Shabby Chic

When buildings have been around for potentially thousands of years there is the tendency to look the other way over minor esthetic issues. Don't tell that to our anonymous neighbor in Springfield who turned us in a number of years ago for having peeling paint on our porch.  In fact, the crumbling bricks, peeling stucco and other flaws add to the romance and appeal of Italy. In a very real sense, Italians have cultivated the art of shabby chic. It almost reminds me of the faux clothing line in the movie Zoolander, called Derelict. When the sun is shining just right on a pile of thousand year old rubble that used to be a dwelling in the middle of a field, it just screams to have its picture taken.

Amy and I recently toured our fair city, Viterbo, camera in hand, taking pictures of things that appealed to us.
Examples abound of plants growing from walls and on top of roofs, such as this one of a fig plant.

The plants below are growing from a wall on our street that separates a garden area from the street proper. Notice also the peeling stucco in the lower right of the picture.

Which brings us to an entire class of art, the peeling stucco, exemplified by the pedestrian entrance at Porta Veritas, shown below.

Below we have the three stage stucco peel: reasonably maintained and painted stucco on the left, full rocks exposed with mortar missing in the middle and repointed rocks on the right. If you look closely, you will also see that all of the window openings have actually been bricked up on the inside, but the glass and deteriorating wooden sashes have been left with no way to get to them to maintain them.

Then there is the art of graffiti. The ancient Romans had this perfected. The advent of spray paint dumbed down the "art" in all but a few cases. There actually isn't that much graffiti in Viterbo. The picture below has a message to "eat vegetarian" on the side of a specialty meat store. The item between the windows is actually a beautiful bronze plaque of a calf suckling a cow.

Examples of decades old, peeling paint can also be readily found. I'm sorry whoever turned me in, the door pictured below has my porch columns beat by a long shot. Note the cool knockers shaped like hands.

Finally we have the completely missing wall. This is actually a picture taken near the duomo of a section of the original Etruscan walls that date from 2500 years ago or more. Viterbo is truly an ancient city.

That does it for now, but look for more photos as we find other interesting shabby chic items that catch the eye.