Tag: architecture

30 Jahngasse, Vienna

A Belle Époque arrangement frames the entrance to 30 Jahngasse in Vienna’s Margareten district. Vienna, an elegant but relaxed city of tremendous charm, steeped in history and visually lush with architectural monuments to its illustrious past everywhere one looks. Great coffee, tasty food, excellent beer; the pastries and cakes require no comment. I could not have chosen a better place to start my journey.

I am just home from three and a half wonderful weeks of travel through central Europe, with a brief diversion to the Adriatic Sea and Venice, which is in its own world, defying geographical categorization. The trip began in Vienna, where I landed at the end of September after a long flight from Saigon, via Doha in Qatar. I posted an image from my first dinner in Vienna on the evening I arrived and had planned to post more as I moved along my itinerary. But finally, I posted nothing, deciding I was better off focusing on the places I visited without giving any thought to social media posts. Be that as it may, I arrived back in Hoi An with lots of photos from the trip – lots – and I am going to share a few of them in the days to come, beginning with several from my first stop in Vienna. There will also, no doubt, be some commentary included with the pictures. Because I like to ramble.

Russian Embassy, Beijing, China

Looking for something else, I happened to run across this image of the huge Russian embassy compound in Beijing. Beyond the fact that China’s relationship with Russia is in the news these days, there is no particular reason for posting this photo. It was taken in February of 2012, several months before I departed from Beijing and China for good.

For more than 200 years the site was home to the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission, which acted as a sort of unofficial representative of the Russian government. After the Russian revolution in 2017, people fleeing Russia found refuge at the mission. In the 1950s after the establishment of the PRC, the Mission was closed and the property and buildings were turned over to the USSR. An embassy housing the USSR’s and later Russia’s diplomatic mission to China was built and opened for use in 1959.

Thai Binh Lau, Hue, Vietnam

Thái Bình Lâu (太平樓) is located in the Imperial Citadel in Hue. The building was commissioned by the Nguyen dynasty emperor Khai Dinh and was completed in 1921. It was intended to be a quiet retreat where the emperor could read and rest. The Vietnamese name translates as pacific or peaceful; Thái Bình Dương in Vietnamese is the term for the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese characters 太平 over the door on the building front also mean pacific or peaceful, and 太平洋 is the term for Pacific Ocean in Chinese.

Buddhism with Vietnamese Characteristics, Da Nang

The Buu Dai Son Pagoda (Chùa Bửu Đài Sơn) is one of my favorites in the Da Nang / Hoi An area. It sits facing the sea (my back is to the beach and the East Sea) several kilometers from downtown Da Nang on the seaside road heading to the Son Tra peninsula. Like many Buddhist sites in Southeast Asia, Buu Dai Son is garish and colorful, in this case in a distinctly Vietnamese way. I looked but could not find the date this pagoda was founded or the date its current structures were built, though I have no doubt the buildings are of recent origin. At the same time, there is no question that the designer was inspired by historical sites like the Eastern Guard Tower in Hue and numerous other traditional Vietnamese structures, both religious and secular in origin, scattered throughout the country.

The Stele Pavilion, Tu Duc’s Tomb, Hue, Vietnam

A few tree and shrub species shed their leaves in what passes for winter in central Vietnam. This photo was shot in December of 2018, and I like how the barren trees in the foreground set off the Stele Pavilion in the center of the image. Another shot of the stele close up appears in my previous post. This structure is one of the key buildings in the Tu Duc Mausoleum area. There is a massive stone tablet inside, on which the emperor’s biography is written. Although Tu Duc had many wives, he was also childless; a case of smallpox left him impotent. In the event, the biography inscribed on the stele was written by Tu Duc himself and this was considered a bad omen for the dynasty. After Tu Duc’s death in 1883, the Nguyen throne passed to an adopted son.

The Tomb of Emperor Tu Duc, Hue

The season is right, but this photo of a shrine within the mausoleum’s extensive grounds was actually taken four years ago in 2018 – wow, time flies. The compound where the Nguyen dynasty emperor Tu Duc (1848-1883) was laid to rest is one of several imperial mausoleums surrounding Hue, the only one I have visited to date. I took a series of photos that have been sitting in a file directory ever since. Taking a look now.

Hue was the capital city of the Nguyen dynasty, Vietnam’s final dynasty that came to an end in 1945 when Emperor Bao Dai abdicated. The city is a fascinating place featuring cultural, historical and religious sites, great food, an incomprehensible local dialect, and photo opportunities at every turn. More visits to Hue are in order.

Colonial-style Home, New England

The area around Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, is affluent and appealing. If you like, as I do, various flavors of American colonial style architecture floating in a rich broth – play on words intended – of manicured small town landscapes and privileged academia, you’ll enjoy a visit to Smith. Some of the buildings and homes are historic sites that were actually built during the colonial era. Others are relatively new structures, like the home pictured here, which apparently was built in the second half of the previous century.

I visited Northampton on a very gray, rainy day; travelers cannot be picky. The heavy overcast creates soft, but very saturated, colors. Working in this kind of light is challenging, and I enjoy it. I am a fan of doors and entrance ways as subjects; this image is an example.