Taking a break from Italy's sunshine

Andrew warned me, but I didn't listen. Ken Follett's sequel to Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, was difficult to put down. By the time we got to Italy, I was deeply engrossed in the challenges facing nuns in the 14th-century as the plague killed more than half of the population.

One young builder had left England for a tour of Italy's architecture, and his reflections on the change matched my observations about the Mediterranean heat:

Italy had Gothic cathedrals, Milan being one of the greatest, but modern-minded Italians did not like the architecture of France and England: they regarded huge windows and flying buttresses as a foreign fetish. The obsession with light, which made sense in the gloomy northwest of Europe, seemed perverse in sunny Italy, where people sought shade and coolness.

Italians identified with the classical architecture of ancient Rome, the ruins of which were all around them. They liked gable ends and round arches, and they rejected ornate exterior sculpture in favor of decorative patters of different colored stone and marble.

We visited Milan's Duomo and the Basilica of Verona. The Duomo is Gothic in its construction, and the facade is made of beautiful light pink Candoglia marble.

They were tuning the organ while I was there - an unfortunate exercise that sounded more like the vuvuzela than music.

We think these sepulcres were the oldest thing we saw on the trip - 1058!

The Basilica of Verona was a welcome respite from the heat. Merthin was right - large windows would have seemed perverse when the afternoon heat hovered around 110°.

Even Jesus found a way to escape the heat!