Budapest

The Danube Blues

A voice near my foot said: "Got a cigarette?" I drew quickly back and trod on an arm.  In the gathering February dusk, combined with the haze that had been building all day, I had not seen anyone behind us as we climbed the Fisherman’s Bastion.
  

"No." I said weakly: "I don’t smoke," and imagined I could feel enmity fuming up all round me. But my daughter came to the rescue.  “Here,” and she produced two slightly creased cigarettes from her pocket.  We descended the steps and stood facing a man about my age, but thinner and wrapped in an old grey coat.  His head was crowned with a brown trilby, and his eyes glimmered like dying embers, his moustache like a brush beside the grate.

He took the cigarettes and beckoned.  We followed him back into the gothic arcade overlooking the Danube.  “Would you like a leaflet?  Hungary ‘Panorama’ – for charitable people.” He lit one of the cigarettes.  Behind him the parliament building faded across the river.  We gratefully accepted a beautifully produced four page A4 leaflet, in English, with a colour picture on the cover of someone driving a single engine seaplane under the Chain Bridge.

The drive in from Franz Liszt airport introduces Budapest (or at least the Pest part of the city) as modern roads funnel into faded boulevards, into straightened roadways and eventually into narrow and congested streets.  On the way, construction sites by broken farms give way to reconstruction sites and run down apartment blocks.  All this passes in black and white, a grainy print, with perhaps a glimpse of someone turning a corner away from you.  Did he have blonde hair?  Horn-rimmed glasses?  Was that Orson Welles in the shadows?  The faded plaster fronts of older buildings are pock marked, scarred and scored by shrapnel and bullets; the concrete of the new is everlastingly grey and already dusty from the traffic.  Since Soviet troops left in 1991, the city has entered a new phase of development, but it’s a long way to the future.

However, our hotel, guarded by (and named after, since it was his home once) the statue of a pre-communist hero, Nandor Zichy 1829 - 1911, is bright and warm and welcoming.  The young staff speak impeccable English (not only a vital necessity in a country where the language isn’t Indo-European in origin - it is from the Finno-Ugric family - but also one in the eye for most hotel receptionists in the UK!) and the redesign of the palazzo is stunning.  Free PCs with wi-fi deck a mezzanine, the central shaft of the building now has a glazed roof, so the breakfast area is airily lit but warm.  Our room is immaculately clean and comfortable – it’s almost a shame to go out!

But I cannot resist a wander, and soon find myself gazing downstream along the mighty Danube, a river that seems neither blue nor waltz-like.  It appears viscous, and the boat that is working its way towards me struggles against the syrupy slush that swirls below the iron bridge.

It is cold.  Everyone is wrapped in bear skins and crowned with beaver hats.  Faces peek out from layers of wrapping; extremities are covered by flaps and mitts and boots.  I take refuge in the fug of the Bar Zappa, named after one of the few Hungarians to have achieved fame in the Western World (OK he was born in Maryland, but his roots were Hungarian!)  [Actually, there are many famous Hungarians, from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to Johnny Weismuller, through Bela Bartok, Harry Houdini, Zsa Zsa Gabor, to Cicciolina, well known Italian Politician, not forgetting  László Bíró (the biro), and Ernő Rubik (the Rubik cube)]  Anyway, I am grateful for the beery comfort of the Bar Zappa, whatever the propriety of its name.  The atmosphere is Paris, 1968, and I half expect to see crushed velvet and ban the bomb badges.   

Our stay in Budapest is short.  It’s a grand, sprawling city, cut in two (Buda and Pest and not really united until 1873) by the mighty river, and by reputation and culture the point where East meets West.  There is something very different here from other, similar, European cities.  Vienna struts its elegance, and is much closer to France; Prague has its bohemian splendour and is so much more Germanic.  Although Budapest took form as a spa town for Imperial Rome, after the fall of the Empire it was occupied by Magyar peoples from the Eurasian steppes, and since then it has been ruled by the Mongols and the Turks, as well as the Habsburgs.  From the disaster of the First World War, to the 1990s, Hungary was tossed between fascism and communism, with the brief glory of the 1956 uprising, inspired by Imre Nagy and his ‘new course’ being crushed by the might of the Kremlin (while the UN were distracted by Suez).  I guess it is fair to say that nowhere is absolutely secure in this day and age, but perhaps it is significant that Hungary still has its own currency in the Hungarian Forint (HUF) although it is in the European Union and the Euro is widely accepted.  As with the slight sense of schizophrenia created by the Danube, Budapest is still hedging its bets.

The city has palaces, churches, museums a plenty - the Hungarian National Gallery in the Buda Palace on Varhegy (the Castle Hill) is one not to miss, though neither are the House of Terror, a dramatic memorial-museum to victims of oppression, housed in the former secret police (both the fascist Arrow Cross, and the communist AVO) headquarters and the Holocaust Memorial Centre.

But if you want a diversion that is less taxing mentally, you cannot visit Budapest without taking your clothes off!  The Romans favoured Budapest because they could bathe here, and the waters haven’t changed.  Whether it is the austere elegance of the Gellert baths, in the 1918 Hotel of the same name, where you can immerse yourself in steaming mosaic pools or swim alongside open air palm trees, or the slightly more relaxed (no gender divisions here) open air pools of the nineteenth century Szechenyi Baths, where my daughter and I wallowed in the 37º waters watching elders playing chess while it snowed.  There are dozens of thermal and medicinal pools here as well, housed in a rough copy of the Brighton Pavilion, with scalding saunas and choking steam rooms as well.  What makes this location even better is that you need to take the repristinated Metro Line One to get to it and then you can wander in the Vidam (or “English”) Park after to get your breath back.

One other experience I would recommend is to spend a little time in the Great Market Hall (Nagycsarnok) which is a vast iron structure a bit like St Pancras, with stalls and cafés on three levels.  The top level being where you can eat and drink and buy any amount of souvenir kitsch; the main floor being dominated by foods of all kinds, from paprika by the tonne, to chicken feet by the truck load (and in case you never thought of it before, where do you suppose the feet of all those neatly packaged supermarket birds end up?  But don’t ask about the beaks…..)   The subterranean level is for fish, but not always quite what you might expect.  In some tanks, super sized carp cannot even turn around.  The mind boggles.  How can they even get them out to sell them?  But what would they taste like, cramped into a coffin like tank of stale water?  Where is Greenpeace when you need it?

Notwithstanding, we eat well.  Whatever the indigenes cook up at home, restaurant food is hot and substantial, and, providing it is washed down with a good Tokaj (a treat by any measure) it’s just what you need to keep the cold out.  Goulash soup, stuffed cabbage, Tokaj.  And then a coffee and some more Tokaj……

We chanced upon a very fine restaurant for our last evening meal.  An open gateway led into the garden courtyard of a renaissance palace.  Then steps led down to the basement, where tables were arranged in the rooms around a central bar.  The walls were decorated with the modern mosaics portraying the virtues of true socialism, but the place had apparently been the hideaway of a group of architects who feared that the communists might not have appreciated their intellectual ideas.

We eat goulash.  With Tokaj.  At the next table, a group of architects discuss technical drawings.  Drinking Tokaj.

  

And afterwards.  We walk up across the river to the heights of the Varhegy, to say goodbye to the city and, if possible, to say goodbye to our hospitable guide.  But the Fisherman’s Bastion is empty, its neo-gothic splendour reflected in the copper sheen of the brutalist modern Hilton.  In the cold the tang of urine and hint of tobacco in the air remind me of air-raid shelters, and bus stations.  But no one is there.  The view of the parliament building all but obscured now in the bitter night, the lights of a boat crawling up the viscous river, the Chain Bridge alive with traffic; but no one but us on the Bastion.  We leave a parting gift.  The remains of my daughter’s packet of cigarettes, a 1,000 HUF note rolled inside. 

http://www.hotel-palazzo-zichy.hu/

Note:  This article was written for the Graham Greene International Festival 2012, hence the quotation from Graham Greene that is the starting point.

Something there is about Budapest

London 1 - Fitzrovia

A Drink in Fitzrovia

"Fitzroy was here!"  Imaginary graffiti fills the walls.  Fitzroy Square, Fitzroy Street, The Fitzroy Tavern.....  Clearly this is Fitzroy's part of London, not Kilroy's!  Neither Bloomsbury, nor Soho, Fitzrovia gained its name in 1940, when Tom Driberg MP dubbed it thus in his William Hickey column in The Daily Express.

The derivation however comes from the family name of the Dukes of Grafton, bastard descendants of Charles II, landlords of this area.  It was a fashionable place to reside, with Prime Minister Robert Cecil, the 3rd Marquess Salisbury, living in the Robert Adam designed Fitzroy Square, and artist John Constable a few steps away in Charlotte Street.

The Fitzroy Tavern, at number 16 Charlotte Street, was built as a coffee house in 1833.  It gained its current name as a pub in 1919 when it was owned by the charismatic Judah "Pop" Kleinberg, whose daughter Sally continued to run it after his death.  Currently owned by the Samuel Smith brewery, it is popular with students from UCL and locals, but in its heyday it was the haunt of writers and artists from Dylan Thomas to Coco the Clown, and from George Orwell to Richard Attenborough, although some local residents, such as George Bernard Shaw (teetotal) and Virginia Woolf (otherwise preoccupied) gave it a wide berth.  Photographers Bill Brandt and Robert Capa captured candid moments here, preserved on the walls, and the Bohemian of Chelsea, Augustus John, can still be found here, at least in spirit.

I slip into a well worn seat to share a quiet pint with the artiste terrible.  He has faded now, and his tweed cape and unkempt hair blend in with the ancient upholstery.  He is not quite his former self, despite the ministrations of Daisy, the barmaid, whose willingness to please revives the most jaded soul.  I ask the great man if he really commented that the Fitz is like Clapham Junction, with everyone coming in and going out at some time?  His voice is a blend of pungent turpentine with sweet tobacco:  "If you haven't visited the Fitzroy," he croaks, "you haven't visited London!"

And then he is gone, leaving nothing but an empty glass and a scrawled message on a beer mat.

"Fitzroy was here, indeed!" 

Cleator

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone!

It is night.  I can hear rain blowing against glass, smattering my sleeplessness.  I was dreaming of Field Marshal Montgomery in a white beret, his smile damaged by a long cigarette holder.  The rain dribbled down his face, rusting it red and slowly it washed away to course down a rough street, past darkly decaying houses and over sandalled feet as legionnaires marched.  I heard the bleating of sheep and the rattling of chains and reached for the light.  Very little happened, though slowly a dim glow began to illuminate a flocked wall.

I turn on more lights and slowly dawn breaks.  I am not Terry Waite.  I know I am in Room 6.  Room 6 is bigger than Room 5, where the desk and chair were separated by a large and immovable bed.  Room six even has a trouser press.  But Room six has the same picture over the bed as Room 5 did.  A picture of two sheep chained by the horns.  One looks at me, as if I am in the wrong place.  The other looks out the window, as if she is in the wrong place.  In both Room 5 (where I was last night) and Room 6 the sheep have a forlorn look and I sense they do not like the wallpaper, especially when it is reflected in the mirrors.

I am here on business, but my business does not start for an hour.  Indeed nothing starts for an hour, so I wander down the empty stairs to the empty breakfast room.  Outside the giant chess set on the lawn has been beaten down and scattered by the storm.  No check.  No mates.

Outside, someone left their pint on the table, in the rain.  It is not tempting.  It was there yesterday.

The gardens are better kept than the House, but both tell a story of past wealth and power.  The House was once, according to Bulmer's History & Directory of Cumberland, 1901, "The Flosh, the seat of David Ainsworth, Esq., J.P. and D.L., a handsome mansion of stone. The grounds, three acres in extent, are tastefully laid out, and contain conservatories, orchid houses, vineries, etc. The farm attached, is noted for its breed of prize Leicestershire sheep."  The Ainsworth family made their money from the Flax Mill, which in 1901 employed some 600 people.

The Flax Mill later became the home of the Kangol company, which was founded in 1938, taking its name from silK, ANGora and woOL.  Montgomery of Alamein became one of their top models, but lesser well known is the white anglo-basque with a satin lining made especially by Mary Tomlinson from nearby Frizington for Bette Davis to wear in one of her films.  You can see, and hear, Mary's story at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/content/articles/2005/06/02/inside_lives_mary_bette_davis_beret.shtml

In 2009, the same year that the River Ehen burst its banks at Cleator, near to the Kangol factory, flooding fields and a number of residential properties (300mm of rain fell in Cumbria on November 19th), the factory was closed and the company, now owned by Sportsworld, moved their manufacturing base to China.

Since the Second World War the house has had mixed fortunes, being at times Council Offices and at times empty and derelict.  Its career in hospitality and catering began when the Truepennies family took it over to make it a B&B in 1981.  It's on Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk as well as a National Cycle Trail, but this enterprise did not flourish.  In 1990 it became the Ennerdale Country House Hotel and since September 2006 it has been part of the Oxford Hotels and Inns group.

I wander down the Roman road (15 feet wide, and formed of cobbles and freestones) that is now the High Street. 

The cottages lining both sides of the street have a particularly Irish look to them, and there may have been a large influx of Irish looking for work when the works of the Whitehaven Hæmatite Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., were opened at Cleator in 1842.  The iron ore of Cleator district is that kind known as red or kidney ore, and is thus described by Mr. Dick in "Iron Ores of Great Britain," Part I: "Compact red hæmatite; easily scratched by a file; lustre earthy; colour, purplish grey; streak, bright red; fracture, uneven; containing cavities lined with crystals of specular iron; and containing, in some cases, quartz."  Other companies opened iron ore (and coal) pits here and the Catholic Church, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Our Lady, a handsome structure in the decorated style, was erected in 1853 at a cost of £6,000, raised by subscriptions.  In 1901, according to Bulmer, there was even a Benedictine Priory with three monks attached to the church. 

As I realise I am late for breakfast, and late for work, my disturbed night, and crazy dreams, begin to make sense.  I hurry back to join my colleagues.

Then, bags packed and clipboards at the ready, we take our leave.  As we cruise down the High Street, without stopping to admire the Grotto, modelled on the Grotto at Lourdes; without time to visit St Leonard's Church, with its 12th century chancel; without the stomach to admire Ehen Hall and its 8 acres of grounds, once the property of Jonas Lindow (who prospered from ownership of the Glebe Pit); and we don't even stop to enjoy Longlands Lake, on the site of the former Longlands iron ore mine, nor nearby Clints Quarry Nature Reserve, a scheduled Site of Special Scientific Interest and of considerable botanical and geological importance. 

Much as we would love to stay......  We have to leave......

TESSERAE - 5 - One night in Trevignano

“Oh, when the saints....!”

The party was due to begin at 8.00pm.  Being Italy, we knew it would be late, so, exercising British decorum, we make our way to the cobbled heart of Trevignano Romano at about ten past eight….. To our surprise, however, the jazz band is in full swing, rattling out “Muskrat Ramble” and every seat is taken, with only jostle room in the tiny piazza below the village church.  It just shows – Italy always can never be taken for granted!

Truman Peebles, the man of the moment, sits regally in the front row, his weathered Stetson proudly signalling his presence.  This is a very special occasion.  Despite the grumblings of 97 year old Salvatore, who cantankerously claims that he is the oldest man in the village (having been born there), this is Truman’s night.  100 years old and still going strong; sharp of mind if a little slow of foot; fêted by the whole village, with old friends and family gathering from all over the world. 

Truman came to Italy with his young family on the SS Lucania in 1951, as a founder member of the Food and Agricultural Organisation in Rome.  Then, when he retired, he moved out to Trevignano, fifty kilometres north of Rome, to share a house with the writer Victor von Hagen, since whose death in 1985 (about when we first met him) Truman has lived on his own, sallying forth several times a day for coffee at Ermete’s bar, or a meal at La Grotta Azzurra, where he dines with owner Nazzareno every Thursday.

 

The band, a group of Roman friends, launch into “On the sunny side of the street,” with gusto.  Two tiny great grandchildren start to dance, provoking a tirade from the leader who proclaims that children should never be allowed. Ever! Truman stands to take applause as they break into their finale, “Oh! When the saints….” cornettist Aldo giving a fine imitation of Louis Armstrong, with a Roman accent (Ah! Whan ze scentz….) 

 

Truman with Roisin (on his right) and Dympna



Then the music ends, and the crowd presses forward to shake Truman’s hand, kiss his cheek, wish him long life…..  In the adjoining piazzetta, outside his house, trestle tables have been set up, piled with goodies, and we join the throng.  Typically, there has been an attempt at control and many hands thrust forward tickets.  But the authority soon gives up; we have no tickets, but, with smiles all round, I come away with plates of rigatoni and pizza, hunks of foccacce, and tumblers of vino.  

Around 11.00 the Mayor arrives, flanked by splendid officials, and presents Truman with an engraved plaque commemorating his centenary.  A belly dancer appears, and is joined on stage by assorted revellers.  The sky is inky, the ochre walls echo disco music and glow with summer warmth and orange light.  We sit with Truman on the steps outside his flat, the crowd fluttering by like starlings, until, way past midnight, it is time for us to make for our beds.  The old man waves goodnight.

“I want to be in that number…..!”

TESSERAE - 4 - Spoleto, Umbria

SPOLETO

I am standing in the middle of a major road, the SS3, five hundred metres from the mouth of the tunnel under the Castle at Spoleto.  A set of traffic lights has just turned red and nothing appears to be coming toward me.  I seize the opportunity to walk the concrete ribbon and snatch a photo of the castle from a rare standpoint.

I
t’s not the greatest view, but it is not a conventional one.  The road, a modern carriageway though bearing the name of the ancient Via Flaminia, burrows into the hill above the dry Tessino river bed, shafting straight under the fourteenth century Rocca (castle). 

It is eerily quiet.  The light still red, nothing oncoming, I sneak forward to improve the view.   A cowled figure, angular, grey, fleeting, seems to beckon me toward the mouth of the tunnel.  He calls out, but I cannot catch the words in the silence, the idle engines blurring the edges of the call.  I step forward, the road inviting me under the hill, and like a fox I am there, sniffing the dark, padding forward into the gloom.

A scent of sweat and musky blanket precedes me; a stair opens into the rock and the pungency of wool and rope entices me upwards.  The stairs are narrow, dank and slippery, but I can hear the slap of leather sandal on stone above me, and then I am in a cave, a room, a glorious opening, with angels spinning round me in a canopy of blue.  God himself kneels, not for me, of course, but to bless the virgin, his right hand held upright with fingers ranged in benediction,. His left hand gently lowering a golden crown, the very image of his own, onto the virgin’s brow.  His hair and beard, uniformly white but combed and trimmed, connects the jewelled red mitre with the jewelled red coat, his cuffs adorned with gold and precious stones.  His shoulders are kept warm by a green mantle, itself held in place by a golden chain.  The girl is decked in finery beyond the reach of mortal purse, her hands in prayer to beg pardon for her unworthiness.  Gold, pearls, opals, topaz, amethyst – the sheen of silk and lace glittering into the golden sun behind.

The freshness of the paint overcomes me, but Filippo steadies my arm and leads me up the wooden scaffolds, past guttering wicks, and into an enclosed garden, with a tiled patio.  A golden haired angel in a red robe kneels before a doorway, a white lily in the left hand.  From a cloud above a white haired and bearded figure lasers down a message that strikes through a grille and pierces the shoulder of a delicate girl in red and white who sits demurely with her fingers intertwined in shy confusion.  It is the remarkable announcement of an imminent birth that prefigures ultrasound by two millennia. 

We pass through into the crowd, and move past the priest, the mourners and the praying women; past the ashen faced corpse with her delicate hands clasped above a rich orange coverlet; I pass Filippo himself with his angelic son Filippino then I pass the green hills and rocky mounts,

until I stand behind a young woman kneeling before her infant, which lies passively on a cloth on the stony floor, his father humbly musing at his head, a cow and a donkey gently smiling down from behind wicker hurdles. 

I step gingerly on, past a wooden saddle and through an arch in the crumbling wall.  The path leads back down, into a cave, down the slippery steps and I find myself back in the tunnel, hurrying to my car. 

I didn’t notice that the lights had changed.

Trevignano Romano



Bar Ermete Dal 1931 - Piazza Vittorio Emanuele 8, Trevignano Romano

No one knows precisely how many people live in Trevignano Romano.  When we lived there in the eighties and nineties the received wisdom was that around 2,500 people lived there in the winter and that that figure might rise to as many as twenty thousand at times in the summer.  The most recent (2008) census figure was 5,819 but many of those will not be permanently resident.  Since we left, about fifteen years ago, there has been continual building, but sites have closed, with unfinished villas scarring the landscape, property sales have flat lined for many months now, and affitasi (to let) signs flutter like flags on many balconies.





The sun going down from La Casina Bianca

Trevignano Romano is a picturesque village about fifty kilometres north of Rome.  It sits on the shore of Lake Bracciano, a bottomless (some 170 metres deep, but even Jacques Cousteau failed to find the deepest point) lake which fills a 30 kilometre round volcanic caldera.  The village is dominated by the remains of an Orsini castle (destroyed in 1496 by one of the Borgia family) and a forested volcanic cone, known as the Rocca Romana, to commemorate the shrine the Romans created on its top.  Volcanic activity is still very much present in the area, with a derelict hot-spring spa at Vicarello (about three kilometres from the village) awaiting multinational corporation agreement on its redevelopment.

The wonderful traditional trattoria at Vicarello

Until the second world war Trevignano was little more than a fishing village, and metalled roads did not reach it.  Then, in the fifties, market gardening flourished and the villagers prospered by getting up early and trucking their produce into the Rome central markets in the early hours of the morning.  The fertile volcanic soil was perfect for tomatoes and salad crops, beans and leaf vegetables.  For a while, until the coastal strips to the north and south of Rome caught up, there was a boom. 

La Chiesa dell'Assunta - with 16th century frescos from the School of Raphael

When, inevitably, that faded, the village was on the map, Gianni Agnelli’s Fiats were everywhere, the roads had been tarred, and Trevignano became a desirable place for holiday outings, then second homes, and then even commuters.  Instead of being a tight jumble of close-knit dwellings around the church, with the occasional villa along the shoreline, cement began to pour, and the march of apartment blocks away from the medieval centre began.



A Carnival Parade in Trevignano - Italia da vero!

It is still lovely, much lovelier and much less sprawling and overcrowded than Anguillara and Bracciano, the two other lakeside towns (both served incidentally by a railway line into Rome) and we remain very much attached to it.

 

Celebrating a centenary

We have come back for a few days to celebrate the 100^th birthday of one of its favourite citizens.  Although American by birth, Truman Peebles has lived there since his retirement from Rome’s Food and Agricultural Organisation forty years ago.  His long white hair and flowing beard make him stand out from the crowd, and when our children were little his resemblance to Father Christmas was too good not to exploit.



Truman Peebles - 100 years young

In those years, we used to meet him on his daily jog along the shore, or see him swimming in the morning in the stillness of the lake.  Nowadays, although he still lives alone in a first floor flat in the heart of the centro storico (historic centre) he moves a little slower, and jogging has slowed to a gentle shuffle.

Hey, that's my wife!

Old friends greet us in the piazza, and in their shops.  My anglo-saxon reserve is surprised by the number of kisses I exchange, but it is all wonderfully friendly.  I have my hair expertly cut by Alberto; discuss photography with Loretta, property sales with Pietro and Mimmo, politics with journalist Paddy (whose wife Dympna has become involved with local campaigns) the flux of tourism with Nazzareno, the expectation of grandchildren with Sandro, and the passing of the older generation with the family at La Casina Bianca.  Amanda has a lengthy and involved conversation with her friend from the shoe-shop, which includes him telling us about how modern tomatoes don’t taste like they used to, how he and friends once feasted on an enormous capon with skin like leather, and concludes with him showing us a pair of boots his father made, specially adapted to the unpaved streets at the time.

My father's boots!

During our stay, on this occasion in a beautifully positioned Bed and Breakfast, (http://www.laterrazzasullago.com/), which really does have a splendid terrace overlooking the lake; we laze on the beach, swimming every so often to keep cool, climb to the castle remains, and through the hornbeam, turkey oak and chestnut woods to the ruined medieval chapel at the 612 metre high summit of the Rocca Romana(the village is at 173 metres above sea level).   From here you used to be able to see a panorama of the lake, including the castle at Bracciano and the aeronautical museum at Vigna di Valle (where flying boats on route to Egypt and India from London used to dock for Rome in the 1930s), but the trees have grown and it is only sparkling glimpses now.  Man’s best endeavours are only temporary; the world of nature reclaims its own. 

Hornbeam growing from a volcanic bomb

Next to the chapel is a great concrete slab, with four rusted iron sockets set into it.  Here it was once intended that a great cross would stand; I hear the words of Shelley in my head, “Look on my works….” But I do not despair.

The medieval chapel atop Rocca Romana, arising from a Roman shrine

We descend, and dine with Truman at La Grotta Azzurra, one of the oldest and best restaurants in the village. 

It is a perfect evening and with a full moon rising, a glass of local wine and a plate of royal perch nothing could be finer. Under these conditions, 100 years seems nothing.  It doesn’t really matter how many people live in Trevignano.  It matters how people live – and like this, you could live forever!



Tramonto over Lake Bracciano

http://www.trevignanoromano.it/inside.asp


Prequel:



Truman in 1991 (that's him on the left!)