Art showers in Dozza

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.

Po Plain looks ever so pretty in pink

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.

A perfect spot to bath the horses

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.

Town named after a radio pioneer

Now Sasso Marconi is not a place you would normally choose to visit, unless you want to experience Bologna in high summer without having to survive the humid heat that settles over this part of the Po Valley, especially in the evenings. Sasso Marconi is situated on the Setta river right where the Apennines rise with promises of a cooling breeze, but the town is not much more than a sleepy suburb in scenic surroundings, 15 minutes' drive from Bologna.

The most interesting aspect about Sasso Marconi is in fact that the city has not always been known by that name. Until 80 years ago, the municipality was called Praduro e Sasso, but in 1935 it changed its name to Bolognese Sasso and in 1938 it became Sasso Marconi after Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi, who was born and lived most of his life in Villa Griffon in this town. Small European cities rarely contribute to this kind of personality cult, but the date is probably significant as is the fact the Guglielmo Marconi was a close friend of Benito Mussolini.

When Marconi died, 63 years old, in 1937 he had a state funeral, and all radio stations throughout the world observed two minutes' silence. Marconi is - at least according to the Italians - the person who invented the radio, and this might explain the honour.

Forty-three years earlier in 1894 Guglielmo Marconi began to experiment with wireless telegraphs, and he managed to send and pick up a signal over a distance of 1.5 kilometers from Villa Griffon. In 1896 he traveled to England to obtain funding for his invention, and he soon became famous on both sides of the Atlantic. He established Marconi International Marine Communication Company, which made it possible to maintain radio contact with ships. And in 1909 he received the Nobel Prize in physics.

Today, radio nerds can study the Marconi collection on the award-winning Internet site Marconi Calling or visit Museo Marconi, where the inventor's work tools, equipment and experimental setups are exhibited. which also houses the Marconi's mausoleum. As a tribute to a great and not quite forgotten Italian.

Other towns
Catania is better than its reputation