VIVIAN MAIER EXHIBITION, PALAZZO DUCALE, GENOVA

You know when you just happen to be in the right place at the right time ...?

That happened today.  I have been losing myself, regularly, in Genova's centro storico.  The ancient heart of this complicated and beautiful city.

I love to walk down through the cool, narrow alleyways called caruggi ... down to the port and pop out into the light.  Just for a little bit, before heading back into the caruggi to climb the hill, heading for one of the oldest parts of the city.  It's been more than 2,000 years since people began living there.

These days, I'm searching for seats in the shade ... places to sit and write this book I've been writing forever.  

But today, when I arrived back in the light of Piazza Matteotti, I noticed they were hanging the exhibition poster ... for the Vivian Maier Exhibition.

I couldn't resist attempting to capture it.  I think, perhaps, she might have enjoyed this photograph.

Palimpsest ... perhaps.

A palimpsest is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been either scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused, for another document.

Source: wikipedia.

I remember being introduced to that word, palimpsest, and its meaning back in university and falling madly in love with the idea of it.  I love discovering layers and traces ... old stories, other stories.

But perhaps Genova's caruggio walls work in much the same way for me.  They tell stories over stories over stories in a way that becomes beautiful.

And Genova's Palazzo Ducale is more tempting than most.  Whoever organises their cultural events is surely nothing less than a genius.  I also missed a Robert Capa exhibition there back in summer ...  I imagined I would return before it was finished. 

And so ... a wall in a caruggi somewhere in the ancient city of Genova.