Not the Cirque du Soleil but instead Homage to Leonardo, the Vitruvian Man, by Plazzotta

Knightsbridge and Belgrave Square

After leaving Al's memorial we tromped East along the bottom of Hyde Park and then headed south through Knightsbridge trying to find Belgrave Square.

Oh, give me a dome

One of our first diversions was the Brompton (named after the road) Oratory. (An Oratory is what the Victorian called a bunch of scholars living together as the term hippy commune had not been invented yet.) We had spent time inside the Oratory on previous trips and it's one of our favorite London churches. (Yes, as you can see from the picture immediately above, it has a dome). Outside this 1878 building is Italian Baroque (copying the Gesu Church in Rome). Unfortunately a wedding was just finishing as we walked by and the Bridal party was hogging the doorways while the photographer took his pictures. (Pietrina was able to get inside later in the week). We did get this picture of the outside statue of the church's puzzled-looking founder, John Cardinal Newman. I apologize for the dark shadows here:

Di-ing to dish the dirt

By now we were trudging Northeast on Brompton road towards Harrods. But stopped for a bite to eat first, forgetting what a great place Harrod's is for lunch. (We also forgot how horribly dreadful that London standard of fish and chips really is!) Pietrina made up for it by eating lunch twice at Harrods later in the week). Here's the compulsory tourist snapshot of this terracotta relic:

If you look closely, you'll see that one of the corner floors doesn't have its royal emblem. Recently Prince Philip had his royal seal (endorsement) removed because of that Dodi-Di dispute with Dodi's father, Al Fayed, Harrods' owner. (Well, in court, Al did accuse Philip of masterminding the accident, as if any head dense enough to hold up a crown has room for that kind of gray matter! Wonder what the memorial will be for this prince consort? My nomination is this Prince's Court statue above the entranceway of the building across the street from the Harrods: )

Swanky swamp

Sneaking out the back door of Harrods, we were soon stumbling by the many embassies that surround Belgrave square, a former marsh now pretty well tonified. Five modern statues including Plazzotta's 1982 Homage to Leonardo at the top of this page) are spaced along the edges of this 10 acre park including the Christopher Columbus statue donated by Spain:

Like that Leonardo statue that began this page? or was it an octopus? If so, there are 6 of the original 9 still for sale at around $100,000. (It's amazing what you can learn on this WWW thing!) I'll contribute a dollar of my own money if you tell me what a vitruvian man is...

Do fences make good neighborhoods?

Belgrave Square was pretty--but locked. Not to start that tale of two cities thing again, but Paris has over 400 gardens, some huge, some the size of my backyard in Texas. While we lock them at night, they are open during the day for all of the public. By contrast, these small fashionable London parks are locked all the time and only the adjoining residents have keys. No wonder Princess Di spent so much time down with us. Probably sleeping in Dodi's Ritz here was better than napping in the aisles of Harrods anyway.

By this time we figured we had better go pick up our theater tickets and maybe catch a museum exhibition. Click here to see what we came up with.

OK, MARCUS VITRUVIUS POLLIO was a Roman architect who wrote "De architectura" and was for many centuries the authority on classical architecture. So I keep the buck. It's amazing what you can learn on this WWW thing!

Where do you want to go today? Here's a few choices:

Return to the index of our February London trip:

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