All but one of the photos in this post are taken looking out of the windows in that modern addition, up at the top of the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle to which I linked in our prior post. One house I decided to photograph outside at street level, in the gallery below, so you can compare how it looks as seen through raindrop-bedecked window on high versus looking up from ground level.
Zwolle is the capital of Overijssel Province here in NL, and I spent a (rather rainy) day & night there a few weeks ago in order to experience quite a magical concert by the combined Amsterdam Sinfonietta & Nederlands Kammerkoor which featured Faure’s Requiem, a Shostakovich Chamber Symphony, Part’s wonderful De Pacem Domine amongst other gems. Herewith a few “signs”-relevant Zwolle views, the first I’ve shown since a few posts in the summer of 2022 (!), the only other time I got out of the train in Zwolle. Spoiler alert: I’ve now been inside the unique modern addition featured in that link: something else to watch for in upcoming posts :-).
Museum Fundatie, in Zwolle, as promised in the last post from this lovely capital of Overijssel province. Lonely Planet tells us this was once a neoclassical courthouse which now houses exhibitions of contemporary art and has a small permanent collection which “traces the trajectory of contemporary art through representative pieces.” I was there after closing time so haven’t yet seen what’s inside, but the contemporary additions on the roof are, as promised by Lonely Planet, “impossible to miss.” Yes, that’s a large gold bird, and we’re told that the larger roof addition is a “snail-shaped slug of a cocoon that sparkles silver in the sunlight.” To me it might as well be UFO that’s perching on the roof, but either way it sparkles and attracts the eye, indubitably. 🙂 This merging of older and newer architecture is a common and often visually stimulating architectural thing here, as shown in various past posts – and certainly a thing to watch for if you visit any city in the Netherlands, more or less.
More photos from lovely Zwolle, two which we introduced you in an earlier post. The Upright yellow contraption in the photo on the left was some form of audio-art installation whose details and sounds I’ve forgotten; the unusual roof in the photo on the right belongs the main museum in town, a photo of which in its entirety you will see in an upcoming post quite soon, I promise.
Let me introduce you to Zwolle, the lovely little capital city of Overijssel. (A province whose descriptive name means “above the Ijssel river,” if you’re curious. And Zwolle is named for the minor contour- which in the Netherlands would likely be called a hill – upon which the city was originally founded: Zwolle is related to the English verb “swell.”)
(so much world, so little time....) 