The Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin

The Inquisition was not set up to mock or denigrate. The idea behind this publication is the promotion of knowledge relating to cultures of any kind both historical and current. However, sometimes that you find out something that can portray an entity in an altogether different light.

When a new project is commissioned in any sphere of human endeavour with the pomp, splendour and general effusion that accompanied Dublin’s new Calatrava bridge certain standards are expected. This is further reinforced with the man himself’s pronouncement of being “honoured when the Dublin City Council asked me to create two signature bridges over the River Liffey. Although both bridges would span the same river, I wanted each structure to have its own distinct identity”. So honoured that these bridges don’t even make it onto his own website.

It is more than a bit disappointing to find that something you like and admire is little more than a knock-off or reproduction. Worse still is when you invest money in a bespoke product only to find others with similar.

Katehaki Bridge, Athens

According to Calatrava “The Bridge was inspired by ancient greece and by the glorious athenian vessels.”

Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay

Presumably its a bridge that casts a shadow. Perhaps it tells the time or perhaps not. If so it is impressive to use a structure so huge to do this, but then again a stick in the soil on a bright day could tell you the time.

Samuel Beckett Bridge

A harp apparently. Not a sundial. Nor is it a glorious grecian vessel.

Here are the bridges mentioned above. Now, the question is; which one is which?

Its the justification that really galls. How is one bridge a boat, when and almost identical one is a musical instrument? Ditch the second rate semiotics and schoolchild representation gimics. Just say ‘it’s an elegant means of conveying traffic across a body of water, similar to others I often do. They are really nice. What colour do you want?”

Bibliography
Arsplus on the Samuel Beckett Bridge
Spanish Blog covers the same
The Guardian in London is not so keen on it
The Calatrava site

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Original content created by: The Inquisition

Arguably the cultural centrepiece of Roman splendour is the Colosseum. Over two millennia the site has hosted visitors and participants, both willing and unwilling, including zealous Christians and hungry lions, professional pugilists, hunting parties and entire zoos of wild beasts, japanese tourists in sun-hats and shitloads of wild cats.

A very fine print by Giovanni Battista Piranesi of the Colosseum, as it was used as shelter for the impoverished and unsavoury.

For much of its history the Colosseum had lain disused and visited only by the Roman peasants who made it into a huge shelter for the disaffected, the afore-mentioned ubiquitous cats and British gentry intent on appearing as learned as possible. After visiting the site Byron wrote some heady, turgid verse:
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time,
And the low night-breeze waves along the air
The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear,

Like laurels on the bald first Caesar’s head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,

Then in this magic circle raise the dead:
Heroes have trod this spot – ’tis on their dust ye tread.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, (1818)

Panaroli

An Italian gent by the name of Domenico Panaroli, was able to look beyond the cat piss, rubble and disorientated Northern Europeans to see a unique biosphere.

Mr Panaroli, 1587-1657, was a physician (which could have meant anything in those days) and a herbalist (ditto). He produced a comprehensive catalogue of the Colosseum’s varied flora – The Plantarum Amphytheatralium Catalogus. A right riveting read that.

In producing hismeisterwerk Mr Panaroli realised that many of the plants were alien to Italy and were in fact from Northern Africa. The theory he developed, and which has not been effectively disproven, is that these plants originated from the animals that were brought from the colonies for the entertainment of citizens in the capital.

It is with some reticence that the Inquisition must point out that these animals did not ‘bring’ these seeds over per se. As tempting as it is to envisage lions bringing a little piece of home with them in a tiny fine goat-skin purse, planting them in their new home and then carefully tending the little seedlings, this is simply not what happened. The seeds were probably carried in the animals’ bedding or their food.

Bibliography
Amo, Amas, Amat… And All That, Harry Mount, Short Books, 2006
Site dedicated to rebuilding Rome in 3D through various historical phases
Nerone – tour guides

Original content created by: The Inquisition