Cai Cai Travels the World: Cremona, Italy, the hometown of violins, a simple, profound and magical town

The origin of Cai Cai and Cremona is because when I was watching the Milan Cathedral in Italy, I suddenly remembered that there was also a majestic cathedral in the movie "The Red Violin", and that church It was just dozens of kilometers away from Milan, so the next day I jumped on a small train bound for the ancient town in the movie...

Cremona, a city in northern Italy, is only about 30 kilometers away from Milan. 83 kilometers. Daily trains run between Milan and Cremona every two hours. Although the transportation is convenient, there is not much intersection between the two places. The fashion and hustle and bustle of Milan are completely missing here. These two places, standing side by side, each retain their own characteristics and characteristics. You can't compare them to each other, let alone compare them. If I really want to say it, I can only say: a small train with only a few carriages can easily transport passengers from the busy focus of the world to another silent world that seems to be derailed from the world.

To ordinary people, Cremona is a nostalgic old city that keeps a low profile; but to music lovers, it is a very famous hometown of handmade violins. Despite this, Cremona has never used these two auras to develop tourism, nor has it ever taken advantage of its geographical location to take advantage of Milan. For people from Cremona, people who know how to travel or who love classical music will naturally come here.

Cremona Railway Station is a small railway station with a simple structure. Because it is located on the edge of Cremona, legend has it that there are no traces of medieval ruins here. The place is crowded with people and filled with dazzling window displays. It feels like a shopping mall, and it feels like it belongs to an ordinary European town.

After getting off the train and looking around, I thought I had gotten off at the wrong station. After some exploring and wandering for a while, I finally managed to stand in Cremona’s Piazza Comunale, looking up at the magnificent cathedral through the crowds of people passing through the morning market stalls ( Cattedrale di Cremona).

The Cremona Market takes place every Wednesday and Saturday morning. On every market day, stalls selling various goods will occupy every corner of the square. Unintentionally, I came to Cremona on Wednesday and experienced the grand market scene of this small town. When I think about it now, I always feel that I am very lucky.

Built in the early 12th century, the Cremona Cathedral is one of the most beautiful and magnificent churches in northern Italy.

The construction of this church was created in accordance with the majestic and solemn Romanesque architectural style prevalent at the time. However, due to the slow progress of the construction project and the impact of the reform and innovation of artistic values ????with the passage of time, the completed Cremona Cathedral can be seen at a glance as having various architectural factions in its architectural style. Its characteristics - it uses the majestic and solemn Romanesque as the basic structure, and turns to the religious Gothic and the luxurious and prosperous Cultural Renaissance style as the architectural context. In the final stage before completion, even the deviant, irrational and irrational Baroque style, which symbolized pleasure and passion, was integrated into the construction of this church. Various architectural styles are evident in Cremona Cathedral, so much so that today the cathedral gives a confusing impression of being both sacred and mysterious.

The cathedral faces south. The morning sun rises from its left and sets from its right every day. Because most of the walls of the cathedral are inlaid with marble, the walls appear crystal clear under the sunlight. The exquisite carvings on the stone pillars also look particularly lifelike because of the sunlight. Although the cathedral is so dazzling, the Cremona bell tower (Torrazzo) standing side by side is not far behind, eye-catching with a height of 112.57 meters.

Architecturally, this towering Cremona bell tower is the third tallest brick bell tower in the world, and the clock mounted on this bell tower is the world's tallest 8-meter-diameter clock. A large zodiac clock. Standing on the ground and admiring the bell tower and the giant constellation clock on the bell tower, you can't help but feel how small you are. Just as I kept marveling at these two buildings, I suddenly found an open door on the bottom floor of the bell tower. There is an introduction to the bell tower outside the door, and there is a small counter selling tickets inside the door.

The entrance ticket to the Cremona Campanile is 5 euros, and the opening hours are divided into two periods: from 10 am to 12:30 noon and from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

The conductor told me that there are 502 steps in the bell tower. As long as you climb these steps, you will see the beautiful scenery of Cremona surrounded by a large green countryside and the spectacular ancient Roman style in the town. The layout of the city will come into view one by one. He also said that looking down from the top floor of the bell tower, the interior construction of the former ancient palace and today's city hall opposite the bell tower will also be clearly visible.

The building surrounded by red brick walls opposite the bell tower is not only an ancient palace with high historical value, but also a city hall that today handles many things for residents. It is also the violin of Cremona. The violin showroom in the hometown. This building retains a large space to display 12 valuable old violins that were personally made by local violin makers. These 12 precious old violins are at least 300 years old, 10 of which are violins, one viola and one cello.

Their appearance is exquisite and their sound is melodious. Several masterpieces by the three most famous violin makers of the time, Amati, Strapari and Guarneri, are also collected here. They are all priceless treasures. If the violin is the queen of musical instruments, then these violins in the exhibition hall made by the master violin maker of Cammona between 1600 and 1750 are the queen of queens.

No one knows why in such a big world, only this small Cremona can come all the way from the long past and maintain the handmade piano industry to this day. Some people think it's because of her outstanding personality, while others think it's God's will. In any case, Cremona has been a holy place for violin making since ancient times. Even today, in this small piece of land, in addition to about 150 violin workshops, there are also a number of low-key violin makers quietly making violins at home.

Cremona’s violin workshops are dotted throughout the city’s streets. They are like daisies in spring, blooming in every corner. Walking down every ancient stone alley in this small town, within a few steps you will come across a violin making workshop or a specialty store selling handmade violins.

This violin with a reddish body displayed in the violin showroom was made by the violin master Guarneri. The violins he made were favored by the famous violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini.

The violin store is gorgeous, but the violin making workshop is a little mysterious, hiding behind the window. The window designs of violin workshops are very simple - large and small violin-making tools, drawings of violin structures, and semi-finished violin bodies are generally used by violin makers as window designs, so that people can see at a glance what is hidden in the window. The nature of the work behind.

Without any intention of customizing a violin, and without making an appointment, I opened the door of a violin-making workshop driven by curiosity. After opening the door, looking at the frightened expression on the violin maker's face, I couldn't help but apologize to him.

My reckless appearance obviously disturbed the violin maker who was concentrating on making the instrument. When he turned his attention from the piano to me, he politely asked me what I needed. I told him frankly that I wanted to take some photos of the piano workshop, but he smiled and said nothing.

During the chat, we learned that this gentle and elegant violin maker is Luca Tenore, one of the new generation of young violin makers in Cremona. He came from Sicily and turned out to be a young cellist with some reputation. In addition to practicing and performing, he also maintains and performs simple repairs on his violins. In this way, he gradually discovered that studying the structure of the piano body was actually quite challenging, so he gradually became interested in the study of the piano body. So, he traveled thousands of miles to come to Cremona to study handmade violin making. He never expected this arrival, and he took root here.

"For some people, Cremona is a beautiful town that is both simple and profound, full of magic." Luca said.

After leaving Luca’s piano-making workshop, I immediately walked back to the train station.

Along the way, I had no other thoughts and just concentrated on walking towards the train station. But when I got on the train and felt a little relaxed, I recalled the beauty of this day's trip. I took out my camera from my backpack and took out the Cremona scenes hidden in the camera one after another and looked at them again. When I looked through the photos of Luca making violins, I couldn't help but be moved - under the dim light, he was so dedicated to making violins for others.

Looking at that photo, I first thought of him carrying a big backpack and a violin, coming to this town alone. Later I remembered that he described Cremona as a simple, deep and beautiful town full of magic.

Cremona is really like what Luca said, it has an inexplicable magic that attracts people deeply. I feel that I am one of them.