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In July of 1605 Mariano Pasqualone was assaulted as he walked through the Piazza Navona in the dark of late evening. He was hit in the head with the hilt of a sword and, as he fell to the ground, was only able to get a glimpse of a man with a black cape running away. There were witnesses to the crime but no one was able to really identify the attacker.

Even without a good look, Paqualone knew who it was though. A few days previous he had had words with a short tempered, violent man who regularly wore a black cape and carried a sword.

The argument was over a girl, a girl named Lena, and the person he argued with was Michelangelo da Caravaggio.

Caravaggio had a tremendous ability to get right up in your face, both with his paintings and, if you crossed his path, in person. Caravaggio's Rome was the gritty Rome full of whores, thieves, drunks and worse and those were the people who inhabited his paintings. Even the paintings commissioned by the church. When he painted The Calling of Saint Matthew he had Christ in a dark and dingy bar selecting Matthew. For Doubting Thomas, Christ is literally demanding belief by forcing Thomas' hand into Christ's own wounds. And when he painted Mary, he painted her as very clearly being dead. Many questioned his stability but none questioned his talent.

Now the Piazza Navona is full of paintings but none have anywhere near the impact of what Caravaggio created. Surrounded by the paintings for the tourists and the tourists themselves is the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi complete with Egyptian obelisk by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It sits in front of the basilica, Sant'Agnese in Agone, which was designed by Bernini's longtime rival, Francesco Borromini. The fountain and the church predate the largest part of the rivaly (which really became an issue when Bernini just about collapsed the facade of Saint Peter's Basilica with an ambitious dual bell tower design and Boromini came in to fix it) but it's interesting that they are so close and were only built a few years apart.

And that is only the more recent history of this piazza. It started out as the Circus of Domitian, built in the first century AD. Boromini's church is named after Saint Agnes who was martyred here in the year 304. She was 12. There are many stories about her martyrdom but my favourite involves her blood pouring into the stadium and Christians soaking up the blood with cloths. Now her skull is kept in this very church in a side chapel.

Her body though is in another church about six kilometres away.

Now the summers are full of sightseers and, at this time of year, there is a Christmas market. Not so exciting now that we know some of what has gone on here, no?

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As far as I can tell the Rue Berthe Molly used to be called Jew Street. I'm guessing it was in the jewish part of town. Knowing that the name was changed one immediately thinks that it was changed for some ugly reason but it looks like Berthe Molly was the daughter of a brewery owner and, when she died she donated all of her land to Colmar. When her husband died, he donated his entire library of 7000 books to the city as well. As a thanks, the name of the street was changed.

The timber framed houses - the one in the foreground is from 1583 - is very typical of the region and Colmar has done a fantastic job preserving them.

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I received some tickets to an SC Freiburg game from Britzinger Wein. It was the first fußball game that I had been to since going to some Vancouver Whitecaps games and my first european fußball experience ever.

They played against FSV Mainz and won 1-0 on a penalty shot. It was a good game but it seems like Mainz didn't play like the team that had won so many games leading up to that point. Freiburg started out a little slow but picked it up halfway through the game.

I really enjoyed the experience and loved the energy of the crowd. In typical european fashion everyone was jumping and singing for almost the entire game.

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The weekend before last I was asked to shoot the events for the 60th anniversary for Britzinger Wein. It's a small town of about 800 people in Markgräflerland and surrounding it are vineyards which supply grapes to the winzergenossenschaft, or wine growing cooperative. The larger area is Baden-Württemberg (like a province) is the warmest part of Germany and is sometimes called the Tuscany of Germany. Of course, Tuscany itself is only about a seven hour drive from here which is a little mind-blowing.

Saturday was occupied with shooting the dinner and wine tasting but on sunday I had the opportunity to wander the entire facility and photograph the business end of wine making. Underground, t's a great mix of old and modern with a cellar full of bottled wines of different vintages, gigantic wooden casks, barrels, steel tanks and an impressive, brand new production area. Really cool stuff.

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One morning in Corfu we took the moped for an early ride. There was some mist out and the temperature hadn't yet got anywhere near it's midday blistering high. It's surprising how dense the trees are there since it's such a dry climate. When you fly in you can see Albania and it is the complete opposite there. Brown, almost without trees and only a few kilometres away. Such a huge difference.

The only real farming I could see on Corfu is olive groves and some vineyards so the trees that are there don't seem to get cut down very much. There isn't much development and most people live clustered together in tiny, classic villages. You can see a couple of them hidden in the trees in this shot.

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