This tiny beautiful island has a Way of Silence – a waymarked soundwalk.
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“‘If you can be yourself, you are everything,’ says one sign. ‘Listen to the water, the wind, your steps,’ urges another.” [1]
On the small Isola San Giulio (St Julius’s Island) in Italy, there’s a Sound Walk. The ‘Way of Silence’ is a flagged alleyway that goes around the island, with plaques that instruct you to listen out for particular sounds. Such a process of walking and structured listening was pioneered by acoustic ecologists as a way of better understanding soundscapes.
When you tire of the sound walk, turn around and follow the back of the plaques which have different messages, forming the ‘Way of Meditation’.
Legend has it that the funnel shape of this cavern allowed the whispers of prisioners be overheard.
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This large limestone cave has a great sound legend attached to it. The story goes that the tyrant Dionysius (ca. 432–367 BC) used this place as a prison. The wedge shape of the cavern caused peoples’ conversations to be focussed and amplified at the roof of the cave, 22m above the floor. Supposedly this enabled guards to spy on prisoners by listening to the amplified sound through a small hidden opening at the top of the cave: even when the prisoners spoke in whispers.
“The tearing of a piece of paper makes a noise not unlike that occasioned by knocking a heavy stick against a stone” Conrad Malte-Brun, 1829.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to hear the effect because of safety fears; in the past travellers were hosted up by rope and pulley to the opening. Consequently, a modern listener is just left to enjoy the reverberance at ground level, marvel at the legend and take in the cavern’s ear-like shape.
Gino Iannace and collaborators [1] have made measurements and test whether the spying myth is true. Rather disappointing, they found that any whispered conversations were unintelligible and lost in a blur of reverberation. The sound sample at the top of the page was reconstructed from their measurements. Even with carefully enunciated speech, it is hard to understand what is being said.
This video has good sound, but for some reason has been shot on its side.
The rich reverberant sound in the Baptistry of Pisa lasts an astonishingly long time, to the delight of all tourists, not just sound-ones.
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Under the dome of the Baptistry in Pisa a stunning acoustic effect can be heard. Notes sung here last so long, it’s actually possible to accompany yourself: new notes will harmonize with old ones still reverberating around. The Baptistry Guards will often demonstrate this beautiful effect.
The key to the remarkable acoustic is that there’s very little soft material about to absorb the sound. Consequently, notes rattles around the space for a long time, some suggest for over 12 seconds, before the sound dies away and becomes inaudible.
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