The little town of Antella has already cropped up in some of my posts. In particular, its fabulous chapel, almost entirely frescoed by Spinello Aretino, is mentioned at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/do-you-know-granacci-or-larciani/
Antella is also the last resting place of Claire Clairmont, who needs no introduction to Shelley lovers. For more information on this essential nuisance in the poet’s life do read my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/claire-claremont-the-epilogue/
A few days ago we stopped in Antella’s main square for an ice-cream.
It was a welcomed stop during an afternoon visiting the delightful countryside surrounding Florence festooned with matured vines, glittering with silvery olive groves and cooled by mysterious pine forests.
It’s a real pity that visitors to the cradle of the renaissance fail to visit the beautiful landscape surrounding the city except, at the most, to reach Fiesole, over-crowded during the season and with by no means the best views over the City of the Lily.
Antella’s main square epitomizes all that’s most liveable about Italy. Just a few miles away from the tourist-crowded streets of Firenze, Antella is another world. In the square different generations mix, play, relax and rarely collide. Old boys play briscola by the local bar. Women meet up for the local gossip. Children play hide-and-seek using the the massive parish church doors, opened out for the evening prayers, as a useful place of concealment.
In the centre stands the statue of a worthy from the town. (Italy’s first prime minister, in fact.)
The church itself contains a mixture of exquisite pre-renaissance pictures, skeletons of unremembered saints, massive oak beams spanning walls that have endured centuries of wars, floods and earthquakes.
A majestic crucifix of ancient date overlooks the nave.
Beyond the apse an even older chapel opens out with a handful of the devout reciting the joyous mysteries of the Rosary.
What I love in particular is the absence of the social divides that plague the provincial English town at this hour. In that ever more fractured land of Brexitania children separate themselves from parents at an ever-earlier age; the old are moved out-of-sight into geriatric institutions or, if lucky and still in their own homes, suffer loneliness and the fear of being mugged if they step outside after 8 pm.
Meanwhile, the young ready themselves to get hyped up for a night of artificial highs of binge drinking and vomiting on pavements while police sirens uselessly try to wake them up, and hospitals become arenas for the victims of fighting and knife attacks.
However, in places like Antella, such ghastly thoughts and memories of a country, soon to be torn apart from the mainstream of Europe by a ‘will of the people’ fed by lies, ignorance and small-mindedness, seem, thankfully, far away.
Reading your charming sketch, I shall surely visit. However, I fear that you may be succumbing to ‘expatitis’, a condition whereby blinkers gradually close and you can only see a tiny and dystopian fraction of the view.
Ever lived in New Cross, London?
Or the back streets of Naples?
No, but 35 years in Forest Gate, East London, comes close!
I now live in an equally deprived coastal town. On Saturday 30,000 people of every possible age, creed, colour, disposition and ability descended on the town for a bonfire procession (a tradition around here) and firework display. Alcohol was imbibed in quantity. Music was played loudly. I witnessed no fighting, no vomiting, no casualties at the St John’s stations, no unhappy policemen.
On Sunday I walked through quiet, already cleaned, streets of houses of every size and era to the sound of church bells, pausing only for brief friendly chats with neighbours, to the newsagent and baker.
England still exists, and will continue to exist. Brexit or no Brexit..
Littlehampton by chance?
Hastings.
(Littlehampton, and Rustington, did feature in my childhood, but are hardly ‘deprived’ these days)
You have persons just round the corner from you in Bagni D L who play an important part in the Hastings international piano competition every February.
I am amazed at the thrust and parry of comments. Let the younger generations have their wish they voted to remain the world is for them to look after possibly better than the older generations as we have caused more damage in the last hundred years than the millions of years that the world has been in existence. Maybe they can regenerate a more sustainable world replanting trees thus recreating creatures habitats, creating more friendly living spaces for future generations, more sustainable food projects, better pensions. Italy has a good points scheme whereby people’s dignity is spared as they can shop and select the food they need rather than rely on food handouts at food banks. We were made most welcome at Antella and asked to revisit that is very friendly and reassuring indeed.