined with statues, including the famous Angry Boy. He stomps his feet, clenches his fists, and screams — just like two-year-olds have since the beginning of time. (It’s said Vigeland gave a boy chocolate and then took it away to get this reaction.) Next comes a huge fountain, where water — the source of life — cascades around the statues. Vigeland consciously placed his figures amid the park’s landscaping to show how mankind is intimately bound up with nature.  

The most striking thing about these statues is they’re all so darn naked. This isn’t the soft-focus beauty of nubile nymphs, but the stark reality of penises, scrotums, vulvas, breasts, and butts. These people are naked Homo sapiens. 

In the center of the park, high on a hill, is the Monolith, a 46-foot granite pillar surrounded by 36 free-standing statues. Here, Vigeland explores a lifetime of human relationships. A mother bends over to care for her kids. Two lovers nestle nose to nose. A father counsels his son. An old man cradles his emaciated wife. 

Vigeland’s final great work was the Monolith itself. It was carved from a single 180-ton block of granite, and took three sculptors 14 years to carve. The pillar teems with life, a tangle of bodies. More than 120 figures — men, women, old, young — scramble over and around each other as they spiral up toward the top. What are they trying to reach? Success? Happiness? Mere survival? God? Vigeland never said. But whatever it is that drives the human race to aspire to better things, it’s clear that we’re all tied up in it together.