09 May 2008

Torre brutta!

Acquedotti


Everyone has a vision of Italy as being the land of beautiful things: cars, art, scenery and architecture. There are an abundance of these here but there are also a fair amount of things in Italy that are brutta, ugly. One of the things that stand out in some towns is the water towers that have been built in the centro storico. Many times these acquedotto are simple but ugly concrete structures that tower over everything else.


The acquedotto seem to all use the same basic design and a few locations have tried to dress them up with brick, but a water tower is still a water tower. These blights, similar to radio towers are fixed, hard to miss and will be there for a long time.


I realize these are solely functional structures and a necessity. However, with Italy’s amazing architectural history and wide array of existing structures to draw inspiration from I always find it amazing how very ugly some buildings can be, especially given the example of classic towers that dot the Italian landscape.

3 comments:

Jessica said...

I agree, many people (tourists) only see the good parts, there is some bad too! We have the ugly towers as well, not to mention the endless amount of shanty towns near many of the train tracks. [p.s brutta has 2 Ts-but I won't tell anyone!;)]

Bryan said...

Spelling has never been a strong point for me; English or Italian. You would think Italian would be easier as the words are spelled as they sound?!

Jessica said...

Haha! I know what you mean! I really struggle with the double consonants in Italian :(