Museums

Yesterday morning I headed to the Civic Museums of Modena, which were
pretty cool. One of the neatest things about formerly Roman cities is
seeing how the layout of the Roman town affected the medieval, and hence
modern, cities. There are a few streets that have distinctive curves from
the Roman amphitheater, long demolished, and the Roman Forum can still be
seen in the outlines of a few others. The main drag through town is still
the Roman road that was the original reason that the Romans settled here
(you can only have so much space on a major artery before you need a
resting point).

The neatest part, though, was a room of musical instruments. There were
four dulcimers from the 17th and 18th centuries, which was neat. It was
also cool that, while busking last night, I was able to say "there are
four of these in the museum down the street".

This morning, a drippy morning, I headed to Bologna. Wow. I hate to say
it, but Siena just dropped a notch in my opinion. Bologna is amazing in a
very similar way, but on a more impressive scale. While I was there I
visited a museum recommended by some audience members last night featuring
antique musical instruments. Nothing pre 1600, but a book from 1636 was
opened to a page describing a dulcimer (it was really open to the facing
page which showed a harp similar to one displayed nearby, but I got
lucky). I was making good progress with the archaic Italian of the text
until I realized it was actually Latin, at which point it became
indeciperable. Funny how psychology works...