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Travel journals
The places of our squares
Before they were squares, they were places. Six journals to discover them as we dreamed them.
01Zermatt, Valais · 3 min read
Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn
You do not drive to Zermatt. You ride up by train, deep into a valley that keeps narrowing, and step onto a platform from which at first you see nothing. Then, around a street corner, the pyramid of the Matterhorn appears, alone, as if set upon the roofs.
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02Geneva · 3 min read
Geneva, the city by the water
Geneva reveals itself from the water. Over the harbour, gulls circle the paddle steamers, the quays stretch out beneath the plane trees and, on a clear day, Mont Blanc appears above the roofs. In the middle, a white plume rises into the sky.
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03The Engadine, Graubünden · 3 min read
The Engadine, when the lakes freeze
At more than 1,800 metres, the upper Inn valley strings its lakes together like beads: Sils, Silvaplana, St. Moritz. In winter they freeze so deep that people walk on them, ski across them and even race horses on them.
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04The Amalfi Coast, Campania · 3 min read
The Amalfi Coast, step by step
On the Amalfi Coast you never walk on the level. Villages cling to the cliff, houses stack up in white, pink and ochre, and everything is joined by stairways. In summer the bougainvillea spills over the walls and the sea below changes its blue with every hour.
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05Barcelona, Catalonia · 3 min read
Barcelona, Gaudí's broken mosaic
In Barcelona, mosaic left the churches and came down into the street. It covers benches, roofs, chimneys, entire façades. We owe it above all to one architect, Antoni Gaudí, and to a technique he made famous: trencadís.
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06Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna · 3 min read
Ravenna, capital of mosaics
From the outside, Ravenna's churches are plain brick buildings, almost modest. You push the door and the gold appears: whole vaults of tesserae, processions of saints, starry skies laid fifteen centuries ago and still intact.
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