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Showing posts with the label Fontana Pretoria

I'm not one for monuments but...

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I recently made a trip to Sicily. I'm not one for monuments but I love the Pretoria Fountain (Fontana Pretoria) in Palermo. It is lovely, above all the wonderful animal heads in all four quarters... The fountain has the added attraction of having annoyed the eccliasiastical authorities. Sometimes it is called the Fountain of Shame (Fontana della Vergogna) maybe because of the naked ladies and gentlemen. I didn't take photos of those. Google will show you plenty. There is a legend that says that the nuns in the convent  next to  the fountain only came out at night so they would not see the naked ladies and gentlemen. I walked around the fountain twice to get a good look at those animal heads. And it occurred to me that the sculptors did better work than the nuns who lived next door to the fountain, and who competed to see who could whip themselves with thorn branches the most. As I saw these sculptures with my own eyes, I saw the hard sharp thorn