Prague

Posted on July 3, 2016 by shane harrison

Angels and art on Charles Bridge

Prague is more of a dream to me now. Charles Bridge partly wrapped in scaffolding, angels and demons in the architecture, the Vltava sweet and slow, a highway diverted through time. We stayed in Mala Strana, a hundred yards from the bridge. It’s an island in the stream, insulated from the sturm und drang of the city flowing all around.

The Old Town sucks in a constant pilgrimage crossing the bridge, serenaded by snappy jazz and classical combos, confused by the street theatre amongst the stone statues. There is no let up in the sinuous streets of the Old Town, opportuned at every step with offers of classical recitals, drinking and dining experiences, and the amiable chancers who will show you all those things that you can see. The streets flow sporadically into cobbled squares. The eye is drawn upward to ornate spires, a fold-out picture book of images culled from Bosch and Brueghel. Mobile drinking groups push by propelled by tough cyclists. The pavement restaurants are packed. Advice abounds; a tall black man dressed as a leprechaun sullenly advertises an Irish Bar. It’s hectic but fun.

Our Lady Before Tyn beyond the Old Town Square

This is the perfect city to explore on foot. If somewhat over-touristic in the Stare Mesto or Old Town, fact is we’re tourists too. We go with the flow. The Old Town Square features the Old Town Hall with its Astronomical clock. Towering to the east are the incredibly ornate spires of the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn. Central Europe in the Middle Ages is tangibly real. Illuminated at night, the spires seem to float against the sky. The dream goes on while no-one sleeps.

In the Square there is a gallery housing exhibits of Mucha and Dali. Alfons Mucha is amongst my favourites. His sinuous Art Nouveau has adorned my walls on posters and mirrors. I imitated his statuesque women. Goddesses culled from myth or personifying the seasons, sophisticated smokers and drinkers, their extravagantly flowing hair, dubbed, a bit scornfully, as Mucha’s spaghetti. A local boy who made it big in Paris especially with his commercial work, I come across his artwork and influence throughout the city. His ornate interlaced lines recall Celtic art and have become emblematic of Art Nouveau and its zeitgeist.

Mucha’s panel at St Vitus Cathedral

The Powder Gate is the eastern limit of the medieval city. Nearby, the Municipal House is an art nouveau complex featuring museums, galleries, restaurants and cafes. Beneath is the American bar. Descending to the cellar, the giddy feeling of being one of Escher’s elves. Mucha graphics peep from the stone. The American Bar glimmers beyond doors of chamfered glass. The tiled chequered floor gleams, lightbeams angle from arched windows at street level. All tables are empty. I am served by a liveried man. A tall local lager is a work of art. While there, a small group of tourists gather at the door, looking in and around and at me. They talk amongst themselves, give me one last envious look and depart. I think they’re Americans, but this is my bar.

Big Brother in Prague

South of the Old Town is the Nove Mesto, though it was laid out in the fourteenth century. The New Town Hall dates from this time. It faces out on a park frequented by vagrants. The view from the top windows was sometimes the last thing seen by those chosen by enraged citizens for defenestration, the medieval Czech’s extreme example of the Big Brother House. The real Big Brother held sway here for half the twentieth century. The main drag, Wenceslas Square, was the rallying point for opponents of the communist regime. They almost carried Dubcek in the Prague Spring, but the Soviets intervened. Vaclav Havel led the ultimate revolt as the Iron Curtain fell. It is not so much a square as a broad rising street. Above the commercial, and increasingly tatty, street facades, art nouveau architecture blossoms into the sky. The National Museum dominates the vista, though it is isolated beyond a broad, busy traffic thoroughfare.

In the sanctuary of the Clemintinum we step out of the throng. It is huge baroque complex including churches and the National Library. The Astronomical Tower is where Kepler and Tycho Brahe unravelled the secrets of the heavens. After Copernicus, more and more we came to realise we were not the centre of the universe. Silence gathers and we buy tickets for a classical recital off a Bohemian Girl. This returns us to the riverside and the Church of Saint Francis for teatime contemplation. That’s Baroque and Roll.

Infant of Prague

There are pilgrimages to be made. My childhood home always had as a centrepiece of the altar, the statue of the Infant of Prague. My mother venerated this miraculous icon. The original came from Spain in the sixteenth century as the Catholic Reformation took root under the Hapsburgs. It was donated to the Carmelites of the Church of Our Lady Victorious in 1628. The nuns change the vestments according to the liturgical calendar. When I call, the statue is clad in blue, which pleases me greatly.

The Castle floats above the city. We wind our way up from Mala Strana into the high area of Hradcany. To the Castle! Parkland and woods, market gardens and flowers, shield us from the city spread out below. The Castle complex is vast. At one end is a torture museum, at the other, St. Vitus Cathedral marks the high point of Prague’s skyline. From screaming to dreaming spires. The Cathedral has been a thousand years a-growing, but remains convincingly gothic. Inside, the stained glass gallery evokes Czech nationalism in the early twentieth century. Mucha’s stained glass depicts the legendary rise of the Slavic tribes.

Cruising on the Vltava

An afternoon and evening is spent messing about on the river Vltava. We cruise beyond the city limits into an unexpectedly bucolic landscape. Returning after sunset, Prague’s fantastic spires and turrets are illuminated against the night. Good wine and company, the city seems remote. The black water stretches out of sight, in both directions. Our metaphor for life, and death.

In the spirit of existential angst, on the last day, it is time to pay homage to Franz Kafka. The Kafka Museum is only a short distance from our hotel. Inside Kafka’s head there is another route through Prague. Gothic, gloomy and fantastic, this is to explore the deeper psyche. Looking through a tinted window to the back of a display panel, the Vltava is black syrup beneath a burnishing sun. My eyes slip upward to the pewter sky until its blueness seeps through. Above Prague’s skyline, a white balloon takes its passengers ever upward towards heaven

Dublin’s Temple Bar

Posted on June 2, 2016 by shane harrison

View from Liffey Street

Temple Bar lies to the east of the medieval walled city of Dublin, bounded by the South Quays, Westmoreland Street and Dame Street to the south. Temple Bar itself is a short segment midway along the Fleet Street/Essex Street thoroughfare. The name may have originated in imitation of the area in London which similarly lies just outside the city gates. Or it may be named after William Temple, Provost of Trinity College in the early seventeenth century. Trinity had been established by Queen Elizabeth in 1592. Temple and his descendents had property here, so the name probably recognises both facts.

When I was young this was a dilapidated and largely deserted part of Dublin. A place of well worn cobblestones and crumbling warehouses, the odd quirky shop or hostelry looming out of the smog. You might be picking up a Dickensian atmosphere here, but I’m not that old. The city planners in the 1970s had earmarked Temple Bar for development as a major bus station. As it was, Fleet Street was then choked with busses bound for Crumlin, Walkinstown and beyond. This was where we’d gather to imbibe the petrol fumes mingling with the smell of fish and chips, rain falling, steam rising from damp coats.

Heading towards Merchant’s Arch

The alternative society was sussing it out in the seventies. The Granary at Essex Street was a wholefood shop, branching out into a cafe and meeting place. Next door, the Project Arts Centre moved here from King Street by Saint Stephen’s Green, bringing alternative theatre, modern art and underground music. The Alchemist’s Head, making Ireland safe for science fiction, was just across the road. My work in the P&T as then was, Eircom now, also brought me to Crown Alley, an attractive turn of the century redbrick on Fleet Street. A hub of the telephone network, the 1916 rebels had it earmarked for takeover but feared, wrongly, that the British army was in possession. Their failure here and at Dublin Castle were major opportunities missed.

The bus station never flew. The low rents prior to development attracted a creative and bohemian bunch. Representations were made to the powers that be. It was Charlie Haughey, cultured rogue that he was, who saw the light. Temple Bar properties was established to oversee development, the aim to create a cultural quarter for the capital. More famously, it has become a major social hotspot, transforming the narrow, once empty streets, into a day long conga line of partying visitors and locals.

Liquid gold in the Temple Bar pub

Some of my old watering haunts remain. Whenever possible I return to The Palace Bar which proclaims its literary and journalistic connections at the eastern end of Fleet Street. Almost two hundred years old, it retains its original old style dark wood bar and furnishing style. High ceilinged with stained glass and a grand glass frontage, all the light pouring in is trapped in this veritable drinking palace. Such pubs are the salt of Dublin’s earthy drinks culture. Our old city haunt, The Crane at Crane Lane is gone. Here we could rub shoulders with Special Branch men from the Castle and seek out ladies from our own suburbs. It happened to be the nearest city pub to our bus terminus. There are many more additions than subtractions. No shortage of watering holes. Temple Bar may have been where the Danes dropped anchor in the ninth century, but you can still pay Copenhagen prices for your Carlsberg here. The Temple Bar pub charges near seven euro a pint, but still the place is hopping by midday. The market here is not price sensitive.

The Central Bank at Dame Street

From nineteen seventy three, the Central Bank has towered over the area like a modern Bastille. Though I’m sure it’s much more pleasant to work there. Sam Stephenson’s monsterpiece was controversial in many ways. Built from the sky down, as it were, the completed floors hung by visible cables from central support towers. The method itself alluded to a certain exalted origin and function. Getting even bigger for its boots, it was alleged to be taller than Liberty Hall, Ireland’s awe inspiring seventeen story skyscraper of the sixties and trade union home. Labour’s Minister for Local Government, James Tully, stepped in and ordered the completed building to be taken down a peg. In truth, its height was in contravention of the planning permission. But that’s another storey.

Being a tall building, something which the Irish feel should be confined to round towers and spires, objectors considered it an affront, a Tower of Babel. Advocates insisted it would stand the test of time. I sneered then but I’d concede that it has lasted well, unlike Stephenson’s notorious Bunkers at the Dublin Corporation buildings by Christchurch. Passing beneath the Central Bank, it does seem to float in the air, and to form a fine gateway for entering Temple Bar.

Throngs of people now float on down from Dame Street towards Merchant’s Arch. This is the main north south axis of Temple Bar. A perpetual beat on the street has replaced the isolated clack of heels on deserted cobbles. Under Merchant’s Arch you emerge blinking into the common daytime whirr of traffic, the south quays taking westbound traffic, the north quays taking it east. The elegant Halfpenny Bridge arches over the Liffey. It takes its name from the toll charged at its inception two hundred years ago, compensation to the ferryman who previously carried people over. Yeats once championed a Municipal Art Gallery purpose built on a covered bridge here. But the iron structure survives, one of Dublin’s most iconic images.

The Liffey, looking east from Halfpenny Bridge

The river bank in medieval days would have been close to Fleet Street. As the city spilled outside the walls, houses built along the shore faced away from the river. It was after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, that the Royalist Lord Deputy of Ireland, James Butler, the Earl of Ormond, decreed that buildings face the river, with a roadway to form the quayside. This innovation, which Ormonde had observed whilst in exile in Europe during the Cromwellian years, transformed the character of Dublin, establishing the river as the defining character in its layout and aesthetic. The Wide Streets Commission, almost a century later, further moulded the city along neo-classical lines. The extent of Temple Bar was defined by the new thoroughfares, Parliament Street and Westmoreland Street, the widened Dame Street and College Green.

Since the eighties, multitudes have come to this cramped box of little lanes, the discrete vestige of medeval Dublin without the walls. We come here to play, to plunge into the past, to live in the moment, maybe set the course of our future. But mainly to play. There is nothing ostensibly pretty about Temple Bar, it is defined more by function than finesse, a jumble of back street businesses, a mercantile slum. But cities and towns are as much about their people as their built fabric. There’s enough human life here to illuminate the city should the electricity ever be cut off. It shines, night and day.

Madeira

Posted on May 2, 2016 by shane harrison

Funchal

Madeira is improbably positioned in the middle of the north Atlantic. So many miles from nowhere, it has to be somewhere to go. Skimming across this part of the ocean, we put into port at Funchal, Madeira, before a quick skip through the Canaries. As island dwellers ourselves, it was a chance to visit places smaller and more remote than the auld sod. Warmer too, though at this time of year the bright spring weather doesn’t scorch.

Madeira was established by Portuguese adventurers six hundred years ago. The name means wooded isle, still an appropriate designation. The jagged mountains forming the island’s spine are covered in trees, well sprinkled too with vineyards and banana plantations. Sugar cane was an early product of settlers and by the end of the fifteenth century Madeira was the world leader in sugar production. Christopher Columbus, the Genoese explorer, came to Madeira to purchase sugar. Those were the days before convenience stores. He found something sweeter in Filipa, daughter of the Governor of the neighbouring island of Porto Santo. Columbus lived on Madeira with his wife for a spell in the eighties. His son Diego was born here. I wonder if Colombus sensed that America was the next stop beyond the rim of the horizon.

Santa Maria de Colombo

In the harbour, the Santa Maria de Colombo is a working replica of Christopher Columbus’s flagship on his voyage to the New World in the late fifteenth century. It is available for tours around the island. This class of ship, a carrack, was much used by the early explorers, many of them Portuguese. Columbus’s vessel, though larger than the two accompanying caravels, is still surprisingly small, its deck no longer than sixty foot. Moored adjacent to where mighty cruise ships now pull in, the contrast is provocative. On this spot the great adventure of the modern world began. Trade, colonisation, the New World, radiated from the endeavour of, largely, Portuguese explorers. Now, hordes follow in their wake, idle travelers like myself, well sated and safe in vast cruise ships. The modest Santa Maria sits in the shadow of our ship. It could easily be overlooked. It shouldn’t be.

Checking out Ronaldo’s credentials

Further on up the quays, another favourite son, is immortalised in a statue. We pause to check out Christian Ronaldo, born on Madeira, who plies his trade with his boyhood heroes, Real Madrid. I’ve seen him play in the Bernebau and Tallaght, and there’s not many people you can say that about. The statue is imposing but disappointingly, well, static. Not so much an athlete as a dictator who preferred wearing shorts to a military uniform.

The island is quite densely populated, with a quarter of a million people living in an area of about three hundred square miles. Madeira is five hundred and sixty miles from Lisbon and on the same latitude as Casablance. The climate is temperate, never either getting beyond the mid twenties nor falling into single figures. The lush vegetation, the explosions of floral colour, along with the ubiquitous banana plantations give it a tropical appearance. Bananas are the main export while Madeira wine is world famed. These crops have been longterm mainstays of the economy. And tourism of course.

The capitol, Funchal, is home to more than a hundred thousand people. Orange tiled bungalows are piled high on the wooded hills. Jagged peaks form a natural amphitheatre into which the suburbs have spread. The high suburbs are over three thousand feet above sea level, higher than Carrauntoohil. It can be cool and cloudy up there, while the lower suburbs bask in sunshine. We take an open top bus that barrels through the city centre, past gardens and banana trees, flower festivals and vineyards. Streets lined with Jacaranda trees persuade purple into the sky. Ancient seafaring tales mentioned the Purple Isles, possibly referring to Madeira.

Camara de Lobos

The place has a prosperous air to it, putting its natural wealth to good use. This is unlike the Canaries, where tourism is king and indigenous industry otherwise scarce. The Canaries import all their food needs. Madeira does not have that level of dependency. We briefly stop at Camara de Lobos; the Salon of the Wolf, an intriguing name. Sea cliffs mark its western periphery, and the town tumbles down to a busy, pretty harbour. The Santa Maria de Colombo was constructed here at the end of the last century.

View from the Cable Car

We return to the seafront Promenade at Funchal. Our friends have been here before and suggest a convenient round trip, taking the cable car up, and a guided sled down. It’s always nice to court peril in someone else’s hands. The cable car runs to Monte, high above the city and adjacent to the Botanic Gardens. You can get an inclusive ticket, but we bought a one way, for a tenner. Into the clouds by our destination, we had coffee and a snack at a small modern cafe perched above the cable line chasm. From here it’s a short meander to the sleds. We skirt the periphery of the Botanic Gardens which seem pleasant, but the whole island looks like a botanic garden to me.

Descending into Funchal

Sleds are a wicker two seater on a wooden base, guided by a street gondolier, for want of a better term. It’s a good fast slide, reaching speed up to thirty miles an hour. A hundred years of this attention has polished the surface of the lanes down to the terminus nearer the town. In fact, it’s a good distance, but it’s relaxing to saunter through the lanes heading down to the centre of Funchal. The old walls of the laneways and the houses beyond are overgrown with a colourful riot of plants and flowers.

Say it with flowers

We want a quiet place for a drink, but nothing really presents itself before reaching the Main Square. With the Spring Flower festival in full swing, the place is packed. A row of pleasant period eateries and bars with extensive outside seating are ideal for people watching with the cacophony of colour and action of a festival providing the backdrop. A rather raucous calypso tinged combo, in truth a guitarist and his portable backing group, provides the soundtrack and we wonder if we should ask him to play Faraway.

We finish off with a leisurely browse through the stalls in the square. The atmosphere is building up for the parade, and as we weave our way back to the port, it’s as if the entire town has turned into a pulsing, floral rumba. Relaxing on deck I absorb what passes for silence in these parts. I sketch the shaded peaks of Madeira, like dark flame rising from the dappled colours of Funchal’s teeming buildings and their vibrant forested nest.

Walkinstown Revisited

Posted on April 3, 2016 by shane harrison

Return of the Wanderer.

I left Walkinstown just over thirty years ago. Many’s the time I’ve been back since, taking the kids to visit Granny, meeting friends for football or beer. Bit by bit, the ties are loosened. There’s less opportunity to drop by and give the auld sod a look. Recently, getting a new car brought me back to those fields where I grew up.

EP Mooney’s, Long Mile Rd.

Walkinstown is certainly the go-to place for cars. New or in their prime along the Long Mile Road and the industrial estates to the west. Over by the Naas Road, the hypnotic Mercedes sign rotates on its Art Deco tower, day and night. A beacon in the darkness, a neon blue call to prayer. Death awaits all things, however, and auto graveyards line the moraine that carries the Greenhils Road from Tallaght down to The Cross. Junkyards are sculpture parks with a purpose, a place where discarded jalopys await their reincarnation.

Drimnagh Castle

In Norman times, the land hereabouts was granted to Hugh De Bernevale, a confederate of Strongbow. The belt of land between the Dodder and Camac was densely wooded and vulnerable to attack from Irish tribes. The Pale (a fortified ditch) was established to protect settlement in the area, and a ring of castles was constructed from the Liffey Valley through Tallaght and on to Rathfarnham and Dalkey. Drimnagh Castle was built in 1240 as a prominent fortress guarding the marches. Constructed in local limestone it remains surrounded by a flooded moat, the only castle in Ireland to retain this feature. The Great Hall dates from this period, the High Tower was added in the sixteenth century, offering commanding views of the surrounding countryside. To the west lies Robin Hood. An intriguing name, it is now an industrial area. Legend, of course, insists that Robin Hood himself sojourned here. General myth places him early in the thirteenth century, when the lands in the shadow of the Castle were secured by the Bernevals. Robin Hood, of course, could simply be a stock alias for a robber. The area then would have been isolated woodland, just beyond the periphery of settlement, where banditry was rife.

The Moat

It is said that Cromwell stabled horses in the Castle during the War of the Three Kingdoms in the 1650s. Cromwell’s Fort Road draws its name from that period too. Cromwell is said to have visited many places, most of which needed to be rebuilt afterwards. Drimnagh Castle seems to have survived unscathed. The Bernevals, later Barnewalls, lived here until that time. The Castle remained inhabited until being sold to the Christian Brothers in 1954. The new schools built to service Walkinstown were completed in 1956. In the interim, the first students of Drimnagh Castle CBS were accommodated in the Castle itself. Masses were hosted before completion of the Church of the Assumption nearby. A theatre group and local GAA teams also used the building. By the late twentieth century, the Castle had fallen into disrepair. Refurbishment was carried out in the late eighties, completed by 1996. As well as the restoration of the castle itself, part of the exterior grounds have been reconstructed as a formal seventeenth century garden. Today Drimnagh Castle is open for visitors, and available for private functions. Tours give a glimpse into castle life in the late medieval and early modern period.

The Castle Yard

Walkinstown takes its name from a tenant farmer called Wilkins. A village had grown up by the early nineteenth century, straggling along the banks of the Walkinstown Stream, a tributary of the Camac. The Camac runs to the north, between Drimnagh and Bluebell, on through Inchicore and into the Liffey near Islandbridge. The stream was visible when I was young. It passed in front of the Halfway House and on to the rear of Wilkinstown House. We used to clamber on its muddy banks, in the shade of trees and bushes, competing to see who could jump across the seething waters. A wall on the western bank retained a flat scrub area, long used as a carpark for the Halfway House. This was a Coach House by the early nineteenth century. While subject to some modernisation, it retains much the same footprint and general appearance as it would back then. Wilkinstown House was originally reached along the banks of the stream. After the Famine of the 1840s the demographics changed. The village was deserted and bypassed by the Walkinstown Road. Walkinstown House passed into the ownership of the Flanagan family.

Halfway House

Most famous of the big house’s residents was William ‘The Bird’ Flanagan, born in 1867 and son of Alderman Michael Flanagan. Small of stature but larger than life, he was a notorious practical joker in late nineteenth century Dublin. The Bird got his name from one of his most notorious japes. Probably. One Christmas he purchased a turkey at a butcher’s in Dolphin’s Barn, requesting that it be hung at the front of the shop for collection. Later, The Bird caught the attention of a policeman on the beat nearby and began to act in a suspicious, excessively furtive manner. Grabbing the turkey, The Bird raced off towards Rialto with the constable in pursuit. Eventually apprehended, he flourished his purchase docket and the unfortunate policeman had to exchange his collar for the mirth of onlookers. The Bird Flanagan pub in Rialto illustrates the incident on its sign. The bar in the Gresham Hotel is also named for him. He once rode a horse into the bar, claiming that the horse needed cheering up, as he’d such a long face on him. His legend also attaches to the naming of the Long Mile Road. Apparently the Bird organised a horse race along its length. The Bird had the furlongs marked out dutifully. His own mount trailed badly at the eighth but as the leaders reined in it galloped past to the end of the road. The Bird claimed his winnings, saying the mile was not enough as the road was a ‘Long Mile’.

Horseman on the Long Mile

William’s brother was Frank ‘The Pope’ Flanagan. Despite the implication of piety, he featured in early Republican gun running. The Irish Volunteers sought arms to defend Home Rule against armed loyalists and their co-conspirators in the army and the Lords. A shipment aboard the Asgard landed at Howth in 1914. The Pope was one of a large crowd who rallied to the cause. He came on horseback. On the instructions of Bulmer Hobson, Frank effected a diversion, leading security forces on a merry dance across the countryside. Frank was loyal to Redmond’s wing of the Volunteers, and served with the British Army for the duration of the Great War.

WT Cosgrave married into the Flanagan family, taking Louisa Flanagan as his bride in 1919, right at the start of the War of Independence. Cosgrave had led the Insurgents at the Dublin Union in 1916, and was lucky to have his death sentence commuted. Something of an elusive pimpernel, British forces suspected he might be hiding out in Walkinstown House during the war. It was raided by the Black and Tans and suffered minor damage. Cosgrave became Ireland’s first prime Minister after independence in 1922, a position he held for ten years.

Much of the Flanagan land was sold off in the development of Drimnagh and Walkinstown. The house itself endured for some decades until it was demolished in 1970 to make way for a supermarket. Suburban expansion had begun in Crumlin in the thirties, followed by Drimnagh and the Walkinstown Musical Estate in the late forties. The Musical Roads rejoice in such names as John McCormack, Bunting, Balfe, Thomas Moore and Percy French. It certainly strikes a welcome note (ha) in the colourful nomenclature of Dublin 12. Bluebell, Robin Hood, Fox and Geese Greenhills, and Ballymount are also part of D12. Pubs include the Cuckoo’s Nest, the Halfway House, the Cherry Tree, the Submarine and the Kestrel. I worked in the Cherry Tree and drank in the rest. The past is always worth revisiting, and imagining.

Church of the Assumption.

London: River Thames to Greenwich

Posted on March 2, 2016 by shane harrison

The Thames flows on its serpentine path through London towards the sea. It is in no hurry to get there. It is confirmed in its relationship over two millennia, a highway to the world, a crossroads of civilisation. The Romans built their northernmost metropolis on its banks. In Christian days its centre point rose from the hill where now stands St Paul’s. At its height, sixty thousand people lived in Londonium. Abandoned in early Saxon times, Alfred the Great – though not a great baker – rekindled its fortunes as he thwarted the Danes. The ever falling, ever moving, London Bridge, anchored its location upriver of the Tower.

Big Ben from the river

Took her sailing on the river/ flow sweet river flow/

London town was mine to give her/ Sweet Thames, flow softly.

We take the Clipper commuter boat from the Embankment, eastwards towards the sea. London is teeming and towering, but calmed each side of the placid waterway. The morning sky is an optimistic blue, touching infinity above and below. In the words of Joseph Conrad, we are poised on ‘a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth’. Conrad saw the connection here with all the great rivers of the world. Polish was his first language, but Heart of Darkness is an English classic, an exploration of the dark recesses of the human psyche. And it all starts here on the Thames as Conrad’s enigmatic Marlow spins his yarn. Conrad spurned his inheritance to take to the sea, eventually sailed up this river and observed its two way flow: ‘memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea,’ such ships ‘whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time.’ Another Joseph, J.M.W. Turner observed the Fighting Temeraire being towed up the estuary towards its sun drenched destruction.

Tower Bridge

From Shadwell Dock to Nine Elms Reach/ we cheek to cheek were dancing/

Her necklace made of London Bridge/ her beauty was enhancing.

How can you resist the melody of English in the endless thoroughfare of the River? Shakespeare and Jonson lurk in punts in the shadow of the quays. Kit Marlowe sails by to his fatal reckoning at the riverside tavern in Deptford. The Globe Theatre looms out of the south, recast perfectly anew in some weird warp of time. Theatre in the round was the focal point of freedom on the periphery. We saw Henry IV here beneath a summer sky as it was meant to be seen, swirling skywriters, helicopters and all. Off season there are tours. We were told that in Elizabethan times, this was the theatre of life. A typical playhouse was some combination of festival and football stadium, rowdy patrons well past sobriety. It was a den of iniquity, the original smoker’s theatre of Brecht.

Despite appearances, time is of the essence. We have a late lunch audience with Oran at Southwark, with drinks in the Shard to follow. Greenwich is just over five miles west on the south bank where the urban crush begins to ease. We have a few hours to look around, and what better place to synchronise our watches.

Royal Naval College, Greenwich

Heard the bells of Greenwich ringing/ flow sweet river, flow/

All that time my heart was singing/ Sweet Thames flow softly.

At Greenwich the city’s glow would have dimmed with distance. The lure of the sea, conversely, grew strong. The Royal Navy College steps up from the river. Initiated by James II, it is a neo-classical masterpiece of Christopher Wren. Begun in late 16th century it was originally the Royal Hospital for Seamen. Beyond the quiet splendour of its collonades and domes, Greenwich park slopes up to higher ground. The Rpyal Observatory was commissioned by Charles II. Overlooking Greenwich Park, it now boasts stunning views of the highrise London of Canary Wharf, the vast city jewelling the horizon by day and night. Here would be established the prime meridian of longitude. Bisecting the global river at Greenwich, forming the crossroads of the globe, where east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet. Although, good tourist that I am, I straddle the line in the yard of the Observatory, a photo opportunity in real time.

East is east and west is west.

Made the Thames into a crown/Flow sweet river, flow/

Made a brooch of Silvertown/ Sweet Thames flow softly.

It was after 1884 that Greenwich was recognized as the line 0 of longitude. The accurate measurement of longitude had presented an intractable problem in previous centuries. With the Longitude act of 1714, Parliament offered £20,000, almost 3 million quid in today’s money, to anyone who could devise a reliable system for the reckoning of longitude. John Harrison, a carpenter from Lincoln, was building almost frictionless grandfather clocks in his early twenties. In pursuit of the prize, he set about the task of building a timepiece to reckon longitude. For the scientific community, gentlemen all, the notion of a mere craftsman providing a solution to the problem was laughable. However, Harrison had a champion in the Astronomer Royal, Edmund Halley.

After sixty years trying, Harrison’s H4, an oversized pocket watch, seemed to fulfil the criteria. However, the board demurred, putting Harrison’s success down to beginner’s luck. His H5 passed the test. But Harrison had difficulty extricating the prize. Only the support of George III gaining some compensation, to the tune of £8,5000. Harrison was eighty years old and died shortly afterwards. His timepiece was used by Cook on his second and third voyages. William Blythe also carried one, although it was nicked by Fletcher Christian, to be returned to the Maritime Museum much later.

Greenwich Park and the Maritime Museum

At the Maritime Museum there’s an exhibition devoted to the Harrison clocks. I figure I have the best part of an hour before our return trip. As luck would have it, I’m about to leave when a museum guard takes centre stage, launching into an entertaining account of Harrison’s travails. Spellbound, I lose all track of time. Herself has seen the hour grow cold and comes in search. The account concludes, but now we’re running late.

Swift the Thames flows to the sea/Flow sweet river flow/

Bearing ships and part of me/Sweet Thames flow softly.

The giants of Southwark

We walk through bustling Greenwich town down to the pier. Heading upriver, the bells of Southwark are chiming for our appointment. Above the shaded grove of the ancient cathedral, the blue sky is scraped by the slender Shard of Glass. Oran slopes out of the shadows as we arrive. We take a lift to the thirty first floor, where the split level Aqua bar floats in a bubble of glass. London is laid out below us, caressed by its loving river. It feels like heaven, or close enough.

Saint Valentine in Dublin

Posted on February 14, 2016 by shane harrison

Dublin is truly the city of love. The Romantic, and certainly the Gothic, are a rich part of its weave. There is a trail to be followed plotting its many love stories, imagined and true, from its Viking origins up to modern times. Here’s one to begin with.

On this date, February 14th, we celebrate St Valentine’s day, a day dedicated to romantic love. The story of Saint Valentine dates from the time of Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 3rd century Rome. Valentine, a bishop of the time, was a keen proselytizer for the Christian faith, then considered a crime. Compounding this, he married young courting couples which was seen as weakening military effectiveness; bachelors making more fearsome warriors, apparently. Arrested for his transgressions, Valentine came to the attention of the Emperor who took a liking to him. However, when Valentine tried to convert him, Claudius countered with a death sentence. Just as well they hit it off, so.

While Valentine languished on death row, the jailer, hearing the holy man possessed great powers of healing, brought his blind daughter to the cell to be cured. Valentine applied a combination of prayer and medicine, unfortunately Valentine’s sentence arrived before a cure. The saint’s final letter was addressed to the girl, enclosing with it a crocus flower, then in bloom. When the jailer opened it in her company, the girl saw for the first time the bright colours of the flower. Her sight was miraculously restored. The letter was signed, From Your Valentine.

Valentine was martyred at Rome’s Flaminian Gate on February 14th, 269AD. Seven hundred and fifty years later, the saint’s traditional association with marital love and devotion has become more specifically associated with courtship and romance, This, in part, is due to the Saint’s day being synonymous with the onset of Spring, and all that that entails.

Valentine is depicted in red vestments, cradling the first flower of Spring, the crocus, in a life-size statue in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Whitefriar Street, Dublin. Father John Spratt, was instrumental in the establishment of this church in the early nineteenth century. From here he ministered to the poor of the surrounding Liberty of Saint Sepulchre. Also a renowned orator, Fr Spratt visited Rome in 1835 and greatly impressed Pope Gregory XVI with his orations. As a gift, Gregory sent a reliquary containing remains of Saint Valentine and a vessel tinged with his blood. These were installed with great ceremony in Whitefriar Street Church but subsequently fell into neglect. Interest was rekindled in the 1960s and the current shrine was constructed with a statue of Saint Valentine.

The Church itself was built in the days of Catholic Emancipation and is rather plain on the exterior. Ostentatious displays of the faith still being frowned upon in Dublin. Within, it is a different matter. Most spectacular is the enshrined statue of Our Lady of Dublin near the High Altar. This Black Madonna dates from the sixteenth century. It was presumed destroyed in the iconoclasm under Henry VIII only to resurface three hundred years later. Fr Spratt is again responsible, discovering the forgotten statue in a junk shop.

Saint Valentine’s shrine is to the right hand side as you enter. It is a major attraction for courting couples from around the globe, indeed any couple seeking spiritual affection for their love. The saint is venerated in special masses on this, his feast day, and there are Blessing of the Rings ceremonies for engaged couples. So, a happy Valentine’s Day to all who love, and all who sense the onset of Spring

Dublin Castle

Posted on February 3, 2016 by shane harrison

Dublin Castle stands on the spot where it all began. Towards the middle of the ninth century, a longboat of Viking raiders found the confluence of the Liffey with its tributary the Poddle, sailed up that to beach their boat on the shore of a large, dark pool. A low ridge extended to the west and here was established the Danish settlement, taking its name from the Gaelic for the pool, Dubh Linn. There had been other settlements hereabout, of course. St. Patrick establishing a church where his designated cathedral now stands. Greek geographer, Claudius Ptolemy, noted the importance of Eblana in the first century, though its size and exact location are disputed. For the Danes, and possibly their Celtic predecessors, the area now occupied by Dublin Castle seemed a logical spot, hard by the tidal harbour of the Pool, the higher aspect of the south bank affording dominance over the surrounding landscape.

Looking south over Dubh Linn

The Danes were to dominate the East and South coast for a century and a half. We read at school that Brian Boru ‘drove the Danes into the sea’ at the Battle of Clontarf. This is true of the forces on the day, a day of carnage; but the Danish leader, Sitric Silkenbeard, survived, Brian did not. The Danes were not expelled and survived another century and a half before the Norman invasion. It was Sitric, overtaken with piety in his later years, who established Christchurch Cathedral at the height of the ridge in 1028. The Danish city was already walled.

To the Norman though, goes the credit for establishing Dublin as a city of stone. The Castle was constructed by order of King John in 1202 at the south east corner of the city wall. The Pool lay to the south while the Poddle was harnessed to form a moat to the north and west. This rejoined the river at the north east corner of the Castle’s Lower Yard, flowing north into the Liffey near where the Clarence Hotel now stands. The Normans reconstructed the walls enclosing the growing city as far as the Liffey and westwards to St Audeon’s at Cornmarket. The extent of this walled enclosure was little amended over the centuries, until they were dismantled in the eighteenth century.

The Castle remains, itself greatly amended in the eighteenth century. For eight hundred years it was the centre and symbol of foreign power, first Norman, then English. It has never aspired to the romantic or picturesque. From the outset is was a functional, rectilinear structure comprising four stubby towers linked by curtain walls. There was no decoration, unless one counts the grisly occasions when rebel princes had their heads mounted on spikes at the gate. My own namesake, Shane O’Neill was to suffer this fate.

Bermingham Tower

Unpopular with host and guest alike, detested by the Irish, the Castle nevertheless fulfilled its function. Edward the Bruce’s invasion of 1315 failed to rattle it. Silken Thomas’s revolt in 1534 went close, but no cigar. His first attack from within the City Walls got no further than punching a hole in the wall. The citizens expelled the attackers who attempted two more attacks. In a last, audacious onslaught the attackers gutted the buildings on Thomas Street to use as a covered ramp to breach the defenses. The garrison, facing the real prospect of defeat, made a great show of pretending that reinforcements had arrived and, rushing to meet the attackers head on, managed to see them off.

Robert Emmet’s fiasco came to naught, degenerating into a bloody riot on Thomas Street. In 1916 there was an attempt by rebels to seize it and the adjacent City Hall. Their forces weren’t up to it. They were responsible for the first death of the Rising when they shot the policeman guarding the gates. The Rebels briefly held the Upper Yard but were driven back by the garrison, though the battle raged about the Castle precincts for the rest of the day. The most significant breach of the fortress occurred during the War of Independence in the early twenties. Michael Collins, Ireland’s most wanted man, strolled into the Castle and pilfered details of Britain’s undercover network, with desperate ramifications for them. With the greatest guile and intelligence Collins effected revolution where centuries of armed assault had failed. In January 1922, Collins accepted the surrender of the Castle to the new Irish Nation.

The Lower Yard

The Castle today is quite different to the original thirteenth century structure. That had fallen into ruin by the middle of the seventeenth century. Within the walls at that time was the Irish parliament building, decaying and further degraded by Cromwell’s marauding troops. When a fire broke out in 1684, the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Allen, took extreme measures to prevent its spreading to the more valuable towers, by blowing up connecting buildings. A blessing in disguise, Allen having described the place as the ‘worst castle in Christendom’.

Rebuilding started immediately and the south-eastern building was completed within four years. The colonnaded ground floor indicates the architectural style of the Jacobean period. The remainder of the refurbished Castle is in the Georgian style, typical of the explosion in development in Dublin throughout the eighteenth century. The main entrance is overlooked by the Bedford Tower. Built in 1761, this elegant neoclassical tower is the most imposing in the Castle complex. To each side are identical portals, it’s the easternmost that acts as the main gate. Atop this is a statue of Justice, pointedly turning her back on the city outside.

Records Tower

At the southeast corner of the yard stands the only remaining visible structure from Medieval times, the Records Tower. This was the main prison of the Castle up to the nineteenth century, and it is from here that the young Red Hugh O’Donnell escaped in Elizabethan times. The battlements were added in the nineteenth century at the same time the Chapel Royal, now the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, was built in the Lower Yard. The Church is built in the neo-Gothic style, then replacing the Georgian in the affections of Dublin.

Shortly after surrender, the Castle was occupied by the Civic Guard, later the Garda Siochana, the national police force. So, much of its original function as the focus of law and order persists. For a time the Castle was also used ad hoc for emergent government departments of the new state. The Revenue Commissioners remain on its eastern side, Bord Telecom on the Ship Street side. As a young man in the 70s, my first fulltime job was with the P&T, the telephone company, and I was posted here for training. With my urban hippy chique, all hair and patchouli oil, I was not best clad for a trip past the Drug Squad HQ every morning. The Castle felt like an old, forgotten outpost then. The satellites were sodden pubs, the rained-on cobbles of an empty Temple Bar.

Older now it may be, but the Castle itself has been rejuvenated as a venue for civil and state occasions and a major tourist attraction. The State Apartments along the south wall have been lavishly refurbished. There’s a garden on the site of the old Dubh Linn, overlooked by the Chester Beatty Library. Rehoused here at the turn of the century, this holds the collection of the American mining millionaire, a priceless treasure of Oriental manuscripts, art and artifacts.

Standing at the entrance beneath the Bedford Tower, you stand very much at the crossroads of Dublin. The ancient settlement is a palimpsest here, overwritten by Norman Gothic, Jacobean, Georgian, Victorian and Modern, it is still a story contiguous with scattered settlements of Celts and Danes by a dark pool. Looking north, Parliament Street makes a straight line with Capel Street to disappear into the distance. This is the axis that bisects Dublin, the dividing line between the old, downmarket westside, and the new, more salubrious eastside. The divide is evident still

Malaga

Gallery

Posted on January 4, 2016 by shane harrison

This gallery contains 5 photos.

South in Andalusia, where flamenco strums, where sand and stones shimmer under relentless sunshine. Most visitors are drawn here by the allure of the Costa Del Sol, sunshine beach holidays made-to-measure, cheap beer and nightlife, the chance to get a … Continue reading →

Dublin City Walls

Image

Entering Crampton Court

I’ve been spending my money in the Old Town,
It’s not the same, Honey, since you’re not around.

Dublin’s Old Town was delineated by its walls. Mostly vanished now, some fragments remain, and vestiges of the ancient street plan allow us to follow an imaginary walk around the ancient city. The Dane’s settled here in the ninth century, dropping anchor at a tidal pool just off the Liffey, fed by the River Poddle. Their settlement was known by its Gaelic designation, Dubh Linn, meaning Dark Pool. The Poddle, now just a stream, flows underground, while the footprint of the pool remains as an ornamental garden, along the southern walls of Dublin Castle.
At the Lower Castle Yard, you can see that the ground is low enough to accommodate a natural moat. To head downstream towards the Liffey, leave the Yard and cross Dame Street. A narrow covered laneway passes to the side of Brogan’s Bar, leading into Crampton Court, to the rear of the Olympia Theatre. Dilapidated now, and a bit dodgy, this was a bustling centre of commerce in Early Modern days. Dublin’s first coffee houses sprang up here, popular meeting houses for traders and merchants before the building of the Royal Exchange.

Leaving the Court, a narrow covered alley leads out to Essex Street, by the Dublin Theatre Festival Office. The old Custom House once stood opposite, before Gandon’s Georgian masterpiece was built further east around 1800. The site is now occupied by U2’s Clarence Hotel. After the eerie silence of Crampton Court, it’s into the rattle and hum of Temple Bar. Close by to the right, the Project Arts Centre was an early manifestation of arts and entertainment a decade before the Temple Bar scene bloomed. Here in the Seventies, prog rock and punk jostled for attention with art and drama. Jim Sheridan cut his teeth here with the likes of the prescient Inner City Outer Space.

Parliament Street

Heading west, Parliament Street marks the extremity of Temple Bar. Standing here one night recently, waiting for a friend, I experienced the tangible beat surging through the district. Back to the river, I took in that iconic Dublin view of the City Hall, even more dramatic when illuminated at night. One of the finest Georgian buildings in the city, it was originally the Royal Exchange. We had a drink and Fish n Chips in the Porterhouse. This was the first branch of the pub chain beyond its Bray home, now Porterhouses can be found in London and New York. Some things change, while others remain the same. Read’s Cutlers is Dubli’s oldest shop, dating back three hundred years. The Turks Head Chop House across the street harks back to ancient times, the Czech Inn, more recent.
That night, we headed towards Vicar Street for the Waterboys gig. Retracing old and ancient footsteps. This was often our route home after a gig at the Project or Zeros. Those days it was deserted around here, now nightlife and daylife are colonising the area too. We pass Cow Lane with it’s restaurants rising in terraces up towards Lord Edward Street. We join Fishamble Street as it curves uphill. This was Dublin’s original fish market, as the name suggests. This was also where Handel’s Messiah first rang out. At the Great Music Hall in 1743, seven hundred people enjoyed the first performance. Anticipating the large crowd, men were requested not to wear swords, women to refrain from wearing hoops.

Christchurch Cathedral occupies the highest ground of the Old Town. Just below the cathedral, which dates back to the 12th century, are the Civic Offices. Sam Stephenson’s ‘bunkers‘ at Wood Quay, site of the original Viking town, excited great opposition. Twenty thousand marched through Dublin in 1978, but ultimately the campaign failed to halt them. Screened by more postmodern structures now, the four brutalist towers are less ominous than they originally appeared. Winetavern Street appears to pass through the heart of Christchurch. An elegant Neo-Gothic bridge spans the road to join the cathedral with the former Synod Hall which now houses Dublinia, an extensive exhibition of Viking and Medieval Dublin.

St Audeon’s Gate on Cook St.

Further west, along Cook Street, is the only good segment of wall remaining. Well restored, it gives some idea of what it would be like approaching Dublin in medieval times. The segment incorporates Saint Audeon’s gate, the only remaining city gate. St. Audeon’s Church is just above the gate, a modest structure established in early Norman times, it has witnessed great urban expansion over the centuries. Bridge Street descends to the Liffey, for a long time this spot was Dublin’s main fording point. In the twelfth century, a tavern was established here and the Brazen Head lays claim to being Ireland’s oldest public house. Dean Swift is said to have lowered a few here, probably en route to or from Celbridge and his trysts with Vanessa. Across the road, O’Shea’s is one of Dublin’s most renowned trad and ballad boozers.

Back to the top of the ridge, there are actually two St Audeon’s churches. The Catholic church is housed in a more imposing neo-classical structure. It is the designated church for Dublin’s Polish community. Passing outside both is Cornmarket, though there is nothing bucolic about it these days. The over-widened thoroughfare sends a constant stream of traffic west towards Thomas Street. Crossing the street, shades of Eddie Murphy in Bowfinger, Lamb Alley has a small fragment of wall. We are near the westernmost point of the walled town. From here, the walls sloped downward and eastward, cutting across Patrick Street where the Iveagh Trust Buildings now stand.

Iveagh Buildings on Patrick St.

These were built in 1904, a housing development for the poor of the Liberties. The surrounding area had become a slum by the nineteenth century. The first Lord Iveagh, Edward Guinness, great grandson of Arthur, had established the Trust to provide housing in Dublin and London. The massive five storey blocks stretch all down Patrick’s Street to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. In red brick with mansard roofs and gabled fronts, they are a distinctive and unified feature of Dublin’s streetscape. The complex also included public baths and a men’s hostel. On Bull Alley Street a ‘People’s Palace’ was built in a more ornate, grander style. This provided recreational and canteen facilities for the young of the area. It came to be known as The Bayno, an essential part of growing up in the Liberties. Closed in the 70s, it is now the Liberties College. Iveagh also developed the park opposite, it offers a great view of the St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the largest church in Ireland. Swift, Dean of the cathedral in the eighteenth century, was himself a passionate advocate for the poor of Dublin. Drapier’s Letters, A Modest Proposal and, arguably, Gulliver’s Travels, cocked a snook at English colonial misrule.
At Werburgh Street we are nearing the precincts of the Castle again. St Werburgh’s Church once had a soaring spire, but unfortunately it overlooked the Castle yard and was soon demolished. Nearby is Leo Burdock’s fish and chipper, Dublin’s most famous. Local resident Leo established it in 1913. Derby Square was also nearby. This obscure enclave features in Phil Lynott’s evocative ballad ‘Dublin’.

At sea with flowing hair I’d think of Dublin,
Of Grafton Street and Derby Square and those for whom I really care,
And you, in Dublin.

Ship St

Ship Street seems far inland for such a name. But it leads down to the location of the original Dark Pool. This is now an ornamental garden along the south wall of the Castle. The Chester Beatty Library was moved here at the Millenium. The American mining magnate had established an unrivalled collection of oriental arts and crafts. There is a good cafe in the entrance atrium. Gaze up at the Castle from the grassy surface of the old pool. It has taken a thousand years to get here, the walk itself took just over half an hour.
Follow the course of the ancient river back to where we began. The circle is closed, twelve centuries spanned. Cobbled streets are peopled by ghosts, of Viking, Norman, English and Gael, the ghosts of merchants, vicars, peelers and poets, where musicians have played and sang through time. Philo’s words come back to haunt me…

I’ve been spending my time in the Old Town,
I sure miss you, Honey, now you’re not around,
You’re not around this Old Town.

Barcelona Revisited

Posted on November 3, 2015 by shane harrison

Revisiting Barcelona recently, it struck me that I have only written about the city in my fiction, though never entirely explicitly. I have few photographs other than these I took around the Eixample. Maybe that’s not so surprising. Like Dublin or London, I have been too immersed in the detail to make a brief sketch. There is so much to the mosaic of a city, a fascination with every little piece distracts from the entirety. Then there is the city of the soul that is difficult to describe in either words or pictures. What a picture Barcelona makes! A haphazard quilt of Gaudi’s giddy spires, Dali’s trompe l’oueil, Miro’s primary creatures, Picasso’s Harlequins. The city is alive in its stone and iron, shifting its shape by the hour so that some unexpected glory or horror can loom at you from a once familiar scenario.

Barcelona was one of those places which so intrigued me that I put its map on my wall. Before I set foot outside of Ireland, these exotic charts were the background to the posters and paraphernalia gathered in mis-spent youth. London’s ancient web of confusion, Chelsea to Soho with a hint of style and sulphur. New York had the added familiarity of those iconic buildings, postcards of the Chrysler and Empire State. Manhattan’s grid growing like a musical score from the chaos of its history. Barcelona was a similar confection. Its grid pattern, like New York’s, developed from an ancient harbour. There was something intriguing about the way the two parts knit together. Like two halves of a city engaged in cartographical warfare. The exotic names were occasionally almost translatable, like a science fiction text: the Diagonal, the Rambla, the Eixample.

Seductive Spanish art of the early twentieth century established a firmer connection. Such artists as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro fashioned a bridge of sorts. Surreal visions sprang from streetscape, seascape and parched landscape of Catalonia. Cubism brought art around corners, Miro’s mobiles moved through space. I could begin to fathom form and exuberance within the plan, find a path down into it for myself. Ultimately, of course, I had to go there.

I have had companions for that trip in reality, but that fab four won’t reform. For the moment I will travel in the company of a boy in motley. Summoned up from the stone slabs of the Rambla, where briefly he played. The artists there can sew together the three dimensions we inhabit, past, present and future. Rendered on one plane, the permanent moment stands on plinths, swirls on paper. Pierrot climbs from the pavement drawing on the Rambla, still clad in chalk and stone. Originally the work of a hirsute, apparently German street artist, always smiling behind his blond beard. His creation can transform into Harlequin at will, the perfect companion, I see myself in him and he is the Other.

The endeavour of Columbus and others, faced with a shrinking of their world, opened a new frontier to the west. The American continents are designated to him in only a secondary sense, Amerigo Vespucci having more court pull. But it was here they were invented as a manifestation of a new western world. The Early Modern period sees a truly new world order develop. A preference for the rational led away from the Dark Ages toward the Enlightenment. This was our world, it was up to us to make it in our image.

Modernism is a key movement in the creation of Barcelona. In the nineteenth century the city would expand beyond the medieval confines of the Barri Gotic. The Eixample was laid out in 1860 to the plans of Ildefons Cerda. The word means extension in Catalan. The plan was to create a regular grid of octagonal city blocks, the chamfering at each corner to allow light into its intersections. Cerda’s vision was Utopian, almost socialist to its critics, positing a mingling of all classes within a uniform scheme. It didn’t work out that way. The Eixample quickly became a well-to-do neighbourhood, with a greater building density than originally envisaged. But it is as fine an example, if you will, of the beauty of urban planning as you will see.

The imposition of the grid pattern does not make for a conformist city. Almost organically, magically, its architecture spills exuberantly out of the old town into the new. This is where architects threw ceramic, jeweled eiderdowns across the roofs, up there where chimneys can turn into toadstools or dragons, spires wear twisted turbans, ironwork folds into leaf and fauna.

I stand on the tower of Sagrada Familia, teetering high above the distant plaza. Pierrot calls to a woman below, but from my vantage point the place is empty of people. The sound of the cry endures, but fades, merging then with the beating of wings. The doves scatter, each bird a tear in the fabric of the day, each flying shadow a tattered window into the night.

God’s own architect, Antoni Gaudi, born in 1852, was well placed to participate in the flourishing of Barcelona’s Modernism in the late century. He became the most definitive of Barcelona’s architects. Geometrically complex in conception, his buildings suspended magically within their space. Swirling domes and turrets brought eastern mysticism within the western rationale. The daring concept of the Sagrada Familia displays that eastern exotic. Each facade seems braced against giant hands clasped in prayer. The stone slips sinuously into flora and fauna, leading the eye upwards to incredible heights. It is an unfinished prayer in itself. Begun in 1883, Gaudi would devote himself exclusively to this project from 1915 until his death in 1926. It is said that Gaudi, walking to the site from morning mass, was distracted by the majesty of the construction and, stepping back to admire his work, was struck by a passing tram. The genius was gone but the work staggered on, gathering momentum in recent decades so that it is estimated it will be completed, perhaps, in 2020, the year of perfect vision.

At the Cathedral in the Barri Gotic we stand by the city walls. Statues on the rooftops wave swords, gesturing wildly to the hills. Beyond in the square Rodrigo y Gabriella play. It is Allegrias, if my memory serves me well. In a weird way I feel I am back in Dublin again. The square is full of tourists but, again, imbued with an eerie emptiness. There is a woman there, striking a southern pose, one arm raised in an imperious gesture. In the exhausted moment the light dims and the gothic city is illuminated by torchlight. Pierrot touches my arm and I turn to see him fold back into the stone. Be my guide up to heaven, I ask, but everything is silent.

Earlier, we had travelled high above the city, taking the Blue Tram and the funicular to the Tibidabo amusement park. This is a pleasure dome indeed, from the 1890s, it still features some of the antique rides from that time. We can float on air and breach the castle walls, flying above the dizzying drop with all of Barcelona below. The boy tells me the story that it was here that Jesus met the Devil, the two looking down on the wonders of civilisation. All of these things I will give thee (in Latin: tibi dabo), said the Devil, if you will fall down and worship me. The rest is history. I could sit up here forever, maybe I am. I know you can’t have everything, but sometimes, in Barcelona, it may seem that you can.

You can get anything that you want…

xxharrison

Just another WordPress.com site