This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.
Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!
I’ve always thought it was rather strange that, when traveling in other countries, we visit cathedrals whether or not the religion in question is ours, but we never do so in our own cities. For example, I lived in Jacksonville, Florida for about 26 years, and I must have passed by St. John’s Cathedral thousands of times. Did I ever take the time to poke my head in? Not even once. (And now that I’ve Googled images of it, I kind of regret it. It looks quite beautiful.)
Of course, I can’t be certain why this happens, but I have a few theories. We always think we’ll have plenty of time. We’ll get around to it one of these days. It rarely occurs to us that we can be tourists in our own town. Somehow, doing stuff locally seems a lot less exotic, and the exotic is always more intriguing.
And then, there’s always the fear that you’ll run into someone you know. “Barb, I had no idea you were Episcopalian!” And then you get to explain that you’re not, and you feel awkwardly intrusive, even if you’re welcomed. Whereas, in other countries, you sort of figure that you stick out like a sore thumb anyway, so you don’t have to explain yourself, and besides, they’re used to tourists.
Incidentally, this theory also applies to basilicas, mosques, temples, museums, and all sorts of other majestic structures with interesting contents and histories. The grass is always greener in the other person’s yard, as the saying goes. And that’s a ridiculous attitude to have, when you think about it.
I’ve already written about a beautiful basilica in Rome as well as the iconic Cathedral in Florence (Well, the interior and the subterranean portions, anyway. The exterior will come in a separate post.) and we saw quite a few more that I’m sure I’ll be writing about. So I have some very recent experience in the business of Italian cathedral-gazing. But on the day of this writing, I had a unique opportunity for comparison.
Dear Husband and I had arrived extremely early for an appointment in downtown Seattle, and we happened to be right near St. James Cathedral. It is yet another of those places that I’ve driven past and thought, “I really should check that out someday.” So we decided to seize the day.
The cathedral is quite beautiful, especially the interior. No doubt about that. The floor plan was identical to many cathedrals that we saw in Italy. It was just as big as many of them, and just as lofty. It had the ubiquitous marble floors. The stained glass was pretty, as were the chandeliers, the sculptures, and the organ. It even had a pair of bronze doors with a remarkable depth of field. And yet something was missing.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Why did I not get the same sense of awe that I had in Italy? I had to think about it for a while.
I’m still not sure I can adequately describe it, but let’s start off with the fact that this cathedral was built in 1907. When you consider that there’s one in Rome that was built in 324 AD, 1907 seems like just a second ago. This church is still a toddler. There’s something about age that gives a place, I don’t know, grandeur? No. Permanence? No. Experience. That’s it. Sort of.
Old churches have something in the air that speaks of generations. They have borne witness. They understand the complexity of time. They are weathered, worn, cracked, sinking, out of plumb, no longer level with the modern streets. They have endured, and they will continue to do so. Somehow you get a sense of comfort from that.
Also, modern construction doesn’t contain the painstaking craftsmanship that old buildings have. Things are so much easier to manufacture now. That’s wonderful from a fiscal standpoint, but somehow you can tell that it was easy, so you’re not as impressed. The dedication wasn’t there. It didn’t take as much time. The stratospheric level of skill wasn’t necessary.
When I enter an old cathedral, I can imagine the medieval men tap, tap, tapping away at the stone to form the gargoyles. I see every single bit of rippled, uneven glass being precisely cut to form the windows. I see the mosaics being placed bit by bit. I see ghostly shards of stone, wood chips, dust, rubble, and flakes of marble on the floor. I see people who will work their entire lives on a project that they know will not be completed in their lifetime, or even, in some cases, in their grandchildren’s lifetimes.
In contrast, St. James Cathedral in Seattle took two years to build. I’m sure it has issues, just as any building that’s more than 100 years old does. But it still looks brand new. There were no visible cracks and no signs of wear. It’s beautiful, but it does not have whatever the architectural equivalent is of life experience.
But in fairness, it’s on its way. I was gazing up at its pretty oculus, and was so used to seeing domes that I didn’t realize that the oculus wasn’t at the top of a dome. The cathedral in Seattle has no dome. But it used to.
Its dome was 60 feet tall and by all accounts it was quite impressive on the city skyline during its brief life. But on February 2, 1916, snow had been falling for 27 hours, to the point where 3 feet of snow had accumulated on the ground. Finally, the dome could not withstand the weight of 15 tons of wet snow, and crashed 120 feet down into the nave below. The pressure wave also popped out most of its windows. Thank goodness it wasn’t a Sunday. No one was hurt.
Still, it only took 13 months for the renovations to be completed and services to resume. The dome was never replaced. But with the oculus that’s there now, you barely notice from the inside.
On the other hand, it took a little over 5 ½ years to reopen Notre Dame in Paris after the 2019 fire. They restored it, as much as possible, to its previous specifications using the original methods. Naturally, more money was thrown at it than was originally available. There was also more manpower, and of course motorized vehicles to deliver supplies and the like, so it was easier to restore than it would have been in the 1200’s, but still, you can see the difference between that and the restoration of the relative whippersnapper that is St. James.
There is something to be said for continuity. It’s not something that you can artificially create. It takes generations, and damage, and repair, and experiences, and dedication, and craftsmanship, and history. You can’t comprehend the value of that until you’ve witnessed it firsthand.
Having said that, though, I still recommend that you try being a tourist in your own town. It’s really amazing how beautiful the interiors of buildings can be, and you can drive past them and have absolutely no clue what you’re missing. Imagine if the Grand Canyon were covered by a gigantic pool cover, and then one day you asked someone to roll it back so you could take a peek. That, dear reader, is what you might be missing if you keep saying that you have been meaning to stop somewhere, but not today. You’ll get to it eventually.
There is an odd little side story to this whole adventure. While we were in the cathedral, a strange man approached dear husband and whispered in his ear. He smiled and nodded. Little did the guy know, but my husband’s ability to hear whispers is pretty much non-existent.
But we saw the man again outside, so my husband apologized and told the guy he hadn’t heard him. The guy nervously cleared his throat, looked around and said, “I hear hypocrites, false accusers, and earthquakes.” Then he walked away.
It took a bit of Googling, but apparently he was referring to Matthew 24, The Destruction of the Temple and the Signs of the End Times. Okay. Wow. Interesting.
Yes, a lot of the stuff in there sounds like the Trump presidency. And I do agree that this country is in the midst of one of its darkest hours to date. But as with Nostradamus, you can pretty much bend and twist that passage to fit just about any circumstance.
If the ancient cathedrals could speak, they’d probably say that eras come and they go, people live and die, and civilizations rise and fall. Catastrophes happen, and somehow, we find a way to recover in some form or fashion. The process might involve a lot of suffering and injustice and the healing may not wind up looking exactly the way we hoped it would. The skyline may have to change. But things go on. Lets hold on to that the next time we feel like giving up.
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