Category Archives: Art

Amaretti: Bitter-Sweets

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During my days in Italy as a child I used to love it when my grandfather placed a tin box of ‘Amaretti di Saronno’ biscuits on the dinner table for dessert. He would unroll the rice paper wrapping two hemispheric amaretti and we’d be handed the delicious biscuits. My grandfather then spooled the very thin tissue paper into a tube and placed it on a plate. He lit the paper which, consumed by the flames, rose up towards the room’s ceiling. We expressed a wish and if the paper touched the ceiling our wish was supposed to be fulfilled. I was utterly transfixed by these pyrotechnics and the paper’s defiance of gravity … even if my wishes were rarely granted.

In these bitter-sweet times the Italian pastry biscuit made with almond paste, sugar, egg white and sweet and bitter almonds known as ‘amaretto’ (sometimes translated as ‘macaroon’ in English) continues to make the perfect dessert. The word ‘amaretto’ translates as ‘little bitter’. I am not entirely sure whether this means that the biscuit is small in size or whether the biscuit has a slightly bitter taste.  Perhaps both.

The Amaretti di Saronno with their famous paddle steamer logo are the classic and best-tasting amaretti. A box of these amaretti even appears in a scene from the film ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’!

There are, however, several amaretti regional variants. Apart from the crunchy and crumbly Saronno amaretto there is the Sassello-type amaretto, soft and more comparable to marzipan. In our local Penny discount store I found these Sassello-type amaretti made in Mombaruzzo, a town near Asti in Piedmont, in which, in addition to the usual ingredients – sweet and bitter almonds, egg white and sugar – are armellines, the seeds contained in the apricot’s kernel, which give the amaretti a hint of bitter taste mixing with the usual sweet one.

As a sufferer of ‘biscuititis’ – a disease which can be defined as an addiction to the eating of biscuits (and not knowing when to stop!) – I love both of these types of amaretti.

Actually the amaretto does not originate from Italy but was introduced by the Arabs during their conquest of Sicily in the ninth century. From thence it spread throughout the peninsula. Well done Arabs- If your physical conquest lasted less than a hundred years your culinary one continues to the present times.

Amaretti go very well dipped in dessert wines like Pantelleria. They are also delicious with peaches and tiramisu where they can replace the Savoyard biscuits.

However, amaretti are sometimes also mixed with salty dishes.  In Lombardy they are often used for particular fillings, such as pumpkin tortelli, or crumbled as a substitute for grated cheese in some vegetable dishes and in Piedmont they are one of the ingredients of the Piedmontese mixed fry, together with apples and sweet semolina pancakes.

Incidentally, the Italian word ‘biscotto’, from which we get the English ‘biscuit’, means ‘twice cooked’ and derives from the method in which biscuits are produced.  I’d certainly prefer these twice-cooked than those half-baked dishes served during these weird times!

Don’t forget that there is also a great liqueur called Amaretto di Saronno. Like many recipes based on almonds, it is of ancient tradition and has its origins in 1500. In the city of Saronno a fresco depicting the Madonna and the Adoration of the Magi was commissioned to the painter Bernardino Luini. The fresco is still visible today in the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Miracles. Legend has it that during the time the painter was in Saronno he was staying at an inn whose landlady was so beautiful, that he fell in love to the point of using her as a model for his Madonna.

(Luini’s fresco in Saronno)

To thank him, she offered him an elixir of herbs, toasted sugar, bitter almonds and brandy which was immediately appreciated. This liqueur, therefore, has always kept a meaning of affection and friendship.

Who launched the modern version of this liqueur in the United Kingdom? Clement Freud. My wife was the interpreter, the perfect model for a Luini Madonna, even as a teenager!

 

Infernal Snows

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Yesterday it was water, water everywhere and nor any drop to drink! But we were not stuck in the Sargasso Sea surrounded by slimy things that crawled with legs upon the slimy sea. With all the rain and sleet we’ve been having Longoio suffered a burst aqueduct pipe and so we had to fill up our bottles from the local spring. Fortunately Gaia, our water company, proved very efficient and after some drilling the burst pipe was located and duly mended.

In the meanwhile I decided on a morning ride with just a sprinkling of rain to have a look at the snows which have fallen over our local mountains-

The otherwise very green Prato Fiorito, the haunt of Sabbath witches and the graveyard, through its landslides, of at least one village in the past, looked very snowy indeed.

My replacement scooter, this time a Honda after the old Aprilia Scarabeo had finally given up the ghost, managed the watery roads rather well.

The Refubbri river, normally so placid, had turned into a raging torrent with some spectacular waterfalls appearing.

There was a slight hint of sunshine this morning but who wants to go out in this weather now? I’m told that Abetone, our nearest ski centre just under an hour’s drive (or scoot…) away, has received another half metre of snow but regrettably ski centres throughout Italy are still closed as a result of the health emergency.

Which brings me to a very confusing linguistic point. The Italian government is now talking about its ‘recovery plan’, after the pandemic has finally gone away. It uses the term written in English. However, there is a similar sounding word in Italian, ‘ricoveri’, which translates as ‘hospital admissions’ – quite the opposite of the English ‘recovery’. So I never quite know when the news is good i.e. the ‘recovery plan’ is receiving increased funding, or whether the news is bad the ‘ricoveri’ are ever increasing!

I just wish Italians would be prouder of their beautiful language instead of importing foreign terms all the time into news items in the mistaken opinion that these have somehow more ‘authority’. Yes, they use that English word as well instead of saying ‘autorità’. This year it’s the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death. The ‘sommo poeta’, who laid down the guiding principles of the Italian language, would surely not have approved. Of course, there’s nothing very funny about the ‘Divine Comedy’ especially when Dante finds himself in the Inferno (now I am using Italian when I should say ‘hell’…but the brits have appropriated themselves in revenge of an Italian word to better describe certain ghastly conditions – like the one the world finds itself in right now). The word ‘comedy’ is used here to mean that Dante is writing in the low ‘vulgar’ or ‘comic’’ language of Italian instead of the high ‘tragic’ classical language of Latin.

The term ‘comedy’ can also mean that this wonderful poem, perhaps the greatest literary work produced in western civilization according to T. S. Eliot (who placed its themes of universality even above those of Shakespeare’s plays) does not, indeed, have a tragic end but rather culminates in that last line expressing the transcendental joy of the love that moves the sun and the other stars:

‘l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.’

It is this line, and other quotes from Dante, which Lucca has sensibly turned into festive decorations for its city as these photos taken by a friend demonstrate.

Now that leads me to consider that my mum had a Dante exquisitely illustrated by John Flaxman, the neo-classical artist.  I wonder where that volume is now.

(Dante meets Beatrice)

 

 

Of Tipples and Tinctures

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What’s your favourite tipple? This is quite a topical question, especially since Christmas is just round the corner. We can’t be locked down from a drink with one other person surely?

In recent years there has been a resurgence of gin drinking, especially in London where the juniper-flavoured potion started being distilled in the seventeenth century after being introduced by the Dutch. A G & T seems to be a traditional introduction to an evening’s entertainment in many circles and certainly there are some interesting brands around: Bombay Sapphire, for example, an echo of the Raj if there ever was one. For me, however, gin is unbearably connected with ‘1984’ and Winston’s last drink at the Chestnut Tree café after he has been tortured and brain-washed to love Big Brother.

“Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the cafe.”

Gin also has horrendous connotations with Hogarth’s engraving of Gin Lane where one sees the effects of the drink among which can be espied  infanticide, madness, disease, starvation and suicide.  For example, there’s that syphilitic woman throwing her child down the steps at the bottom of which is a figure reduced skeletally by the effects of the beverage.

If it was

“Drunk for a penny

Dead drunk for two pence”

I would add “dead for threepence”

Dickens, of course saw that gin was not the primal cause why people were reduced to such wretched states. He writes:

“Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance that, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour”.

Plus ca change!

Compare all this with the healthy humans in Hogarth’s parallel engraving of Beer Street where commerce and good company thrive. It’s almost as if the unhealthy tinctures of the continent are contrasted with honest healthy English beers.

Of course, I agree there’s nothing to beat a pint of ‘Nelson’s Blood’ brewed in Chatham, the dockyard where HMS Victory was built. It’s one of the few things that would make me return to a post-brexit UK.

Whisky and soda is OK although I prefer to drink whisky by itself, preferably from a hip flask that anyone venturing across the Highland heathers is advised to take as an essential part of their survival equipment.

I’ve tried Vodka a few times but the way it has turned me into a psychopath is frightening. No wonder Russia has the one of the highest records of domestic violence.

No, none of these would really satisfy me except for my two favourites. Not Rum and coke (I just don’t like coke that much and its taste reminds me of some tooth eroding disinfectant) but rum with a fruit juice like pineapple and coconut.

Now that’s a really sunshine drink prompting memories of wonderful holidays passed in Antigua, Saint Lucia and Saint Maarten. And particularly, in Cuba where, naturally, it is closely associated with that other fabulous snifter the Mojito, Hemingway’s favourite tipple, made with the best rum, brown sugar, lime, soda and mint. A mojito is a cocktail no-one could possibly be without, especially during these somewhat trying times.

In Italy my favourite pick-me-up is Campari and Soda which a friend calls their ‘happy drink’. Quite right too! Obtained from the infusion of bitter herbs, aromatic plants and fruit in a mixture of alcohol and water, it has an intense aroma and a ruby red colour.

This awesome drink was developed in a small bar in Novara by Gaspare Campari in 1860 who then moved to Milan a couple of years later.  The (secret) Campari recipe has remained unchanged ever since.

Campari Soda was launched in 1932: with that famous conical bottle designed by the futurist artist Fortunato Depero.

His advert designs for the drink are equally original.

I hope that you’ll have a respectable amount of your favourite tincture this Christmas. It’ll keep us company if nothing else and is a better cure for the blues than any psychotherapeutic session and (in most cases) a lot cheaper.

Now as for Italian wines …but I’d better keep this post short before I become too thirsty!

 

 

A Modelling Career

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The combination of seemingly unstoppable rain for almost a fortnight now combined with our drastic cut to social life thanks to covid and the predictably disastrous end to the biggest con executed upon the British people since the dissolution of the monasteries – I refer, of course, to the no-deal – may drive some of the more susceptible of us  to drink and despair and the less susceptible to spend more time on personal leisure activities whether these be the exploration of the more abstruse passages of the Kama Sutra or other exotic practises to develop the mind and other parts.

I’ve tended to find that a nice way to get one’s mind off the present calamitous world situation (actually hasn’t any world situation since the end of the last Ice Age been calamitous) is to take to modelling. No, not for Vogue, not even to photograph some alluring siren on the cat walk – I’ve my own felines to do that. Here’s one I did in marquetry some years back:

But, instead, to indulge in a hobby I have enjoyed on and off since my earliest days: that of making miniatures of buildings or modes of transport or animals using a variety of materials.

For wood there’s my vague Sopwith camel imitation.

Sandra may probably manage to come over here on this cardboard version of a monoplane:

Of buildings this will probably be the closest I’ll get to owning a castle.

The nice thing about it is that the keep slides off to reveal the inner sanctum of the lordly habitation complete with treasure chest and minstrels.

Of course, the ancient Romans were more laid back with one of their villas here, complete with triclinium and Arcadian arbour.

As for Lucca’s mediaeval times I’ve managed to piece together this miniaturised version of the Guinigi tower. Making it from a pre-printed postcard was really too small for comfort.

I love my prehistoric and not so prehistoric animals: our planet’s denizens if it goes on any further like this might soon join them

Our bathroom is not exempt from this activity although it tends to concentrate more on fluorescent jigsaws and plastic fish.

Of models that actually work I’ve this variety of gliders. When younger I used to have great fun making them with the more sophisticated Keil Kraft gliders (remember them?).

I love messing about in boats (having obtained a RYA certificate in the Thames waters):

And cutting cute woodland book ends have been my pride and joy.

There’s nothing to beat a typical English nineteen thirties semi. Here are a couple I’ve completed for nostalgia’s sake.

My finest model is not on show. Regrettably it got lost in transit from the UK to Italy many years ago

I’d spent ages on the cardboard version of one of Spain’s most fabulous buildings; the King’s palace of Escorial. I’d even fitted it up with interior lights and with loudspeakers to transmit the motets of that greatest of Hispanic renaissance composers Tomas Luis de Victoria. I also added a bit of Soler who was also resident at the palace, played exquisitely by friend Gilbert Roland who has recorded every one of his amazing sonatas. Who knows where this model is now? Not even the company that supplied me the parts for its construction is in existence any more. ‘Sic transit…

At least my Victorian house remains. It has proved most useful in my English lessons to Italian children. They all now know what upstairs/downstairs means…and as for counterpanes,

This chap is a frenetic jazz drummer I picked up in pieces from a fabulous wood modelling centre in Wales at Timberkits models in the heart of beautiful mid wales. Our drummer will shortly have a double bass player to keep him company. Just turn their Handels and hear the sounds that come out.

There is a pile of Airfix-type models I still have to piece together. If the bloody pandemic carries on like this I, might well have to complete further warships and tanks in order to fight the world’s injustices

Anyway the best modelists are Italians both in the wonderful way the world’s most beautiful girls do the cat walk with the world’s most gorgeous dresses and with the presepi or cribs which every Christmas tide grace Italian churches and streets. Sadly this year there will be so much fewer of them around but I will still attempt to hunt out those that are on display. At least my one poor effort, cobbled from some ready-made ones, and my own additions will grace the mantelpiece on top of our fire this Christmastide.

And, by the way, with all the snow that’s happened and the extra we are promised we cannot do without this little multi-coloured snowman I also recently put together.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

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Today is a public holiday in Italy. What holiday is being celebrated? It is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Whose Immaculate Conception? Certainly not Jesus’ Virgin birth, as some still mistakenly think. It is the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of Jesus. It means that, unlike the rest of us, Mary was born without the original sin imparted to all mankind through Eve’s unfortunate temptation by the snake in the Garden of Eden, to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Mary was born in the normal way. Her parents were Anne and Joachim. Yet, as programmed by God to bear the son of man, she was not shamed by that shadow of original sin with which we are all born with – that is, according to Catholic theology – until we are baptised. Anne, as will be remembered if one reads the apocryphal Gospel of Saint James, was beyond child-bearing age so, in a sense, Mary’s was a symbolic virgin birth.

The idea of Mary’s unique status in mankind was first observed in fifth century Syria – that same country which is still being martyred by a war fought by fanatics of another monotheistic religion which, too, also holds Mary in the highest respect. Indeed, Mary is the only woman mentioned by name in the Holy Qur’an, in Sura nineteen.

I quote:

The Angel said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son. She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste? He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place.

That is clearly another take on the Annunciation, which is celebrated here on March 25th.  Nine months, after the appropriate length of time, later Jesus is born.

December the 8th was when Mary was conceived, not when she was born, which took place, again appropriately, nine months later and is celebrated on September 8th.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Mother of God, was officially promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and is held in the greatest respect by all practising Roman Catholics. Indeed, among Anglo-Catholics – an offshoot of the Oxford movement in Victorian Anglicanism – it is, too, a day of reverence.

In many countries the day is a national holiday and in Italy it serves as the start of serious Christmas festivities. No Christmas shopping two days after August bank holiday here – it all begins now: the full bonanza of gift wrapping, Christmas lights, trees and the rest of that strange mixture of bonhomie, excess feasting, tinsel, carol singing, living cribs, family love, religious outpouring, commercialism and the warmest of fires which the season brings to us.

(Our crib during Advent -awaiting for the birth of the Redeemer)

The Christmas tree, although only imported into Italy at the beginning of the last century has become an ever more important symbol of Christmas. Its triangular shape symbolizes the Holy Trinity and its nature as a perennial plant stands for the Eternity of God himself.

Here is part of our tree:

Surely our Mother Earth needs the same respect and adoration in her time of need, which is, more than ever, now…

MADONNA

Ineffable, your interstellar gaze

and cosmic garments’ flow unspeeches me

as unknown master’s brush paints God’s decree

and angel choir resounds from rainbow blaze.

Illumined chance, in summer’s sunset haze

had stopped my way, world’s restless refugee,

and opened aimless heart and made it free

when you accepted my unkempt bouquets.

 

Your face, I’ve seen before, in books and dreams:

till now unnoticed in its loveliness;

recondite smile that kisses all mankind,

unfathomed eyes that heal, touch that redeems,

marine star, sole reply in storm’s distress,

in your compassioned breast all hope’s enshrined.

 

(My poem written in 2008)

 

Newtown (Ancient Sicilian Style)

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The main part of Greek and Roman Syracuse lies north of the islet of Ortygia and extends over a wider area than that occupied even by the modern city. It was divided into four quarters with the following names: Acradina (wild pear), Neapolis (New town), Tiche (after a temple), and Epipolis (outlying town). Here we visited the Greek theatre, one of the finest outside Greece and dating from the third century BC when the city was governed by Hieron I.

What would I have given to be time-transported to the days when the lost plays of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus were acted on this stage!

Nearby are the giant quarries called latomie which were later used as prisons. The largest of these, the Latomia Del Paradiso, is also nicknamed Dionysus’ ear not only for its earlobe-like shape but also because of its remarkable echo which can pick up the slightest whisper and, therefore, proved most useful for the guards gathering up any confabulations of escape uttered by the prisoners incarcerated there.

In 212 BC Syracuse became a Roman province after a battle during which Archimedes was killed while he was engrossed on a mathematical problem completely unaware of what was about to happen to him. That’s what I call utterly, barbaric ignorance…

In the second century AD the amphitheatre, second in size only to that of Verona, was completed. So gladiatorial combat and animals fights took over in popularity from classical Greek drama….

Giovanni also took us to visit his namesake’s church, a mystic early Christian building, San Giovanni alle catacombe. The ancient Basilica was built around the 6th century in the place where, according to tradition, the first bishop of Syracuse, Marciano, that died a martyr under Gallienus and Valerian (mid-3rd century), was buried. This church was once Syracuse’s cathedral.

On the way we passed a modern monstrosity of a church dedicated to the Madonna of the Tears whose image miraculously shed tears here in 1953. Giovanni ironically said that if she saw today what was constructed to honour the memory of this event the Madonna would shed even more tears!

We paid homage to the German poet August Von Platen who died of Cholera aged thirty nine in Syracuse and whose tomb is in the city’s non-catholic cemetry next to the fine archaeological museum founded by Paolo Orsi.. Giovanni laid a wreath in his memory:

Here is part of one of my favourite poems by Platen (my translation):

I wish I could always be as free as my dreams,
away from the flashy crowd,
and wander by the banks of placid streams
cooled by shadow-drifting clouds.

Free to shake off this weary weight
of human life, and rest instead
in nature’s perfect heart :
all summer singing around me.

….

And nothing would I drink or eat
save heaven’s clear sunlight and the spring
of earth’s own sweet welling waters,
that can never sting the heart.

My visit to Syracuse was also a trip down memory lane for I had been here before more years than I can to remember when I was guest of my Uncle the French literature professor at Catania University. Here are some photos from that time when I was not yet a teenager. The latomie and the amphitheatre can be recognized.

New Year’s Eve arrived and I was expecting to join the crowds of revellers in the Syracusan streets. Actually we celebrated at Giovanni’s partner’s parents’ place as we were advised that we could easily be injured by fireworks if we ventured outside at the midnight hour. It was wise advice as the noise from the ‘botte’ or bangers was deafening and they were launched in all directions. The following morning the streets were littered with the remains of this battle of the night.

It was sad for us to leave such a fascinating city as Syracuse and I have yet to keep a promise to return and visit it in more depth. I hope I can keep this promise next year for ‘if winter comes can spring be far behind?’

Bagni di Lucca’s Previous Pandemic

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BAGNI DI LUCCA’S PREVIOUS PANDEMIC.

Premise: I have translated and made a few additions to Bruno Micheletti’s fascinating recent article on Bagni di Lucca’s 1629-31 pandemic. Bruno Micheletti, as many of you will know is a leading member of our local historical association and some of you may have met him during Bagni di Lucca’s organised visit to Casabasciana. Bruno’s knowledge on these matters is, therefore, second to none.

***

Wear a face mask? No thanks. I prefer wearing a noose round my neck…

Every age has its own remedies and ways of facing and resolving emergency situations that arise. Obviously in the days when no-one knew how infections were transmitted, how they could be cured and, above all, when there were no vaccines, people turned to supernatural measures. Thus, during the great Italian plague of 1629-31 which claimed perhaps one million lives, or about 25% of the population, [the inhabitants of Bagni di Lucca, implemented the following measures. In September 1630 news of the plague pandemic arrived in the Lima valley. At that time, the entire territory of Lucca was still free from infection, so Bagni di Lucca’s local company of Suffrage (a charitable body dedicated to good works, and prayers for the dead) decided to make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Foce Colonia which is on the road that leads from the Monti di Villa to Montefegatesi and is better known today as the oratorio di Sant’Anna.

From there the procession decided to return via the Pieve di Controne and passed by another image considered miraculous: the Madonna Del Poggio at Guzzano.

(This is the church on the hill just outside Guzzano which suffered earthquake damage in 2012 but was well-restored thanks to the efforts of Claudio Gemignani. See my post on this church resurrection at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/guzzano-church-resurrection/)

The same company also decided to undertake another penitential procession, this time from the church of San Martino (the as yet under restoration building just above the Terme Alte) to the Bagni Caldi down the hill to the church at Ponte al Serraglio. From here they proceeded to the church of San Marco. The brothers were all with their hoods pulled down over their faces and wearing a rope noose around their necks.

During the height of the plague (October 1630 – April 1631) every Saturday evening the Company of the Rosary would depart from Bagni di Lucca’s parish  church of Corsena and head for the Madonna del Colle. They too wore a hood over their faces and a rope noose around their neck. The Commissioner of Val di Lima also participated in these processions, wearing his more elaborate noose. In addition guards were posted at the two bridges at Seraglio and at Palmaia, and a large gate installed across the road leading to the Controneria. Nobody was allowed to come in and nobody was allowed to leave…complete lock-down!

The plague fortunately ceased with the first summer heat of 1631. The town of Bagni di Lucca had only five deaths. The victims were all buried near the baths and not in the church. So the processions, the gates and the nooses worn around the neck had apparently worked successfully.

This valuable information by Bruno Micheletti prompted me to note that our own little church or Chiesina ‘della Margine’ at Longoio bears the date 1631 and is dedicated to the Madonna of the Seven Dolours.

This date cannot be coincidental. It is quite clear Longoio was saved from the pandemic by the prompt action of Bagni di Lucca’s company of suffrage. Having stated this I just wonder how long it will be for us inhabitants of the Controneria to be able to enter the town of Bagni di Lucca without fear of contagion or the necessity of wearing a face mask or of sanitizing one’s hands or practising social distancing. I, for one, almost feel that, subject to the arrival of the miracle vaccine, a suitably social distanced religious procession might even be in order. If it was successful in 1631 why not today?

I, at least would feel inclined that in order to give thanks to the Almighty for eventually delivering us from the pandemic we could have the former church of San Rocco outside nearby Vetteglia and now in a ruinous condition restored as a refreshment and information point for modern day pilgrims to the extraordinarily beautiful area of the Controneria.

(In case you didn’t know San Rocco was invoked against the plague and, judging by the number of churches dedicated to him, was particularly venerated. Born in a noble family the saint gave his wealth to the poor and became a mendicant pilgrim. During his travels the town of Acquapendente became badly affected by the Black Death; Saint Roch stopped there and healed its victims by making the sign of the cross over them. He cured the sick from several other plague-ridden towns without catching the disease himself. However, when the saint reached Piacenza in northern Italy he fell a victim and a fetid ulcer developed in his leg. So rank was its smell that people kept well away from him. Luckily a dog befriended Roch and brought him some food on a daily basis and even licked his ulcer clean. Hence St. Roch has also become the patron saint of dogs. So let’s have a refreshment point here for dog walkers and their pets too!)

The beautifully distanced photograph of the oratory of Foce Colonia (Madonna di Sant’Anna) is by courtesy of one of our finest local photographers, David Bonaventuri.

Sicily’s Queenly Quail Island

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If one were unfortunate enough to be given just one city to visit in Sicily it would have to be Siracusa, ‘Syracuse’. Divided between the mainland of the island of Sicily and the islet of Ortygia, its name deriving from ancient Greek for ‘quail (perhaps because of its shape? Or because it was once the home of quails which are table delectation for many Italians) the city was founded by the Greeks in 743 BC and rapidly grew flourishing especially after one of its tyrants Geione vanquished the Carthaginians at the battle of Himera.  Syracuse became the principal city of Magna Graecia under his successor Gerone and turned into a major cultural centre; for example, poet Pindar and playwright Aeschylus both lived at the tyrant’s court.

The status of Syracuse diminished under the Romans and the city entered into a long period of decline. Now, although its area is just a fraction of what the ancient city occupied I found the place happy, prosperous and quite fascinating.

We had booked a hotel in Ortygia and in the morning met up with our friend Giovanni who was to be our guide during our couple of days there. And what a guide! Already well-known for his moonlight trips around the temple of Minerva south of Florence and guardian of the Brunelleschi-designed fortress of Vicopisano Giovanni is equally knowledgeable about the distinguished history of Syracuse. He took us for a walk round Ortygia.

We strolled through the market:

We wandered to the end of the island which is defended by the eleventh century castle of Maniace elaborated into its present gothic form by Frederick II.

We saw the enchanted fountain of Arethusa so evocatively described in music by Szymanowski and also where Giovanni met his partner Andrea whose civil union we attended at Vicopisano fortress in 2018.

We entered a spacious square and stepped inside what we imagined to be the baroque cathedral of the city only to find that we were, in fact, within the cella of a Greek temple with the peristyle closed in to form a giant nave in the seventh century.  What a sensation it is to enter into a building that has been continuously dedicated to religious rites for close on three thousand years!

Giovanni also pointed out to us some of the lesser known wonders of Ortygia. One of these was an ancient ritual Jewish bath discovered under the foundations of a present-day hotel.

We also passed by the fountain of Diana, a monumental cascade dating from 1907 by Giulio Moschetti, with the collaboration of his sculptor son Mario Moschetti and located in Piazza Archimede in Syracuse.

I remember this fountain when, as a very young boy, I was taken there by my Catania university professor uncle and took this picture then.

Archimedes was another famous citizen of Syracuse and it is fitting that a square has been named after him.  Considered as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians in history, Archimedes’ contributions range from geometry to hydrostatics, from optics to mechanics: he was able to calculate the surface and volume of spheres and discovered the laws governing the buoyancy of bodies; in the engineering field, he discovered and exploited the operating principles of levers and his very name is associated with numerous machines and devices, such as the Archimedean screw, demonstrating his amazing inventive ability. Still surrounded by an aura of mystery, however, are the war machines that Archimedes would have prepared to defend Syracuse from the siege by the Romans. Was it all done by mirrors I wonder?

Today, however, Archimedes’ life is remembered through numerous anecdotes, especially the one about his exclaiming eureka!  when, naked, he ran excitedly through the streets after jumping from his bath having discovered the theory of the displacement of water in the calculation of volumes. Actually, although not quite in such a direct manner, scientists continue to get equally excited about their discoveries especially the recent ones involving vaccines which may finally rid us of this pestilential Covid-19! The spirit of Archimedes thankfully lives on!

We had, however, yet to discover the wonders of an ancient Greek colony that lay on the mainland half of Syracuse…

The Valley of the Temples

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Sicily was once part of Magna Graecia’ – greater Greece – and its Greek remains are as fine as anything one can find in present-day Greece. The temple of Segesta, the acropolis and temples at Selinunte, the theatre at Syracuse are just the tip of the iceberg of what Sicily can offer in terms of classical Greek monuments. And then when one gets on to the Roman period…

What could we select in this cornucopia of marvels? Agrigento was on the way to our destination of Syracuse for the New Year and it was well-chosen.  Imagine a two-hours walk through a valley of temples each one more fascinating than the other: a stroll through an open-air museum of some of the finest buildings from ancient times.

Agrigento was founded as a Greek colony with the name of Akragas in 581 BC. Under its tyrant Terone its power extended to Sicily’s northern coasts. In 480 BC it won a memorable victory over the Carthaginians. It was in the fifth century BC that Akragas obtained its maximum splendour and it was during this time that the temples were built  These included the  temple of Olympian Zeus, one of the major achievements of Grecian architecture, unfortunately now just a mass of stones collapsed as a result  of several earthquakes. In the rubble I noted a Telamone, or stone giant, which had supported the temple roof but was now laying a rest for many centuries after his labours.

The best preserved temple is that of Concord thanks to its being reused as a Christian church. I wish the Christians had done that to more temples instead of using them as a quarry..

The temple of Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri is perhaps the most familiar thanks to its souvenir cork models one of which I had as a child. It’s slightly disappointing to realise that the temple is a mid-nineteenth hypothetical reconstruction and, in fact, mixes up Ionic and Doric elements!

There’s also the temple of Hera and that of Heracles not to be missed.

There’s so much more to see. For example, the sanctuary of Ctnoie, the tomb of Terone and the temple of Aesculapius. We could have spent days there but were just happy to soak in the afternoon atmosphere of a late December sunshine just at the time the almond trees were coming into bloom in the valley of the gods.

Half-way through the vale another wonder, this time natural, captured us. It was the garden of Kolymbethra which has been ranked as one of the most beautiful in Italy.

We are lucky to have the history of this magical place well-documented since classical times.

Diodorus Siculus writes about the renovation works of the city promoted by the tyrant Terone immediately after the Battle of Himera (480 BC) and mentions a

“… A large pool … with a perimeter of seven stages … twenty fathoms deep … where the aqueduct irrigate nursery of refined flora and abundant wildlife …”

In the same period the Kolymbethra was built, thanks to the help of many slaves captured in battle, it was possible to construct the superlative temples and the hypogea, or artificial tunnels with the function of collecting the waters that oozed from calcarenite porous rock, to convey them, through a system of tunnels, from the hill towards the Kolymbethra basin, constantly feeding the pool. The garden, in addition to being a holiday resort for the aristocracy, was also a meeting place for all the inhabitants of the classical city: here, in fact, women gathered to wash clothes and anyone who wanted to cool off in the clear waters of the swimming pool.

A century after the Battle of Himera, the basin was buried and transformed into a vegetable garden, thus becoming a rich arable area. The presence of the hypogea, whose original function was adapted to agricultural use, was fundamental; the water conveyed by these aqueducts fed a small basin, located next to the mouth of an underground, which was used to irrigate the garden. This system still works today, keeping the land arable.

Subsequently, between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the cultivation of fruit trees spread in Sicily, it became a citrus garden.

In 1999 the Sicilian Region entrusted Kolymbethra to FAI, the Italian equivalent and associate of the National Trust FAI. And so it was that we showed our National Trust life membership cards and entered perhaps the most ancient continuously cultivated gardens we have ever trod.

What one sees today is a group of isolated temples. It must be remembered, however, that these temples were integrated into a populous city most of which remains to be excavated. What a wonderful ancient city Agrigento must have been!

Goethe, in his Italian travel book, bemoans the fact that his visit to ancient Agrigento was delayed by his guide wanting to show him modern Agrigento.  We in retrospect were disappointed that we found that by not visiting mediaeval and modern Agrigento we missed out on a city filled with a lovely cathedral and some fine mediaeval streets. But with our time limit how could we avoid the wonders of ancient Greek temples?  In this we were totally in agreement with the then head of Bagni di Lucca Villa post office who we met quite by chance as were exiting the bewitching valley.

Alchemy, Guttuso and Cart-wheels in Palermo’s Bagheria

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Every Italian city of cultural importance is encircled by superb aristocratic villas. Lucca’s own are spread among the foothills of the Pizzorne and include such wonders as the Villa Reale (see my post on its new owners at https://longoio3.com/2020/08/12/elisas-villa-resurrected/) and the Villa Torrigiani. Vicenza is famous for its Palladian villas along the Brenta. (There’s my post on these at https://longoio3.com/2018/11/04/vicenzas-palladian-splendour/). Florence is distinguished for its UNESCO world-heritage Medicean villas (see my post on them at https://longoio3.com/2020/02/28/a-place-in-the-country/

It is no wonder that, with its magnificent location between mountain and sea, Palermo would have a cornucopia of villas. The town of Bagheria is the focus for these villas. Indeed, the name derives from the Arabic baḥriyya, meaning ‘by the sea’.

The majority of these villas were built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and are baroque in style. Sadly, many are now abandoned, waiting for a shining knight to rescue them from the dragons devouring their dilapidated splendours.  We wanted to indulge in some urban exploration of them but the risks were too high what with crumbling roof beams and a major mafia centre nearby at Corleone.

Interestingly, there is a theory that alchemical philosophy was at the basis of the construction of some of these villas, in particular Villa Valguarnera and Villa Palagonia with their strange sculptures.

This philosophy probably derived from the desire to create an Arcadian society where acolytes could devote themselves to the liberal arts and alchemical philosophy, far from Palermo’s menacing Court of the Inquisition of Palermo. This theory links up with Florence’s Neo-Platonism associated with villas like Careggi where philosopher Marsilio Ficino was based. (No wonder I felt enlightened when I woke up in that villa’s grounds now incorporated in Florence’s Careggi hospital after my eight-hour operation earlier this year…)

In Bagheria there are some villas available to view and one that I came across by chance houses the Renato Guttuso museum. The villa was built in 1736 by the prince of Cattolica Eraclea, Francesco Bonanno. From 1830 the Bonanno family lost the property and the villa took different uses: lazaretto, barracks, and finally at the end of the 1800’s it was bought by Gioacchino Scaduto who used it as a home and a factory for canned food!

Luckily the villa was saved for more exalted purposes and reopened in 1973 housing works by Renato Guttuso which the maestro donated his hometown before his death in 1987.

In addition to Guttuso’s creations, representing over forty years of activity,  the villa hosts works by twentieth century artists like, among others, Cagli, Mario Schifano, Onofrio Tomaselli, Silvestre Cuffaro, Domenico Quattrociocchi, Pina Calí, Vincenzo Gennaro and Giuseppe Pellitteri, Mimmo Pintacuda andGand Tornatore. Over the years, other works have been donated to the museum.  Here is a small selection of what we saw:

Guttuso’s works range from paintings to sculptures, from drawings to engravings and range from works from the 1930’s to the artist’s last years.

Guttuso, who we had the privilege of meeting in the 1980’s when he opened an exhibition of his works in London, is one of the most significant Italian painters of the modern age.  I particularly admire the socialist imprint of his artistic production. Without indulging in the crasser aspects of soviet realism Guttuso manages to produce works which stand for their moral force together with those such as ‘Guernica’ – Guttuso and Picasso were good friends.

(Guttuso’masterpiece: ‘Crucifixion’.)

The museum also includes a lovely collection of the two-wheeled painted Sicilian donkey cart. The panels illustrate stories from the great knightly epics of the past like ‘Orlando Furioso’ and his paladins.

The tradition of painting transport vehicles in this colourful way continues to this day in Sicily: for example with this Fiat 500.

In India we noted a similar tradition with regard to heavy goods vehicles vivaciously decorated with epic stories, this time from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

For me these are wonderful examples of how great traditions can survive and continue across technological progress. Ever thought of customizing your car with stories from Malory’s ‘King Arthur’, for example?

I do hope that the time will come when the whole area of Bagheria will be elevated to a world heritage site. Its wonderful villas need this help and they could be used for so many social and cultural purposes. We at least are glad to have visited something of what can be achieved in the Villa Cattolica.

Where to now in Sicilia? Just one day left before our appointment with Giovanni in Syracuse….