Trento – an art city in the alps

A travel guide is by its very definition a tool that visitors and locals alike may use to explore and learn about a particular area. Trento is a “layered” city, both in terms of its history and urban development, featuring both labyrinths of narrow medieval alleyways and wide, airy Renaissance-period avenues, tower houses and palatial mansions decorated entirely with frescoes. And amidst all of this, the places where the sacred and the profane are inextricably linked: the Cathedral, Castello del Buonconsiglio and the city’s squares. Perhaps this is why, even in its more modern parts, Trento remains a quiet, very relaxing, people-friendly city. Strolling along its streets the human soul is able to find its own historic, chronological and artistic dimensions. The imagination provides a fourth dimension as walking helps us to learn about the “hidden” city, the one that lies beneath the one we can actually see and touch. Page after page this guidebook provides a brief insight into the past, present and future courses of history. These stones and our dreams are able to reveal events, whether real or virtual, that took place in the past, with the words and city playing a role in interpreting each other. These exchanges between the words and the city are essentially metaphors, a prime example of which would be that the world is a book. Seen in this perspective, the city can be read like a book or map. For this reason the text and photographs are presented in the form of a fast-paced dialogue, allowing the places, objects and people that inhabited these houses, mansions, churches and castle to parade before the readers’ eyes and are thereby saved from falling into oblivion. I think the important issue here is how should we go about discovering the city. Should we study it from a chronological perspective? If this is the method we choose, then this guidebook will help us put the visible world in order, whilst leaving to us the choice of how to organise our tour. Or should we just wander around the city and absorb the sensations and impressions it offers? In this case we would use an old popular method of getting to know something by using all five senses, to experience the city “organically”. Perhaps the best way to “savour” this guide book is to actually surrender ourselves to the city and just stroll around, “immersing” ourselves in its fabric and delighting in its lesser known spots, where the interplay of light and shade, the decorations on the churches, mansions and houses become symbols, metaphors and allegories in their own right. Discovered in this way, the city takes on a life of its own and pulsates, arousing emotions and reactions, its past mingling with the present, with its own distinct Alpine character, which is a blend of Mediterranean and Nordic cultures. By discovering the city this way we set up a mutual exchange and dialogue with the city under our feet, before our eyes, and on our palate, in which each can express his mood and preferences. Use this guidebook as a guiding light; just open it, turn the pages and let other beacons shine out and light up your imagination. Fiorenzo Degasperi