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.

Siena, Tuscany

The Best of Italy

Monte Paschi Media Chief David Rossi Found Dead, Police Say [March 7th 2013]

All is not well in Siena.  For 541 years the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA has been Siena's largest employer and biggest patron.  It has sponsored the medieval costumes for the Palio - the bareback horse race in the central Campo twice every summer - for fifteen years (at €11m a year) and supported charities and civic works.  But now it has had to be bailed out to the tune of €4.2 billion.  In February it announced that its assets would be reduced by €730 million.  Then on March 5th prosecutors opened an investigation into insider trading.  The troubles may have begun with the acquisition of the Banca Antonveneta, in which it was assisted by JPMorgan which helped Monte dei Paschi raise about €1 billion with securities which were good as long as the bank was profitable.

David Rossi, aged 51, was the communications chief of the Bank and was found dead at 9.00pm on March 6th having apparently fallen from his office window.

Dealings with the Deutsche Bank and Nomura are now being investigated, as is the Chairman, Alessandro Profumo, who was brought in last year to restore confidence.  Unfortunately Profumo had to announce its third straight quarterly loss (of €1.5 billion) yesterday.  Profumo was previously, for thirteen years, head of Italy's largest bank, Unicredit, but resigned after clashing with shareholders over Libyan investments.

Until this I always felt that Siena was the perfect city....  It is thirty-five years since I first visited, and stood high above the Campo on a friend's terrazza to watch the violent excitement of the Palio, and through the years I have loved every visit, getting to know the canyon-like streets that curve and fall towards the centre.  

The architecture, predominantly created in ochre brickwork, but adorned with gleaming marble, is thrilling in its gothic bravura, especially around the central Campo with the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia.

The art, from the giant frescoes inside the Palazzo Pubblico by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini, to the more delicate works by Pinturicchio in the Libreria Piccolomini, to the wonderful Madonna of the Franciscans by Duccio di Buoninsegna in the Pinacoteca Nazionale is as impressive as anywhere in Italy - at least to my taste.

The Cathedral, or Duomo Santa Maria, is a candy-striped feast of light, which literally crowns the city at 346 metres above sea level, and with the remnants of even greater design (building was curtailed by the Black Death at the beginning of the fourteenth century, or it would have been at least twice the size) allowing visitors magnificent views across the roof tops to the Tuscan countryside.

Inside it is cool, and tastes of peppermint.  The Pisano brothers were responsible for much of the finish, with Giovanni completing the facade in 1297 and Nicola providing the superb pulpit which stands on imperious lions in the nave.

For me Siena was perfect.  The food, especially in trattorie that think of themselves as on the periphery, is superb - meaty and robust, accompanied by great vegetables and finished off by tangy cheeses or honeyed cakes.  Local wine is great as well, tending towards the darkest red with a purple stain, but Siena also holds a special treat for the oenophile. Deep in the old powder stores of the Medici fortress lies the Enoteca Italiana, where you can savour a glass or bottle of any Italian wine you choose.  

Siena can be cold, when the blasts of winter drive you into bars begging for grappa. In summer it can be baking, and you have to smother yourself in lemon and pistacchio ice cream to survive. In spring it is at its brightest and best, with flowers singing to the sounds of violins from high windows in the academia musicale. In autumn the sharp sting of woodsmoke rouses your appetite and you crave porcini mushrooms and fennel sausages.

I thought Siena was perfect.  I have slept in Palazzi (such as the Pensione Palazzo Ravizza) but also in the open air on the roof of a modest pensione near the cathedral, dreaming of bells clanging in my head.  I have seen the horses for the Palio blessed in the contrada churches and the flag wavers practising in their courtyards.  The people are open and straightforward, striking looking and looking to strike if need be.  It is a place of study, both academic and musical, and there are students around who would not have been out of place in Paris in '68.  And there are ordinary workers as well. On one trip not so long ago I got caught up in a march along the main street.  

Not all is perfect in Siena.  The Monte dei Paschi bank has had to be bailed out; its communications director has fallen to his death.  Alessandro Profumo is cutting costs and purging political connections from the management.  Hundreds of branches of the bank throughout Italy are to be closed and about 4,000 jobs will be lost.  He has said that he cannot rule out the possibility that the bank itself may be sold.

Times are hard.  Money, the love of which is the root of all evil, is in short supply and one of the oldest and most revered banks in the world is closing its doors.  But Siena, wonderful Siena, home of San Bernardino the benevolent preacher and Santa Caterina, martyred on the wheel, will survive this shock and it will continue to be, for me at least, the very best of Italy.

http://www.enoteca-italiana.it/w2d3/v3/view/enoteca/enosito2/pubblica/enoteca/enoteca/esc_en.html