Much of Bagni di Lucca’s High Street, the Corso Umberto I, is looking decidedly shabby. The upper section in particular, leading towards the post office, has seen so many shops closed down in the past fifteen years.
Gone is the hardware and ironmongers, closed since Mr Marroni’s decease a couple of years ago.
The best patisserie and coffee shop in Bagni is also shuttered, although it still contains all its fitments.
Daddo’s shoe shop has long since stopped supplying goods to Bagni di Lucca’s well-heeled inhabitants.
Sandra’s household-ware shop is in the last throes of its closing down sale.
And so the sad list goes on. There are vaguely hopeful signs stating that the premises are for sale to new businesses but when will these ever arrive to enliven Bagni’s high street?
It’s all becoming more and more like the scenario in that nostalgic film ‘What’s eating Gilbert Grape’ starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, when the local mid-west store sells out to the hypermarket.
Of course, we all know the reasons for Bagni’s High Street decay:
- Declining population.
- Move to shopping in hypermarkets (at Gallicano, for example).
- Increasing on-line sales.
- Retirement of shop-keepers with no offspring interested in carrying on the family business.
- Heftier government taxes.
- Difficult parking situations
- A relatively short summer tourist season.
- An aging population which does not need purchasing new items for the first time.
- A difficult economic situation enveloping the nation.
- An ever decreasing choice of items at prices which could be beaten for value at several other places.
- Restricted opening hours with long lunch-hour breaks and Sunday closing.
- A lack of attractiveness in the appearance of several shops.
It’s all very sad but is clearly not peculiar to Bagni di Lucca. It all started in the USA with out-of-town shopping malls, spread to the UK’s high streets, which are pretty dire in too many cases, and is now affecting Italy’s social in-town meeting points to an increasing extent.
What to do? Just think of the features you’ll miss out if Bagni’s High Street carries on in this way.
- No quick repairs on items you have bought, like vacuum cleaners and TVs.
- No friendly chats with helpful shop-keepers ready to advise you on products or keep up with the local gossip…
- No shops with items different from the uniform boringness of chain stores and hypermarkets.
- A High Street with decreasing signs of humans.
- A town that is, in brief, slowly dying on its feet.
That’s why we should continue to patronise as far as possible our local shop-keepers even it is just a matter of buying spare bags for that vacuum cleaner or a filter for a moka coffee or a packet of picture hooks. For if this depressing trend carries on much further the only shops left in Bagni di Lucca will be a couple of catering establishments, estate agents and, hopefully, the tourist office.
As someone rightly said: Bagni di Lucca’s shop-keepers are its true, and largely unsung, heroes.
Sad and disappointing. I thought when I was last there what would happen to some of the towns and villages there once the older folks passed on. And, it is happening.
It certainly is now. And the local admins are too involved in their squabbles to do much about the decay. I have not even mentioned the sad situation regarding the thermal baths.
I think Mr Grape may have been christened Gilbert.
It is a sad and long list that you give us. Add to that the many similarly closed shops in Ponte (albeit for much longer) and the other villages. It seems that the tipping point of viability for commercial life in the town is long passed.
I do observe that Fornoli seems to be bucking the trend a little.
Yes. Of course Mr Grape’s first name is Gilbert. Fornoli seems more up-beat thanks to its closer position to the main Serchio roads and railway station. The inauguration of a new pizzeria and an almost complete line of shops dealing with computers, mobile phones, cars, gardening, shoes, clothes, etc. is evidence of a much improved retail situation there. Thanks very much for adding to the discussion.
As I have already mentioned it seems to be a worldwide malaise whereby commuters and ordering online seems to be taking over the face to face contact with the seller to purchase whatever is needed food clothing furniture. It is ok if you have mobility problems or live at a distance from the shops, very useful also as one ages. The only problem is when the wrong size colour item are sent as speaking from personal experience a pair of comfortable shoes for mother needed four or five pairs to buy the right fitting so it was to and fro with parcels to the company. We finally got the correct style, no laces just stick down ones. Robots are the next best solution for particular situations.
The Bagni di Lucca of my youth is gone. The slow but steady decline is painful to watch and I see nothing in the immediate future that will change that. The bureaucracy which definitely works against small businesses, the tax situation and the flight of young Italians to more economically friendly areas makes it hard to see any change in the near future. The nearby, beautiful villages are becoming ever more deserted as homes are mainly purchased by foreigners who are there only part time. Seeing the deterioration of my ancestral home is very sad indeed.
It is, indeed, very sad. Interestingly, the same situation is already well-advanced in the UK where, even if the former local village inhabitants now wanted to return to their original homes, they could not afford to since foreigners have pushed up house prices beyond their means.
Furthermore, here, those foreigners who have bought houses in the area are now increasingly putting them on the market. (This is especially true for people from the United Kingdom thanks to the shambolic government that runs their country and is still promoting that absurdity called ‘brexit’.)
In fact, there is a glut of houses for sale in the Bagni di Lucca region and some of them have been on sale for years. For example, in Longoio there are several buildings bought by foreigners that have been on the market for over six years. The case of the ghost village of Bugnano is also well-documented.
There are even houses ‘abandoned’ by those outsiders who have not returned to Longoio for ages and these houses are not even listed on the market! It’s a quite distressing situation, especially when one looks at old photographs of the area and sees how many more people used to live and work here.
Lastly, there are not many foreigners who are in the least interested in the traditions of the area and many of them can barely put two words in Italian together. They seem to keep themselves isolated from permanent residents and keep themselves to themselves without any contribution to local activities.
I just wonder how long, culturally speaking, the villages, indeed the whole comune, can carry on in this way. And we live in one of the better-off areas in Italy in this respect!
A word or two, if I may, in defence of the disinterested foreigners that you characterise, of which I am one, for such generalisations miss the grey between the black and white. It is something that troubles me daily. Yes, local interests have priority but if we, for example, had not bought our house, who would have done? It was, after all, on the market for over ten years before we purchased it. Would a local purchaser have pumped an additional €250k in renovations into the local trades economy? And, don’t forget, that perhaps a dozen families a year staying at the house all spend their euros, dollars and pounds in local restaurants, shops and attractions and, perhaps, spread news of the area among their friends and acquaintances.
I would gently point out, also, that the second home phenomenon is a function of wealth disparity and not a raid on a particular locality. Try, for example, to find an Englishman in Belgravia. Should an invaded area bend to accommodate the incomers or carry on regardless?
Finally, I would mention that I, and, I suspect, you, were around before the UK joined the EU and will survive in the same way after Brexit. We are well used to ignoring the politics and getting on with our lives as best we can. Cheer up!
We appreciate your interesting comment. We should also state that we are the products of Second World War outcomes i.e. my dad married his Italian sweetheart as as result of serving in the Eighth Army and my wife’s similarly a product of war and love in Italy. That’s why we consider ourselves heirs of Churchill’s concept of Europe and have the utmost contempt of anyone in our islands of birth who voted for those ignorant opportunists who support a Europe opposed to the paramount vision of those who wish for a continent free of war and persecution.
PS Regarding Belgravia, my wife was brought up in the square (not the unfashionable side of it I hasten to add…). Indeed, that’s where I first met her.
Reply from C.H. ref statement from pheroneous above which states:
‘I would mention that I, and, I suspect, you, were around before the UK joined the EU and will survive in the same way after Brexit. We are well used to ignoring the politics and getting on with our lives as best we can. Cheer up!’
C.H. answers:
‘I think that is part of a misplaced nostalgia on the part of the Brexiters for the 1950s, which they view as some wholesome golden age. It is both profoundly mistaken and profoundly selfish: mistaken because it was a time of cold houses, lousy food, doubtful personal hygiene, pinched snobbery, mysogyny, homophobia and racism. Whilst some of these may continue to appeal to Brexiters, what they are nostalgic for, and what they wish to recreate, is their childhood -those self-described ‘happy days’ when they played outdoors all day – if only because there was nothing else to do. Seeking to drag the rest of us and, in particular, young people back to such a dreary and seedy time just so that they can relive the conditions of their childhood is both infantile and profoundly selfish. Perhaps we could build a huge 1950s theme park – ‘Right of Centre Parks’ ? – where they could indulge their nostalgic fantasies without troubling the rest of us.😁’
My reply:
C.H. you could not have expressed the matter better. I am truly grateful for your comment on a pretty rotten situation which the country of my birth is now facing.
My childhood and teenage youth was largely spent in a house impregnated with the smell of paraffin fuelled calor gas heaters in the damp winters, lumpy potatoes for school dinners, reading ‘tit-bits’ for any sex scandals, waiting for a party in a parent-less friend’s house and being warned by parents about any ‘queers’ I might have chanced to meet. My treats were corned beef and ‘Swift’ toffee.
I am quite convinced that if a referendum were held tomorrow there would be enough young persons to overturn than ridiculous quorum-less majority and bring the UK back to some sort of sanity. As my school-friend and writer for ‘Private Eye’ under the name ‘Piloti’ (He was the distinguished architectural critic Gavin Stamp who sadly died at the end of last year) requested as part of his last wishes: ‘bury me with my ‘bugger brexit’ badge on my lapel.’
I don’t share either of your analyses. Here, in the UK, I don’t detect any nostalgia for the 1950’s beyond a vogue for mid-century design in the antique shops, nor do I see or hear any appetite for further referendi. There is a vocal minority who wish to bugger brexit, for sure, but, in my reading of the country’s mood, the majority – regardless of how they voted – just want the thing settled and wish to move on, whether backward or forward, as soon as possible. A frustration I, as a pro-European with reservations, share.
I have few memories of my fifties childhood beyond scratchy clothes, awful school toilets and very strange meat products (Haslet, pigs trotters and mutton soup made using a sheep’s head) none of which I would want to inflict on the current generation.
Going back a couple of conversations, if I remember, Francis, your wife is Italian, which rather proves my point!
Mind you, post-war, of course, Belgravia was probably as much a bedsit and shared-flat land as anywhere else in central London, so, perhaps, my sweeping and rather careless – given that the Duke of somewhere or other probably owns half the property there – generalisation didn’t apply nearly as much then as now.
Thank you for your comment. Three corrections, however. 1. My wife is British. 2. The ‘nostalgia’ comment is a quote from someone else. 3. The plural of the gerundive ‘referendum’ is ‘referenda’, not ‘referendi’.
Glad to know you are pro-European.
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