And the coming home

 Part three: The long road 'home'

When I was a boy I used to really enjoy weekend walks, often exploring abandoned farm buildings or distant woods with a pal, or sometimes inviting myself to lunch at unsuspecting households of friends.  The wrench, however, was the retreat, the having to go home, the retracing my steps.  A sense of dull depression would creep over me, not because I didn't like home, but because it included the responsibilities of chores and homework and school the next day.....

A similar feeling descends on me as I think about the long road 'home.' 

However, before I leave, we take a trek up Monte Labbro, a 1,200 metre hill not far from Arcidosso, once the home of the charismatic 'Prophet of Monte Amiata' David Lazzaretti (1834 - 1878).  Four kestrels sprint and flutter in the strong mountain breezes - possibly two young ones being schooled by their parents?  The views from here are wonderful, across the Tuscan countryside and up to the heights of Monte Amiata (1,738 metres) with the plumes of steam from the geothermal power station near Santa Fiora in the foreground:

And then, all too soon, it is time to bid my friends farewell, including ninety-something year old Corrado (pictured at the head of this piece), who was born in the house where I have been staying (but who moved down to be beside the road around fifty years ago).  We have shared many a glass of his rustic wine in the past, but today he spills me a coffee.  His wife, Concetta, died exactly one year ago, and he is managing pretty well, despite failing eyesight, though complains about the difficulty of getting domestic helpers who don't put things away in the wrong places.....  Considering that he was born in the time of Mussolini, was a boy when German troops stomped and shot their way through in the 1940s, and then lived his adult life under 66 different governments, considering all that, he is in pretty good shape, and I hope I will see him again on my next visit.

I drive across country, crossing the River Orcia and past some spectacular examples of biancane - eroded rocks typical of the Crete Senesi  - then wind up past La Foce (famous home of Iris Origo) to Montepulciano and then down to the Val di Chiana and on to Arezzo.  

It's all happening here.  A sunny Saturday and everyone is in their finery.....

In the Piazza Grande a massed gathering of paramedics and mountain rescuers sing the National Anthem for me and we all are then treated to an aria from La Traviata.  

There's a wedding in the Cathedral, which swallows the beautiful bride into its dark entrails:

And another in the Pieve di Santa Maria, where the priests are taking no chances:

It's a day for parading (don't they look fabulous?):

And then an evening for the Passeggiata (soooo relaxed!):

I feel rather alone in this city this time (Amanda and I were last here a few years back) without my little companion - I guess weddings remind me - and yet there is life all around, children dashing about playing chase in the Piazza, and hundreds of really healthy looking young people engaging with their friends in a ritual of Saturday Night excitement, the girls all dressed in black skirts or trousers, bare midriffs and fine tops, the young men studiously less careful, except in their hair cuts.

I take comfort in the bottle-lined interior of La Torre di Gnicche (Piaggia S. Martino 8), where la signora Lucia makes me welcome and I sample some local affettati and vino for my supper.  It is quiet, even though it is barely fifty metres from the Piazza Grande.

I retire to my hotel room, high above the central streets, but can hear, through my slumbers, voices well into the night, with the final farewell calls around three.  But all in good humour - no sound of breaking glass, or voices raised in drunken violence.  It is calm, and friendly, and harmless....

In the morning, with clouds beginning to gather, I have to return the car to Florence, and then I stroll about the crowded, smiling streets.  

It is beautiful, and it is busy.  2020 was a disaster year, of course, but this year things have picked up.  One million two hundred and fifty-five thousand tourists have been registered in Florence in the summer of 2021, a rise of 185.7% over last year (although this is still 60% down on 2019).  

Although many of the visitors here are Italians who have chosen not to travel abroad (or who could not) most of the tourists here are Europeans (German, French, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss and Austrian) but not American or Japanese.  Apparently this is especially thanks to the introduction of the European Green Pass in August - and  I can vouch for the efficacy of this.  My NHS Covid Pass App (which I printed out and carry in my pocket) has been accepted in every bar and restaurant on this trip - I have just had to show the QR code and every little zapper from Paris to Tuscany has recognised me and given me a big green tick - how simple is that?  And it means that not only do the baristas and restauranteurs know that I am doubly vaccinated, but all the other diners or drinkers can rest assured that I am too.  No pass = no entry.  OK, so there may be some disappointed people, and people who have reason not to be vaccinated, but for the vast majority of people this brings peace of mind, and means that places can now function almost normally.  I have to have a driving licence to drive, and my wife is no longer allowed to, which, practically speaking, means that the roads are safer than if everyone could drive whether licensed or not.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream......

Anyway, the skies darken and thunder rumbles.  As predicted, the heavens open and a heavy storm sweeps the streets clear of mankind and unkind.....  For a moment I think my roof is leaking, but then I realise the paint has run....  It isn't like this in never land.  You simply don't know up from down.

And then it is over.  The cobbles gleam and there isn't a crowd in the sky. Pretty soon it will be tomorrow and the world will forget what has been and what.  But for now, I have the extraordinary privilege of staring at Brunelleschi's dome as if it were about to be completed:

And a strange light illuminates the facade of the cathedral, bathing it in a pinkish glow:

Night falls.  A pizza and a glass of vino, a wander past the hotel I used to prefer,

and bed.  In the morning I board the Freccia Rossa to Milan, where, in a complex of modernity and imagination, including a thoughtful garden of delights and some ancient empty streets, I have a few hours to wait, 

Which wait I partially fill by indulging in a last meal before my execution.... A truly beautiful risotto alla Milanese followed by Abbacchio a scottadito (with a side dish of porcini trifolati) with some Roero Arneis (2019) and then some Nebbiolo d'Alba.  Thank you Alla Cucina della Langhe (Corso Como, 6) - If you are in the neighbourhood, please give them my regards.

And then it is all aboard the TGV for Paris, eight hours (it is delayed) of scenery and sneezing (not me, but the woman next to me), hauling sometimes at 300kph.  I cannot help but feel the gravitation pull of Italy behind me, as I nervously approach my homeland.

I won't go on.....  I know some of my readers will have different ideas, but the absolutely worst part of this trip was my return to the UK.  I was prepared for this - I had had a Lateral Flow Test in Florence (supervised online); I have been twice vaccinated against Covid 19; I am healthy and have no obvious symptoms; I have a new blue British passport; I have the NHS Covid pass; I spent around £200 on tests including the Day 2 PCR test for my return; I was born in the UK; I pay taxes; I have a permanent address in the UK....  But despite all this I was reduced to a trembling wreck at the Gare du Nord by the overriding feeling of unwelcome and inefficiency (the Gov.uk website was down exactly when I needed to show my Passenger Locator Form).  After ten days of friendly (sympathetic) travel through three different countries I really felt it might have been preferable to have gone to Calais to hitch a ride on a leaky dinghy to Dover.  

Indeed, if it weren't for the fact that I had to get back to look after Amanda, and that I have some rights, I would have happily turned round and gone straight back to Italy.  No wonder that hardly any European HGV drivers (et al) want to go through this humiliation on a regular basis.

Just one little example: with my new blue Great Britain (sic) passport I had to go one way through the channels towards the security check.  Guess what?  Our channel wound its way in convoluted rounds to eventually be reintegrated with the simple straight channel for anyone else.....

Some apologies to those who disagree with my take on this, but Brexit has been a predictable disaster.  I am ashamed to be a British citizen.  I have been back ten days and Johnson makes a speech without mentioning supply difficulties (I couldn't get any fuel near here yesterday) and Theresa Coffey sings I've had the time of my life at the Conservative Party Conference closing disco.....  Universal Credit drops by £20 a week; fuel prices are at an all time high (with all the knock on effects that will have on food prices); heating one's home will be hundreds of pounds more this year; and Pandora has opened a box that spotlights the fact that the poor person who may falsify their benefit claim is such a minnow in the huge lake of tax evasion and surreptitious corruption that is this Tory world.

Fuck!  Nowhere and no one is perfect, and Italy's plethora of difficulties, governments, parties and disasters doesn't make for a good comparison, but all in all I would rather take my little one back there and see the sun go down with a glass of good red wine, than fret myself to death here in this so-called Bullingdon sovereignty where thousands of pigs can be eliminated because of 'supply problems' and food banks and supermarket shelves are running on empty.

Che bella cosa na jurnata ’e sole,
n’aria serena doppo na tempesta!
Pe’ ll’aria fresca pare già na festa...
Che bella cosa na jurnata ’e sole.

O, sole mio!

The end of the road.  Back home, on the beach with my little one....

Tuscany

Nostalghia for the Medici, et alios.....

October in Tuscany.  It's cold.  In Volterra the wind is high, shivering down the deep, narrow, stone streets.  The Medici (Masters of Florence) have taken over the Piazza dei Priori to film the second series of their selfie fest [a political family drama set in Florence in the early fifteenth century. Cosimo de Medici finds himself at the helm of his banking dynasty when his father, Giovanni, dies suddenly.....  Starring Richard Madden.]

We came from Pisa, where a combination of one-way streets, road closures, pedestrianisation and general impassibility set me up me to accumulate around 100 florins in taxable offences.....  A small price, perhaps, for a view like this.....

As dusk falls the streets are busy with visitors hurrying away.....

And then, in the dark, the university, where Galileo - and his feathers - studied the nights, the city is quiet....

And the Campo dei Miracoli is silent and deserted.

The Medici rose to power in the early fifteenth century.  They came from a region north of Florence, initially were doctors (hence the name), then they became wool merchants, then, deftly employing double entry book-keeping, they became the most powerful bankers in Europe.  Having gained wealth, and prominence, they trumped Florence and ruled the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.  In the meantime, they produced three popes and two queens of France.  Their intermarriages with other rich families, and their sponsorship of the arts, meant that for centuries they shaped the development of Tuscany and beyond.

Not that they ruled everywhere....  Siena, fiercely Ghibelline (supporting the Holy Roman Emperor) as opposed to Florence's Guelf stance (on the side of the Pope) was a rival, partly also because of the difference in the sources of their wealth - Florence being a mercantile trading city, while Siena relied on agriculture for its economy.  They weren't friends, anyway, and in September 1260, at Montaperti, ten thousand Florentines perished at the hands of the Senese and a further fifteen thousand were taken prisoner.

Today, Siena is peaceful, and an Aperol Spritz in the Campo is a pleasure that neither Guelfs nor Ghibellines can diminish, though we are only days after the horse of the Giraffe contrada died in agony after a fall during a special run of the Palio to commemorate the centenary of the end of WWI.

Not far away, dominating the val d'Elsa, is San Gimignano, famous for its towers, but also a renowned spot on the via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.  Like Pisa, Volterra and Siena, there are tides of visitors, washing through the streets and sights in the chilly October sun, admiring themselves against the stone walls, and leaving a little of their wealth behind.

San Gimignano produces a lovely white wine, known as Vernaccia, and the town has installed a fine tasting bar in the ruins of the Castle here, the Vernaccia di San Gimignano Wine Experience.  The centre was created by Consorzio del Vino Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a consortium which brings together all winegrowers producing Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOCG, the first Italian wine to obtain the Appellation of Origin in 1966....  The world, almost suddenly, seems a better place.

As night falls the day trippers fade away, bussed back to their cruise ships or modern hotels, and I wander the cool dark streets, silence cloaking my footsteps,

As the moon rises above the medieval towers.

In the morning, it is still October, and though the Italian sun shines there is a cold wind.  We head for Monte Amiata, at 1,738 metres (5,702 feet) the highest mountain in Southern Tuscany, a volcanic cone far mightier than any Medici.  I pay my respects to Andrei Tarkovsky at the ruins of San Galgano, one of the great Cistercian monasteries of Italy.  Scenes from his 1983 film Nostalghia were filmed here and I breathe the air of yesterday.... 

Further on down the road we pass the Abbazia di S. Antimo, a Romanesque gem said to have been founded by Charlemagne at the end of the ninth century.  Once this was so quiet and little visited that a Roller nested in the campanile, but now it is cared for and practised in and visited by many.

We approach the mountain, its twin peaks looming behind the restored Castello di Velona Resort Thermal SPA & Winery (where you could have B & B for about £300) which was a roofless ruin when I first explored this region....

This is the Tuscany, the Italy, that I love most.  I arrived here to stay with friends in August 1976, carrying a suitcase up the road from the railway station at Monte Amiata Scalo.  It was hot then, and somehow I lost the instructions of how to find my friends on the way up the hill.  But eventually I got there, first to meet Corrado, now in his nineties, and his wife Concetta,

And then to sit by the fire in an isolated farmhouse, dining on fegatelli (little intestine wrapped parcels of pig's liver flavoured with fennel) and drinking dark red wine.  

The area is dotted with villages, their church towers aspiring heavenwards.  Things have changed since I first came, but it is still a harmonious landscape that shows how man and nature can coexist.  There is no longer the braying of the donkeys first and last thing in the day, and there is less wood smoke drifting up from kitchen chimneys now, but wine and olives and bread and sheep's cheese are still the main products here.....  There are good things in life.... 

And the sun still goes down with a golden glow, leaving the world in the purity of darkness, filling me with Nostalghia, 

Nostalgia which circles round and round, like the coloured bricks and stones in the ceiling of the chiesetta di S Galgano.....

It is October.  It is cold, and the Medici are still filming their power struggles in Volterra.  

But nonetheless my heart warms with love for Tuscany.

Firenze (Florence)

A Day in Florence

With recent advances in the services provided by Trenitalia, Florence is now only an eighty-minute trip from Rome.  What is more, you can book your own seats on the trains from home, on the Internet, and, with Eurostar, move comfortably and swiftly between cities.  In some ways this brilliant advance in transport may, however, be a drawback, making the world ever smaller.  It’s like the Apple or Blackberry.  It’s all so easy now; we take things for granted.  In the “good” old days, the first stop out of Rome on the way to Florence was at La Storta, where lunch at the Trattoria del Quarto Secolo might have given you the strength to make it as far as Campagnano, or perhaps Sutri, depending on whether you were travelling in style or tourist class.  Whatever else this meant, by the time you got to Florence, you were probably in need of at least five days rest, giving you time perhaps to see the major sights before moving on.  At today’s pace, you’ll do a bit of shopping in Via dei Calzaiuoli, have a bistecca alla fiorentina for lunch, and then back on the Eurostar to Rome for tea at Babington’s.

 

There are, however, variables and you don’t have to be so hurried.  Florence is a city of changeable weather, and I, for one, seem to have been quite unlucky on some of my visits.  The surrounding mountains and the nature of the Arno valley, combine to create a microclimate that can be very cold in winter or very heavy in summer.  And then, of course, it rains sometimes.  The first time I went there was the tenth anniversary of the 1966 floods, and it was very worryingly wet.  I squelched about the streets encountering shopkeepers uneasily checking their defences and entering churches that still bore the tide marks half way up the walls.  Subsequent trips have been icily cold, with winds like liquid nitrogen scouring down from the Casentino.  On other occasions it has been breathlessly hot, with brown clouds and an airlessness that gave even Michelangelo’s implacable David something of a headache.  On some occasions, however, I have been treated to perfection, and have greatly enjoyed afternoons in the Boboli gardens or on the Ex-Forte Belvedere (partially closed at present for restoration, but a delightful place to picnic and view the city below).

The weather is not a huge issue, however, for Florence is a very internal city – indeed perhaps this is because of the weather.  Massaccio’s Adam and Eve, bitterly ashamed of themselves for their stupid disobedience (or simply annoyed that they got caught?) care not a fig leaf for the climate, as their punishment is fixed within the Brancacci Chapel, roofed over by the strength of Santa Maria del Carmine.  From another point of view, perhaps, one of the delights of Florence for many visitors is to take hot chocolate in Café Rivoire on Piazza della Signoria (though my preference is for un espresso at Gilli’s on Piazza della Repubblica) and it’s the internal glitter, the antique but well-maintained opulence, that is the attraction.  Exteriors, by and large, in Florence (despite notable exceptions) don’t count for much.  Just look at the facades of San Lorenzo or Santo Spirito for confirmation – they just aren’t there.  The streets don’t really lend themselves to views; it is after all a cramped Roman settlement at a prestigious bridging point.  Buildings have risen on the original grid plan and the streets have become deeper and darker.  It is very hard to match outsides with the glories within in this proud and self-contained city.  Try to imagine what lies within the rough-hewn fortress of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi for instance, and then go and view Benozzo Gozzoli’s Journey of the Magi (1459-1463) within.  The contrast between the vibrant colours and the exciting swirl of people and animals on the interior walls and the rugged, chipped and impregnable walls outside is, to use a local word, impressionante.  Despite, of course, the irony that the walls within depict outside scenes.  Almost as if the whole of life is an illusion.

Or a piece of theatre, which is coincidentally what I stumbled on in the vicinity of the Piazza della Signoria one cold and rainy December afternoon.  Some hundred or more mature citizens of Florence had got themselves into medieval costumes and, with a variety of weapons and musical instruments, were parading in a stop-start, heavy, slow procession.  Trumpets blared a tune, followed by martial drumbeats, and then, at someone’s imperceptible signal, the four characters in charge of the trundling cannon, set fire to the charge and all were deafened to a standstill.  And then it started again.  Police in escort, ladies and gentlemen, hand in hand.  Striped pantaloons, red shoes, steel helmets, halberds, pikes, and flags – the works.  As the crowd pressed in, the rain began to intensify, the whole troupe approached the Palazzo della Signoria, and, then….  it broke up.  Tourists had their photos taken arm in arm with five hundred year old gentlemen; the party was over.

I asked a frightened looking policeman what it was all about.  He hesitated, twitching like a rabbit with a stopwatch.  “Una manifestazione,” he explained.  “Scusi, devo andare.”  Leaving me feeling like Alice in a slightly awkward Wonderland.

And so, if it’s a phoney world, why go there?  Why does half the world knock on the door?  Could it be that this is perhaps the only place in the world where you can see a fur coat on a bicycle?  Could it be that this place has perhaps the greatest concentration of pictorial and sculptural riches anywhere in the world?   As with so much, some of it is a matter of opinion.  Some will argue that Michelangelo’s David is overbearing and disproportionate and that Cellini’s Perseus (and Donatello’s David) are too pretty and posy.  But the arguments will continue, because of personal opinion, and informed opinion at that.  Those that prefer Fra Angelico have plenty to see.  Those who enjoy the brightness and mannerist exuberance of Pontormo in Santa Felicita cannot complain, while those who love Domenico Ghirlandaio have only to go to Santa Trinita if they cannot get into the Refectory of Ognissanti (recently elevated to be a Benedictine Abbey, after the Franciscans moved on). 

Or, indeed, look inside Filippo Brunelleschi’s dramatic and elegant Ospedale Degli Innocenti in the busy Piazza Santissima Annunziata.  Within, apart from the offices of UNICEF, aptly housed in this ancient Foundling Hospital, you can find the masterpiece of Domenico Ghirlandaio, the Adoration of the Magi, as well as the beautiful Madonna col Bambino degli Innocenti. by Sandro Botticelli, which was painted between 1465 and 1467.  Or, again, slip into the Palazzo Davanzati,  one of the few remaining medieval Florentine houses, a palazzo signorile, which dates back to the 14^th century; it is an extraordinary, wonderfully decorated and furnished building, recently reopened after extensive works.  Internally, at least, Florence is a feast.  Enough to feed a thousand art history schools.

Externally, however, it does have a few glories.  There’s marble enough to interest the lapidarian, from Santa Croce, to Santa Maria Novella, to the Duomo to Giotto’s exquisite Campanile up to the gem on the hill of San Miniato del Monte, (which is as good inside as out).  And when up on the hill, rest awhile and gaze back over the town and its coursing river.  You can see why the Romans needed it, and why everyone else since has kept it on the map.  You can perhaps understand why Dante loved the place so much, and why, for a while at least, it was capital of the new Italy. 

And when you have done musing, wander down the hill again and try one of the Hostarie in Via San Niccolo, or walk on back to the central market and sniff out the Trattoria Gozzi, where, despite the demise of the imposing Sergio himself a few years ago, the enduring standards of friendliness and honesty are practised by his son.  It’s only open for lunch, but their food is procured daily from the adjacent covered market and prepared in traditional Tuscan ways.  Ribollita, aqua cotta, pappa del pomodoro; excellent red wine, first class meat.  Its welcoming interior lit by bright chandeliers that reflect off the Della Robbia (type) ceramics on the walls.  Only now, I notice, the chandeliers are burning energy efficient bulbs, a faultless piece of modernisation, that perhaps matches the practical resourcefulness and famous intelligence of the Florentines.

And if that was the lunch, an eighty-minute nap on the train back to Rome will do just nicely!

Trattoria Toscana Gozzi Sergio

Piazza San Lorenzo, 8r, Florence, Italy

(no website)