In Barcelona, every street and every building speak art and design. At the Picasso Museum, I expected to find a modern building, maybe a surreal building, as I see many of the modern museums around the world hosting surrealist art, instead I found a typical Catalan gothic style, almost the same as the Spanish Colonial architecture seen in Central America. I was not disappointed, the building was very nice, and I had a lot of architecture to study and admire. I think the modern glass door needed to be a heavy carved wood door to keep in style with the decorative stone pediment above.
Picasso Museum – Barcelona, Spain
The museum is located on 15 Carrer de Montcada, in the Baró Gotico, basically, the historic heart of Barcelona and it spreads through five ancient stone palaces built in the 13th and 14th centuries. Through an exterior staircase in the courtyard filled with palm trees, the visitors can reach the exhibition areas upstairs.
Up there, the primary focus is on Picasso the apprentice and his early artistic life. With the teacher, his father, he mastered the human anatomy, the psychological insight of portraits, learned to paint real feelings as death and life. Growing up in France he tried to emulate many of his colleagues’ techniques: impressionist landscapes, posters and still lives.
Picasso Museum – Barcelona, Spain
It was a great pleasure to learn about his early work of the period he lived in Barcelona, a collection hardly seen anywhere. One can see over 4,000 works between paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and ceramics.
Picasso declared he was taught to paint as an adult when he was a teenager and painted as a child when he was in his eighty. The Museum sells more than one million tickets each year, if you plan of going over there, get prepared.
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
Bari, my native town is dotted with classic and neoclassic style doors. The coffered red door in my photo was, at one point in history, the entrance to a patrician home. A coffer in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit, or vault, usually found in historical buildings of powerful families, nobles, and royals. Doors were also designed in the coffer style to mark the importance of the family living there. Today, this building with a coffered red door is home to regular working people, the patina of time on the stones around the door tells the story… it is a great expense to clean those stones, modern people without servants usually don’t pay much attention, busy as they are making a living.
Bari Vecchia (Old Bari), Italy
This type of door has a central panel that opens to let in only one person at a time. It closes with a latch and a huge iron key just like a castle key. An iron door knocker announces that someone is at the door asking to come in, otherwise, the usual screaming in the street, calling someone’s name would do the trick and a person would come out at the balcony to respond. Usually, this large door opens into an atrium without a roof, where people socially congregated. In the atrium, a set of stairs will take the people to their flats.
Bari’s old town has been revamped to accommodate fancy businesses and tourists more than residents. About twenty years ago, the city gave incentives to people living in the old Bari to leave the area and find newer homes in the modern part of Bari. As a consequence, many designers, movie producers, music makers, architects, lawyers, and many professionals took over the top floors of the historical area. Down below at the street level, restaurants, bars, pubs, various eating places, and shops for tourists occupied what was once warehouses, deposits, and market stalls. Today, old Bari is very safe and retains the charm of an ancient town. It is called the living room of the city. I remember when I needed a man to accompany me as a protection, just to attempt to walk around along the perimeter of the old town, it was never advisable for a woman by herself to get lost in the deep part where it would have been difficult to get out.
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon andBarnes&Noble
I visited la Salle or Salon Dore’ at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco when it was just reopened after a newly refitted for a seismic area. The room is a re-creation of an elegant French neoclassical interior architecture. At the time I was remodeling an upscale home in the very same French style. The hinges of the doors in this room reminded me of the same ancient door hinges I had seen in my grandmother’s home and in many ancient homes of regular blokes I visited when I was a child.
The hinges allowed the doors to open away from the frame and lay flat on the walls, giving more space to the ladies wearing a panier dress to pass through without going sideways. That’s what women wore in the 1700s. One can see the full door opened in the rectangular photo (click on the photo to see it larger). This hinge also allowed the owner of the mansion to see how many guests were in the salon without really being seen. My lovely vane grandmother did the same thing, she wanted to be fully prepared to receive her guests and peeped through the half-open door hinge. She came out when the room was full of people.
A very special door hinge at La Salle Dore’
A Bit of History During the reign of Louis XVI, the rooms’ style in patrician mansions reflected the grandeur of ancient Rome. Evoking the great exploits of Imperial Rome with giant gilded Corinthian pilasters, tall arched mirrors, trophies of war and love was the way to convey a higher social status of the owner.
Salle or Salon Dore’ Photo: Legion Of Honor
The Salle Dore’ is a historical room that passed hands many times since 1795. Its boiserie (wood paneling) beautified the rooms of many world noble elite, notable business people and bankers, from the Hôtel de la Trémoille in Paris to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild’s mansion in England, to Mr. Rheem in Burlingame, California until finally arrived in San Francisco at the Legion of Honor Museum and re-created in its full original beauty.
My client ended up decorating one of the rooms in her home sort of like this Salon with bergères, and a canapé upholstered in blue and white silk, armchairs and console tables against the walls. The hinges….? I had to wrack my brain to find a blacksmith who could reproduce the very same style, nothing less, or my head would have come down. This is my entry for Thursday Doors challenge, hosted by Dan Antion. Ciao, Valentina Amazon Author’s Page
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
In response to the Thursday Doors challenge, hosted by Dan Antion, it seems appropriate to talk about a Venetian door at this Carnevale time, the largest event in Venice that happens every year forty days before Easter. This is the door of the historical Gritti hotel, one of the few most exquisite hotels in Venice.
Hotel Gritti Palace – Venice, Italy
The entry door is designed in a typical classic style, with an arched top, surrounded by stone pilasters on both sides decorated with acanthus leaves and dentilles details.
The noble palace dates back to 1475, and although today it is a commercial hotel for the “elites”, it retains the feel of a private patrician home, where exceptional art and elegance are kept.
Hotel Gritti Palace – Venice, Italy
The Pisani family owned the palace in 1475 and transformed it into a Gothic shape. In 1525 the building became the private residence of the Doge of Venice, Andrea Gritti, and in the centuries that followed, the palace changed hands many times. It was home to other noble families and illustrious visitors until the early 19th century when it became a luxury hotel.
From the outside, it looks like an ordinary entry door of a patrician palace like many others in Venice. Inside the Gritti shows an unbridled luxury to leave astonished any visitors entering an unreal world beyond all limits. Ciao. Valentina Amazon Author’s Page
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
Are you tired of government restrictions and mandates? Do you wonder if we will return to the life we had before 2020? Some of my friends, established married couples of many years are now divorced, some have moved to different areas, and some have disappeared on their own.
Certainly, life has not been very exciting, my refuge has been art for the last two years. Pretty pictures, lots of colors, and inspirational images have saved me. In the history of the world, the greatest masterpieces sprung out of the epidemic crisis. Art has been a refuge for the soul during hard times for a lot of people. Artists see the reality that scientists ignore, said Gustavo Rol, an Italian parapsychologist, philosopher, and painter.
I think art comes from that invisible world that dominates us, of which each of us is the millionth part and together creates the great puzzle of human art.
Some people may think can’t even draw a straight line. That’s not true, they just have never developed the artistic side of the brain. Everybody who can see is an artist without even knowing it, everybody can contribute to keeping this world beautiful. Beauty and art will save the world.
I don’t think I make art masterpieces, but it has been uplifting to take refuge in the colors of nature.
I painted the guest bathroom from top to bottom, furniture included and refurbished the décor. The yellow illuminates like the sunlight, there is no chance to get depressed in here.
While I am waiting for life to come back, I will continue doing what makes me feel good, soak myself in the arts. Ciao, Valentina Amazon Author’s Page
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
The air of this May evening is fizzy and clean. Breathing without the city smog feels liberating. The yellowish streetlamps of this area add a sense of antiquity bathing everything in a golden glow, just as I remember these streets were in my childhood. Here, yellowish lights are still preferred, they keep the circadian cycle in check. Mornings are somewhat busy under a hot sun, evenings are supposed to be slower, people want to see the stars in the sky not being blasted with bright streetlights when they stroll for pleasure. Life is much slower here, it rolls differently than everywhere else and every moment has its own meaning. There is the smell of wood burned in home’s fireplaces, and meat being grilled in fire brick ovens at butcher shops where passersby stop to get a cone full of delightful small bites of roasted meats.
Spring Horse and Carriage Show
A stylish landau carriage with a colorful harnessed horse is parked by the marble steps waiting for an elegant woman to board it. Her hat made of feathers by a skilled hatter reveals a certain social wealth. I notice her fine shoes, silk and embroidered in soft pastel colors, just like her gloves. I would love to wear those shoes. Enchanted, I admire her for a short while, her gestures are feminine and well-structured as if she went to a finishing school. Her affected behavior reflects the manners of the time when beauty perfected even in the smallest details served to enhance the harmony of a woman. A man in a top hat gives her a hand to climb on the landau… soon they disappear in the distance.
Spring Horse and Carriage Show
I woke up from a dream and returned to where I really was, in Alberobello, Puglia, in an evening in May colored with yellow glowing streetlights, women in jeans and high heels, modern cars, colorful scooters, fashionable shops and the smell of wood-burning in fireplaces, the only thing that indicates I was in a slow life in the country and not in the city. I was there to see the Spring horse and carriage show. The horses wearing shoes were elegantly dressed for trotting the streets, and so were men and women on display riding the carriages.
Spring Horse and Carriage Show
I often travel in different eras, I guess it is my way to escape this reality that stinks a little more every day. Ciao, Valentina Amazon Author’s Page
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion consultant, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
The epidemic restrictions have kept the world apart. Surely, I am not the only one feeling the solitude. Today, I called a longtime friend in Italy, a school friend, and asked her how her store was doing. She designs her own shoe lines and sells them in her store located in the fashionable center of my native city. She said the last week was a week to forget, nobody walked in the store.
The newly Italian puppet government established during the 2020’s pandemic (?), the kind of government nobody voted but “the class of politicians” appointed to the throne of power is doing a very poor job maintaining the economy of the country above water. They are bankrupting every business in any field, tourists are staying away due to the many restrictions applied to visitors and they are keeping the population in fear with unreal laws. The country is basically under a new socialist dictatorship.
Alley in Polignano a Mare Polignano a Mare Terrace
Let’s start from the beginning. Some “notable” or so reputed foreign newspaper said that Italy was taken as an experiment for Covid 19. It turns out that some devilish world power wants to see how fast a strong and century-established culture like the Italian culture could be irreversibly broken and eliminated from the face of the earth. Italians have strong tight families, where a woman and a man still make babies, people believe in God, respect the elderly, the teachers and the flag. Italian people are surrounded by beauty every day they go out the doors; the country has a concentration of the richest arts never seen in any other country, has superb food and wines. Italy produces the fastest cars, beautiful fashion and flirtatious attractive women are everywhere. Love is always in the air and music is romantic.
Alberobello Main Street
Italy covers only 0,1% of the world surface. The Italian language is not spoken everywhere else in the world, but a lot of foreigners study to be fluent in Italian. If the Italians had not been there when they did, the world today would have been something else. The Italian peninsula is very small and full of disasters: earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, river floods, landslides, and much more. To live there under all these nature’s phenomena would have been a good bet for some other population, yet Italians have succeeded to create a beautiful country on dangerous territory.
Think of Venice built on water, it is a difficult city to live in, but precious mosaics, the marble designs, the embroidery in architecture, the fine glass art have made it a mysterious beauty the entire world wants to visit and experience emotions no other city offers.
Venice – Ponte Rotto
Think of Naples, Pompei and surroundings built on volcanoes, on boiling sulphury Geiser and on yellowish tufa stone, with an ancient under city still a marvel to visit. It thrives with creativity and the art of living.
Amalfi
Pompei
Think of Rome and how the ancient Romans built an empire in such intelligent and modern way with the ancient resources they had. Their buildings, aqueducts, arches and cupolas withstood the taste of time and all the natural disasters. Today, we are still admiring their arts and skills.
The Italians invented the landscape mixed with a harmonious architecture that did not exist before and since the Renaissance has attracted the world over. They have invented a way to be happy in the enjoyment of the landscape, as every small area is a concentration of ecstasy.
These are exactly the reasons those devilish world powers I was referring in the beginning want to destroy to break Italy. Italy is too uncomfortable for regimes that want to keep people crushed under their thumbs. Creative people don’t follow rules, creative people find alternative ways to make a living, creative people don’t break easily, creative people cannot be controlled. The world power’s experiment is failing. Italians might be suffering now, but they will rise and shine again. Italians have learned to live with nature’s disasters, this rough moment will slide off their shoulders. Italian heritage is strong and cannot be annihilated. Days will be blue again, Italians are still creating beauty that will eliminate the satanic people who want to see Italy falling in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s not going to happen, because when the people rebel against evil powers God leads the way.
The “new world disorder” will have to wait, therefore SCREW all the people who sold their souls to satanic forces. Ciao, Valentina Amazon Author’s Page
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion designer, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
Last year 2021, I started a series of short videos “Create Beauty Every Day”. It was a year under the influence of Mercury and Mars, two very strong entities that brought agitated energy into the world, in fact we have seen the results. I decided to create weekly short messages to get through the epidemic, uplift the spirits, to help others overcoming difficult moments by using beautiful things, learn to get surrounded with the nicest things, using colors in new ways and opening the way to new habits. Life might be rough in this exceptional time, but it doesn’t have to be dark, dull and full of fear.
Thinking of adding beauty in our daily life is like we plant seeds in a world hard as concrete, sordid and arid; when we manage to make a crack in that hard concrete a few seeds will come out, then many more will follow and that arid concrete will no longer have strength. Beauty is contagious and reproduces quickly.
Whether is art, music, nature, colors, fun clothes, love, a relaxing bath, a flower that fills the air with joy, or whatever beauty means to people, thinking of beauty daily it positions the soul in a new spirituality that helps understand the beauty of life. I repeat it: beauty is contagious and multiplies quickly.
Valentina Cirasola is an interior-fashion designer, author of 6 published books, a storyteller, and a blogger of many years. Her books are non-fictional practical ideas to apply in the home, fashion, cooking and travel. Get a copy of her books here: Amazon and Barnes&Noble
We are just about at the end of this year and tomorrow will be Thanksgiving Day. At this point, I would have to use a French expression “Les jeux sont fait, rien ne va plus” meaning “the games are done, nothing else will go”. No, I say no to this, the games are not over yet. Maybe some people have not produced or achieved what they had in mind for this year, and if that’s the case, I would have to say it was not important for this year.
The games are not over yet refers to the challenging games that will start next year. It will be the year of Venus. The planet Venus will dominate the Universe, it will fight the influence of Mars until it gets defeated. Venus, being a female planet, will fight all negative influences by bringing beauty and love. Next year women will do exceptional things, the truth about what is happening in the world will be revealed and we will start living in harmony. It’s not going to be an easy year, beauty and love will be our ammunition.
Calling all Women….! Starting this Thanksgiving, prepare a beautiful Thanksgiving table if you celebrate this holiday, if not, prepare a nice dining table every time you eat from now on. Get dressed as beautifully as you can every day, leave the exercise clothes at the gym and wear clothes that will highlight your beauty, personality or quirkiness. Raise your emotional vibration, raise your feminine conscious, let the world know the wind of femininity is coming.
Women are mothers, they represent the earth, they are grounded. A woman giving birth under a bombshell, knows she is still living a beautiful moment in a brutal reality and knows people will help her in that act of giving her baby to the light. Woman are the beginning and the completion of everything.
With our Venus power, next year we will get rid of the dark and ugly only with beauty. As I have said many times, beauty will multiply when you show what is it to those who live in the dark.
Many people did not make it this year, I am thankful I am still alive and kicking, I am thankful I have the power to think, read, write and create beauty. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Ciao, Valentina Website
Valentina Cirasola is an art lover, author, and a lifetime designer. Often people describe her as “the colorist” as she loves to color her clients’ world and loves to create the unusual. Currently, she consults on colors that will enhance clients’ personalities and are in tune with their lifestyles. To add harmony and peace to the homes, Valentina creates atmospheres using proper lighting and creating fantasy rooms instead of typical rooms looking like furniture showrooms. She is the author of six published books, two of which are on design subjects and colors. Amazon and Barnes&Noble
Autumn is full of warm colors and flavors, it is one of my favorite seasons, I was born in October and naturally aligned with this season. The land abounds of earthy food. I remember walking in my grandfather’s land through rows of tall grains swaying in the warm winds ready to be harvested. His vineyards were my favorite places, full of beautiful fat grapes hanging off old branches with foliage rich of jewel colors. I knew at a young age, one day I was going to like wines and it didn’t take very long. My parents gave me a taste of wine diluted with water every time I asked for it. In Italy, it is common for kids to taste life in small bites at a time, it makes them feel grown ups.
My appetizers with Beaujolais Nouveau
For the last seventy years, the third Thursday of November has been declared the day of the Beaujolais Nouveau. It’s a celebration of the new wine, made in the South of France as a way to be thankful to nature for a good harvest and people’s dedication to hard work. I remember the day of the harvest of our local Puglia wines, the workers getting together with my grandfather and my family to celebrate in the vineyards singing, eating, and drinking. The celebration of new wines is the same everywhere there are passionate people about wines. It was a happy time for everybody, and I didn’t even understand what was all about, I just knew I wanted to be there in the middle of the fun.
Beaujolais Nouveau grows in a region right under the Burgundy area, made of Gamay grape, very fruity, with a purple-pink coloration, it is always served slightly chilled. It’s a “fresh wine” with low tannin, easy to drink especially in the company of friends. Look at how Japanese people enjoy this day of celebration. One woman in this video says Beaujolais Nouveau is good for the skin and relaxes her.
Well, all the wines do that. Wines are works of art for a relaxed lifestyle, they express emotions, the flavors of the terroir, and express personal experiences, in fact, not every one tastes the same thing.
So very little is going on these dark days, let’s take what we can, let’s celebrate peace, life and love. Let’s be in the light and in nature with all that brings us excitement. Ciao. Valentina Design Website
Valentina Cirasola is a designer who cooks. She has a deep interest in food that led her as an autodidact in the studies of food in history, natural remedies, nutrition, well-being and learning food of the world. She wrote two books on Italian regional cuisine and a few others on color theory and travel. Valentina says colors and food, style and beauty are indivisible. She lives by this belief. Robert Taitano, a friend and business associate says:“ Valentina – an International Professional Interior Designer is now giving you an opportunity to redesign your palate”. Get your copy of Valentina’s books onAmazon and Barnes&Noble
Welcome! Immerse yourself in the colorful world of Modern Tropical, an eclectic lifestyle brand for people who love the retro-modern beach aesthetic. It is produced by independent award-winning artist Kristian Gallagher.
Valentina Expressions 