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2010-11-29T09:45:00.003+01:00

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The beauty of Bari

2010-10-25T16:12:00.004+02:00

Like many other south Italian cities, Bari represents at least a two-in-one discovery. There is the commercial centre, Murattiano, which Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat laid out with a ruler, and where the Mussolini era has left its mark with a series of sinister, pretentious buildings; and there’s Bari Vecchia - the small white historic town on a peninsula with more than 120 mysterious shrines, lively piazzas and old, erratic, get-lost alleyways that protect the inhabitants from the wind and the sun.

All time tourist favourites are the two Medieval castles, Romanesque churches and the holy relics, but the Puglian capital also stands out as a hot spot for shopping, music and being.

Sights
Castello Svevo, dating back to the 10th century and reconstructed by Frederick II 200 years later, is one of the first things you’ll notice when entering Bari from the north. Around 1220 the trapezoid defensive structure with moat and corner towers housed the Holy Roman Emperor’s court including Saracens, scientists, astrologers, hawks, leopards and the famous elephant. According to an inscription on a wall within the castle, this was where beggar monk San Francesco was severely tempted by a sensual young girl, whom he frightened off with a piece of burning coal. Today Medieval monks and knights in shining armour have been replaced by two old-age-pensioners selling tickets to the rather boring Gipsoteca within.

Fortino di Sant’Antonio Abate guards the eastern corner of Bari Vecchia against pirates from the sea. The building dates back to the 15th century and it was named after the saint of domestic animals, who has a chapel in the hallway that can only be visited on January 17th.

Cattedrale di San Sabino is one of 40 churches crammed into the relative small area of Bari Vecchia, and it is a prominent and admired example of the Romanesque style in Puglia. The unembellished, white exterior is simple and elegant and inside several tiers of columns, colonnades and galleries emphasize the solemn atmosphere. Remember to go downstairs to visit the crypt which contains the relic of San Sabino and a nice Madonna Odegitria icon.

Basilica di San Nicola is Bari’s main attraction. A massive church that contains the relics of San Nicola, better known as Father Christmas. The saint is celebrated with a big festival every year during the first weekend in May, when they tap manna – a liquid said to have miraculous powers – from his tomb.

The provincial gallery Pinacoteca Provinciale presents Italian baroque and impressionistic paintings especially by the local painter Francesco Netti. And in Museo Archelogico there is an impressive collection of red- and black-figure pottery from Attica.

Places
Piazza del Ferrarese provides a lively entrance to the old town as market place in the morning and communal living room at night. Here you will find numerous cafés, bars, and gelateria in addition to excavated patches of via Appia-Traiana, the Sala Murat which holds minor exhibitions of contemporary art, the old indoor fish market, and occasional public events like fashion shows and food festivals, etc.

Piazza Mercantile merges imperceptibly into Piazza del Ferrarese. Historically this was the political centre of town, where Bari’s Council of Nobles met at the Palazzo del Sedile, and where debtors were flogged and punished at the Colonna della Giustizia that can still be seen in a corner of the square. A great number and variety of pizzeria and restaurants can be found in alleys surrounding Piazza Mercantile.

Lungomare Imperatore Augusto fill with people promenading back and forth every evening in the typical Italian fashion. The promenade in Bari Vecchia is raised over the sea and appears to lie on an old city wall, while the less crowded Lungomare Nazario Sauro in the new part of town runs along the harbor.

Corso Cavour means shopping - especially clothes - of all the popular brands and chain stores.

Piazza Garibaldi is the place to relax in the shade of tall tree. The public garden offers authentic Italian park life, where men crowd around obscure betting games, while women chat and children play.

Food & Events
For authentic puglian cooking try Ristorante Bacco, Osteria delle Travi "Il Buco" in largo Chiurlia 12 or Ai 2 Ghiottoni, where you can find orecchiette with horse meat stew, cavatelli pasta with clams and beans, tiella or tiedda with rice, potatoes and mussels, “braciola” rolls of horse meat filled with cheese, parsley and garlic and fried and grilled fish.

In summer Bari hosts a number of free open air concerts like Radio Norba’s Battiti Live with popular Italian bands and musicians.

Another annually recurring festival is Times Zones in November staging international performers with a repertoire of progressive and independent jazz, rock and electronica. The venue for most of these concerts is Teatro Kursaal.

And then there is the opera scene in the newly renovated Teatro Petruzelli. One of the great opera houses of Italy alongside La Scala in Milan, Teatro Massimmo in Palermo and Teatro San Carlo in Naples. The gorgeous Art Noveau building with a frescoed cupola, red velvet seats and gilded wood carvings burned down to the ground in 1991, but reopened in December 2009 after a reconstruction costing 20 billion euro.

More to Avetrana than misery

2010-10-18T16:35:00.003+02:00

Over the past weeks the main square in Avetrana has developed into an absurd version of Times Square on New Year’s eve attracting endless numbers of locals, tourists and journalists ready to discuss and report the latest developments and rumours in a tragic, ongoing murder mystery.

Corriere della Sera writes about ‘La folla di curiosi’ and international newspapers are appalled by this blatant example of Italian videocracy (cf. The Guardian ‘Mother told live on Italian TV of daughter’s murder’). One family’s private tragedy in relation to the disappearance and murder of a 15-year old girl has developed into a scary primetime docu soap with archetypal puglian peasants in all the villainous, bad guy roles.

You tend to forget that Avetrana is a real town with 7 000 bravi, ordinary, law-abiding people, where old men used to rule over the piazza every evening around sunset. There they discussed the weather and the wine harvest while their wives attended mass in the Chiesa Madre that can be dated back to the 15th century, and the younger generation played football and drove around on scooters. In the spring, the city organizes an authentic carnival, and in summer, the local stadium stages rock concerts with great Salento bands like Negramaro and Sud Sound System and then everybody flicks a lighter and sings along on popular radio hits like ‘mentre tutto scorre’. Avetrana is a very nice and very typical town right in the middle of the three Salento provinces Taranto, Brindisi and Lecce.

Various theories account for the name of the town. Avetrana could be a derivation of latin ‘habet ranas’ meaning a place with many frogs due to the nearby swamps, or it could be an abbreviation ‘terra veterana’, that is the land that has not been cultivated. Both theories reflect that Avetrana has been inhabited thousands of years before Christ.

The town is separated from the sea by marshes, and sometimes a sad crying like the bellow of a dying ox can be heard from the southeast. Local legend offers various explanations of this phenomenon. There are those who claim that the sound is a cry of help from a Saracen in full armour with weapons and gold trimmings who disappeared in the swamp when riding his magnificent black horse. Others say that the noise is the crying of martyrs that has been audible since a monk desperately in love with a young woman drowned himself in the water. And then there are those who maintain that the sound is made by a ogre that looked like an ox only 10-20 times larger. One day long ago this monster washed up on the seashore and got helplessly trapped in the marshes.

Occasionally, the sad, heart breaking cries can still be heard in Avetrana, especially when Sirocco wind beats up a storm in the Ionian Sea making the waves reverberate in the underground grottoes and caves that run between the sea and the wetlands. And this crying will remain long after the present hype and televised lamentation subside.

Lost in transit between Linate and Malpensa

2010-09-29T11:34:00.003+02:00

Trapped in a highway spaghetti during a slow moving Milano rush hour you have plenty of time to regret the decision to use the Lombardian metrolpol as a hub to southern Italy. Milano offers a great choice of intercontinental, international and domestic flights, but 64.7 km and a city of 1,3 million people separate the connections and there are no metros or high speed trains to facilitate transit. ‘Shuttle’ buses operate roughly on a 90 minute schedule, the duration of the tour is 1 h 10 and suddenly you need a miracle to make a 2 hour transit.

I speak from the experience of going from Copenhagen via Milano to Bari and back, and it qualifies as a regular nightmare. Outbound we caught the shuttle bus from Malpensa and arrived at Linate just in time only to find that our domestic flight had been cancelled. The next connection involved a 5 hour wait and a total transport time of 15 hours. Yawn.

Homebound another cancellation paired with wind turbulence delays made it necessary to take a taxi to 125 euros, and we only caught our connection flight thanks to the driver’s willingness to disregard speed limits, sweet talking a security guard into letting us through Malpensa’s VIP scanner, mobile phone check in, cabin baggage only and serious jogging to the departure gate.

The transit challenges could of course have been figured out beforehand, but a naive belief in European infrastructure led me to assume that there had to be a well functioning transport system between Milano’s airport for international and domestic flights. Nothing could be more wrong. So now I fly to Puglia via London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris or Rome, or better still drive 4-600 km through Italy to and from the nearest airport offering a direct connection.

Corn in the desert

2010-09-20T16:27:00.002+02:00

The Foggia province in Northern Puglia separates into two distinctly different landscapes: There is the Tavoliere plain, also known as Magna Capitana, and the Gargano spur with its green hills, white cliffs and Forest Umbra. Considering the charms of Gargano with breathtaking views, eminent beaches, ample tourist facilities and two of the most popular European pilgrim sites, most visitors skip the Tavoliere. Yet beneath the endless monotony of wheat fields there are interesting sights layers of history.

Take for instance the village Ordona on the Via Traiana route, where you can see beautiful and virtually undiscovered remains of a Roman temple, shops, market, amfitheater and thermal baths. In ancient times the place was known as Herdonia, where Hannibal fought the Second Punic War (219-202 BC) that destroyed the town and left the area to sheep.

The Roman poet Horace, who was born in the area in 65 BC, described the Tavoliere as a dry, thirsty, desert landscape. An arid flatland that couldn’t be cultivated until 1939, when the Apulian aqueduct was inaugurated. As one of the largest construction projects undertaken in the early 20th century in Italy, l'Acquedotto Pugliese taps water from the Sele River in the mountains near Avellino in Campania and reroutes it to the riverless Puglia region. Twenty thousand workers contributed to the ambitious project that started in 1906 and brought freshwater to Bari in 1915. Today the entire length of the aqueduct, including primary and secondary lines is 2189 km, serving the more than 4 million inhabitants in 258 cities, towns and villages along with the corn and tomatoes that grow in the former wasteland on the Tavoliere.

Italian hours

2010-09-10T15:57:00.004+02:00

When traveling through Italy, you can’t help noticing how the south operates by a different time zone than the north of the country. In my part of Puglia, you never go out to dine before nine pm, and families with grandmothers and small children are still dropping in for their evening meal at half past ten in the evening. Appetite comes slowly in a warm climate. In consequence, we are always running late for dinners in northern Italy, where all tables are full at eight o’clock and where some restaurant kitchens stop serving after ten.

Now time - to me at least - was part of the order of things, and therefore above questioning, until I happened to read the introduction to Henry James’ Italian hours. Here Professor John Auchard interprets the title in a historical context, quoting guidebooks from the early 19th century for saying that the “manner of reckoning time in some parts of Italy is peculiar to themselves." Apparently, time in Italy was considered a local phenomenon, varying approximately four minutes for every degree of longitude, so that noon arrived at different moments in Florence, Milan and Rome. This should explain why trains, for instance, operated on different schedules in different towns, and why they sometimes happened to depart earlier than announced!

Synchronization improved with the unification of Italy in 1870, but it took years before standard Greenwich mean time, proposed in 1884, was widely adopted. And perhaps the local protests against time tyranny and regimentation are still manifest at dinner time.

Caught up in the attractions of Puglia

2010-09-08T12:02:00.003+02:00

My first visit to Puglia took place as an act of escapism. A few days of peltering rain in a leaking tent with two young children in Emilia-Romagna stirred the urge to go south, and with a trunk full of muddy washing we kept going till the sun broke through. It happened shortly after Vasto, and while we crossed the Tavoliere temperatures climbed.

The Tavoliere ranges as the largest plain in Italy after the Po Valley, and plains can be pretty boring from a touristy point of view. Especially in Puglia, where farm workers live in towns leaving the countryside to vast fields and roaring emptiness. Not knowing if or when the wheat fields would ever end, we turned left around Manfredonia, went out on the spur of the Gargano Promontory and ended up in Vieste. Since then Puglia has been the undisputed holiday favourite.

Precisely what makes south-eastern Italy so attractive eludes words, but an important element is the easy-going friendliness. People we met went out of their way to guide strangers; they smiled and talked uninhibited; organised play groups for the children and came running after us, if we forgot our change at the cafe. The relaxed atmosphere seemed so pervasive it infected holiday-makers from all over Italy, and soon you had open invitations to stop by people in Milano, Mantova, Bologna or L’Aquila.

Another Puglian characteristic is the natural and cultural diversity. Over the past 2000 years Puglia has been under Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Swabian, Saracen, Angevin and Spanish rule and the historical heritage can be traced through every town. An endless number of churches, castles, city walls, palaces, watchtowers, acquaducts, harbours, magic stones and religious sanctuaries complement the two official world heritage sites (ie. the trulli in Alberobello and Castel del Monte). The landscape changes from hills and forest to plains, heathland, caves, ravines and gorges with an understated kind of beauty; charming white villages with labyrinthine narrow alleys compete with high-end shopping districts in big city grids; medieval traditions and customs mingle with modern living; industry and agriculture keep the wheels turning and behind the ancient stone walls there’s a rich production of olives, wine, wheat oranges, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash and other vegetables.
Puglia has got is all - along with free sandy beaches, a warm, dry climate and an amazing light that immediately cures minor depressive tendencies after a Scandinavian winter.

No wonder I got so caught up during my first Puglian escape that I still hang around. In coming blogs I’ll try to describe the main attractions of each province.

The secret zoo

2010-08-26T17:12:00.002+02:00

A couple of days ago I came across an article on the combined zoo, safari and amusement park in Fasano near Bari. That reminded me of another Puglian zoo that in spite of a great number and variety of animals is practically unknown, even to people who have lived in the area all their lives. I am talking about the zoo on the road between Oria and Manduria – just across the road from the barracks and airfield where several division within the US Army Air Force were stationed during WWII.

We had braved the stench of Manduaria Ambiente to visit the sanctuary of S. Cosimo alla Macchia, where friends had told us devout pilgrims still practiced floor licking - lingua strascinuni – as a kind of penance – but when we arrived the church and the surrounding outdoor areas were fully and totally deserted. A shop sold crucifixes, holy water fountains, charms, rosaries, bibles, porcelain angles and other religious souvenirs, but there were no customers, the church was empty and neither cars nor busses filled the scorching parking lot which could easily accommodate all Auchan shoppers on a Friday night.

So much concrete emptiness can get a little creepy, so we observed the scene from the shadow of some trees and found ourselves next to a small wooden ticket office. This aroused our curiosity so we paid the entrance fee and entered a lush garden forest where we were greeted by parrots, pelicans, storks and black swans. There were also deer, wildebeest, zebras, antelopes, camels, buffalos and other hoofed animals, crocodiles, reptiles and snakes, hippos, lions and about eight big tigers locked up behind a double steel wire fence. They looked pretty docile and bored, but I still found it hard to believe that so many big cats live on a lawn in Salento, and if I did not have the photos to prove it, I would still doubt the memory.

There is something strange and surreal about secret zoos, but the Giardino zoologico di Oria is a nice, cool and quiet green spot that deserves many more visitors, than I have ever seen in the vicinity. So if you happen to be in the area, you might as well take a look around. Perhaps the ticket office will even reward you with a peacock feather.

Exploring Arezzo in writing

2010-08-23T15:38:00.003+02:00

I have a real bad habit of consulting guidebooks after I have visited a place – a negligence leading to great regrets over opportunities lost, photos not taken and sights not seen.

Like Henry James, I spent my day at Arezzo in an “uninvestigating fashion …. systematically leaving the dust of the ages unfingered on the stored records”. I did see Piero della Francesca’s fresco cycle on “The legend of the True Cross” and glimpse Santa Maria della Pieve from a distance, while haunting the fashionable shopping district, but I seemed to miss the poetry of the place.

Fortunately, James kept a record of his Arezzo stay in 1873, and it is a great pleasure to explore the city through his writing:

“Adorable Italy in which, for the constant renewal of interest, of attention, of affection, these refinements of variety, these so harmoniously-grouped and individually-seasoned fruits of the great garden of history, keep presenting themselves! It seemed to fall in with the cheerful Tuscan mildness for instance – sticking as I do to that ineffectual expression of the Tuscan charm, of the yellow-brown Tuscan dignity at large – that the ruined castle on the hill (with which agreeable feature Arezzo is no less furnished than Assisi and Cortona) had been converted into a great blooming, and I hope all profitable, podere or market-garden. I lounged away the half-hours there under a spell as potent as the “wildest” forecast of propriety – propriety to all the particular conditions – could have figured it. I had seen Santa Maria della Pieve and its campanile of quaint colonnades, the stately, dusky cathedral – grass-plotted and residence about almost after the fashion of an English “close” – and John of Pisa’s elaborate marble shrine; I had seen the museum and its Etruscan vases and majolica platters. These were very well, but the old pacified citadel somehow, through a day of soft saturation, placed me most in relation. Beautiful hills surrounded it, cypresses cast straight shadows at its corners, while in the middle grew a wondrous Italian tangle of wheat and corn, vines and figs, peaches and cabbages, memories and images, anything and everything.” (From Italian Hours)

I really must go back sometime soon to look for those memories and images.

The weird wonders of Grotte di Castellana

2010-08-20T15:14:00.004+02:00

Two things strike me as really remarkable about Grotte di Castellana
– one of Italy’s seemingly endless subterranean limestone caves with pretty drapings of stalagmites – columns rising up from the cave floor - and stalactites hanging from the cave ceiling like icicles on the eaves in a Scandinavian winter. That’s the history of how the cave was discovered and the shape of one particular but not very big stalactitete.

Until 1938 the caves 2 km outside the town of Castellana in Puglia were shrouded in mystery and superstition. Local farmers were aware of a stinking hole in the earth that swallowed quite a few animals which they believed led straight to hell. In fact, the malodorous smell was gasses from the rotting cadavers of animals that had not survived a free fall of 60 metres from the surface of the earth to the bottom of the principal cave appropriately named ‘la grave’. Just before the Second World War a courageous geologist named Franco Anelli ventured down the hole, and he discovered a complex systems of enormous grottos connected by underground passages. A slippery, spooky and chilly place that has had more than 14 million visitors including the film crew of Alien 2, since it was first opened to the public some 60 years ago.

All visitors have seen – but perhaps not noticed – a small stalactite that seems to grow perpendicular on a vertical dripstone. I have heard geologists discuss the phenomenon and develop theories about a draft and physical possibility of such a formation, and I think they reached the conclusion that the horizontal stalactite had to be a fig of the imagination. So now I have to go back and do another 50 minute guided tour to confirm the sight – unless some of you have seen the same weird wonder?

Behind a medieval castle in eastern Marche

2010-08-18T11:22:00.003+02:00

Standing on the balcony of the Ducal Palace in Camerino enjoying the breathtaking view of the Sibillini Mountains, there is little to indicate that this hillside town on the eastern border of Le Marche played a prominent role in the conquests, plots and conspiracies that stained the Renaissance.

From the 14th to the 16th century Camerino flourished and became a bustling centre of trade under the auspices of the powerful Da Varano family that seemed to be related to all the great noble families of Italy. Their court drew artists and scholars from all over the country and during their reign Camerino’s university was founded, and they built the sumptuous Ducal Palace and a 12 km-long wall to defend the city.

The defense could not hold out against the troops of the notorious Cesare Borgia. Through the late 15th century this spoiled, scheming, ruthless and murderous papal offspring, who had renounced the priesthood in favour of a military career, successfully subdued local despots in Romagna and proceeded to carve out a principality for himself in the territories owing allegiance to the pope. In 1502 Camerino was conquered along with nearby Urbino, and Cesare Borgia cut off the head of the Da Varano family including three male heirs to the fiefdom. The conquests compromised Cesare Borgia’s popularity in the region, but with the help of the French king he managed to fight back local uprising and conspiracy.

Cesare Borgia even had time to erect a castle in Camerino to ward off attacks from the south-west. The Rocca del Borgia is a massive construction with cylindrical towers and through the ages it has served as treasury concealing the shrine of Loreto from looting Saracen pirates, as Nazi headquarters and hospital before its present reincarnation as restaurant.

All the castles, armies and mercenaries in central Italy could not, however, protect Cesare Borgia from the hazards of ill health. In 1503 both he and his father the pope were seized with fever. The pope died and Cesare's dominion fell to pieces.

In Camerino, a Da Varano descendant who had survived the massacre regained control of the city and acquired the title of duke. He constructed a passage between the Palazzo Ducale and Rocca del Borgia apart from the drawbridge that originally formed the only point of access. He armed the castle with 42 guns and lay down strict rules for defense, hygiene and public service that transformed the medieval city. For instance people were obliged to clean the cobbled stones in the street outside their houses every Saturday. Water supply was organized and sources had to be cleaned. Commercial stalls were referred to particular town squares. And the cattle market moved outside the city walls. With these measures Camerino prospered, grew and became one of four Civitates Maiores of Marche.

Today Camerino rests peacefully on a pillow of past glory. For a university town, it seems extraordinary small and quiet as we - with usual bad timing - struggle up steep and winding but still clean streets in the heat of the midday sun. At the top of the hill we find some shade from the buildings surrounding Piazza Cavour, where a statue of Pope Sixtus V presides along with some foreign students. They may be plotting to attend summer courses at the University, but apart from that there are no conspiracies or warlords in sight. Even the portico, balcony, loggias and frescoed halls of the Ducal Palace breathe tranquility and beautiful vistas.

Rally round the palio

2010-08-10T16:44:00.003+02:00

“Vai, Vito! Vai, vai!” an elegant woman in a crispy new, slim-fit shirt screams while edging her way through the crowd lining the promenade around Ponte Girevole.

Like innumerable other Italian towns, Taranto stages an annual race, where various groups compete for an honourable banner known as the ‘palio’. In Italy there are palii involving horses – like the world famous and newly controversial Palio di Siena - and palii for armies, eggs, boats, frogs, oxen, donkeys, hunters, archers, woodwork, wheelbarrows, cheese, running, walking, grape pressing, pasta making, you name it. The competitions spice up local ‘feste medievali’ and mobilize supporters from all over town.

Il Palio di Taranto is a rowing race between different crafts and district. Carabinieri row against coast guards, marines and firefighters, while representatives from Talsano and Paolo VI tries to beat contestants from Tamburi and Croce to the finish line. In each colour-coded boat, two strong men with very broad shoulders, inflated triceps, knee pads and in some cases also ludicrously outdated swimming costumes stand up rowing from a starting line in Mar Grande to the bridge Mar Piccolo, while their family, friends and colleagues spur them on with cheers and shouts.

As an outsider I find it hard to match the zealous passion of local spectators, who couldn’t be more engaged if they were watching the final stages of Tour de France. They push and scream intensely as the leading boats approach the canal in a frantic effort to get ahead. Two minutes later the winners have been found, and they are proudly displaying the palio, while a tow-boat drags them back to shore. Here they are met by television crews, a hand-shaking mayor and teenage kisses from a newly crowned Miss Lizzano and Miss Torricella.

Meanwhile the woman in the slim-fit shirt beside me looks a bit downcast. She is accompanied by a man who places a comforting hand on her shoulder and assures her that the result is okay, before they hurry down behind Castel Sant'Angelo to receive their private palio hero.

Summer vegetation in my back yard

2010-07-12T09:13:00.002+02:00

Italian Notes is taking a break these weeks to enjoy the proliferation of Italian summer flowers and vegetate in the back yard.

Thank you for all the kind attention generated by Italy Magazine’s portrait of Italian Notes as Blog of the Week. I hope new readers may find entertainment in some of the old blog posts and will try to keep the facebook site updated with inspiring links to Italian travel writing.

The whitewashed towns of Salento

2010-06-24T16:50:00.009+02:00

Like the Greek islands and southern Spain, dazzling whitewashed towns dot the heel of Puglia. Ancient towns with Roman, Greek or Saracen roots and WLAN access.

The stone-paved streets in the tight-fitting town centres are so narrow, you have to step into a doorway to let a scooter pass. People sitting outside on their front steps shelling beans, napping or chatting greet you with a friendly, but inquisitive boungiorno. Through open gateways you can look into private courtyards with bright flowers in pots and recycled steel cans. Strings of chilies and tomatoes are hung to dry outside kitchen windows. And on the roof tops clean washing floats in the wind sending whiffs of fabric softener and detergent through the air.

In spite of their old history the white towns on Salento still house modern lives, as you will see, if you follow the white town route from Locorotondo, through Cisternino, Ostuni and Otranto to Gallipoli.

Locorotondo
Situated in the Valle d’Itria and surrounded by major tourist spots like Martina Franca, Alberobello and Cisternino, the charms of Locorotondo are generally overlooked, but the city with a population of 14.000 people has a lot more than whiteness to offer to offer. The centro storico is perched on a hill top from where you have a terrific view of the countryside with the characteristic trulli houses. Apart from that the architecture of Locorotondo is famous for the pointed roofs called 'cummerse', a feature not seen elsewhere on the Italian peninsula.

Cisternino
In Puglia, the name Cisternino links to fornelli pronto, butcher shops with wood fired barbecue and a few tables where roasted meat is served with a glass of wine. A must-try for all visitors after a relaxing stroll within the confines of the old town walls. According to legend the town Cisternino was founded in the Bronze Ages and destroyed during Hannibal’s raids in Puglia in 216 BC. The settlement was revitalized in the 8th century, when refugee Basilian monks decided to build a Greek Orthodox abbey. Traces of the original church have been found under Chiesa Madre di San Nicola.

Ostuni
Ostuni is the ‘città bianca’ per se. A fabulously romantic city attracting thousands of particularly Italian tourists each summer. They crowd the citadel where every building, wall, staircase, roof and archway are painted white. Main attractions are the cathedral, the bishop’s palace and houses for the local nobility and the eastern town wall, where people line up to photograph each other on a background of the dark blue Adriatic Sea and the cyan colour of the summer sky.

Otranto
Thanks to Horace Walpole’s gothic novel called The Castle of Otranto, the small Greek town south east of Lecce as become a household name. And even though Walpole never visited the place, Otranto does have a castle and a gothic history involving two giant cannon balls and the death of 800 martyrs, killed by Turkish pirates in 1480. Their skulls are supposed to be lined up in a side chapel to the cathedral, but most visitors just walk around the old town and if they are very lucky catch a glimpse of the Albanian mountains.

Gallipoli
Like Otranto the founding fathers of Gallipoli were Greeks who settled on a chalk stone island with a good command of access to the Ionian Sea. An arched stone bridge connects the old town with the commercial town centre, providing an interesting view of the castle and the fleet of Greek blue fishing boats. I don’t think I have seen a single tree on the island, but there are numerous churches, cafes, restaurants and a city beach facing the sunset. And you can walk by the waterfront all the way around the old town, pretending you have discovered some magic kind of African Venice. This explains why the Greeks named the town Kallipolis, meaning "Beautiful City".

Enchanted princes with incredible vocal capacities

2010-06-18T16:27:00.005+02:00

You know summer has come to southern Italy, when you can’t hear your own thoughts for the enervating noise of cicadas. As I understand it, the small insects have a built-in drum in their abdomen that can produce noise of up to 120 dB at close range. That equals the sound effect of an aircraft or a rock concert. Enough, to disable phone calls and conversation and to drive anyone who has to live with the sound from dawn to dusk a little crazy.

Cicadas are temperature sensitive animals, so they don’t make a racket until the thermometer has climbed up over 30C. Then they start clicking very loud and very early in the morning and continue till midnight. Fortunately, they have the consideration to turn down the volume around noon, when everyone surrenders to the heat.

To a Scandinavian the idea of singing cicadas seems attractively romantic, but in reality it can be a regular pain in the neck. And some days the situation is so desperate, it almost makes you wish for rain.

I suppose, you could forgive the cicadas if the din served a purpose, but from what I have read, these insects live their entire lives within a very small radius. In fact, they prefer to stay put around a specific tree. Female cicadas lay their eggs in the bark, the eggs develop into nymphs that slide down the trunk to draw juice from tree roots. In due course, when the nymphs have grown up, they climb back up the tree, leave their skin and start searching for a mate. The clicking noise serves as a male point of attraction, but as the love of their life is always just around the nearest branch, they might be a bit more discreet.

Now their discretion is entirely visual. In spite of the noise, it is difficult to catch sight of the cicadas, unless you are satisfied with the dry discarded skin they leave behind on tree trunks and steel wires. I don’t think I have seen live cicadas more than twice, one of which demonstrated an alternative mode of singing every time a wanton 11-year-old poked it with his shoe. The cries of the poor insect were heartbreaking, but also highly entertaining, if you asked the kids.

They are not familiar with Greek myth saying that the cicada is the lover of the Titan dawn goddess Eos. She fell in love with a beautiful prince and Zeus helped her to make the prince immortal. Yet they forgot to grant him eternal youth, so the prince ended up as a shriveled old corpse. He maintained his powerful voice, however, and he is still using it.

All along are watch-towers

2010-06-15T15:25:00.004+02:00

One of the characteristic sights of summer on the Italian coast are solitary watch towers silhouetted against the sky on promontories overlooking the sea. For centuries these buildings formed a first bastion in a local defence system designed to protect civilians from looting Saracens who raided the Mediterranean for riches and galley slaves. (see also Pirate attacks on the Adriatic coast)

Most of the watch towers in Italy were constructed during the 15th and 16th centuries with a square, flat-roofed tower on top of a pyramidal base. A single doorway placed about 5 m above ground level makes it virtually impossible for attackers to enter, as the rope or movable ladder providing access could easily be pulled up into the building after use. In time wooden staircases replaced the ladders, but these too could easily be destroyed in case of an attack.

Though generally derelict, the towers still dot the coast like pearls on a string. On Salento alone more than 80 tower ruins landmark the seaside for sailors and locals. Constructors placed the watch towers in positions where they could maintain visual or aural contact with the next tower and with the Norman castles and fortresses inland. If a lookout saw an enemy or unidentified ship approaching, he would light a fire on the flat roof of the tower to warn off neighbours and call assistance. Later on some of the towers were equipped with bells that could be struck with a hammer (martello) leading to the generic name martello towers.

Both light and sound filled the purpose, and today the towers serve as a decorative reminder that networking is not just a modern buzz word.

Cities, sights and other attractions in northern Abruzzo

2010-06-11T08:40:00.005+02:00

I first fell in love with Italy in the Teramo province, so I was greatly disappointed to learn that it had not been found worthy of mention in any of the numerous guidebooks, I have accumulated over the years. Who is going to tell the thousands of tourists that gather around the Sette Sorelle beaches of Martinsicuro, Alba Adriatica, Tortoreto, Giulianova, Roseto degli Abruzzi, Pineto and Silvi Marina about the wild orchids, wolves, bears and other extraordinary attractions? There are lots of things to see and do on a grey or scorching summer day in northern Abruzzo, and here is my list.

If you can’t stand another hour inhaling the smell of sun lotion, you might be ripe for a city break. Giulianova hides an unspoiled centro storico just 1 km inland behind the Lido with stately old family homes, grand piazzas, original shopping and a maze of timeless alleys. Most of the Rai 1 television series ‘Domani è un altro giorno’ was shot here, and film locations are generally recommendable for their suggestive visual qualities. Another favourite is Teramo with its ancient town gates, quiet and tidy streets, and view of the mountains, not to mention the gothic cathedral that seems to have a fake front. If you are lucky and go on Tuesday or Saturday mornings, you may even browse the weekly market for the latest Italian fashion (copies), fresh vegetables, antiques and an assortment of can’t-live-without-it bric-a-brac.

Among lace curtains and beach towels we encountered a very friendly abruzzese, who had spent some time as a guest worker in Germany longing for the marvels of his Heimat. Now he could not stop praising the Grand Sasso and Monti della Laga national parks with a range of truly spectacular mountains, lakes, waterfalls, forests and gorges interrupted by sigths of rare flowers and endangered animals.

- You really should not visit Teramo without going up in the mountains. There are so many places of outstanding beauty and tranquility. I go there to hike, fish or relax as often as possible, he said. And he was absolutely right. You will never get enough of Grand Sasso as a place of pure zen.

Around the park you will also find orginal sights such as the Museo del Lupo, Museo della Grotta di S. Angelo and Tossicia Museo delle Tradizioni Artigiane. Along with ancient fortresses like the fascinating Castel Manfrino situated on the top of a rock overlooking the Salinello Valley, the fortified market town Capestrano and the magnificent Bourbon ‘Fortezza’ in Civitella del Tronto.

Lovers of arts and crafts should definitely visit Castelli, where ceramic workshops produce a special bright and colourful majolica. Carlo Levi called Castelli ‘the sistine chapel of Italian majolica’, and that seems to me like an epigraph worth investigating.

What are your favourite sights and attractions in northern Abruzzo?

Dreaming of palm trees

2010-06-09T16:17:00.005+02:00

Like most northerners with a small piece of land in the south, we have been dreaming of palm trees. Tall, majestic, exotic plants that don’t branch out but spread their evergreen leaves in a perfect fan. As an old symbol of victory, peace and plenty, the palm tree makes an impressive sight that goes well with a palazzo style villa and not so well with a humble casa rustica surrounded by olive trees. That is why we decided to consult our Italian gartner.

He told us, that palm trees are not just very expensive, they are also a popular status symbol and therefore – at least until they reach a certain height – an all time burglar favourite. Especially, when placed in front of not permanently inhabited houses in the countryside.

Instead he recommended a bushy fan palm, as the only palm tree native to the northern Mediterranean countries. It looks shrubby with multiple trunks, thrives in containers or when planted directly in the ground, and shows a good strong resistance against diseases, cold and pests. These arguments replaced the dream of palm tree power with an emblem of modest practicality that looks very much at home in the back yard.

And the real palm trees and other exotic plants can still be enjoyed in the cities and along the seaside, where every species and variety is cultivated, like the fascinating Strelitzia reginae also known as Crane Flower or Bird of Paradise.

5 itineraries through the natural beauty of Puglia

2010-06-04T16:55:00.003+02:00

Guidebooks and visitors rarely praise Puglia for its natural attractions, which seems quite understandable compared to the breathtaking beauty of more spectacular Italian regions like the northern lakes, Liguria, Toscana and Campania. Still, most places wane when measured by these standards, and Puglia can be real pretty outside the tourist triangle of Castel del Monte, Alberobello and Barocco Leccese.

Here is my suggestion for five very different itineraries that will show you the best Puglian views and landscapes.

Manfredonia to Vieste
Most tourists take the easy northern road to Vieste, cheating themselves for a drive along the Amalfi coast of Puglia. Only 40 km separates Manfredonia from Vieste, but the drive takes an hour and this is not due to traffic but to hairpin bends leading up and down the mountains. Every time you reach a bend with a poor view of the road you have to brake and honk to warn off other cars going in the opposite direction. Free ranging cows and goats with tinkling small and bigger bells use the road as a shortcut between pastures. And once you have passed Mattinata you are in for the most spectacular views . Gargano rests on white limestone painting the sea an unusual emerald green that contrasts the blue sky and the silvery green colour of the olive fields. And in between you will see the most adorable islands, lagoons, beaches and rock formations like the famous "Architiello".

Saline di margherita di Savoia
Follow the coast from Manfredonia to Barletta and you will come through Saline di margherita di Savoia , the biggest saltpan in Italy. Apart from the fascinating salt ponds and salt mountains, the Salina provides perfect bird watching. For instance you can see the largest population of pink flamingoes in Europe.

Corato to Gravina in Puglia and Altamura
Driving on the S378 from Corato to Gravina may not be on a shortlist of the five most beautiful scenic drives through Puglia, but it will take you to some of the most spectacular ravines in the city by the same name. The Murgia is characterized by these small canyons formed by rain water that has dissolves the limestone, but they look more dramatic as if the surface of the earth has been broken into pieces. Some of the ravines have caves, swallow holes and dolines inhabited in prehistoric times, and the history combined with the naked and bleak landscape inevitable makes a strong impression.

Putignano through Alberobello to Martina Franca
Traversing Valle d’Itra is the classic tour of trulli land, where you will see dozens of cone shaped houses with occult roof paintings dotted on every hill top. The soft hilly landscape has been cultivated for thousands of years, as can be seen from the really old gnarled and split olive tree trunks, you will pass along the way.

Maglie to Leuca
I know most people prefer the scenic drives to Santa Maria di Leuca along the coast, but to me the real Salento can be found on the inland road from Maglie going south in the hour around sunset. The water and the sun produce the most amazing light effects with colour changes from yellow, orange and red to deep purple and all shades of dark black blue, and every white building glows in the dark in a neon sort of way. It is pure magic.

The horror of Gallipoli

2010-06-03T15:42:00.003+02:00

One museum that will always stand out in my memory is the Museo Civico in Gallipoli. The cool but crammed high vaulted room may give an innocent first impression with its numerous glass cupboards displaying the usual assortment of lost brass buttons, old coins, broken pottery, rusty weapons, weird uniforms, corals, minerals, sea shells, fossiled reptiles, and fish and animal scheletons, but if you go behind the scenes – or rather upstairs - it gets really spooky.

I visited to museum some years ago with two small children, who found the buttons and coins rather uninteresting. After a few minutes, they got impatient, noisy and bored and wanted to move on, which attracted the attention of the young uniformed superintendent, who came up to me and offered to show us something special. His face was dead serious and there were no additional explanations, but being curious by nature the children and I followed him through a closed door and up an unlighted staircase, where he rattled his keys, unlocked another door, led us into a pitch-dark room and turned on the fluorescent lights.

The light clicked and flickered in a sickening blue-green tone to reveal more glass cupboards filled with transparent jars the size of small bathtubs, but it took some time for the eyes to adjust. By then I spotted some brown pink organic matter in the jars, but it took me a couple of minutes to realize that the contents were human. There must have been dozens of aborted fetuses, siamese twins and children born with disfiguring handicaps, all very life-like apart from the brown discoloured hair that comes from preservation in formalin. It was horrible. Luckily my son reacted instantly: He clasped both hands over the eyes of his little sister and started to drag her out, before she could make sense of the sight, and I ran after them down the staircase.

Back outside in the blazing Salento sun, the experience took on the nightmarish sheen of unreality, but I have never revisited the Museo Civico in Gallipoli. Instead we go across the street to the ancient olive mill in the ‘frantoi ipogei’. This will definitely not keep you awake at night, as I doubt the monstrous collection would, if I had known what to expect beforehand.

Volunteers clean up beaches

2010-06-01T12:16:00.005+02:00

300 plastic plates, 1000 aluminium cans, 4000 glass bottles, 1000 bank notes and phone cards, 300 plastic containers, and innumerable newspapers, magazines and cigarette butts were picked up from my favourite beach on the Ionian Sea last year. A sign displays the booty under a headline saying ‘La spiaggia libera è sempre meno libera’, highlighting the fact that free beaches are drowning in waste and encouraging the public to leave the beaches clean.

As usual Legambiente organized a nationwide beach cleaning during the last weekend of May. In 48 hours volunteers collected 50 tonnes of waste including mountains of old household appliances, lost cellular phones, used sanitary towels, building material and tires. The press release does not mention uncovered treasures, but the sand normally hides an assortment of jewelry, engagement rings, coins and other valuables. Still, I doubt the excitement of the treasure hunt can compensate for the hard work of removing other people’s garbage left along Italy’s 7.375 km coastline.

From this point of view the state of Italian beaches at the start of the season seems downright amazing. Every spring I am ready to despair over the filth and mess left behind on the beaches by summer outings and winter storms, but come June the sand is completely clean, white and inviting.

Thanks to the volunteers.

Stilo between past and present

2010-05-28T14:02:00.003+02:00

Must have been the contr’ora, cause shops were closed, windows barred and shuttered, and streets deserted on that warm July afternoon we stopped in the Calabrian town Stilo. Not even the café- bar was staffed, although we were welcome to sit down on the dirty white plastic chairs and rest our feet in the shadow of an Algida sponsored umbrella. For some reason my memories of small town Calabria are always devoid of people, yet I find the remote villages and abandoned buildings closed in between the sea, the sky, the ravines and the mountains absolutely fascinating.

It may be a lingering impression from the past. Since the seventh century, hermit monks from the Arabian deserts were whirled out in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire by the increasing domination of monasticism. The monks sought refuge in the sparsely populated Calabrian mountains, where they could pursue their solitary quest for God, but by and by their numbers became so large that their influence seeped through all aspects of religious life. The eastern monks founded churches and monasteries, they preserved and transmitted oriental rites, cults and lithurgy to the locals, and they more or less re-conquered Calabria from Lombard rule.

To me the austerity and seclusion of the hermits still permeates some of the most inaccessible areas of Calabria. All it takes to bring back a sense of the early monastic orders is a vivid imagination and a view of a cave that may have been used as a human dwelling dug into the rocks.

Today Stilo is not a rock settlement, but a town populated by almost 3000 people, whom I did not meet, but across the piazza I saw a rundown souvenir shop with a window exhibition of brown and light blue ceramic plates, figurines, amphorae, and a poster praising ‘La Cattolica di Stilo’. Ever curious, we took the car and drove a bit further op the mountain, where the road ended in a parking lot and a foot path. A few Italian tourists had also found their way up the mountain, and a kiosk selling lollipops, granite and canned drinks offered refreshments. Cattolica di Stilo is a major sight and according to explanatory signs even listed as UN World Heritage.
We walked a few hundred metres along a low stone wall separating the path from the precipice. Far below the Ionian Sea looked like an overgrown pond, while Stilo revealed itself as a rather ordinary church and a block of squared white houses surrounded by a circular road.

The ‘downtown’ church with its carved façade, cupola and clock tower formed a striking contrast to the red building at the end of the foot path. The Cattolica di Stilo is a tiny red-brick building with unnoticeable exterior decorations apart from five austere periscope domes topped by a wavy perm of roof tiles. Inside the church has a Greek cross plan inscribed within a square and three apses symmetrically arranged around a central dome. The vaults are supported by columns plundered from ancient buildings in Magna Graecia and resting on bases formed by upturned capitals. The interior was once entirely covered with frescoes with strictly Christian motifs and were also several inscriptions in Arabic.

The construction reflects the strictly sober beliefs of the Byzantine monks, and according to UN World Heritage the Cattolica di Stilo is considered the most representative of the Byzantine Basilian monuments. It was built between the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Stilo was the leading Byzantine centre of the region and a magnet for hermits and monks, who found shelter in its caves, creating an extremely important rock settlement in the area. Other examples of Basilian architecture in Calbria include S. Maria della Roccella in Squillace (Catanzaro), San Giovanni Teresti in Bivongi (Reggio Calabria), Santa Filomena in Santa Severina (Crotone) and San Marco and Santa Maria del Pathirion in Rossano (Cosenza)

The Cattolica di Stilo was destroyed in an earth quake in 1783, but surviving elements are largely intact, and the reconstruction has been based upon authentic architectural designs and structures. Driving down the hairpin turns, I saw the lights being turned on in Stilo, while children on tricycles and old men seeking company filled the piazza as an outdoor living room, and realized that small insignificant buildings can have great importance for understanding past and present.

Bathing in the Pontine Marshes

2010-05-21T15:52:00.005+02:00

One of the most fascinating things about Italy are the layers upon layers of history and stories hidden in every hamlet. Take the modern holiday resort Terracina south west of Rome as an example. A completely average tourist destination with a wide choice of hotels, restaurants, beach umbrellas and gelateria … yet on top of a 200 metre cliff you see the ancient Temple of Jupiter Anxur with its characteristic columns, and the more than 2000 year old Via Appia passes through town.

The historian Titus Livius, who lived from 59 BC to AD 17 under emperor Augustus, described Terracina as 'Urbs prona in paludes' or a city in the swamps, for even though Appius, the Roman censor that began and completed the first section of the military road to the south of Italy, did his utmost to drain the land by constructing embankments and dig channels along the road, the area between Rome and Terracina remained a swamp of 800 km2 impenetrable and slimy water, where malaria mosquitos were the only species to thrive.

Up to the 20th century the Pontian Marshes or Agro Pontinoro were considered seriously unhealthy, and writers like Goethe and the Dane Vilhelm Bergsøe have produced choking accounts of the dangers lurking outside the sourthern walls of Rome. Even Hans Christian Andersen, who is generally enraptured by all things Italian including the great road leading through the marshes and the ‘fresh, green swamp growth’ notes ‘the poisonous air emanating from the swamp. The chalked walls were all covered in a fat, bluegreen mould. Buildings, like people, were marked by beginning breath of decomposition, in strange contrast to the rich beauty of the surroundings, the fresh green and the warm sunshine.’ (my translation)

The problem with the Pontian Marshes is that the land rises up towards the coast, which means that rivers and brooks from the mountain inland do not reach the sea. In spite of numerous attempts throughout the ages, the area was not properly irrigated until Mussolini launched his great plan for the area. The fascists dug three canals that accumulated water from the hills and led it out to sea. Lowlands were pumped dry, and 2000 families – most of them from northern Italy – were transferred to the area. Each family was given a farm house with barns, animals and various farming tools and equipment to encourage land cultivation. Mussolini saw the project as a great success and it was frequently used in propaganda as an example of the greatest progress that solved the challenges of unemployment, emigration and self-sufficiency in one go.

Something to think about while you rinse your swimsuit, shop in the local Conad and enjoy the sunset over Mont Circeo in a perfumed cloud of mosquito repellent.

Capers in all crevices

2010-05-19T14:02:00.003+02:00

Outside my Italian cottage we have two large bushes carrying a summer wig of white flowers. Or to be quite honest, I have only experienced the profusion of flowers once, as every spring my neighbour the Contadina demonstratively rips off each and every one of the delicate flowers with their long purplish-pink stamens and throws them on the ground.

- If the bush flowers, it will not produce berries, and capers are great taste givers. Who needs flowers anyway, she says with determination. My objections that these flowers look quite pretty, are answered with a ‘bo’ which is Apulian for ‘beh’ in the meaning ‘I don’t know and I couldn’t care less’.

Since then she has consequently deflowered by bushes very early every morning, unless I make sure to get to the flowers first. She also likes to pick the berries, which is one of the tasks one cannot leave to a straniera, though she has started to trust me, after she developed a strange kind of capers allergy on her hands, and had to dress each finger in tissue paper and cellotape. Now I am allowed to harvest my own capers under her strict supervision.

- Remember only to pick the large buds. The small ones absorb too much salt. Mangia sale, she says, and normally I listen and do as I’m told. After all, she has almost 80 years experience in preserving capers, and she has kindly shown me how the flower buds should be nipped and cleaned, before they are placed in sterilized jars and covered in layers of salt and water.

When the bright green buds change colour the capers are ready to eat, and with two old bushes you – and your extended family - will never run out of this kind of food seasoning and garnish. Each summer produces 10-15 jam jars full of capers, which is more than most Scandinavian families consume in a life-time.

In addition I am still allowed to enjoy the sight and smell of the vaguely fragrant flowers every time I pass by old Italian castles or town walls. Caper bushes grow in the most incredible places, but seem to have a preference for ancient stones and archeological sites. You see it climbing the walls of the Colosseum and Forum Romanum, it can be found among the ruins of Pompeii and in column crevices in Pestum and Agrigento.

The only place you will not find capers are in South Italian supermarket and grocery stores. Massive free supplies are available to all locals, and lazy housewives stock up at the olive pusher in the weekly market. He does not, however, sell the big caperberries that I have only ever come across in northern European specialty shops. Therefore I have tried to convince the Contadina that we might leave some flowers on the bush and watch them become berries, but this idea will definitely not take root and grow in her (or her neighbour’s) garden.

Please, let’s talk Italian

2010-05-18T13:43:00.003+02:00

I don’t mean to ridicule inferior language skills or silly typing mistakes (I know I do more than my fair share) and besides I think any attempt at using a foreign language should be encouraged, but I am sooo tired of Italian waiters and concierges who insist on speaking English, when their guests address them in perfectly understandable Italian, and when their English vocabulary is limited to “okay”, “Yes” and “No”. At tourist destinations, it happens all the time, and I don’t think I am the only one who finds it a bit trying.

Granted, I speak Italian with a funny accent, and people are welcome to laugh, but I have studied the language for 6 years and passed several exams, I read Dante, Moravia and Pirandello slowly but without filter, and I get by on a daily basis with all it takes of banking transactions, political discussions and friendly banter. Yet when I enter a restaurant in Mid- or Northern Italy, the staff rolls their eyes or point, shout and treat me as an imbecile who is only capable of understanding one-syllable words.

At the same time I am handed poorly translated menus that are either indecipherable or make me lose my appetite. I have no idea what is meant by “tidbits of still meat” in a main course, but I am not sure I like it. Just as I am not too keen on “scrumbled eggs”, “wet bread with oil”, “Ewe’s typical cheese”, “organic cereals and pulse” or “vegetables in thousands of ways and numerous sweet ought-nots” to quote but a few of the menus, I have come across lately. The translations do not make sense. But I am sure it would sound absolutely mouthwatering and irresistible in an Italian menu.

So, if you want happy and satisfied tourists, who talk of their holidays in Italy as a success, try to respect their choice of language, when handling simple verbal transactions like a restaurant order. Most of us are extraordinary proud of ourselves, when we manage to order a cup of coffee in a foreign language, and if you have attended language school through a long, dark, cold North European winter, it is incredibly disappointing, when no one has the patience to try to understand you when on holiday.

I know the Italian waiter has probably got the same urge to practice English (or German), but why doesn’t he or she save it for tourists that are at a complete loss for words, chat up a friendly foreigner in the street or perhaps consider a holiday abroad?

What did Bob Dylan do on monte Conero?

2010-05-17T09:11:00.004+02:00

Last July I managed to get hold of a magazine called 'Meridiani' focusing on Le Marche. One of the articles called ‘L’Altra Riviera’ practiced an advanced kind of name dropping that linked Giorgio Napolitano, Riccardo Muti, BB King. Vasco Rossi, Diego Della Valle, Cesare Pasciotti, Marina Berlusconi, Ornella Vanoni, and … Bob Dylan. Celebrities, who have all – it seems – spent time around the hump backed mountain south of Ancona.

The magazine interviews the owner of hotel Fortino Napoleonico in Portonovo, a converted castle with a splendid view of the sea, where Bob Dylan turned up under a false name some years ago, who says that it was virtually impossible to meet the American singer-songwriter, while he stayed at the hotel.

- He always left very early in the morning. And returned late at night. He didn’t talk to anyone. Our only proof of his stay here is his signature on the registration documents.

Now, Bob Dylan does not seem like the type of person who would settle for deckchair in one of the many stabilimento balneare overlooking the ‘Vela’, a cliff resembling a yachting sail as indicated by the name, or the hordes of pale and bare bellied Europeans frequenting the bays and beaches. And I don’t see him as a keen golfer doing all 18 holes in Golf Club Conero near Sirolo, either.

Still, he might have enjoyed a visit to Giacomo Leopardi’s library in Recanati, wandered among wild boars and berries in the 6 000 hectare national park, or cultivated spiritual cravings in the sacred house of Nazareth, which has now been transferred to Loreto, but is still sanctified as the house where Mary received the annunciation. Although the landscape around Monte Conero may appear sparsely inhabited, we are only 10 kilometres from the regional capital Ancona and some of Marche’s major tourist attractions, where even international celebrities might while away a couple of days.

From this point of view, I find the truth about Bob Dylan’s sojourn on the Adriatic coast of Italy a little disappointing. Apparently, the musician had entered a joint venture with one of Marches most celebrated producers of quality red wine, Le Terrazze. As a life-long Dylan fan, the owner of La Terrazze in Numana, Antonio Terni, had named one of his wines ‘Visions of J.’ after a song on Dylan’s ‘Blonde on Blonde’ album, and in appreciation Terni sent a few bottles backstage after one of Dylan’s European concerts. The taste was so convincing that Dylan agreed to be part of Terni’s next wine project called ‘Planet Waves’ after another Dylan album. Therefore we may conclude that Dylan stayed in Portonovo on business.

The back label of the first vintage, 2002, bears Dylan’s and Terni’s signatures, along with an enigmatic message that ends, 'What pushed two guys from opposite corners of the world to put their names on a bottle of Italian red wine? Destiny? Fate? Coincidence? Planet Waves.’

The producers only released 5 000 bottles of Planet Waves 2002, so they are extremely hard to find, but we can always hum along to 'All Along the Watchtower' and

'Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.'

While we wonder, what Giorgio Napolitano did on monte Conero? Somehow he does not strike me as the type of man who would build sand castles or play in the surf with his grandchildren ….

5 amusement parks around Riccione

2010-05-11T15:38:00.006+02:00

Riccione, Cattolica and other beach resorts in the area between Rimini and Pesaro are extremely popular among families with children, and few places in Italy have so much entertainment to offer this particular group of visitors. If there is a Las Vegas in Italy, it is here.

The five amusement and theme parks mentioned below are just the top of an iceberg that covers all sorts of play grounds, go-cart tracks, jumping castles, trampolines, arcade games, mini golf, horse riding, etc. Not forgetting the beach with its low water levels and white sand ideal for beach volley, beach bats, pedaloni and sand sculpting. Holidays in Riccione come with a guarantee against boredom.

Oltremare is a theme park where you can watch dolphins perform, but trained dolphins are just one of many attractions. Through playground activities combined with spectacular visual and sound effects Oltremare attempts to teach children about the origin of the universe, the survival of the fittest and environmental threats. Most visitors spend 5-6 hours in the park once they have paid the entrance fee of 25 euro for adults (over the age of 12 years) and 18 euro for children between 6 and 11 years. There are plenty cafes and restaurants in the park, but you are welcome to bring your own lunch packet and eat in the picnic area.

Fiabilandia is a Disneyland inspired (no comparison) fairy tale world for very small children with lots of slow rides surrounded by colourful plastic. The park gets a poor score in most internet reviews, but there seems to be general consent about it being toddler friendly though the prices are steep with 22 euro for everyone taller than 130 cm.

Italia in Miniature is a bit like Legoland, with Lilliput versions of major sights. Here you can see the gondolas of Venice, Rome’s Colosseum, the leaning tower of Pisa and Agrigento’s Valle di Templi in one afternoon mixed with amusement rides and driving lessons for children. The price is 20 euro for over 12 year olds and 15 euro for children up to 11 years. Entrance is free for children of less than 1 metre.

Aquafan is the most famous water park in Italy with many attractions for children, teenagers and grown-up. Noah’s ark with four slides, Extreme River and surfing Hill, music shows and discotheques are particularly popular. Entrance fees are 25 euro for two days (the second day is gratis) and 18 euro for children aged 6 to 11 years. An alternative, smaller scale water park is Beach Village http://www.beachvillagericcione.it/, where the pools are filled with sea water. A day here costs 12 euro for grown-ups and 10 euro for children.

For theme park enthusiasts Mirabilandia south of Ravenna takes the prize with some very wild rides and great shows .The park which is among the largest in Italy houses Europe’s second largest Ferris wheel, the Katun roller coaster with vertical loop, cobra and zero G rolls as well as two corkscrews. Great fun for everyone who like to move fast forward with their head hanging down. The price for adults is 31 euro and 25 euro for children below the age of 12 years. All tickets are valid for two consecutive days, as the second day is free.

Art showers in Dozza

2010-05-10T08:25:00.007+02:00

While more or less authorized street art takes over house exteriors in Rome and other big cities, residents and visitors in small town Dozza in Emilia-Romagna have long welcomed murals of a more permanent nature.

The name Dozza supposedly derives from ‘doccia’ - the Italian word for shower – because people in the Middle Ages would go here to bath, when most other places in the area suffered from drought and water shortages. An aqueduct led water from Monte del Re to a cistern in the hills a few kilometres to the south west of Imola, and when Dozza became a free commune in 1150 the town’s coat of arms was designed with a lion-eagle griffon drinking water.

Instead of bathing water, today’s visitors are given showers of fantastic food and interesting works of art. For a population of 6 000 people Dozza has a lot of really nice restaurants and even more wall paintings. Once every other year the town invites acknowledged contemporary artists along for a weekend known as the ‘Biennale del Muro Dipinto’, where new walls are decorated. The XXII festival was held in September 2009, and the initiative has transformed Dozza into an open air gallery.

The transformation of the historic village into a Città d'Arte started 50 years ago, when Dozza’s Pro Loco Association introduced the concept of Muro Dipinto, and invited the first team of artists over for a weekend. It was in June 1960, and unfortunately the event drowned in rain. Water poured down incessantly, so that locals and the few visitors who had come to witness the work in progress had to take turns holding umbrellas over the artists and their work. The weather helped to make the event unforgettable, and ever since then new artists have been asked to contribute to the Muro Dipinto at regular intervals of two years. So far, well-established Italian names such as Roberto Matta, Bruno Saetii Licata, Aligi Sassu, Remo Brindisi, Norma Mascellani, Concetto Pozzati and Alberto Sughi have all left their mark on Dozza. By now paintings cover most of the wall space available in the village.

The only undecorated building seems to be the medieval castle, which local nobility erected in the 14th century. Rocca Sforzesca is amazingly well preserved and serves as a museum where you can see utensils used in a medieval kitchen along with a well-equipped armoury and prison cells. The castle also houses a permanent exhibition of art complementing the works that can be seen in the surrounding streets.

Any visit to Dozza culminates at a restaurant serving local specialities. Some of them so refined and delicate that they almost qualify as small works of art.

The invasions of Vieste

2010-05-05T15:02:00.004+02:00

Over the past 10-15 years Vieste on the southeastern tip of Gargano has become a popular holiday resort. Italian and foreign tourist surf the waves, swarm sandy beaches and swim in the child-friendly (read: not very deep) emerald green sea against a picturesque backdrop of white lime stone cliffs. As soon as the sun sets browsers crowd the old town’s maze of steep, narrow streets with their range of restaurants, souvenirs and crafts shops, while enjoying the friendly atmosphere and warm velvety evening air.

The romance of the place is underlined by a legend attributed to Vieste’s landmark, a 25 m tall vertical monolith standing on the beach beneath the castle. This rock known as Pizzomunno was allegedly named after a young fisherman, who once upon a time fell in love with a local golden haired beauty called Cristalda. Every day the fisherman went out to sea, where a mermaid tried to lure him to become her king. Pizzomuno refused thinking of Cristalda, but that evening when he took his beloved for a walk along the beach, the jealous mermaid attacked and dragged the girl below waters. Pizzomunno was petrified by chock and sorrow, and the next morning the white rock had taken his place. The rock is still standing, and once a year Cristalda is said to come out of her abode in the sea to visit her lover in Vieste.

Apart from such fanciful fairy tales, it is hard to imagine that anything has ever disturbed the beauty and tranquility of this ancient fishing village, until you notice the ‘Chianca Amara’ or bitter stone outside Vieste cathedral.

The stone commemorates an attack by Turkish pirates under the command of Turgut Rais in July 1554. Turgut Rais had worked with Barbarossa and he was respected and feared for his martial skills and his ruthlessness, so when he attacked Vieste with a fleet of 60 galleys there was hardly any point in fighting back. The Swabian castle and the fortified city could not protect the local population, and after a few days most of the men had been butchered, while around 7 000 women and children were captured, deported and sold as slaves. The massacre must more or less have eradicated the town.

Fortunately today’s invasion of beachgoers is much more peaceful, and the 13 000 inhabitants of Vieste seem to live in harmony with and of the steady flow of tourists occupying their hotels, holiday homes and camp sites.

Speckless Italians

2010-05-03T14:57:00.003+02:00

I don’t think, I have ever encountered a population more obsessed with cleanliness than the Italians. Supermarket shelves and the cupboard below kitchen sinks in private homes boom with soap, soda, washing powder, cleaning agents and detergent for all intends and purposes. Magic concoctions that eat chalk, degrease cooking tiles, shine wooden, laminated or glass surfaces, remove damp spots or polish floors indoors and outdoors. As far as cleaning is concerned, Italians believe in efficiency, and to be efficient household products should be dedicated to one job only. Using universal mixtures that promise to clean everything indiscriminately is substandard and socially unacceptable.

Take a deep breath when you pass through a narrow street of old houses and inhale scent of artificial pine, lemon, lavender and eucalyptus characterizing the various detergents. And watch out for all the house-proud ladies who scrub the pavement outside their front door on a daily basis, before they empty their soapy water bucket in your shoes. Modern Italians like to keep the path clean.

With these experiences in mind, I was greatly surprised to read Charles Dickens description of the women of Genova in 1844.

According to Dickens’ ‘Pictures from Italy’, Italian women were “… very good-tempered, obliging, and industrious. Industry has not made them clean, for their habitations are extremely filthy, and their usual occupation on a fine Sunday morning, is to sit at their doors, hunting in each other’s heads. But their dwellings are so close and confined that if those parts of the city had been beaten down by Massena in the time of the terrible Blockade, it would have at least occasioned one public benefit among many misfortunes.”

It seems Italian cleanliness is not genetically or culturally defined after all, but a result of ordinary European progress, prosperity and increased focus on personal hygiene.

Ravenna in the rise and fall of the Roman Empire

2010-04-29T16:12:00.003+02:00

Long before anyone had ever heard of Venezia, people in nearby Ravenna paddled around among houses built on small islands in a marshy lagoon.

Today the sea has withdrawn and the boats have been replaced by cars, scooters bicycles and designer shoes perfect for promenading along the prosperous shop-fronts in Ravenna’s central labyrinth of pedestrian streets. In between high-heels and handmade leather, you’ll see a pair of sensible sneakers they are almost inevitably linked to tourists determined to visit all of Ravenna’s eight World Heritage Sites in one go.

But before giving in the study of early Christian mosaics, I’d like to dwell on Ravenna’s role in the rise and decline of the Roman Empire. It was in Ravenna Julius Ceasar gathered his forces after having conquered Gaul and invaded Britain, and from this obscure place he crossed the Rubicon, marched on Rome and became the unrivalled leader of the Roman world. And it was to Ravenna one of the last Roman Emperors, Flavius Honorius, fled when the Western Empire started to crumble. The town offered shelter in the highly inaccessible swamps and marshes and support from the imperial forces of the Eastern Roman Empire. In this way Ravenna enjoyed a peaceful period where early Christian art could flourish and prolonged imperial history in the West for another 70 years.

A happy coincidence for the world’s mosaics heritage and a great example of how history repeats itself – or at least returns to its point of origin.

ANAS and their deserted cherry-red charm

2010-04-27T15:07:00.003+02:00

Placed with regular intervals of about 50 km on old Italian state roads, you see the characteristic Casa Cantoniera A.N.A.S., which are so conspicuous they even have their own group on Flick. The cherry coloured buildings with white trimmings have been used as storage for road material and maintenance equipment for almost one hundred years, and up to the 1980s many of them also served as homes for the local Capo Cantoniere, who was responsible for regional road repairs, and his family.

Now most of the houses stand empty. Over the last 30 years, the activities of ANAS (Azienda Autonoma Statale della Strada) that used the houses to build and maintain a network of nearly 45.000 km road that constitute the backbone of Italian infrastructure have been privatized and decentralized.

Today ANAS’ road responsibilities comprise only 20.622 km including the free south Italian motorways and Rome’s great circular road, but according to Newspages.it the Azienda still owned a total of 3.150 buildings including 1.336 storage facilities, 1.179 case cantoniere or road man’s houses, 549 garages and 70 outbuildings in 2003. At that time they prepared a sale of half the case cantoniere, many of which are placed in very attractive locations, but somehow the plans have stalled. At least, most of the ANAS houses I have come across recently appear uninhabited and boarded up.

The sweet aspirations of a figtree

2010-04-26T15:30:00.004+02:00

In south Italy self-sown fig trees grow on every bare patch of dry red earth. You see them on motorway shoulders, in heaps of garbage and among the stony rubble of ancient muretti a secco. Figs are everywhere. Yet I can’t help being impressed by their insatiable desire to reach up, grow and achieve greatness in numbers and measured by the size of their leaves.

In the spring all branches on a naked figtree point upwards ending in bright green dots that turn out to be perfectly shaped leaves that are just about big enough to serve as a Lego doll bikini. The tininess does not last. For every blink of an eye, the leaves seem to grow, and after a few days fruits can be spotted. Like the branches and the leaves, fig fruits point upwards until they are ripe, soft and heavy with juices that weigh them down. For some types of figs this happens in June, and then the birds will be ready and waiting, leaving only empty shells behind. Summer figs are hard to get by.

Still, you will have another chance in September and October unless all the fruits have been sacrificed in a prolonged draught. Figtrees tackle hot periods without rain by turning their leaves into upward pointing cups ready to catch every drop of dew that may fall. As a last resort the tree may have to let go of the fruit, but this is very unusual. In the late summer you are up to your knees in windfalls and beneath each figtree there is a fragrant jam of sweet slippery fruit. Such fantastic affluence really.

Santa Claus in Southern Italy

2010-04-22T10:07:00.003+02:00

I have seen Santa Claus – and I am not talking about the coca cola branded pot-belly who haunts department stores and shopping malls with his white ho-ho-ho beard from mid-November. My Santa Claus is a real saint. His remains – or rather a tomb within a tomb within a tomb containing his remains - can be seen on a silver altar in a crypt under the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari. The old corpse still emits body fluids that have been known to effect miracles over the centuries, and therefore this liquid which with a slight euphemism is known as myrrh or manna can be bought in small bottles from the church souvenir store.

As patron saint of sailors, fishermen, children, merchants, thieves, wolfs, Russia and pawnbrokers, it is not only around Christmas Saint Nicholas enjoys a large following. He has a reputation for secret gift-giving, and his miracles are legendary. For example he is supposed to have resurrected three children, who had been slaughtered and cured by a butcher planning to sell them as ham. He made anonymous donations of gold coins to three young girls whose father was too poor to raise a dowry. And he refilled a shipload of wheat so that the population of Myra could actually eat their cake and have it.

The popularity of the saint was so great that Italian Catholics felt entitled to steal – or save – his bones from their original burial ground in Asia Minor. San Nicola lived in a small town near Antalya in Turkey from 270 to 347 AD , and when he died, he was buried in a local church. Around the turn of the first millennium Turkey converted to Islam, so sailors from Bari who had delivered wheat to Antiochia further East on the Turkish coast offered to buy the relics of San Nicola from the Greek monks guarding the sanctuary. The Greeks turned down the offer with moral consternation and tried to scare the Italians off with reference to divine anger and revenge, but some of the braver sailors nevertheless broke into the grave. Here they found a marble urn or sarcophagus containing the nicely scented fluid called “manna di San Nicola”, and one of the sailors had to immense himself in the holy water in order to extract the bones and skull of the saint. After this deed the grave robbers fled, but they managed to bring the relic home to Bari.

In May 1087 the remains of San Nicola arrived in Puglia amid great celebrations. An ox cart was set up to pull the saint’s coffin to the cathedral, but near the harbour the animals suddenly stopped, and it was decided to build a special Basilica for San Nicola on this exact spot. In consequence, the animals depicted at the Lion’s Portal are not just lions but oxen that have lost their brass horns. And if you take a close look at the walls of the Basilica you will find funeral inscriptions of the 18 sailors who brought the saint from Turkey to Italy.

Inside the church you will find a much venerated statue of San Nicola and downstairs in a beautifully vaulted crypt the bones and fluids of the saint are kept in a highly protected tomb. This tomb is opened but once every year to extract manna, a ceremony marking the end and culmination of the annual festival for San Nicola.

This festival takes places from May 7-9 to commemorate the arrival of the saint in Bari, and it attracts thousands of pilgrims who wish to pay tribute to San Nicola and witness the procession on May 8, when the statue of San Nicola is carried down to the sea and sailed across the marina in a fishing boat.

But the statue always returns to its position in the church from where is has protected Bari from all sorts of dangers including the allied invention during the last World War, followed by German bombings and the explosion of an American ship with a cargo of ammunition in the nearby harbour. Episodes proving that the sacred relics still work magic.

Are Italians afraid of trees?

2010-04-20T14:52:00.006+02:00

I may be mistaken – in which case I apologise profoundly – but I have got the feeling that many Italians are intimidated by trees, when they - the trees that is - appear in great numbers. The suspicion arose a couple of years ago in the Pollino national park in Basilicata and Calabria, when we stopped on a deserted hilltop to enjoy the view. Close by a broad dirt road led into a group of pine trees offering shadow and refreshing coolness, so we decided to take a walk. We had not gone more than 300 metres before a police car appeared out of nowhere.

- Where are you going? The policeman asked in a not too friendly tone that ended in a regular warning: Don’t walk too far. You might get lost.

The episode sort of baffled me. There were no military installations around and no signs forbidding picnics, hikes or Sunday strolls, so I imagined a mob-hunt or criminal hide-out in the hills were making the area temporarily off limits to the public. We were not setting out into the Amazon jungle or going mountain climbing the Dolomites, so the idea that the landscape might pose a threat did not even occur to me. I mean, I have been scared when lost in a dense Swedish forest, where you can literally walk for days without seeing traces of human life, but a pine wood in Pollino? Come on.

And then I forgot about it – until a recent visit at Tenute Al Bano Carrisi in Cellino San Marco. Behind the cantina the famous singer is supposed to have one of the biggest original forests on Salento, but the 60 hectare of eucalyptus, fir and pine trees were all fenced in and locked up. As we were standing by the gate, a skinny man in overalls approached saying “You won’t get in there”. When asked why, he explained that it was far too dangerous to walk around in the forest on your own, as you might get lost, but in the summer Tenute Al Bano arrange guided tours in a small fairground train for those who want to explore the wilderness.

Still, I really don’t get it! I mean, Little Red Riding Hood could not be led far astray by big bad wolfs in this forest, and even on a dark moonless night with no visible pebbles, Hansel and Gretel would be able to find their way out simply by walking along the fence until they reached the gate, so what is the problem?

If everything else fails you can always adopt the Swedish tree hugging method based on the assumption that someone will find you, before you get too exhausted to shout for help, unless of course there is an altogether different explanation behind the Italians’ urge to protect tourists from getting lost in forests.

Curiosity killed Pliny the Elder

2010-04-19T15:27:00.002+02:00

While we are all grounded and talking about erupting volcanoes, it may worthwhile to recall the fate of Pliny the Elder - the great Roman author, scientist and natural historian, who died under tragic circumstances near Pompeii in year 79 AD.

Pliny the Elder was incurably curious by and of nature as demonstrated by his effort to gather the entire field of ancient knowledge in one encyclopedia, Naturalis Historia, which at the time of his death counted 37 volumes. When he observed a more than 30 km tall mushroom cloud rising from Vesuvio on 24 August 79 AD, his first impulse was to rush nearer in order to study the phenomenon.

As commander of the Roman fleet, Pliny the Elder was stationed in Misenum on a cape 35 km to the northwest of the Bay of Naples, and he ordered a ship to sail him across the water to Pompeii. Halfway across the bay it was raining rocks, pumice and hot cinders, but instead of turning back the ship continued to Stabbiae (Castellammare di Stabia) south of Pompeii in an attempt to evacuate the people trapped there. Unfortunately, the winds that had brought Pliny and this men to shore, also prevented them from sailing off again, and they had to stay overnight.

The next day the volcano was still active, and Pliny and his companions had to use torches to see through the daytime darkness and tie pillows on their heads to protect them from falling rocks. Near the beach Pliny the Elder, who was a bit on the heavy side, had to sit down and rest, and he died of a stroke or a heart attack without getting up again.

Meanwhile his nephew Pliny the Younger stayed in Misenum and he was able to produced the only surviving eyewitness account of the death of his uncle and the erupting volcano. He wrote:

"He (Pliny the Elder) was at Misenum in his capacity as commander of the fleet on the 24th of August [sc. in 79 AD], when between 2 and 3 in the afternoon my mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance. He had had a sunbath, then a cold bath, and was reclining after dinner with his books. He called for his shoes and climbed up to where he could get the best view of the phenomenon. The cloud was rising from a mountain-at such a distance we couldn't tell which, but afterwards learned that it was Vesuvius. I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree. It rose into the sky on a very long "trunk" from which spread some "branches." I imagine it had been raised by a sudden blast, which then weakened, leaving the cloud unsupported so that its own weight caused it to spread sideways. Some of the cloud was white, in other parts there were dark patches of dirt and ash. The sight of it made the scientist in my uncle determined to see it from closer at hand." (text excerpt from Volcano Live)

Today a similar determination to observe Vesuvio at close hand seizes virtually every tourist visiting Campania. Travellers queue to walk round the summit caldera that encircles main cone, and the volcano seems perfectly calm and docile, but all the same it does have a reputation for sudden, violet explosions. For this reason, I found myself staring anxiously and with a rapidly spreading pelle d’oca into the mouth of volcano wondering whether the whirling dust could be a crack in the crust that prevents hot magma, gases and ash from sprouting from the earth’s interior? I was relieved, when we had bought a box of rock and pumice souvenirs and were heading down towards the car park, but still the volcano and the sight from Vesuvio over the bay of Naples on a clear day is an attraction not to be missed.

Edifying house paint

2010-04-16T11:11:00.003+02:00

I don’t think I have ever recommended plaster as a tourist attraction before, but with Trento I will make an exception. Several of the palaces in the old renaissance part of town are decorated with almost 500 year old frescos that – though waned and tattered – tell a story.

Some of the houses are painted with geometric or floral patterns in red, green and yellow, but there are also frescos with allegoric motifs, like the ones on Case Rella opposite the Duomo. Here you can get lost in pictures of Lady Justice weighing one bouncing child against the other. A man and woman in Alpine outfits with a chubby, naked and independent child, Conscience depicted as a rather suspect knife thrower; and Lady Luck holding her horn of plenty, and many others. It is like a silent movie from the time, when the Roman Catholic Church was busy redefining itself in relation to the upcoming Protestants.

From 1545-1563 a commission of cardinals gathered in Trento to address controversial issues such as corrupt bishops and priests, indulgences and financial abuses. This Council of Trent led to an institutional reform rejecting all compromise with the Protestants, and restating the basic tenets of the Roman Catholic faith.

During this period Trento flourished as a liberal humanistic state and wealthy families built renaissance palaces with an alpine twist and had the facades decorated by artists such as Marcello Fogolino, who ended up in Trento after having been banished from Venice for complicity in murder. In Trento he continued working on realistic representations of physiology and perspective in edifying allegories, and, in consequence, the exterior of many renaissance palaces in Trento still glow with untroubled innocence and men climbing up the ladder of virtue.

Source: Trento città del Concilio by Aldo Gorfer, 1995, and Wikipedia

A fine collection of curiosities

2010-04-14T12:19:00.004+02:00

You never know what to expect, when you enter a private museum. Take for example the Ribezzi-Petrosillo in Latiano, Brindisi. From the outside it looks like an ordinary house, but inside it is filled with the most remarkable collection of curiosities. The exhibition spans eons from archaeological finds of ancient coins and parchments to 20th century comic books and gynecological instruments. No doubt, the building has housed several generations of collectors with a really broad taste.

Our guide through the museum is a middle aged woman with a cloud of jet black hair floating around her head. She explains initially and in Italian-English, that she inherited the house with contents from her father and her grandfather. Her paternal grandfather was a lawyer, which explains the presence of Italy's first collection of legal documents from the 1500s, while her father practiced as a doctor and collected surgical instruments, photographs and a personal greeting from Gabriele d'Annnuncio. How the other effects have ended up in a townhouse in the middle of Salento, can only be guessed - for the tour of the museum would take several days, if the lady had to explain everything - but it is possible to walk through the millenniums and study the changing tableaus as an illustrated history of Italy in coffee table format. There are plenty of rarities to catch the attention.

Our hostess starts off with a passionate account the Messapians, who lived in Latiano before Roman times. In their tombs archeologists have found large black jars for mixing water and wine, ceramic jugs, gold jewelry, nails, arrowheads, and weights for the loom. There is also a kind of human horse brush to peel the outer layers of skin and dirt, and special jars with cubist handles that only belonged to dead men. It is all pretty amazing and extraordinarily well preserved.

From Messapian there is a leap to the 20th century and a room filled with Corriere dei Piccoli - a series of Italian comic books published from 1908 to 1995.

- The serie is not complete, but we have many collectors’ items, and this series has just had its 100th anniversary," the dark haired woman says.

I feel a bit like Umberto Eco's protagonist, Giambattista Yambo Bodoni, in La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana, when he encounters a stack of old cartoon heroes, but not for long, as the guide has already moved on a collection of coins from Magna Grecia to Euro. I give her 5 Danish kroner as a contribution to her collection of foreign coins and it is gratefully received. Perhaps it will peep out from its own cardboard hole next time we drop by the Ribezzi-Petrosillo museo.

The next two hours we are presented with very old, old and not so old Italian hunting gear, toys, cameras, swords, hot water bottles, musical instruments, hats and clothes – with small remnants of the messapian in between.

It is really quite fascinating.

For instance, there is a small machine that hunters 100 years ago used as a decoy. When the machine is pulled up, it rotates small mirrors, that catch sun rays, and lure birds into thinking they have found water. In this way the hunters had something to aim at. There is also a Lanterna Magica, that is a small container with space for an image strip, a peep hole and a candle. This was rich children’s substitute for a television. And there are autographs and pictures of the last Italian king Vittorio Emmanuele, opera composer Puccini and "nostro il Duce" as the lady says, before she opens the doors to the music room.

Here she displays a couple of musical boxes that still work, if you turn the handle. Energetically, the guide plays a mazurka and invites us to dance, but being the only guests in the museum, we prefer to clap politely. And then we all enjoy a polka.

The concert and tour ends in a friendly, uplifting atmosphere to the tune of the Marseillaise and we thank our guide - and her husband, her daughter and a new arrival - heartily for a museum experience out of the ordinary.

Drink with the fauns and satyrs in Ancona

2010-04-13T12:31:00.002+02:00

By cloning goats with men, the ancient Greeks and Romans constructed a personification of an orgiastic, untamed libido, and it is still peeping out on us from medieval facades and monuments. Most of the time you only have to see the horned, mocking face to imagine the lower half of the manimal with tail, hooves and other primal attributes.

On the medieval stretch of Corso Mazzini in Ancona between Piazza del Teatro and Piazza Roma, no less than 13 fauns and/or satyrs stick out their tongues at shoppers. The 12 sardonic bronze masks are presumably sons of Pan, who himself is carved in stone and placed in their midst, a position held for almost 500 years.

La fontana del Calamo or Fontana delle tredici Cannelle was designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi in 1560 as a replacement for an antique Greek fountain that had been demolished in 1503. The faces are in other words incredibly old, but they keep well, and they still sprout water from the canes or pipes in their mouths.

Satyrs are traditionally associated with fighting and wild drunkenness, but the locals nevertheless maintain that you should not leave Ancona without drinking with the Paneides, if you wish to return, that is. And who wouldn’t want to return to this magic seaport, where you can see the sun rise and set over the sea without changing location?

How to report an Italian burglary

2010-04-06T12:51:00.005+02:00

Last week someone stole our electric current by pulling a wire connecting the house with Enel’s installations by the gate out of the ground and cutting it off. It cost us a cold night with no light and no water along with a day’s work and a bill of 77 Euros for replacements and reinstallations.

Three days later at 9 pm, the electricity disappeared again, and knowing the procedure I tried to contact Enel, but was cut off continuously by the voice-response diy telephone service, which - it appears - does not accept calls from mobile phones. In other words, we had to spend another cold night without light or water, before a friend in town with a permanent phone could alert the electricity company. This time the burglars had stolen Enel’s main supply line to the area. Presumably, to get hold of the cobber wire inside the cable. That is what I would call a power cut.

The entire neighbourhood was enraged.

- We should all report this in order to make the police take the problem seriously and check up on the vagrants sneaking about out here. All the time something is stolen from rural houses, and although the cost of the stolen goods may seem insignificant, it does give us a lot of bother, was the general opinion.

So in an act of solidarity and good citizenship, we stopped by the Polizia Municipale to report the burglary. The polizotto was very sympathetic, but he had to refer us to the carabinieri, where another uniformed gentleman with impressive headgear, accepted our complaint, but…

-I would like to make a formal report, but I cannot. Prima, because your neighbourhood is in another municipality, which means that it is outside of our jurisdiction. And Seconda, because our computer system is down, and no one can report anything right now – this is not our fault, but something that has gone wrong in Roma. So you should report this to the police in the next town, but wait a few days until their computers are up and running.

The response appalled people in the countryside:

- Ma dai, one of them shouted, how can the carabinieri say this is not their jurisdiction, when we have an emergency. What if someone snatched an old lady’s handbag and ran across the street to another municipality. Would the carabinieri stop the pursuit in the middle of the street, and say sorry, not our jurisdiction?

- What kind of help is this? He asked performing a pantomime of bag snatching, running, pursuing and stopping short before crossing an invisible boundary. He went on to imitate a man with a heart attack, who could not receive medical help from a doctor from another municipality.

By then the drama turned into a joke, but still, the neighbour had made his point.

Po Plain looks ever so pretty in pink

2010-04-03T10:25:00.003+02:00

Most of the time the Po Valley from Verona over Modena to Rimini is just plain plain with flat endless fields stretching far into the horizon only to be interrupted by inevitable traffic jams around Borgo Panigale and San Lazzero and a view to brand new concrete high-rises, encircling charming old city centres. But, for a couple of weeks each spring the plain becomes downright beautiful, when thousands of fruit trees bloom and cover the area with a vast patchwork of delicate rosy white, brigh neon green and candyfloss-coloured sugar-pink.

I suppose the white in time will become apples and pears, pink flowers turn into peaches and abricos and green fields grow up to be corn and wheat. To think that Pianura Padana, which dystopians see as a European Bombay, when all the 20 million potential communiters living on the plain merge into one big city, is also one of the main producers of fruit and vegetables for the European market is amazing. And right now the cultivated nature of the Po Valley can be enjoyed in technicolour by everyone passing through the lower plain.

Bearing the cross

2010-03-26T11:05:00.002+01:00

Last week I wrote about the pappamusci in Francavilla Fontana who perform a 24-hour walkathon on bare feet to show their sympathy with Jesus and atone for their sins. I never got round to the culmination of the rite, which takes place in the evening of Good Friday, when all the pappamusci and numerous others perform ‘la processione dei misteri’.

In Francanvilla as in Taranto and Grottaglie all the hooded ‘perdoni’ or ‘pappamusci’ line up in a parade tailed off by heavy wooden figures depicting the various stages of the suffering of Christ. But in Francevilla they have added an extra touch of drama to the procession by letting young men test their strength on wooded crosses.

I do not know the weight of a 7 metre tree trunk with a cross bar of 3 metres, but to judge from the sighs and panting of men, hauling them over the cobblestoned streets, crosses are a heavy load to bear. And you cannot help wondering what spur the bizarre urge to do so. Still, it is a truely amazing spectacle to witness 50 or 70 crosses being dragged through town by barefooted men in medieval cloaks and hoods, while a rattling Priest’s synchronize the progress. And to think that this custom has survived for centuries.

The ritual in Francavilla Fontana ends around midnight, when the Black Madonna leaves the cathedral and makes her round through town, and the next morning is an ordinary crowd gathering market day. In the hustle among the stalls, I keep looking for telltale signs like a limp or sore shoulder that might reveal the identity of the persons concealed behind the hoods’ of the pappamusci, but so far it has all been guesswork and bragging. Even the churches are said to destroy the list of participants immediately after Good Friday.

Spring in an oil field

2010-03-22T14:47:00.007+01:00

It starts the moment the morning sun sends the first rays of light up over the horizon and pushes the darkness aside. The aggravating broom from a small combustion engine works better than most alarm clocks, and the noise continues throughout the day for weeks on end.

At first, I thought we had accidentally bought a small Italian farm house lined up to a noisy motor cross racing track, and the suspicion made me rather grumpy. Wannabe motor bikers are not ideal neighbours, when you dream of an Italian house in the country. In fact, I think the people who sell houses should be obliged to warn against noise pollution.

Anyway, it is difficult to complain, when you cannot identify the source of the annoying motor noise. Our house is surrounded by olive trees, and it would be difficult to hide any larger that toy-sized racing track in their middle. The noise posed a regular enigma, until we discovered the truth of the old saying about not being able to see the forest for trees.

The motor noise turned out to derive from olive trees that have to be pruned with 6-8 years intervals in order to provide a satisfying outcome, and this means that chainsaws cut through the tranquillity of every spring. In the early morning, gangs of olive pruning workers arrive and start hollowing the crown of the tree under the supervision of a maestro. They remove all branches except the really big ones which are left with a few twigs. The cut-offs are douched in petrol and lighted as gigantic bonfires, and the rest of the spring newly pruned olive trees stand around virtually naked.

This gives you a chance to wonder about the significance of shape. In Puglia olive crowns can be cropped a cono, a cilindro, a vaso, a vaso polifinicos, a vaso cespugliato, etc., and the shape is said to depend on the age of the tree and the fruit collecting techniques employed. That I don’t know about, but I can see that cropping methods in the provinces of Foggia, Bari and Northern Brindisi differ from the technique used in Taranto, Lecce and Southern Brindisi.

Olive farmers in northern Puglia design their trees with branches hanging down so they resemble crooked old people, who have been frozen in a stop dance. Very old trees with a split trunk, even look as if the tree people are standing on two legs.

Further south in Salento cropped olive crowns are formed like cups, letting plenty of light into the middle of the trees.

And then there are the rich and wealthy, who can afford to buy olive oil, and therefore use their olive trees for decorative purposes only. These trees are given a puddle clip with fluffy, pompons of foliage around the ankles in a cut that requires frequent grooming. Ornamental olive trees are not found in my neighbourhood, where trees are valued for their produce. An olive tree in its best age (4-600 years) will after all give you 10-15 litres of extra virgin olive oil each year, provided that it is nourished, swept and pruned according to local prescriptions.

In consequence, we all have to live with the infernal noise of hundreds of petrol-driven chainsaws each spring. After all, Puglia has a reputation as a Saudi Arabia of Southern Europe to defend.

The beauty of Macchia Mediterranea

2010-03-19T13:14:00.004+01:00

Initially, I found it a bit difficult to distinguish between Italian shrubland and Italian wasteland, as a lot of people tend to dump rubbish like broken refrigerators, old cupboards with tired hinges and stuffing spilling armchairs in the periphery of open land. Yet, I could not help noticing the reverence with which the locals talked about the macchia mediterranea. Macchia seemed like a magic word that could push back civilization, protect the seaside from concrete holiday hotels and building developments and arise revitalized from the ashes of unavoidable bush fires like the mythological phoenix.

- The macchia mediterranea can be found along the coasts throughout the Mediterranea Basin, but in many places this natural habitat is threathened by agriculture and land exploitation, and in some places it has been almost extinguished. That’s why the local government in Puglia has protected the macchia of this region so that it can only be used for recreational purposes.The macchia contains lots of rare plants, flowers and wild life that should be preserved, a lawyer acquaintance explained.

The explanation caused me to observe the stony and sandy shrublands that resemble northern European moors more closely, and gradually their wild natural beauty grew on me.

Each spring the desolate, evergrey, treeless desert sprouts an orgy of flowers and fragrances. There are purple pillows of wild thyme, delicate rosemary with tine blue violet flowers, white myrtle, and yellow broom dotted with red poppies, rosy sand verbena and gorgeous pink sunflowers, I can’t identify, although they spread like weeds

So if you happen to go near the Italian coast over the next couple of months, watch out for the macchia mediterranea. There is much to be appreciated. And if you happen to know the name of the pink sun flowers (see photo above)that grow in the sand dunes in a finger-nailed and a cup-sized version, please, let me know;-)

Walking barefoot for Jesus

2010-03-18T15:18:00.004+01:00

I really love Italy during the Settimana Santa. Throughout the country, people celebrate Easter with sacred rites and rituals that evoke the mystery of ancient beliefs in a highly modern setting. Each procession works pure magic, like ’il pellegrinaggio ai Sepolcri’ in Francavilla Fontana.

- You get blood blisters the size of bird’s eggs. Your feet turn black, and you are unable to walk anywhere for days afterwards, but it is nothing compared to the satisfaction of having completed the ‘pappamusci’, a born and bred Francavillese, who participated in the annual purification ritual once many years ago, vividly recalls.

Like many of his peers, my friend has walked barefoot through town as one of the hooded pilgrims, known locally as ‘pappamusci’. The pilgrimage begins Maundy Thursday afternoon and continues non-stop for 24 hours, as an exhibition of true religious stamina.‘Pappamusci’are dressed in laced white robes with a string around the waist, cream-coloured hats and capes and aprons with embroidery saying ‘Décor’ and ‘Carmeli’. They walk in couples from one church to the next with stricktly measured, synchronised steps, a rosary in one hand and a rod in the other, but it is the terrifying and concealing headgear that attracts most attention.

The pilgrims should remain anonymous, and therefore their faces are covered by pointed hoods with small holes for the eyes. They resemble Ku Klux Klan members as featured in American movies, yet there is no pent-up violence hidden behind their attire. The pilgrimage aims for purification and perfection, and all men from Francavilla should participate in the procession at least once in their lives.

The name ‘pappamusci’ allegedly derives from Greek, meaning the black priest or the slow and quiet priest. Several religious orders stage similar events, but this particular tradition has probably come to Francavilla Fontana with the Spanish Jesuits in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since then the pilgrimage has been a recurring event for Easter.

Over 24 hours the pilgrims go from church to church, and before entering they tap their rod in the ground and greet other pilgrims. Inside the church they continue up to the altar, kneel and pray, before continuing the journey. Each movement has been thoroughly choreographed and handed down from farther to son, without ever being formally registrered in liturgy.

My friend laughingly maintains that his one-time pilgrimage will have earned him a lifetime of forgiveness and absolution for all his sins, but his wife is not convinced. She thinks it is about time, he took another walk without shoes on the stony, cold pavements.

The art of multiple stop shopping

2010-03-17T11:07:00.004+01:00

Being an Italian housewife is a full-time job. The daily shopping round cannot be done in less than 2-3 hours, as you still frequent the baker for bread, the butcher for meat, and the market for vegetables in spite of the proximity of supermarkets and iper mercati. In addition, you have to go to special shops if you are in need of a particular electric gizmo, an o-ring for the tap or a little fertilizer for the orange trees . Every little thing has its own store, and it can be an art to find it.

On top of this, you are wrong, if you think that any old bakery or butcher shop will do. Italian housewives are very particular in their choice of shops based on the shop’s quality, cleanliness and congregation, and talk runs if you are seen to enter the wrong establishment. The only compensation is that shopping can be perceived as a highly rewarding, social event.

You never enter a local Southitalian shop without a loud buon giorno. Silence is considered rude to such a degree that is deserves the elevator gaze, and greetings should also be exchanged on the way out. In between you queue, while other customers update the shop assitent on the progress of a mother’s cold and while the butcher upon request minces 200 gr of meat three times. Every shopping experience comes with copious amounts of chitchat, personal advice and opinions on everything from politics to cooking.

Some time ago I had been waiting for 15 minutes at the butcher, before it finally became my turn. I wanted vitello chopped into cubes for ragu, and as I preferred a piece of meat without bones, the butchers had to go out back to retrieve a new cut. When he returned, a woman behind me mumbled something about foreigners always having special requests for the preparation of their strange national dishes. A type of comment that is unfortunately becoming more frequent, and which I always pretend not to understand or hear. This time, however, the butcher knew better.

- Anche la signora non è Italiana, he explained kindly. She is from Spain, but has been living here for decades.

And then we could all exchange pleasantries on the attractions of Italy.

Sometimes it requires specific background knowledge to arrive at the right interpretation of very simple statements. But the fact that the woman in the shop was not trying to bully foreigners, but practised a special kind of expat bonding, sure added extra flavour to the ragu.

Trip in a time machine

2010-03-13T11:33:00.003+01:00

Most of the time, Oria is a quite ordinary Salento town with 15 000 inhabitants, cattedrale, castello ‘Svevo’ and – in clear weather – a nice view of two seas. But Palm Sunday the town takes a trip in a time machine and transform into Jerusalem 2 000 years ago, like several other towns throughout Italy.

Every year local churches and enthusiastic citizens stage ‘La Passione’. A play presenting the last days of Christ as a kind of total theater with a richness of details, props, extras and locations to make the drama all the more vivid and real. For the spectators it is almost like being present in Gethsemane and on Golgatha and witnessing the crucifixion of Christ.

According to lamppost announcements, ‘La Passione’ begins at 7:30 pm, but Southitalians live by their own watch. After one hour a small group has gathered in the cold March evening, but the organizers are still testing mikes and speakers, and when spotlights are turned on they reveal nothing but the outline of a meadow with a few olive trees. In the background the dark, bombastic castle looms and a few priests try hard to keep track of the more than 200 participating amateurs, who are eaglerly adding the finishing touches to their costumes.

Finally, loud cracks and whistling become decipherable words, and a speaker or tape recorder reads the Gospel, while Jesus and his apostles enter the scene. In a corner Judah can be glimpsed accepting the 30 pieces of silver, he gets for his betrayal, a table is set for the last supper and Jesus is anointed. It is amazing how Bible history suddenly becomes alive.

Every Easter scene in the Holy Book is acted out without shortcuts or popular abbreviation. And the drama, the setting and the atmosphere provides the impression of watching Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper or a painting by Giotto in a 3D Avatar version.

As the evening gets colder Jesus starts shaking with death throes under the olive tree, and the audience sighs in relief when the Savior is apprehended and escorted through streets lined with palm leaves and olive boughs to an open piazza, where the spectacle continues with the addition of knights on horseback. The horses seem nervous due to the crowd and the narrow streets, but everything is under control, and the audiences applaud to show their appreciation.

‘La Passione’ culminated around midnight, when Pontius Pilate washes his hands in front of the cathedral, and finally Oria is ready for Easter.

Other towns in Italy arrange similar spectacles.

Padlocked love affairs

2010-03-11T10:51:00.003+01:00

It all started with Federico Moccia’s novels ‘Tre metri sopra il cielo’ and ‘Ho voglia di te’ and the movies of the same names. Young Italians got caught by the padlock fad, at a time when padlocks as a symbol of love had already been known over large parts of the world for years.

In the film ‘Ho voglio di te’ from 2006 the young lovers write their names on a padlock and chains it to a lamppost on Ponte Milvio iin Rome. They then proceed to thrown the key into the Tiber, as a symbol of unbreakable love. Cute.

The movie was a great success and since then lovers have felt urged to copy the romance. Already in the spring 2007 the lamppost on Ponte Milvio succumbed under the weight of the padlack curtain, and the municipality has been forced to cut them down on a regular basis. They have also tried to encourage the use of virtual padlocks on the internet, but it is never quite the same.

Therefore the craze continued to spread throughout Italy. New locks appeared faster than the authorities could remove them, and they even blemished public munuments like the Trevi Fountain in Rome and Ponte Vecchio in Florence. To prevent irreparable damage to national heritage, the municipality decided to place bars and chains dedicated especially to padlocked love on Ponte Milvio. That way the lamppost has been saved from collapse. And street vendors around the bridge have extended their range of goods to include ironmongery, making it much easier to throw away the key to your heart.

It this way padlocks have become a tourist attraction and a ritual as trivial as the coins thrown into the Trevi Fountain and shoe tossing.

Five things to do around Lake Como

2010-03-10T14:15:00.005+01:00

Guide books brim with suggestions on what to do in various parts of the world, which means that tourists are inevitably circling, pushing and queing around the same places. This list points to some of the lesser attractions around Lake Como as an alternative or a supplement to the more popular Villa d’Este at Cernobbio, Villa Carlotta near Tremezzo and the beauty of Bellagio.

Photograph a paparazzi in Laglio
Italians are virtually obsessed with American film star George Cloony, who has bought no less than tree villas in Laglio on the west coast of Lake Como, where he stays once in a while. Chances of seeing Mr. Clooney are minimal, but if you happen to be in the neighbourhood, you might as well watch out for possible paparrazzis. They can be distinguished from ordinary tourists by the size and length of their tele lenses.

Hommage to a battery
It is hard to imagine a world without batteries powering mobile phones, pocket lights and mechanical toys, but this invention that shaped the modern world is little more than 200 years old. It springs from the shores of Lake Como, where physicist Alessandro Volta experimented with frog legs as conductors of electricity. From these experiments he derived the voltaic pile, and the rest is history as demonstrated in Tempio Voltaiano which is one of Como’s more popular museums.

Walk with a view
A classic outing from Como city is a trip on the funiculare to Brunate 720 metres above sea level from where there is a fantastic view of Monte Rosa, Villa d’Este and the lake on a clear day. From Brunate there are two walking paths back to Como: One follows the funicolare and the other takes you past a former convent from the 15th century called l’Eremo di San Donato. Alternatively, you can walk further up from Brunate to San Maurizio, Cao or Monte Piatto, where you may find archeological excarvations along the way.

Explore the villas from the lake
Motorboats, rowboats, canoes and kayaks can be rented by the hour at several harbours on the lake. From here you can sail along the coast and explore faboulous villas like Villa Pliniana near Torno. Villa Pliniana is named after the spring that feeds a natural waterfall running through the house’s courtyard. It was built in 1573 by Count Giovanni Anguissola, and it has housed people like Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Byron, Stendhal, Foscolo and Alessandro Manzoni whose novel I promessi sposi takes place in Lecco.

An industry of worms
Como has been the centre of European silk production for the last 4-500 years, when Milan assumed prominence as fashion capital. The first silkworms were smuggled out of China in the sixth century and several Italian towns took up the labour intensive business of raising and breeding silkworm. Production of silk thread stopped after the Second World War, in recognition of the fact that it takes 100 cocoons to make just one tie, but the comaschi still have the expertise in weaving and dyeing silk fabrics made from imported Chinese fibres. The story of silk production through the centuries can be studied at the Silk Museum in Como, and around the city there are several factory outlets offering high quality silk garments at really attractive prices.

Bakeries selling leftovers from the Middle Ages

2010-03-08T13:53:00.003+01:00

Generally praised as a culinary stronghold, it is amazing to note that the people of central Italy don’t know how to bake bread. In my opinion, bread from most parts of Tuscany and Umbria is compact, dry, bland and devoid of character, and therefore local housewives tend to camouflage the bread as crostini, bruschetta, panzanella or minestra and other courses that conceal the tastelessness.

In addition or perhaps as a consequence, bakeries in Tuscany and Umbria are hard to find, and when you finally spot a ‘panettiere’, they are either closed (due to the weather, the time of day, the time of week or the time of year) or out of bread. All you can hope to find when the shops reopen in the afternoon is a pound of baked flour so hard that it could be used in self defense as an instant knock out for approaching muggers. The taste is non-existent.

Of course the tasteless Umbrian and Tuscan bread has a perfectly sensible explanation.

In the early Middle Ages, the rulers of Pisa cut off salt supplies lines from the coast in retaliation of a fall out with their rival in Florence. This made salt so costly that common husbandry forced people in central Tuscany to prepare bread without the addition of salt, and the inhabitants of Umbria had a similar experience.

In 1540, the slightly corrupt Pope Paul III imposed an indirect tax on salt, which immediately changed the culinary habits. The Pope forced the citizens of Perugia to purchase salt from the pontificates, and this in reality doubled the price, and caused major headaches as salt was a most effective means for the preservation of food. In response the people of Perugia sought to limit consumption and stopped adding salt to bread, and some of them are still willing to swear that ‘filone’ tastes better that way.

So even though salt tax has long been abolished and the salt supply lines to central Tuscany reestablished, the consequences live on. Instead of preparing bread with salt, people of central Italy prefer to bury their bread in heaps of tomatoes, onions, basil and olive oil. They drown it in a ribollita with cabbage, leeks, onions, potatos and beans. Or dissolve it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar before tossing in tomatoes, cucumbers and celery for a bread salad.

That way, stale Tuscan and Umbrian bread gives us a taste of history and becomes edible for outsiders without a share in the medieval salt wars.

Splashes of spring

2010-03-02T14:22:00.004+01:00

American author Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885) is best known for the novel Ramona, but she also published a book of Verses based on her experiences during a tour through Germany and Italy in 1869. Her poem of poppies invariably brings Italian spring to my mind.

Poppies on the wheat
Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, with toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.

The farmer does not know
That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,
Counting the bread and wine for autumn’s gain,
But I, - I smile to think that days remain
Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet
No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,
I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,
Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Traffic fines in Italy

2010-02-26T13:30:00.005+01:00

Some months ago we received a registered letter from Montalbano. That is not “il commissario” known from the Italian TV-series, but a town by the same name in the province of Matera in Basilicata. A couple of the town’s 7 679 inhabitants or a traffic surveillance camera had registered our car while speeding on a desolated stretch of highway between Montalbano and Scanzano Ionico seven months earlier. The car had travelled with a speed of 68 km/h (42.3 mph) where the legal speed limit is 65 km/h (40.4 mph)

This violation of traffic rules costed us a ticket of 41 euro, which has been paid without complaints. Speed limits must be respected, even if the infringement could in theory lie in the calibration of the measuring equipment.

Almost simultaneously a colleague had an additional bill from the car rental company used during a short holiday in Florence. The rented car had been placed at a turning space for a short period of time, while my colleague was looking for directions, and this had induced a parking fine, which the car rental company would like to have refunded. My colleague was glad the parking authorities did not spoiled her holiday by blocking the wheels and towing the car out of town as frequently happens to illegally parked cars in northern Italy. Compared to such waste of valuable vacation time and money, the penalty seemed preferable and fair.

Acceptance was not the attitude, when some relatives shortly afterwards received a fine of 90 euros after a one hour stay in Arezzo last autumn. Inadvertedly, they had entered a ZTL zone, not knowing that ZTL is short for Zona Traffico Limitato and not understanding the meaning of the Italian words anyway. They had no idea that entering a ZTL street with your car requires a special permit, eg. in the form of a document from the hotel saying that the hotel has informed the police about visitors in a car with your cars number plate. The police will then pick up the fine before it is sent, and if it should show up in the mail, you can - bocca lupo – get the fine cancelled by sending a copy of the document from the hotel (provided you have kept it). Otherwise, there is nothing for it but to pay.

A lot of people think ZTL works as a literal tourist trap. These zones are found in an increasing number of Italian cities and they are guarded with surveillance cameras, which means that you have to be extremely lucky to sneak through.

According to an article in the English language newspaper The Florentine from February last year traffic violations occur with 40 second intervals in Florence. Every minute the local police issues 90 tickets, equaling 1 253 tickes a day. This provides the municipality with an additional income of 52 million euros annually. An amount that has risen dramatically in recent years.

Of the 859 959 traffic violations that issued by traffic police in Florence in 2008, 457 613 were issued to motorists who entered limited traffic zones without the required permit; 250 415 were given to drivers who parked in no-parking zones; 22 904 were issued for speeding; and 7 700 were given for having run a red light. Compared to this drunk-driving is a minor violation, as only 303 drivers were fines for drunkenness in 2008.

Seasick fishermen in Termoli

2010-02-25T08:37:00.003+01:00

For some reason, I have always associated the characteristic Trabucchi - or trabocchi as it is also spelled - with the Gargano peninsula. These fragile wooden constructions that float above the water like a daddy longlegs caught in a web of weights, pulleys, pine sticks, rods and fishing nets, ready to seize any fish swimming past can be seen on the coats between Vieste and Peschici, but the ingenious fishing machines are also used further north. For instance, trabucchi surround Termoli’s old town, and although the contraptions have lost their economic importance they are still in use.

Connoisseurs may even spot a difference between Puglian versions and trabucchi in Abruzzo and Molise. On Gargano, the trabucchi fishing machines are placed on a rock overhanging the sea, fishermen in Abruzzo and Molise go farther out from the shore when they construct their trabucchi platforms, which can be accessed through a long jetty. The sea depth has to exceed 5 metres for the trabucchi to work and it should be placed correctly in relation to currents, seabed conditions, et cetera.

According to some sources the trabucchi originated in Asia Minor and was brought to Italy be the Turks. Other sources claim that the machine was invented by a seasick fisherman who wanted to pursue his profession with firm ground under his feet. And then there are those who maintain that the contruction sprung from the mind of fishermen who wanted to be able to work safely regardless of the weather. In any event, the trabucchis have been known from the mid 18th century, when the first equipment that should making fishing more like farming was introduced.

The machine is operated by a fisherman who sits with lowered nets in the shelter of the house, waiting for a shoal of fish to swim by. When the fish have reached the right position, the net is pulled up with the catch. In Termoli you can sit on a bench and study the trabucchi in operation, which is very entertaining, but personally I have not seen them land a worthwhile catch. The amount and size of the fish seem incredibly small compared to the magnitude of the apparatus.

Nonetheless, trabucchi have had great importance for the residents of Termoli up to World War II, when the fishing machines provided a steady supply of food. The equipment is therefore treated with great reverence and kept in good working condition. And in the meantime it has developed into a significant tourist attraction. Several trabucchi owners are willing to let tourists try their fishing luck from the platforms for a fee, and the gear does make a change from from normal angling and fly fishing.

Fresh beans wrapped up in cotton wool

2010-02-24T13:34:00.002+01:00

In northern Europe we are still caught in the depth of winter, but as soon as you pass the Alps signs of spring shoot up and multiply as you go south. The grass seems greener in a purely literal sense, water flows faster in the rivers and cute white flowers adorn the apple trees. Further south, forsythia and mimosa blossom with such excessive exuberance that I - for one - have had my share of yellow flowers for the rest of the year, and pink peach blossoms make part of the Tavoliere look as if it has been covered in beet root salad. Touring Italy from north to south in the spring time leaves splashes of psychedelic colour on the inside of your eyelids.

Still, it is not the bright vivid colours that constitute the strongest sign of spring in my book, but a rather plain looking bean that is one of the first crops to hit markets and restaurants after a long winter and tastes delicious when eaten fresh from the pod. Broad beans or fave are so easy to cultivate that they lost their attraction in Scandinavia, once people could afford to buy more exotic, imported vegetables, but in Italy and in other countries around the Mediterranean they are highly appreciated.

I still remember the first time a limp, hunchbacked waiter at a popular restaurant in Emilia-Romagna produced a handful of bright green bean pods from his pocket and threw them on the table along with a slice of pecorino and a drop of the local olive oil. The surprise of opening a long, lumpy bean pod and finding a string of green kidney shaped beans packed in soft cottonwool was pure magic. And the feeling magnified when you started eating the beans that taste like a cross between sweet peas and bitter rocket.

Fresh fave are so much more refreshing that the porrigde prepared from dried fave in southern Italy, where housewives spend hours on plastic chairs outside their houses while shelling fave beans. In fact, their use of fave resembles the Egyptian Ful Medames served the Italian way with chicory rocket salad (for recipies in Italian see ammodomio or singleitaly), but this is an acquired taste you have to be south Italian to really appreciate. Whereas the fresh, crispy and slightly bitter green beans are truely delicious as a pure taste of spring.

Carnevale Romano today and 165 years’ ago

2010-02-23T15:38:00.005+01:00

Venezia, Verona, Viareggio and Putignano undoubtedly stage the most spectacular Italian carnivals, but throughout the country cities mark the period before lent with fancy dress parades and other events. In Rome there is a tradition for soap bubbles and buskers entertaining the crowd with juggling and fire eating, not to mention horse riding and unbelievable amounts of confetti covering the streets like freshly fallen snow.

The contemporary Carnevale Romano is basically a childrens’ party, and I can’t help wondering, if these things were more fun in the old days, or if the surviving reports have just been written by more susceptible minds. Take Charles Dickens who stayed in Rome during the carnival in 1845 and left this account published in Pictures from Italy:

“On Monday afternoon at one or two o’clock, there began to be a great rattling of carriages into the court-yard of the hotel… and, now and then, a swift shooting across some doorway or balcony, of a straggling stranger in a facy dress: not yet sufficiently well used to the same, to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion. All the carriages were open, and had the linings carefully covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant pelting of sugar-plums; and people were packing and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occupants, enormous sacks and baskets full of these confetti, together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally running over.”

Preparations completed, the Dickens family did as the Romans, and got into the own confetti and flower stuffed carriage and started driving upu and down the Corso. The Roman Carnival has not changed scenes since the mid 19th century, it is still centred around Piazza del Popolo and the Corso, which Dickens describes as “a street a mile long; a street of shops, and palaces and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza. There are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house … put there in general with so little order or regularity that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner.”

In Dickens' day, all carriages went up and down the streets in a long line, occasionally interchanging “a volley of confetti” with the carriage in front or behind, and in a narrow lane sugar-plums and nosegays began to fly around, pretty smartly. One gentleman “attired as a Greek warrior” managed to toss a bouquet to a young lady in a first floor window with impressing precision, and in return he “received an orange from a house-top, full on his left ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited. Especially, as he was standing up at the time; and in consequence of the carriage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered ignominiously, and buried himself among his flowers”.

Dickens goes on to describe the atmosphere in some detail and concludes:

“…the main pleasure of the scene consisting in its perfect good temper; in its bright, and infinite, and flashing variety; and in its entire abandonment to the mad humour of the time – an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past four o’clock, when he is suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the whole business of his existence…”

The horses were then spurred to race riderless along the length of the Corso only to be caught at the finish line by carpets blocking the street. An abandon and recklessness that cannot be found in the 21st century equestrian show held under the cover of a giant tent on Piazza del Popolo and transmitted on big screens, but the children enjoy the party, nevertheless, and it will retain a strong presence in the memory of all participants for weeks to come along with the confetti struck in every crevice between the cobbled stones of the Corso and Piazza del Popolo.

Crossing the Rubicon

2010-02-22T15:49:00.003+01:00

When travelling in Italy you are constently stumbling over pieces and places of history. Take a drive along the busy E55 from Rimini and Venezia, and you will suddenly find yourself crossing the Rubicon. A small bridge over a placid looking stream, which may or may not be identical with the mighty river the Roman Legions feared to cross, does not look like a point of no return, but 2000 years ago is constituted the northern boundary of the Roman Empire, and any general who crossed the river with an army of men, without permission from the Senate, committed rebellion.

In the year 49 BC after careful deliberations, Julius Caesar ordered his men to cross the Rubicon, and said the famous words “alea iacta est” or “the die is cast”. With the act and a gambling metaphore Caesar started a violet civil war from which he emerged as the unrivaled leader of the Roman Empire.

At that time Roman armies were in the habit of making sacrifices to the river god, when crossing a river into enemy country. In this instance, Caesar was ssaid to have set out a herd of horses that were left free to roam along the banks of the Rubicon. Five years later when Caesar was assassinated in Rome, people swore that they had seen these noble creatures refuse to eat and weep mournfully, while standing in their pastures.

Today you have to be extraordinary lucky to spot weeping wild horses, while crossing the Rubicon, and as long as you abide by the traffic rules no one will take up arms to prevent you from going one way or the other. Just remember that there is a nice beach around the place where the Rubicon flows into the Adriatic Sea, so if you are passing in the summer months, you might want to stay a while and think about the time, when men in sandals were not just defending the territory of their beach towel.

An English woman on the fishmarket near Ponte di Rialto

2010-02-19T13:01:00.001+01:00

For the Danish blog I have just finished writing a shopping guide to Venice, which of course mentions the famous fish market near the Rialto bridge. That reminded me of Elizabeth David’s classic cook book on Italian Food from 1954 with its vivid and sensual description of tastes, colours and light. Rereading the piece seems to place you right in the middle of the morning hustle, and you can almost smell the fish, that have just been brought in from the Adriatic Sea. Apparently the atmosphere at the Campo della Pescheria has not changed over the last 50 years. A fantastic adventure for real and in writing, even if you don’t bother to go shopping at 4 am in the morning.

“Of all the spectacular food markets in Italy, the one near the Rialto Bridge in Venice must be the most remarkable. This light os a Venetian dawn in early summer – you must be about at four o’clock in the morning to see the market come to life – is so limpid and so still that it makes every separate vegetable and fruit and fish luminous with a life of its own, with unnaturally heightened colours and clear stenciled outlines. Here the cabbages are cobalt blue, the beetroots deep rose, the lettuces clear pure green, sharp as glass. Bunches of gaudy gold marrow-flowers show off the elegance of pink and white marbled bean pods, primrose potatoes, green plums, green peas. The colours of the peaches, cherries and apricots, packed in boxes lined with sugar-bag blue paper matching the blue canvas trousers worn by the men unloading the gondolas, are reflected in the rose-red mullet and the orange vongole and canestrelle which have been prised out of their shells and heaped into baskets. In other markets, on other shores, the unfamiliar fishes may be vivid, mysterious, repellent, fascinating, and bright with splendid colour; only in Venice do they look good enough to eat. In Venice even ordinary sole and ugly great skate are striped with delicate lilac lights, the sardines shine like newly-minted silver coins, pink Venetian scampi are fat and fresh, infinitely enticing in the early dawn.

The gentle swaying of the laden gondolas, the movements of the market men as they unloead, swinging the boxes and baskets ashore, the robust life and rattling noise contrasted with the fragile taffeta colours and the opal sky of Venice – the whole scene is set out of some marvelous unheard-of ballet.”

After the poetry, Elizabeth David serves recipies for different fish prepared in 70 different Italian ways. A remarkable feat and a highly recommendable book, if you have not got it already.

Tracing Fellini and the frightening ladies of Rimini

2010-02-17T15:57:00.009+01:00

Rimini signifies holidays and beach parties for most people, but the city with 141 000 inhabitants on the Adriatic coast is also the hometown of Italy’s celebrated film maker Federico Fellini and the place that sparked his imagination. In ‘La mia Rimini’ Fellini guides us through Rimini, as he experienced it from 1920 until he moved to Rome in 1939, but the magic atmosphere prevails.

On a foggy day outside the tourist season, my impression of Rimini confirms Fellini’s perception of an unreal city. A place and a word made up of straight lines like marching soldiers caught between towering mountains and the dark open void of the sea, where the inhabitants are forever caught between arrogance and blasphemy in a strange mix of superstition and belief in God.

"Pensare a Rimini. Rimini: una parola fatta di aste, di soldatini in fila. Non riesco a oggettivare. Rimini è un pastrocchio, confuso, pauroso, tenero, con questo grande respiro, questo vuoto aperto del mare. Lì la nostalgia si fa più limpida, specie il mare d'inverno, le creste bianche, il gran vento, come l'ho visto la prima volta”

Fellini was born in via Fumagalli, in a house he does not remember himself and on a road I fail to identify on the map. The guided tour therefore starts at the station (A) and goes down to the olive tree in Piazzetta Plebiscito (B), which I suppose to be near the house where Fellini grew up. He recalls an episode from the garden, where he suddenly caught sight of two actors practicing their lines in a murder mystery, only to interrupt rehearsals with a commonplace question about whether there were figs on the fig tree. The boy didn’t know, but later he came to see the event as a sign of predestination.

Scary women
Close to Piazzetta Plebiscito we find Via Clementini, where Fellini observed his first love from a distance. A young well-developed girl with full breasts, who would sometimes come and stand by the window.

From here we might head north along Via Guglielmo Oberdan, until we reach Via Clodia (G) by the river, where there was allegedly a house full of prostitutes before WW2. Fellini describes how these heavily painted and easily recognizable women with their mysterious gold-tipped cigarettes were displayed on the Corso once a fortnight.

At the nursery, Federico Fellini was surrounded by the hooded nuns of San Vicenzo, who frightened him. During a procession he had been told to guard his candle for Jesus, but when the candle blew out and the band began to play, the boy broke down in tears. Still, it was not in Rimini but in the near by town of Fano, that Fellini met unforgettable Saraghina from the film 8½.

Adolescents around the Corso
Fellini returned to Rimini for secondary school in via del tempio Malatestiano (C), which has now been turned into an art gallery and a public library. At that time, the building seemed gigantic with neverending stairs and a headmaster, who tried to literally kill students and made them learn the Iliad by heart.

The drama was enacted by the boys in the evenings, until they discovered the fun of disrupting lovers on the beach and studying the comings and goings at the chiesa dei paolotti in Via Battara (D), where munks, nuns and other frequent visitors performed mysterious rites that included the blessing of animals.

Fellini was was a skinny young man, who did not like to pose in swimming trunks at the beach, and that was a great handicap at a seaside resort like Rimini. Instead he opened a shop selling caricatures and art near the Duomo (E) and hung around bars on the Corso with artists and intellectuals. As a university town Rimini has a large student community, and Friday and Saturday nights are still an open invitation to cafécrawls and partying in the streets. And Rimini is still a town divided by the seasons.

"Era il luogo di ritrovo dei vitelloni, d'inverno (d'estate, tutto si spostava al mare, da Zanarini. Importante: a Rimini esiste una divisione netta tra le stagioni. È un cambiamento sostanziale, non solo meteorologico, come in altre città. Son due Rimini diverse)"

Locked in memory
From the Corso we might just drop by Castel Sismondo (F) behind Piazza Cavour and Teatro Galli. In Fellini’s day La Rocca contained a gloomy prison with inmates shouting from the windows. Especially, when there was a travelling circus camped beneath the prison walls. Today, La Rocca is a conference and exhibition centre and the area in front of the castle transforms into a marketplace every Wednesday and Saturday.

From the castel there is a long walk along the river down to the port, the beach and the Grand Hotel (H), where Fellini stayed, whenever he returned to Rimini in later life. Here he found a fairy tale wealth and luxury that made the visits bearable. He preferred Rimini to be an imaginary place locked in memory.

"Io, a Rimini, non torno volentieri. Debbo dirlo. È una sorta di blocco. La mia famiglia vi abita ancora, mia madre, mia sorella: ho paura di certi sentimenti? Soprattutto mi pare, il ritorno, un compiaciuto, masochistico rimasticamento della memoria: un'operazione teatrale, letteraria. Certo, essa può avere il suo fascino. Un fascino sonnolento, torbido. Ma ecco: non riesco a considerare Rimini come un fatto oggettivo.È piuttosto, e soltanto, una dimensione della memoria."

And after following Fellini through Rimini, the town will also be stored in your memory, although I for one look forward to every new visit.

Map for Fellini walk

Fruit for all senses

2010-02-15T12:21:00.002+01:00

In my Italian garden we have a profusion of quince trees and the same goes for most of my Salentino neighbours and acquaintances, who are all immensely rich in sour, rock hard and strongly perfumed fruits from fall and onwards. But the low, frugal quince tree provides fruit for all senses and sense for all seasons.

During spring, the quince produces exquisitely shaped flower buds with a delicate pink hue that unfolds into a four petalled flowers resembling dog roses. Over summer, the fruits grow along with a characteristic fragrance that sweetens the surrounding air and tricks you into believing that you have just entered a classic, slightly stuffed tea room steaming with freshly brewed flower teas. The smell is so strong that some people keep a quince in their drawers to scent the clothes. In the fall, the apple or pear shaped fruits develop a hairy fuzz that soften their wax-like skin, and you start hearing the thud thud sound of heavy quinces falling to the ground. And finally, after hours of preparation and showers of sugar the fruits are edible as a kind of mincemeat marmalade known as cotognata.

To judge from the number of jars with homemade cotognata, I am given as a go away present every year, many families have a surplus of quince jam stocked away in their ‘cantina’ basement. Quince trees produce a very high yield, and as always in old peasant cultures natural riches come with an obligation to make the best of what you have been given. It is a pity and a great shame to see a heap of rotting fruit beneath each tree.

Instead most of the fruits are gathered and carried inside, where the housewife peels the hairy skin off the cotogne (and off her hands for that matter), uses all her strength and arm muscles to cut the fruit in smaller pieces, removes the core, the seeds and part of her thumb, and boils the fruit with enough sugar (pound to pound) to make a thick, dark brown pasta. The process takes most of the day and produces a good, natural sleep, even if you cheat and boil the cotogne until soft in order to make them easier to peel and handle. Making cotognata is hard labour rewarded with barrels full of hard marmalade with a somewhat artificial, perfumed taste.

- It is very good with cheese or as marmalade served with bread, the housewifes say, handing over the gifts of cotognata, and their husbands nod in agreement and avert their eyes.

Still, I used to have a jar or two left over at the approach of each new season, unless they were used as a wandering trophy, but those days are over. I have just discovered that cotognata makes perfect pie filling (see the recipe here), so in the future I doubt cotognata presents will be enough to see us through winter. I may even have to resume my own experiments with our Italian garden’s bounty of uncooperative quince fruits.

Skeletons and dino tracks on the Murgia Alta

2010-02-12T14:42:00.003+01:00

This week the British newspaper Telegraph.co.uk brought an article describing an amazing archaeological discovery in the Roman Vagnari Estate near Gravina in Puglia. Archaeologists have been excavating a cemetery from the 1st century, and they have found 72 skeleton among which were that of a man, who according to DNA tests derives from East Asia. The discovery is extraordinary, because it indicates that the Roman Empire was far more extensive than previously thought.

So far history books have maintained that Romans traded silk and spices through intermediaries along the Silk Route, but no Asians were believed to have travelled in the other direction. Judging from his burial place and the grave goods, the man with the old Asian bones was a slave or a labourer of humble standing, but he is nevertheless an example of a hitherto unknown migration, which makes it interesting to identify his exact place of origin. Perhaps the Vagnari cemetery will revise history.

Outing to Jurassic Park
The story reminds me of an excursion we made to the murge around Gravina and Altamura a couple of years ago. I had read in a similar article that at least 4 000 dinosaur footprints ranging from 5-45 cm in size had been found in the De Lucia quarry, and I thought it would be interesting to see, what genuine 70 000 year old dino marks looked like.

Unfortunately, the footprints proved really hard to find, although the quarry is placed in an wide open landscape with rolling wheat fields stretching into infinity. We ended up in Altamura, where two old men hiding from the midday sun in the Pro Loco told us to go back the way we had come and stop around a point in nowhere called Casal Sabini, where there was supposed to be a quarry.

The quarry was of course fenced off and closed to the public, but a hole in the fence and not a soul in sight for miles around dared us to enter, and after walking around the gravel and limestone excavations for some time, we did find some cracks and hollows that might – with a bit of imagination, goodwill and the hurry of trespassers – be dinosaur footprints. Whether from the long-necked herbivorous Sauropods, horned Ceratopsids, Iguanodonts and Achilosaurs, or the carnivorous species Teropods, I could not tell, and there were no signs of the promised folds of animal skin, either.

Still, the closed down quarry was definitely an interesting experience. And maybe one day the site will be turned into a major tourist attraction as Jurassic park and fairground with explanatory notes pointing out the best preserved tracks. So far it has been listed on Unesco’s tentative World Heritage List.

The very old Altamura Man
In the meantime we might take the old men at the Pro Loco’s advice and go back to see the Altamura Man (and one of the first Asian immigrants in Europe, if that becomes possible).

In 1993 a group of spelaeologists found the extremely well preserved remains of a Homo heidelbergensis in a karstic pulo called the Lamalunga cave. According to Unesco, the Altamura Man is 130 000 years old, but Wikipedia says he may date 400 000 years back, so it is safe to say his exact age is attached with some uncertainty. This, however, does not make the sight less interesting. As the old men in the Pro Loco said:

- The Altamura Man is a lot older than the dinosaur tracks and much more interesting for tourists to look at, because you have to go down to a cave at the bottom of the gravina, where there are heaps of skeletal bones from many different animals. It is a sight not to be missed, but … you won’t make it before afternoon closing time, so you have to wait five hours till they reopen.

Houses in mourning

2010-02-11T14:59:00.001+01:00

The south Italian way of handling death takes some getting used to, if you ask me. The way they print death announcements on posters and exhibit them in town squares and on the houses of the deceased may appear a bit strange and spooky, compared to the Northern European habit of hiding obituaries in the back of newspapers. But perhaps the open advertisement of death is healthier than our taboos and acts of denial in the long run.

I have been told that fifty years ago chiming bells accompanied local south Italian priests on their way to give a parishioner the last rites. The bells would attract a large following of children and idlers curious to see where the illness had struck and soon the whole community knew what had happened. The shared knowledge may have prevented stigmatization. Neighbours, grocers and schoolteachers were all aware of what had happened without being told directly and could offer condolences, respect or words of comfort.

Personally, I have not seen or heard priests running through town to the sound of small hand bells, but people still dress a house in mourning by using the characteristic ‘Lutto in famiglia’ signs. The signs generate a certain respect that I am not quite sure how to handle. For instance, I found the note stuck to the office of our geometra one day, and it almost deterred me from entering, though it turned out the mourning referred to one of his neighbours.

Italians don’t seem to suffer under similar inhibitions. Four years ago when Italy won the world championship in football over France mourning stickers were extensively used to mock the opponents. Morbidly irreverent, bad taste or good fun?

Volterra’s writing on the wall

2010-02-10T11:35:00.002+01:00

My approach to Volterra is pretty much that of a child, who has been invited to the zoo to see the lion, but only has eyes for a stray cat sitting nearby.

I mean, Volterra is a charming Tuscan town surrounded by an old city wall that effectively screen off the noise, smoke and dangers of the traffic outside. It does not attract a fraction of the tourists that flock around neighbouring San Gimignano each summer. Shops abound with Tuscan wines and specialties; artisans sell handmade lamps and figures carved in the yellowish-white surrogate marble known as alabaster; there are decorative bags with dried beans or barley at a price of more than 12 euros per kilo; and at the restaurants’ outdoor tables you can have a menu turistico with a straw-wrapped Chianti bottle served on red checkered tablecloths. Volterra embodies classic Tuscan romance.

Add to that 3000 years of history. Around 600 years BC Volterra was known as Felathri, and archaeologists have identified a city gate, Acropolis, amphitheater, baths and tombs constructed by the Etruscans, centuries before they became an integral part of the Roman Empire. Large slabs of stone gives an impression of these people’s impressive skills in urban design and engineering, and in the Guarnacci museum you can see a fine collection of Etruscan objects and art such as the quirky and often copied sculpture of a long thin man, which the controversial poet Gabriele d'Annunzio nicknamed ‘evening shadows' or ‘Ombra della Sera’.

Over the last 2000 years the inhabitants of Volterra have fought a variety of enemies and sustained a diocese. While the pious built cathedrals, churches and Palazzi, constant wars led to the construction of six new gates; a new city wall, which was shorter but bigger and stronger than the one left by the Etruscans; a formidable fortress and tower apartments with private entrances on the third or fourth floor, so potential enemies could be welcomed with a bucket of boiling water.

This leads me to the ‘stray cat’, because when you zigzag your way up to the town that is situated on a salt dome in an altitude of 545 metres, you cannot help feeling a little bit intimidated by the bombastic buildings on the edge of the abyss. And is you look more closely you will see barbed wire and armed guards on the lookout.

La Fortezza Medicea was built for military purposes in the Middle Ages, but the building turned out to be highly suitable for storage of political prisoners, who might be opponents of the Medici family or against national unity under the Risorgimento. The fortress still serves as a prison with criminals locked up in the medieval cells.

But it is not the jail that makes Italians knit the brows when you say you are going to Volterra. It is the psychiatric hospital which housed 6000 patient up until the 1970s. The incredible number of mentally ill people gathered in one place must have been an inferno of Dantesque proportions. Stories on the Internet relate that the hospital in Volterra had one sink for each 20 patients, while 200 patients shared a bath. Nonetheless, the now abandoned buildings contain a singular work of art.

One of the patients at the hospital in Volterra was named Oreste Ferdinand Nannetti. He described himself as an astronautic mining engineer, and spent 14 years writing poems and scratching marks and images with his belt buckle on the hospital walls.

The signature Nanof or NOF4 produced a frieze of 180 metres in the hospital yard, densely decorated with a very special, beautiful and touching kind of graffiti. This book carved in stone has fascinated psychiatrists, art historians and photographers, some of whom have described Nanof’s remnants as a lexicon of emotions. Others interpret the signs as a manual on how to cope with hallucinations, electromagnetism, radiation, high-tech weaponry, spaceships, alchemy, and certain metals magical force. But most of all the drawings resemble giant scribblings mixing words with geometric shapes and drawings of a church or a soldier.

The psychiatric hospital in Volterra closed in the late 1970s, and today the work of NOF4s decays rapidly. Weather and wind have sanded the wall, making the plaster flake off, some of the buildings have been demolished, and Nanetti Oreste Ferdinand himself died in 1994. The best chance of seeing the work of NOF4 is probably on photographs, cf. eg Giacomo Rizzo’s Photogallery.

With these images in mind the drive up to Volterra and the sight of the fortress with its walls, towers, and enclosures acquire a whole new meaning and works as an antidote to too much sugarcoated Tuscan romance in one place.

Tyrolean turtle attacks

2010-02-08T08:09:00.002+01:00

The little old lady, who runs a Meran/Merano Gasthof, scrutinizes every guest carefully, before she decides who to let in to the immaculately clean doctor’s mansion, while her free-ranging turtle guards the door. The turtle has a fetish for bare feet in open shoes, and in spite of it being more than 50 years of age it attacks relentlessly, making me perform an inelegant slow motion turtle trot in the courtyard, while I wonder whether this kind of reptile has teeth that bite hard in the tetanus vaccination sense, or whether it just nipples. The uncertainty makes me want to flee.

In a corner inside the door an old stove with hand painted tiles sweat terribly in the summer heat, and the tiny guest rooms with shared bath and toilet in the corridor appear frugal. But the view is magnificent, the floors are polished and the gate to Merano - or Meran as the lady prefers to call it - is only due passi down the street.

On the stairs we meet a couple of in their 30s in full dirndl and Tyrolean dress. The woman wears an apron dress with a laced up corset, huge white puffed sleeves and hair braids coiled over the ears, while the man is dressed up in long stockings, bare legs and lederhosen with suspenders. All he needs to complete the picture is a green Tyrolean of the kind Danes like to sing and laugh about, but here the dress is obviously a serious matter.

- When I went to school here in Meran, we were not allowed to speak German, not even in the schoolyard. Everything had to be done in Italian, and if by mistake someone happened to utter one German word, they were severely punished, the little old lady confides. Repression of the German-speaking majority in Alto-Adige continued well into the '60s, when the UN intervened and put an end to what began as Mussolini’s Italianizing campaign.

Today the border conflicts have been narrowed down to a clash of symbols in eg. the pedestrian street, Via Portici, where pasta shops lie side by side with shops selling local grappa, sausages and speck. Half timbered houses decorated in soft colours sport hanging geraniums in pots on the balconies, and Bierstuben with outdoor serving mix with whitewashed Italian styled houses in the cathedral square.

Merano is lovely town, and it is obvious why it became one of Europe's first and largest centres of mass tourism around the turn of the 20th century. Back then a great many rejuvenating springs attracted wealthy foreigners, and the wellness industry is still alive and kicking with spas, thermals baths, sanatoriums and wellness hotels. In the winter Merano appears as a lively ski resort, and during summer wellness tourists mix with wandering Dutchmen and Germans, as can be seen from in the local high street fashion, which includes bathrobes, thick stockings and trekking boots.

Merano is situated at the foot of the mountains, where the Passiria river comes roaring. Further up this river in San Leonardo 1767 the local hero Andreas Hofer was born. Andreas Hofer inherited the Sandwirt inn from his father, and he also made a living as a horse dealer, but in 1805 Tyrol was transferred from Austria to Bavaria due to the advance of Napoleon’s army, and this spurred Andreas Hofer to organize a tyrolean uprising.

The revolt began on 9 April 1809, when Hofer poured sawdust into the River Inn as a sign to mobilize the peasants. After several bloody battles against the French army, the Tyroleans conquered Innsbruck, Bolzano and Trento, but Napoleon’s men did not give up, and in January 1810 they managed to capture Hofer, who had been betrayed by a neighbour. Andreas Hofer was executed shortly afterwards in Mantova. Since then, he has been granted martyr status in Tyrol, and last year the 200 year anniversary of the peasant revolt was celebrated with exhibitions, parades, festivals and role-playing in of the many towns in the area.

Among the participants in the celebration were people like the old lady at the Gasthof, who still feel a need to protect Tyrol’s specific cultural identity. And of course the turtle, who willingly attacks the toes of all foreign invaders that get too close.

The end of the world

2010-02-05T16:20:00.004+01:00

One of the most striking and wonderful features about Salento, if you ask me, is the light. The narrow taco of flat land surrounded by open seas multiply and reflect the rays of the sun, the moon and the stars endlessly, turning the sky into an orgy of sparkling luminance. Going south towards Santa Maria di Leuca around dusk or dawn, when the great circle of the sun sets or rises in the sea, all colours are tinted red, yellow and orange. Half an hour later, white building have a bluish purple glow as if are highlighted by strobes, and when night falls millions of stars appear on a velvety black sky, always reminding me (pretty much against my will) of the catchy Negroni commercial singing: 'Le stelle sono tante, milioni di milioni, la stella di Negroni'

Light and the solitude enforce the fine del mondo feeling, you get standing in front of the Basilica 'De Finibus Terrae' and looking at the lighthouse in Santa Maria di Leuca at the southeastern corner of the Italian peninsula, where waters from the Adriatic and the Ionian Seas meet.

The lighthouse in Leuca measures 48.6 metres and it is placed 102 meters above sea level making it one of the most important lighthouses in Italy. It was built in 1866 and under favourable weather conditions it can be seen from a distance of up to 40 km.

Santa Maria di Leuca got its name from the Greek word ‘leukos’ meaning ‘white’ and from the holy virgin, who is said to have performed sailor saving miracles in Leuca on 13 April 365 AD. According to legend, Saint Peter entered Italy through Leuca on his way to Rome as part of the evangelization of Europe, and to commemorate this event a wooden cross can be seen among the pine trees on the path from the Basilica to the port.

Another monument was erected by the fascists in 1939 to mark the initiation of the acquedotto pugliese. This aquaduct sometimes lets water out into the sea, creating a spectacular waterfall know as lu mare spunnatu. A lucky sight to end travels to - if not the end of the world - then at least to the end of Italy.

Welcome to the land of the myth

2010-02-04T10:59:00.004+01:00

Signs saying ‘Benvenuti nella terra del mito’ and ‘Città di Rodolfo Valentino’ greet you, when you enter Castellaneta, a town with 17 000 inhabitants and a deep ravine 40 km north-west of Taranto, where latin lovers of the 21st century stay indoors on rainy spring days.

Castellaneta has earned a place in the history of cinematography as the birth place of Rodolfo Valentino, one of the first and greatest film stars starring in silent movies like ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ and ‘The Sheik’, and even though the young Rodolfo born in May 1895 left town before he turned ten, Castellaneta still celebrates the townsman, who made it big in America.

Along the passeggiata you encounter a lightly-chipped and rather clumsy blue clay statue of Valentino dressed up as Arabian sheik. Opposite Osteria Rodolfo Valentino offers fresh homemade pasta, and in the old part of town there is a Valentino gallery and a Valentino Museum, which happens to be closed (much of the time, I’m afraid). It is not in Castellaneta, you will experience the mass-hysteria surrounding the myth.

When Valentino died of appendicitis in August 1926 at the age of 31 years, an estimated 100 000 people attended the funeral in New York, and reports spoke of riots, suicides, mystery admirers and fainting women. The olive-skinned actor with the well-greased hair had come a long way since he left Puglia in 1906.

Rodolfo Valentino’s father died, when the boy was eleven, and due to financial trouble he was sent to an orphanage in Perugia. In 1909 he tried to join the marines in Venezia, but was rejected due to poor eyesight, and ended up graduating from an agricultural college in the province of Genova. Valentino went back to see his mother and siblings in Taranto a couple of times, announcing that "L'Italia è troppo piccola per me" and in December 1913 he embarked on the merchant ship Cleveland in Hamburg bound for Ellis Island. In New York Valentino first made a living as a taxi dancer, before he joined a travelling show and made his way to Hollywood.

As such he became the epitome of the American dream for millions of Italian emigrants to USA from the malaria-ridden South in the years between 1880 and 1915, and a walk around the old town of Castellaneta makes it easy to envisage the poverty, sickness and oppression of a hundred years’ ago. I suppose that is the real attraction of the place, now that Valentino’s image is fading.

- Rudy who? my friend said, when I told her we were going to Castellaneta to see the Museo Valentino. The name and reference to silent movies mean absolutely nothing to most people born within the last 40 years.

The truth about Pisa

2010-02-03T14:12:00.001+01:00

In Seven Gothic Tales, Karen Blixen takes a shot at the human predicament and the truth about Pisa, and both the story and the statement may in its own strange way illuminate tours and detours in and around Tuscany:

“truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse…The truth about this road is that it leads to Pisa, and the truth about Pisa can be found within books written and read by human beings…What is the truth about a man on a desert island? And I, I am like a man on a desert island.”

Karen Blixen: “The Roads Round Pisa”

Overrated Italian markets?

2010-02-02T14:00:00.001+01:00

Recently, I came across an American blogger’s bid on what sights and activities to avoid when visiting Italy as a tourist. One of the top time wasters on his list was street markets, which resemble old-fashioned charity shops that have moved all their stuff outdoors. I have, regrettably, lost the link, but the gist the argument was that the things offered for sale in Italian markets are everyday groceries and amenities that may have interest for the locals, whereas tourists look in vain for herbs, specialties, food to go, ready-made delicacies, crafts, flea market bargains. While outdoor markets in neighbouring France are a symphony for the senses, Italian markets are plain boring and not recommendable as a tourist outing.

The blogger may have a point. The few tourists who visit my local Italian market in late July generally look lost with lifeless eyes, closed body language and an uninviting attitude. You see a tight group mother, father and a couple of children clinging to money belts, handbags and purses. They arrive late in the morning, when the sun and the heat beat down with no mercy, and walk around sweaty and groaning in their beach suits. Their disappointment at not being able to find a cafe or a shop selling ice cream is very tangible.

Markets in southern Italy are usually held at a completely shadeless campo sportivo outside town. The traders are ordinary shopkeepers with VAT registration, fixed positions and a license to sell a certain type of goods in six cities within a specific administrative area in the province, and they start work at 5 in the morning, along with the most determined housewives. Italian families go to the market to buy bulks of vegetables, fruit, fish, salumi and other supermarket goods that market vendors can offer fresh at cheaper prices and higher quality.

At the market you will also find the peculiar spring to a specific curtain rod, wash tubs of coloured plastic, towels and awnings, but the soap house department has limited the tourist appeal. Folkloristic interest focuses on the few pensioners selling home-pickled capers, olives and chillies, and the clothes vendors with a range spanning grandma style underwear, synthetic dresses and jeans with small flaws to less than 15 euro. Among the random clothes heaps you may also find some really hot fashion hits, but it takes practice and luck to make a good bargain.

And that is the charm of Italian street markets, along with the knowledge that the supply changes, if you go to another town across provincial boundaries. Each place has its own specialities, and in the big cities like Mantova, Carpi and Civitanova Marche it is fantastic to wake up Saturday morning and see the central squares transformed into a patchwork of stalls and marquees, where you can get lost in the crowd, window shop with your hands and sit down at a busy café to enjoy your latte and brioscia.

Pompeii revisited

2010-02-01T16:01:00.002+01:00

Today ansa reports that visitors to the archeological site in Pompeii will soon be able to follow the excavation and restoration of the House of the Chaste Lovers. Work at the house will be resumed this month after ten years of neglect, and parts of the building will be open to the public, so that they can see the archeologists in action. All it takes is a trip to Napoli and the suburban town that was buried under lava during the eruption of the Vesuv volcano in 79 AD.

The reference to hidden frescos and archeological field work inspired me to revisit Pompeii on Google Street View, where the famous peek into the ancient Roman world is one of a very few European sights that can be toured virtually.

Google’s 360-degree panoramic service enables you to ‘walk’ around among other tourists with rucksacks, caps, cameras and shorts, and it is interesting to study the old paving stones, but don’t expect to get inside the villas or feel the horror in the garden of fugitives. I ‘strolled’ up and down the main streets and around the amphitheater several times, while enjoying a truly magnificent view of Monte Vesuvio, but it hardly qualifies as a cultural experience. Or perhaps I’m just out of practice when it comes to virtual travelling?

For a real sense of Pompeii you still have to board plane, train or car and move yourself to Campania, and then you can also witness the progress made in the restoration of the House of Chaste Lovers.

Don’t kill the olive tree

2010-01-29T16:42:00.002+01:00

Our house in Italy includes a piece of land with 23 olive trees ranging in age between 30 and 600 years, and when we first saw the property, the estate agent pointed to one of the trees, and sighed:

- In the north of Italy, a healthy tree like that one would fetch a price exceeding the total price we ask for the house and il terreno. An olive tree is at its best, when it is between 400-800 years old. Older trees become hollow, they twist and turn and deteriorate until they are hardly carrying any fruit, but still it is prohibited to cut them down. In Puglia, olive trees are protected as local patrimony, and you have to obtain permission before they are felled, which is rarely granted. The authorities won’t even allow people to build on their own land, if the project entails sacrifice of olive trees.

From what I have heard from the estate agent and others, olive trees have been protected since the Second World War, when the pugliesi were forced to fell trees for firing wood. This drastically changed the landscape, which had been cultivated for thousands of years, and as it takes generations to grow a new olive tree, the damage could not be undone in a lifetime or two. A ban on killing olive trees was therefore instituted.

Olive tree laws are generally respected, but some farmers find it unfair that they have to maintain groves of unprofitable trees. They cannot get a proper return on their soil, if it is filled with gnarled, dried out trunks, which go on sprouting branches of silvery green leaves for ages after their fruit bearing days are definitely over.

This may explain why very old, decorative trees are sometimes uprooted in the dark of night and trucked north, where they are sold at exorbitant prices to Settentrionale, who want the prestige of an old olive tree in their private gardens. Meanwhile south Italian farmers can then go to the police and complain that their trees have been stolen, before they go home and start cultivating new crop.

The curious marble mountain in the middle of Milano

2010-01-28T16:25:00.002+01:00

I am positively addicted to second-hand books on Italy, and yesterday I came across H.V. Morton’s A Traveller in Italy from 1964. On this trip, Morton starts out in Milano, where he observes that people can walk and talk simultaneously unlike the Romans who block the pavement every time they utter a word.

He also provides this description of Milano’s – in my opinion - slightly overdone and overwhelming Duomo, the construction of which stretched over 579 years from 1386 to the completion in 1965.

“The crowds circulated in front of brilliantly lit shops in a piazza in the centre of which stands the largest cathedral in existence after S. Peter’s in Rome. This trans-Alpine mastodon is a curiosity. It was begun in the late Middle Ages when Gothic architecture was in vogue and it was continued for centuries after it became unfashionable, but having been committed to such a vast construction, the builders were obliged to continue building in generation after generation in a spirit of conscious archaism. Naturally they overdid it. Whenever they were in doubt, a few saints were added to the building. Their numbers confounded even Baedecker, who says there are ‘upwards’ up two thousand statues in marble. Slender pinnacles rise everywhere, each one holding a saint. This pious encrustation culminates in a floodlit, golden Madonna – Milan’s beloved Madonnina – who, when I first saw her, stood high against the dark sky gazing into the piazza far below, where Victor Emmanuel II rode a bronze charger.”

Hans Christian Andersen was more impressed. He visited the cathedral around 1833 and recorded his impressions in The Improvisatore, translated by Mary Howitt:

“I went daily to the cathedral of Milan, that singular mountain which was torn out of the rocks of Carrara. I saw the church for the first time in the clear moonlight; dazzlingly white stood the upper part of it in the infinitely blue ether. Round about, wherever I looked, from every corner, upon every little tower with which the building was, as it were, overlaid, projected marble figures. Its interior dazzled me more than St. Peter’s Church; the strange gloom, the light which streamed through the painted windows – the wonderful mystical world which revealed itself here – yes, it was a church of God!”

While Charles Dickens' view of the church ten years later was obstructed by fog.In Pictures from Italy, he writes:

"The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that could be seen of it at the time. But as we halted to refresh, for a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, I had ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its majesty and beauty."

I guess, the Duomo di Milano is just one of those sight, we all have to see and judge for ourselves.

Faenza’s disadvantage

2010-01-26T17:29:00.006+01:00

- Welcome to the world famous Faenza. I suppose you are going to see the museum first thing tomorrow. It is said to have one of the world's largest and finest collections. As a matter of fact the city has made pottery since the mid-1500s and in many languages the city's name has become synonymous with ceramics. Think about it: What's pottery called in your language? a very enthusiastic man with big expectant eyes asked.

If you have visited Faenza before, you know the answer, and besides I did not have the heart to ruin his fun by answering ‘earthenware’ or ‘majolica’. Still, I honestly do not know what the word ‘faience’ means, and like the other times we have stopped over in Faenza, we did not stay long enough to visit the museum and perhaps find an explanation.

Faenza has the disadvantage of a truly foul smell. You notice it from a distance, when you drive along the autostrada with the air conditioner switched on, the stench is incredible and it is impossible to decide whether it comes from hemp fields, agriculture, industry or the large factories producing ceramic tiles. You suddenly understand why some people talk about The Poo Valley.

Fortunately for the city's 55,000 residents, the smell does not seem quite as bad in the centre, but you can find threads discussing boundary values and methods to measure the discomfort on the Internet, so the problem is real.

It was not the scent that made us leave town after one night only, but a feeling of not being able to find a way in. Allegedly, Faenza’s central square should be bordered with arcades and really nice buildings, but we walked around a residential area for hours, and although we asked directions several times, we never managed to hit bulls eye. After crossing an artful junction with several over- and underpasses, we ended up in a park lined with winos, and instead of a good restaurant, there was a primitive pizza place selling beers in paper bags as a sideline. On previous visits we have been unable to find a hotel in the town, although I am sure it must be there some place. Sometimes it is just difficult to be a tourist travelling on your own.

This time we had found a great Bed & Breakfast in the outskirts, but due to the apparent lack of attractions, we decided to drive on early the next morning. I know from experience that no Italian city is totally ugly, smelly and boring, so maybe it's time to pay Faenza another visit?

The mill in the town centre

2010-01-25T16:18:00.002+01:00

With a seconda casa in Italy, there are certain Italian things (mainly eatable), you just can’t live without. Several times a year we are loading the car with olive oil, almonds, cherry jam, dried tomatoes, dried herbs, ready-made pesto, coffee, capers, salumi, chick peas and other things that are better and cheaper in Italy before going North. And one of the stables is durum flour bought by the kilo directly from the mill.

The first time a friend told me to go to il mulino for the best quality grano duro, I thought I had misheard. Where I come from, mills are factories with no retail outlets open to the public. Still, I followed directions down a narrow one-way street right in the centre of town looking for a sight like the one that met Don Quixote in La Mancha, until I found two terraced homes on opposite sides of the street emitting white clouds. Inside the houses, machines looking like white dusted giraffes made an infernal noise, and there were bags and barrels with grains and flour stacked everywhere.

Our local mill is run by two brothers in their late twenties and judging from the queue of customers lined up in the shop, milling constitutes a good, healthy business. The brothers quite understand our annual purchase of 25 kilo durum wheat. The flour is absolutely necessary to keep up a private supply of homemade bread and pasta with an authentic Italian taste throughout the year. It is the stuff my travel dreams are made of, and I am not the only one dragging basic groceries thousands of kilometres across Europe.

All the emigrants, who have left Puglia for jobs in Torino, Switzerland or Germany, seem to leave traces of white footprints every time they visit their ancestral hometown.

Germans at Lago di Garda

2010-01-22T17:12:00.003+01:00

The beauty of Lake Garda is breathtaking, as is the sheer number of north European tourists flocking around the place. They are attracted by the mild climate, clean bathing water (remember bathing shoes) and magnificent mountains that put a natural limit to urbanization. As a result roads and houses are placed right on the lake, and the towns are relatively small, though sufficiently large to house buckets of hanging geranium and beers served outdoors to pale, shirtless men with big beer bellies.

A German tourist invasion has been going on for centuries led by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who conducted his first trip to Italy in 1786. He stayed at an inn in Torbole on the north shore of the lake, as evidenced by a plaque saying: "In questa casa dimoro Goethe il 12 Settembre, 1786. H'eute hab ich an der Iphigenie gearbeitet, es ist im Angesichte des Sees von statten gegangen."

In his book ‘Italian Journey’ the German poet describes the fantastic view of the lake upon arrival from Rovereto, where you pass through a valley and over a hill before almost the entire lake comes into view. Exotic figs and olive trees grow along the lakeshore as a sign of the special climatic conditions.

From Torbole Goethe sailed further south, but a strong wind forced the boat to stop in Malcesine, where the German decided to make a drawing of the castle ruins. The drawing almost had him arrested, because at that time Malcesine which constituted the northern border of the Republic of Venice was at war with Austria. The locals thought Goethe was an Austrian spy studying military installations, and it took a lot of explaning to convince them of the poet’s peaceful intentions.

Since then a steady flow of famous writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Heinrich and Thomas Mann have visited Lake Garda and in words depicted the lake’s "perfect blue" and its dazzling reflections of silver that look like an army of stars, and the Varone waterfall which is said to cover the entrance to Inferno.

Today, the poetic travel experiences are somewhat overshadowed by more prosaic tourists who enjoy nature as a glorious backdrop to Bierstuben and roller coaster rides, but if you take a hike a few kilometres away from the lake, the original beauty and atmosphere is still intact.

Adventures on the autostrada

2010-01-21T16:51:00.002+01:00

A couple of years’ ago, I had an Italian pop tune on the brain and stopping for a break on the motorway, I asked the woman in charge of the espresso machine, if she knew a song with the words “rosso relativo senza macchia...” Seconds later the entire staff from the overweight pizza baker to the cashier joined in the chorus, and the woman took a few dancing steps in her red cap and apron between isles and islands of special offers, before she produced an old Tizziano Ferro CD. Sometimes poetry strikes in weird places.

Over the past decade, rest areas on Italian motorways have developed from primitive quick stops to compact shopping malls. Today most of the old bars and coffee shacks from Brennero to Brindisi and from San Bernado to Reggio have been or are being replaced by air conditioned restaurants, cafes and shops where you can buy local delicacies like ham, sausage, cheese, pasta, olive oil and preserves along with newspapers, magazines, books, music, maps, mineral water, saints, sunglasses, toys, batteries, biscuits, bread and tooth paste at reasonable prices. Competition between leading food travel chains, like Autogrill, Sarni, and Fini, is fierce.

All corporations constantly try out new concepts, though the chaotic walking lines within the cafe-restaurant-shops remain the same. In Italy it is considered bad style (and inferior hygiene) for one person to handle money and food alternately. When you enter the shop, you therefore have to go to the food counter to decide what kind of sandwich, drink or meal, you would like to order. Then you walk back to the checkout, while you try to remember and pronounce strange sandwich names like fatti furbo, gustosello and rustichella; pay for the food you want; and return with your receipt to the food counter, where someone will eventually hand you something to eat and drink. Along the way back and forth you will have plenty of opportunity to bump into strangers, and the chance reoccurs when you try to balance coke, coffee and pizza slices to one of a total of three very popular stand-up tables.

Still, the food is great and the service is moody and unpredictable, but once in a blue moon you can actually make the stressed staff sing.

Mocking baroque stone faces

2010-01-19T17:28:00.002+01:00

It must have been a Sunday for the nut-seller had set up camp in a corner of the piazza, where all the old men assembled to wait for the heat to cool off. One of the anziani stood out with his light grey Borsalino and an orange polo in a shirt wave of grey, white and blue, but apart from that no one drew much attention to themselves.

To the men on the piazza, we have probably been top entertainment, as we walked aimlessly up and down the main streets a couple of times consulting the ceramic Legenda on the walls and looking at the somewhat neglected baroque buildings. Palazzolo Acreide is one of Unesco’s World Heritage Sites in Val di Noto, but you don’t stumble into sights – they have to be discovered somewhere behind the beautifully embellished, weather worn facades. There is an enticing atmosphere of Sicilian 'Gattopardo' style decadence around the place. No wonder Palazzolo Acreide was used as location for Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of 'Cavalleria Rusticana'.

When we crossed the piazza for the third time, the man with the Borsalino got up.

- Are you American, he asked with impeccable US accent and seemed genuinely disappointed by our 'no'. Still, we spoke English, and the old man seemed to grow for every word exchanged in a foreign tongue. At least, his friends were gawking reverently, while he explained the obvious that we should definitely consult the tourist office to get the most out of our stay in Palazzolo Acreide.

- There is so much to see around here, and they have got all manner of brochures, he explained, pointing to a shop in the opposite corner of the piazza and stressing several times that the services of the tourist office were free of charge.

At the end, we had no choice but to cross the square and enter the tourist office followed by too many pairs of Sicilian eyes. Here we received an exquisite service and innumerable brochures once the two ladies learned they could speak to us in Italian, but when we set out again to see Akrai and the zona archeologica, the ruins of the Norman castle and the ethnologic house museum of Antonino Uccello, the attractions had closed down for the evening. All that was left were a series of mocking baroque stone faces and the awareness that language is more than a means of communication.

The archangel’s mountain

2010-01-18T16:16:00.001+01:00

It is embarrassing to admit, but I have been in Monte Sant'Angelo without visiting the cave. It was not for lack of encouragement though. As soon as the car had finished crawling up the winding road and was parked at 852 metres altitude, willing guides offered to show us around and present the local attractions. Their offer was rejected. Again and again and again, and ... while we strolled around the tiny town with row after row of identical white gabled houses, strangely reminiscent of an English mining town in its Sunday best. Interesting and enjoyable without being able to fill a postcard, but then again I missed the opportunity of seeing a print of the archangel’s hand, and this irks me still. That’s what you get from not reading guidebooks and not to be susceptible to tourist hustlers.

The main attraction in Monte Sant'Angelo is an underground cavern, where an oracle that was allegedly able to cure diseases overnight lived in pagan times. Ailing people came to this cave carrying the skin of a black ram, then they would lay down on the skin to sleep, and the next morning they would be miraculously healed.

Subsequently the archangel took over the pagan shrine. According to legend a man living in the mountains of Gargano in 490 AD lost a fine bull. He looked for it for hours, and at long last he found it standing at the entrance to the cave at the top of the mountain. The man tried to lure the animal away, but nothing helped. Eventually he became so desperate, he shot an arrow at it, but instead of hitting the bull, the arrow turned around and hit the man. This course of events, he naturally found a bit strange, so he consulted the Bishop of Sipontum (today’s Manfredonia), St. Laurentius.

The bishop went out to the mountain to study the matter and pray, and while he was there, he saw a winged man with a red cape. The man with the cloak said he was St. Michael, the first of seven archangels, commander of the Army of God that led souls to paradise and guarded the forces of hell. The angel had gone to the mountain in order to wrest the cave from the pagan oracle, and he had summoned the bishop to inaugurate the cave to St. Michael and other angels.

The bishop entered the dreary cave, but once inside it blazed with light and in a corner he saw an altar covered in purple that had just been inaugurated by the archangel himself. This miracle tranferred the cult of St. Michael from Asia Minor to Gargano, and Monte Sant'Angelo became an important pilgrimage site. Especially for the Normans to whom St. Michael was the patron saint of warriors, blessing their sometimes bloody conquests.

In order to enter the archangel’s church, you have to pass through an archway with an inscription that reads something like: ‘This is an awesome place, the house of God and the gate to heaven.’ Words, that did not exactly read as an invitation to step inside.

If we had done so, we would, according to eg. HV Morton's descriptions from the late '60s, have seen a staircase with 86 steps leading down to some fantastic silver doors dating back to 1076^th. Then you enter the cave, where a holy spring makes the floor slippery, and between the steep rock walls are a crude altar, side altars, bishop’s throne and a famous statue of the archangel himself. On the walls you will find graffiti and foot and hand imprints of earlier pilgrims, including several kings and popes. Morton also saw pilgrims licking the floor, but already at that time the practice was rare and somewhat forbidden, so hopefully it is a thing of the past. But I can still look forward to all the other sights.

I did not even buy a souvenir pilgrim stick at the stall outside the church but walked away with a pasta roller instead. We all have something, we hold sacred, I guess.

Filling in the blanks

2010-01-15T16:08:00.002+01:00

One of my favourite towns in Toscana (there are many) is undoubtedly Arezzo, where you can take a walk in art, history and religion without missing out on great shopping, intellectual cafes, Vespa youths and other emblems of modern city life. Unprepared as always, we stumbled into San Francesco church, and in the mildewy smell behind a modest exterior Piero della Francesca’s famous frescoes were revealed.

In the mid 15th century, Piero della Francesca set about making a action packed cartoon version of the legends of the true cross in twelve frames on the church walls. Your see Adam and Eve’s son, Seth, plant a tree from seeds of the tree of knowledge at the burial of his father. Later the Queen of Sheba recognizes a beam from the divine tree and warns the wise King Solomon that it will be used to hang the king of Jews, so that Solomon as an act of precaution has the beam buried. As we all know(?), Solomon’s cross resurfaces on Golgatha, whereupon it is robbed by a Persian king and disappears for centuries, until the roman emperor Constantino sees it is a dream, and uses it as a good luck charm for his attack on Rome and Maxentius. Constantino wins the battle of the Milvian Bridge, becomes emperor, and converts to Christianity in reverence of the force of the symbol. Afterwards, Constantine’s mother finds the true cross in Jerusalem and as proof of the authenticity the true cross is used to resurrect a dead man.

The legend is not all that coherent; Piero della Francesca’s frescoes are not presented in any particular or chronological order; and damp and age have left big holes in the paintings. Still, you can use your imagination to fill in the gaps, while enjoying some of the earliest and finest Renaissance masterpieces, including the first scene illuminated by pale moon light in Western art.

Back in the street I happen to photograph a nun, while she is scolding a man on the other side of the street for his infrequent church attendance. And suddenly it seems as if we are all doing our bit to fill in the blanks between heaven and earth.

Why are Italian war monuments so cruel?

2010-01-13T13:38:00.002+01:00

I have started collecting monuments. Every time I come to a new city in Italy, I photograph their ai Figli Caduti setup, like the one shown here from Castrovillari in Calabria. So far my collection counts about a dozen photos, but it is fairly new, and I have no doubt it will grow. For a bigger collection see eg. Associazione Storica Cimeetrincee.

It started out with a real distaste for the grotesque war monuments occupying the main piazza in all Italian cities regardless of size. Nowhere else in Europe, have I seen so many explicitly gruesome depictions of war, suffering and death. National Mall in Washington is understated in comparison.

Italian war monuments are so extremely direct in their symbolism that you feel urged to hold your hand over the eyes of children, to protect them from the morbid sight. To increase the emotional impact, the council often adds a list of names of all the city's fallen soldiers, so you inadvertently find yourself faced with a very personal and local tragedy, which - by the way - happens to have taken place almost a hundred years ago. It is a wonder why Italians find such revocations of history cum collective memory constructions necessary.

To search for an explanation I began to study the monuments in more detail. Some of them are tasteful and classic in the sense of a small plaque, an obelisk or an eagle on a Greek column. Others are bombastic, huge, ugly blocks of granite or concrete. And there are soldiers’ helmets with gun holes through. Piles of lifeless bodies in slightly chipped ceramics. Proud warriors ready to defend the nation. Soldiers or angels, who carry around a dead comrade, while Nike raises a laurel wreath of victory. And gigantic, arches of triumph, which in many cases seem inversely proportional to city’s size.

Apart from that I still have not managed to see a connection between monument design and the city's soul. Is the population of the cities showing brave soldiers willing to fight to defend the common values, happier and more optimistic than neighboring towns commemorating their dead with a hole in the head? Why do some cities prefer horror to heroes?

The deeper meaning eludes me, but at least the monuments must have created work and a steady source of income for a small army of sculptors. So they do serve a purpose - and their diversity in design and materials is downright amazing.

Slaving in southern Italy

2010-01-12T09:25:00.004+01:00

Last week’s riots in the Calabrese town Rosarno highlight south Italian problems with illegal immigrants working as farm hands under slave like conditions.

Already in early January 2007, the undercover journalist Fabrizio Gatti received the prestigious Premio Guiseppe Fava prize for his articles in L’espresso called ‘Io schiavo in Puglia’, where he described a labour system of organized exploitation, intimidation, suppression and terror. Since then nothing much has happened. At least it is obvious to anyone travelling in Mezzogiorno on a regular basis that the problem still exists.

It is increasingly rare to see Italians working the fields. The gangs harvesting tomatoes, watermelons, olives, oranges and other labour intensive crops are alternately from Africa, Asia or Eastern Europe, depending on the connections of the people who hire them. Their status as illegal immigrants leave them unprotected from the law and labour agreements. And they live under abominable conditions in camps or in closed down factories, as can be seen from their characteristic packed-up vehicles parked outside.

Seen from an Italian farmer’s point of view agriculture is unprofitable without access to cheap labour and subsidies (for a detailed outline of the economy behind the problems see eg. La Stampa: Le arance di carta di Rosarno). While small farms used to be family enterprises, farmers who are getting on in years complain that their sons and the young people in general find it too hard to work the land for a living. Younger generations are neither willing nor able to lend a hand during harvest, which means that the farmers come to depend on hired help. And as long as there is an illegal work force willing to do the job at cut-down rates, the basic structures will not change. It is sad, really.

Dish washing extravaganza

2010-01-11T08:20:00.003+01:00

While reading the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize, Hilary Mantel’s: Wolf Hall, and wondering whether Henry VIII will ever manage to get rid of his first wife, Katherine, I stumbled over this anecdote about Agostino “Il Magnifico” Chigi. Chigi lived from 1466-1520 and he built the sumptuous renaissance palace called Villa Farnesina in Trastevere, Rome, where he entertained his guests among frescos by Raffaello, Sebastiano del Piombo and other eminent artists.

“In Rome there was a banker called Agostino Chigi. In Siena, where he came from, they maintained he was the richest man in the world. When Agostino had the Pope around for dinner he fed him on gold plates. Then he looked at the aftermath – the sprawled, sated cardinals, the mess they left behind, the half-picked bones and fish skeletons, the oyster shells and orange rinds – and he said, stuff it, let’s save the washing-up.

The guests tossed their plates out of the open windows and straight into the Tiber. The soiled table linen flew after them, white napkins unfurling like greedy gulls diving for scraps. Peals of Roman laughter unfurled into the Roman night.

Chigi had netted the banks, and he had divers standing by for whatever escaped. Some sharp-eyed servant of his upper house-hold stood by the bank when dawn came, and checked off the list, pricking with a pin each item retrieved as it came up from the deep.” Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall (p 313)

Next time I go to Rome, I will remember to visit the newly restored Villa Farnesina and imagine the pretence and extravagance practised by European leaders 500 years’ ago. For an online preview visit the world’s oldest scientific academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.

Not just another lemon tree

2010-01-08T08:26:00.000+01:00

Six years ago when we bought our house in Italy, one of the main ambitions was to become self-sufficient with lemons, and on the first trip to one of the local Garden Centres we bought a two-year old lemon tree. The plant measured less than a metre, but it had three tiny lemon fruits, and I started imagining mouth-watering mountains of lemon curd, lemon pies and salty, preserved lemons.

The tree was planted in fertile soil in the back of the garden and we carried buckets of water down to get it settled, until the local contadini dropped by and announced the project futile.

- You cannot make a lemon tree grow here. Young lemon trees need to be watered regularly, and this is too far away from the tap. It won’t work, they said.

When we returned a couple of months later, they were obviously right, so the by now sorry looking lemon tree was moved closer to the house. Again the contadini turned their thumps down.

- This part of the garden is founded on rocks. There is no soil from which a tree can draw nourishment. Besides it does not like to be moved. You might as well give it up, was their verdict.

After another couple of months the tree had lost most of its leaves and there were signs of vermin and unknown lemon tree diseases. We bought a new slightly bigger tree along with a fortune worth of fertilizer and pesticides recommended by the gardener and planted the lemon just outside the back door, where it is still standing.

But after five years our precious lemon tree is still smaller than an average pre-school boy and the fruits fall off before they reach the size of a euro. But hopefully in twenty years’ time, I will have a basket of home grown lemons every year, and in the meantime I just have to sneak into the neighbours’ garden to ‘borrow’ some fruit. Though it hardly seems fair, their lemon tree carries plenty of fragrant and juicy yellow fruits all year round.

Why can´t north Italians get their bricks straight?

2010-01-07T11:49:00.001+01:00

In my opinion, they look like prickly porcupines taking up a defensive position right in the middle of modern towns in Italia settentrionale. Old, uninviting churches and palaces, which instead of golden elegance use the grimness of mislaid bricks to pull the divine down to earth. These churches have made a virtue out of being nothing special or better than other buildings. Who said the Jante Law is a Scandinavian phenomenon?

The technique of placing every other brick diagonally or cutting the corners of stones in order to leave a rusticated pattern in the building’s exterior became fashionable in Florence in the late 1400s. Originally this kind of masonry was used to create contrast between the ground floor and smoother surfaces, but there are examples of buildings like the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara that have received a complete rusticated makeover. In these instances, the house front appears as an abstract relief with no apparent motif.

And this seems to be the purpose of the exercise. For small means the many bulges and protrusions, known as bugnato and rusticato in Italian, provide the surface with a decorative touch that may adorn otherwise boring, supporting structures. The building style can also be interpreted as a democratization of architecture and a sign of transition to a new power hierarchy. Or it can be viewed as a nostalgic dream of the good old days, when buildings were constructed by using the rough and random stones available.

Personally, I think exaggerated use of rustication is a trick to hide one brick laying mistake in a wall of repetitions. Let’s say a medieval mason had had a little too much grape juice for lunch and returns to work with a testa girata. Being slightly intoxicated he is unable to stack the bricks in a straight line, so instead he creates his own personal style. His style proved so innovative and interesting that other bricklayers decide to copy the concept. That was how north Italian churches acquired their spots and bumps, and how followers of Vitruvius' principles of classical architecture got a headache discussing, whether the bugnato style lives up to the ideals of firmitas (soundness), utilità (utility) and venustas (beauty). I have no doubt. I think hedgehogs look nicer under the hedge.

The witches of Benevento

2010-01-05T09:39:00.002+01:00

A fierce wind blew from the North sending showers of cold and wet rain down over Benevento, which given the circumstances might as well have maintained its original pre-roman name. The Romans considered ‘Maleventum’ a bad omen and changed the name from foul to fair in the more welcoming Benevento, but occasionally winds and events are still evil by nature.

I was looking for the famous witches of Benevento, but the shops were closed and few felt tempted to take a stroll in the rain. Save for the odd umbrella, the broad Corso Garibaldi pedestrian street was deserted and only shadows could be seen flickering the narrow, crooked alleys of Centro Storico. All I managed to find was a couple of signboards advertising a Locanda delle Streghe, a Liquore Strega, and other shops and souvenirs sporting the local Ianara/strega brand. Modern witches seem to have sold their souls to Mammon, who may or may not be identical with the Medieval idea of Satan.

On the other hand, witches are known to blend in with the crowd in order to make their dark magic inconspicuous, so perhaps they were hiding undercover. The only crowd had gathered outside the Chiesa di Santa Sofia, which along with certain aspects of the witch cult bore witness of my long-bearded Lombard ancestors and their presence in Italy from 568-774 AD. Bells summoned locals to high mass in the beautifully simple and vaulted church, and quite a few women were in attendance, though no one - even vaguely - resembled a witch.

We decided to move on and entered the garden behind La Rocca dei Rettori, thinking it might contain the famous walnut tree, under which Italian witches, wizards and devils met to dance and celebrate under a full moon. In medieval times, the tree was said to infect the brain of any person who might fall asleep in its damp shade. Actually, you just have to look at the nuts for evidence of their affinity to the brain. Furthermore, a pagan rite is said to have existed around a sacred tree in Benevento in the 7th century. Knights were required to gallop towards the tree, grab a piece of snake’s skin hanging from it and pretend to eat it. Apparently, the pagan rite has been mixed up with a snake cult and the legends of the sacred walnut tree, and the up to 200 witches have been on trial for assembling under a tree in Benevento, but few people were actually executed for witchcraft in Catholic Italy.

The park behind Rocca dei Rettori offered a magnificent view, a lot of trees and quite a few distorted and disquieting figures that seemed to be frozen in the past. At least, they could not quite eliminate the image of Benevento as a diabolical place, which means there is still some magic to search for, while we along with millions of Italian children are waiting for La Befana and her small gifts of carbone.

Presents from above

2009-12-30T11:05:00.000+01:00

To me the shrines, sanctuaries and chapels dotted around the Italian landscape form a perpetual enigma. Holy statues and saints peeping out of windows from their holes in house walls are ordinary sights of comfort and wonder. The stone shrines and prayer houses along the roads appear alternately sad and cheerful, depending on whether they have been raised to commemorate a death or a miracle. And then there are the small one-man-chapels in the middle of nowhere that tend to leave a big question mark in my mind.

To a non-catholic entering these sacred places seems like a transgression, but once my curiosity got the better of me, and I went inside a small chapel on a deserted mountain top in Calabria. The cool darkness and bare white-washed walls contained an altar with altar cloth, prayer candles, a wooden cross and – most surprisingly – small plastic trinkets, notes and letters to God. A few of these letters were very private and personal, but most of them resembled wish lists of the material ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a colour tv’ kind.

Perhaps the chapels serve as a divine post office forwarding mail to the world above. Or perhaps the altar corresponds to our shopping centre Santas to whom we whisper a list of wishes that magically manifest themselves as presents in a stocking or under a tree at Christmas. I just hope that all God’s pen pals including those with a laboured and shaky handwriting will have as much success with their wish lists.

Visiting Al Bano

2009-12-28T21:03:00.000+01:00

Well, for those of you, who don't know Al Bano with or without Romina Power, he (and she, ie. his former wife) are Italian pop singers, who made it big in San Remo and the Eurovision Song Contest in the 80s. A bit like Keld&Hilda, Svenne&Lotta, Sonny&Cher or Captain&Tenille. I write this tentatively, because all Italians – or at least all pugliesi – find it absolutely incredible that anybody, who was alive in the 1980s, haven't got an Al Bano and Romina Power (who is by the way daughter of the famous American actor Tyrone Power, you know?) soundtrack to their lives. They are soooo famous.

And they are not just famous for their hit music, the Italians stress, when they have finished rolling their eyes in exasperation over foreign cultural twits. They are also famous for their marriage, their tragedy, their break-up, and for Al Bano's unwavering loyalty to the place, where he grew up, Cellino San Marco. Actually, Al Bano still lives in Cellino San Marco (or more precisely on the road between Cellino and Oria), where he has got his Tenuta, ranch, and where you can buy his award winning 'Don Carmelo' wine, eat at his restaurant, visit his casa discografica, or stay in his villagio. It is pure celebrity-star spangled magic.

The magic starts, when you come to a fork in the road and meet a 5 metre tall Madonna statue with widespread arms announcing that you have reached Tenuta Albano Carrisi. Further down the road, there is a boundary wall surrounding a small village in a kind of patchwork architecture merging different styles and materials. There is a park with lakes, streams and gold fish. And there is the restaurant, the enoteca, the church, and other facilities for residents.

According to the article 'Un villagio di nome "Albano"', the popsinger has designed the buildings himself, just as he has taken part in the practical construction work. Maybe that explains the clash of tastes, and what he himself calls a fruit salad of various ideas, memories and feelings picked up on travels throughout the world.
Al Bano's world can now be seen all year round outside Cellino San Marco, and his music can be heard on record, and on YouTube where he and Romina Power are forever performing 'Felicità', which happens to be the only Al Bano hit song, I remember having heard before.

Pirate attacks on the Adriatic Coast

2009-12-16T14:22:00.001+01:00

Situated on il borgo vecchio promontory behind a drawbridge door, the fortified Castello Svevo in Termoli appears impenetrable with its high, massive pyramid base, turrets in each corner and a watchtower on top, providing a grand total view of the sea, the north-south going road and the hinterlands. Hidden behind hollow slits, soldiers in the Middle Ages could defend the town with bows and firearms at minimum risk to themselves, yet they could not withstand an attack from the Ottoman corsairs

In the mid-16th century, Barbary pirates created havoc on the Adriatic coast, destroying numerous cities and taking the population hostage. Hostages could be released by paying ransom, but most of them became slaves in North Africa or on the Ottoman galleys, where they manned the oars. Estimates indicate that around a million Europeans were enslaved on the Barbery Coast in the period from 1530 to 1780, and a lot of them were abducted from southern Italy.

The people of Termoli must have been aware of the pirates’ brutality, because the moment they spotted ships carrying black flags with skulls and crossbones at sea, they decided to flee. When the pirates entered Termoli in August 1566, they found the old town more or less deserted. Enraged, the corsairs set fire to the castle, the old cathedral and houses on borgo vecchio, and from surrounding hills the inhabitants of Termoli saw the red glow and flames devour their homes, but most of them survived.

For some reason, or perhaps because there is some evidence of resistance and supernatural sanctuary, the people of Termoli commemorates the Turkish raid with live action role-playing on Ferragosto. Every year on August 15th hundreds of young men dressed up as Ottoman pirates climb up the castle and raid the old town. The siege culminates in the burning of the castle and spectacular fireworks.

Italy’s caped crusaders

2009-12-11T13:53:00.008+01:00

Some weeks ago I went to see Dario Fo talk about climate change, theatre and entertainment, and he also gave a short improvised performance in the universal gibberish, grammelot, language, originating from commedia dell’arte. Anyway, the event led me to re-read ‘My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More)’, which in Italian (and in the Danish translation) is called ‘Il paese dei mezarat’, mezarat being a lombardian dialect word for half-mouse or bat, more commonly known as the pipistrelli in Italy.

According to Fo, Gotham City can be found on the eastern bank of Lago Maggiore in the province of Varese. He is referring to Porto Valtravaglia, where people worked all night to keep the glassworks’ furnaces going, just like the fishermen, the lime burners and the smugglers. In an interview with l’Unita, Dario Fo explains:

"In lombardo, soprattutto sul lago Maggiore, "mezaràt" significa mezzo-topo, quindi il paese dei mezaràt sarebbe il paese dei pipistrelli. Ad ogni modo è un termine che si riferisce alla gente di Porto Valtravaglia che lavorava soprattutto di notte, perché erano soffiatori di vetro, pescatori e contrabbandieri. Insomma, Porto Valtravaglia è un paese in cui i bar e le osterie non chiudevano mai, non avevano neanche le porte, non avevano un ingresso principale. Io sono cresciuto lì, in un paese dove c'erano persone che provenivano da tutta Europa, dalla Francia, dalla Germania, dalla Spagna, perfino dall'Oriente, ognuno con una tecnica diversa di soffiatura del vetro".

In my village at the other end of Italy, there are no glassworks but plenty of bats. Just after sundown on hot summer evenings, when weeks have passed since the last rainfall, you feel them brush by under the pine trees, hunting for mosquitoes. They are so fast, they are virtually invisible, and it can be really scary to feel this winged mammal close to your head, but still they have to be forgiven. After all they are able to eliminate up to 500 zanzare in one night, which makes them considerably more efficient than mosquito candles. And sometimes – or at least once – one of the small caped crusaders continued working so long after it had become light, that it had to pass the day exposed on one of the boundary walls in the garden.

So even if we don’t have workers staying up like bats all night, we do have bats working all day, and this should also qualify as an Italian Gotham City or at least ‘un altro paese dei pipistrelli’.

An inaccessible beauty without proper footwear

2009-12-09T15:16:00.006+01:00

A photographic poster first drew me to the Cava Grande del Cassibile in southeastern Sicily. The picture showed a series of waterfalls and untouched green lakes in a deep, white limestone canyon below the blue summer sky, as a blissful natural attraction among innumerable cultural sights. Nonetheless, there was no reference to the place in the brought along guidebooks, and first after consulting the locals we drove off on a narrow country road in the direction from Avola to Palazzolo.

The road climbed up to Avola Antica and a magnificent view 500 metres over sea level, and after about 10 kilometres we encountered a line of parked cars and a helicopter pad marked with a circled H. A couple of shacks indicated some sort of action, and suddenly people emerged in rather large numbers considering the deserted feeling of the surroundings. Most of them were panting and sweated profusely as if they had just completed a major sports achievement, but I did not pay much attention. It was after all four o’clock in the afternoon on a hot Sicilian summer day.

We went with the flow to buy a bottle of water, and lined up for the path that seemed to descend into the canyon. It was being guarded by a man, who instead of asking for an admittance fee, demanded to see our passports, carefully registering names and numbers. That done he stuck his head out of the shack window and looked at our feet.

- You don’t intend to enter the canyon in those shoes, he said and pointed an accusing finger at my fashionable pearl sandals. Hiking shoes are compulsory footwear for all visitors, who wish to enter the canyon.

Luckily, he was a typical Italian anarchist, who did not mind bending the rules a little.

- But remember: You have to report back here before six and you won’t reach the lakes in less than 3 hours, unless you are in very good shape. Normally, it takes one hour to walk down and two hours to ascent, but never mind: In those shoes you won’t get far.

At the edge of the precipice I began to see his point. The path was a steep zigzagged line, where you sometimes had to jump from one high stone to the other, and people walking up looked utterly exhausted, parents coaxed complaining or crying children, and ever so often bottlenecks arose when someone had to stop for breath. And they all wore hats to shelter from the sun and sensible shoes.

Far below the view paid justice to the poster photograph with waterfalls and inviting lakes where ant-sized people were taking a refreshing dip. Excavated in the canyon you could see caves, where the prehistoric Siculi tribe had their dwellings and burial places 1300 years AD. And wild orchids and other rare flowers mixed with the vegetation.

We went half way down, hoping the pearl sandals would last, and then we had to turn around to get back before closing time. Italians are not normally overprotective, so when they treat a natural reserve with such precaution and respect, I am convinced that the Cava Grande del Cassibile may pose real danger. Still, I am going back next time I visit this part of Sicily, and then I will start out early in the morning equipped with plenty of water, packed lunch, hat, swimming suit and sensible shoes.

A perfect spot to bath the horses

2009-12-08T15:11:00.006+01:00

Traversing Italy from north to south requires a few stops along the way, and one of the perfect stopovers is Bagnacavallo. A small town between Bologna and Rimini with loads of restaurants and very high, but still affordable culinary standards. A personal favourite is Osteria Malabocca, interpreted as Ma la Bocca to avoid suspicion of hurting the mouth.

During an exquisite meal here, the chef emerged to chat about the genteel aspirations of the name and speculations that modern day tourists may have been preceded by the great poet Dante.

- Do you know, the Romans used to come here to cross the river Senio, and they believed the water had a therapeutic effect on ailing horses? He asked with considerable reverence. In the high Middle Ages the place therefore became known as Bagnacavallo, because this was the place to bath the horses, and even today Ingredior rhoebus, cyllaros egredior meaning “It enters ill and comes out healthy” is inscribed in the city’s coat of arms.

The next day we went out to look for the miraculous waters, but found only farm land and signs to the near-by town Cotignola that was basically destroyed during the Battaglia del Senio between German and allied forces in april 1945.

I was reminded of my experiences in Bagnacavallo the other day, when reading biographical notes on Lord Byron. Apparently, the great Romantic poet left his illigitimate daugter Allegra at the Capuchin convent in Bagnacavallo, while he pursued his flamboyant interests elsewhere. In 1822 when Don Juan was being lived and writted the five-year-old died from fever surrounded by nuns at the convent.

It would appear that Bagnacavallo lost some of its health-bringing magic many years ago, but self-indulgence lives on in the menu degustazione and it can be highly refreshing.

’Orse meat

2009-12-04T16:36:00.005+01:00

Nowhere in Europe have I seen such a high concentration of horse butchers as in Italy. In Puglia there is at least a Macelleria Equina for every Polleria, and the pugliesi love to tease squamish and sentimental foreign dinner guests with a horse meat alert.

- Why don’t you eat ‘orse meat? Those who speak a bit of English ask. It is good for you. Horse meat is rich on iron and very tasty, like a mixture of beef and game.

I try to explain during the last war horsemeat was sold in Denmark, but today horses are mainly used as work mates and pets, and you would not eat your cat, dog and budgies either. The argument is, however, wasted on the Italians to whom taste is paramount, and you end up feeling like an anemic schizzinosa.

According to Wikipedia, Italy produces meat from 213,000 horses a year, which is more than any other European country. In fact Northern Europe exports worn out riding horses to Italy, where they are butchered and eaten, cause unlike sheep and cattle horses are not bred and raised specifically for their meat. So from an economic and environmental point of view, it makes sense to serve this taboo for dinner.

Thrift and practical considerations are also behind one of Italy’s most famous horse meat dishes, the pastisada de caval from Verona. Allegedly the recipe dates back to 489 ad, when King Teodorico and King Odoacre fought a great battle outside town. After the battle the ground was strewn with horse corpses, which King Teodorico donated to the people of Verona to celebrate the victory. At that point the rotting stench was already noticable, so the people of Veneto cooked the meat for hours with lots of onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes and other vegetables, herbs and spices like bayleaf, cinnamon and clove and the local Amarone wine.

It should be really delicious – if you like horses in this way too.

The black sun phenomenon

2009-12-02T15:05:00.006+01:00

Every day large flocks of starlings commute back and forth between their nests in Italian cities, and 'work' in the country.

According to the Italian Ornithological Association (LIPU)starlings are most common bird in Italy in winter, and in autumn they have been counted to make up two-thirds of the feathered population, followed by wild ducks and finches.

Starlings breed in Northern Europe in the summer and return to the countries around the Mediterranean Sea in the winter months. The migratory birds prefer to nest in town due to the urban heat and good accommodation in parks and street trees. By day, they commute to the countryside to find food in vineyards and olive groves.

In March and April the starlings return to countries with a cooler climate, but their five-month stay in Italy is not without problems. The noise along tree-lined promenades can be unbearable, some neighbourhoods in Rome and Naples experience a dangerous mess of bird droppings, and large flocks of birds regularly disrupt traffic and cause accidents.

For instance, the combination of bird droppings with rain makes Rome's cobblestoned streets extremely slippery for the two-wheel drivers. In fact the Romans are so fed up with the birds that they try to scare them away with CDs playing load starlings-alarm signals and the installation of powerful searchlights in the trees. Still, it scare tactics do not seem to have any major effect in the long term.

Apparently, Italian city-dwellers will have to live with a teeming starling population during winter, but they may find comfort in the impressive sight of large flocks of starlings flying in formation above country roads. Small scale ‘black sun’ phenomena can be observed both in the morning and the evening, as birds and humans tend to commune simultaneously between home and work.