Cortile delle Scarpe

   
Cortile delle Scarpe is not the actual name of the small courtyard pictured above, but the odd pair of shoes were so precisely placed within it that they, not the little marble well in the center of the space, seemed to be the focus of the place, like relics on display, imbued with some indecipherable significance unavailable to a causal passerby who chanced into it, as I did. Set in the center of that ground floor, with its array of architectural shapes, its shattered orange plastic drain pipe, its coiled green hose, its wrought iron window bars, its bricked-in archway, the shoes (and even the broom and dustpan in the corner) seemed uncanny, like objects in a dream, inviting interpretation and resisting it in equal measure.