Merry Capers

Posted on August 2, 2021 by Francis

Capers are not just naughty frolics or escapades. They are also some of the loveliest and most useful plants one can have in one’s garden.

The garden walls of our place in Longoio host four caper plants.

We didn’t plant these delightful plants; they just happened to be there when we found the house and have remained so through the hottest summers and the coldest winters. Indeed, it’s not that easy to plant capers: like cats they have a mind of their own and choose the places where they wish to flourish.

Capers, the flower buds of Capparis spinosa, have been used in Mediterranean gastronomy since ancient times to flavour a great variety of foods: from meat, to fish, to pasta. I especially like them with a tomato sauce for pasta, in salads and sprinkled on cheese toast. I’m sure that capers can be grown in the UK using a heated propagator but to see these beautiful plants grow on one’s garden wall in Italy is truly a joy to behold.

As with all capers one has to reach a big decision: either pick the bud or let it flower into one of the most delicate blossoms we know.

We have to continue to make this decision during our indolent August days, for capers flower between May and October.

There are two methods to prepare capers for our table: either using salt or using vinegar. My wife Sandra has used both methods.

Preparing capers with salt.

Cut the stem of the capers one by one, wash them gently, drain them, dab them with a cloth and allow to dry completely.

In a jar proceed with a first layer of salt, a layer of capers of about 1 cm, another of salt and proceed in this way until the jar is complete.

Store the jars in a dark, cool place and shake the jars from time to time. The salted capers will be ready after forty days and will keep for almost two years.

To consume salted capers, they must first be de-salted in plenty of cold water, changing it several times, drained well and dabbed with kitchen paper, rinsed with vinegar, squeezed gently, placed in a jar covered with extra virgin olive oil and kept in the fridge. It is better to de-salt small quantities of capers and leave the rest in salt.

Do you know the difference between capers and cucunci? Capers (capperi) are the unopened flowers

while cucunci are the fruits containing the seeds that come from uncollected flowers or capers.

Capers grow throughout Italy but the best ones are reputed to come from the island of Pantelleria.

Preparing capers with vinegar.

Wash the capers, drain them and dry them with a cloth.

Put the capers in a bowl and sprinkle them with coarse salt and bay leaves. Let them macerate for 2 – 3 days, mixing them occasionally with your hands. After this time, put the capers in the sterilized jars.

Boil white vinegar for a few minutes. Pour the hot vinegar over the capers so as to completely cover them, seal and leave to flavour for five days.

Drain the capers from the vinegar. Then put them back in sterilized jars.

Boil the remaining vinegar, let it cool, then add it to the capers, seal and keep in the pantry.

Medicinal uses of capers

Capers contain more quercetin (an anti-inflammatory agent) by weight than any other plant. The root bark is used in herbal medicine. The active ingredients have diuretic and blood vessel protective properties. It can be used in the treatment of gout, haemorrhoids, and varicose veins. An infusion prepared with caper roots and young shoots was used in folk medicine to relieve rheumatism.

PS the Italian expression ‘capperi’, said as an exclamation, means ‘crickey’ or ‘gosh’ or ‘wow’. It’s obviously a polite way of avoiding the expression ‘Cristo!’ E.g. ‘Capperi che pizza!’

PPS The caper plant hibernates in winter. Do not be alarmed if it looks dead in that season. Come spring the cappero will re-flower in all its full glory.

Merry Capers

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Francis

Capers are not just naughty frolics or escapades. They are also some of the loveliest and most useful plants one can have in one’s garden.

The garden walls of our place in Longoio host four caper plants.

As with all capers one has to reach a big decision: either pick the bud or let it flower into one of the most delicate blossoms we know.

We have to continue to make this decision during our indolent August days, for capers flower between May and October.

There are two methods to prepare capers for our table: either using salt or using vinegar. My wife Sandra has used both methods.

Preparing capers with salt.

Cut the stem of the capers one by one, wash them gently, drain them, dab them with a cloth and allow to dry completely.

In a jar proceed with a first layer of salt, a layer of capers of about 1 cm, another of salt and proceed in this way until the jar is complete.

Store the jars in a dark, cool place and shake the jars from time to time. The salted capers will be ready after forty days and will keep for almost two years.

Do you know the difference between capers and cucunci? Capers (capperi) are the unopened flowers

while cucunci are the fruits containing the seeds that come from uncollected flowers or capers.

Capers grow throughout Italy but the best ones are reputed to come from the island of Pantelleria.

Preparing capers with vinegar.

Wash the capers, drain them and dry them with a cloth.

Boil white vinegar for a few minutes. Pour the hot vinegar over the capers so as to completely cover them, seal and leave to flavour for five days.

Drain the capers from the vinegar. Then put them back in sterilized jars.

Boil the remaining vinegar, let it cool, then add it to the capers, seal and keep in the pantry.

Medicinal uses of capers

PPS The caper plant hibernates in winter. Do not be alarmed if it looks dead in that season. Come spring the cappero will re-flower in all its full glory.

Garden Centres Re-Open!

Posted on May 22, 2020 by Francis

From May 13^th garden centres in the UK have reopened to the public. (“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”)

Garden centres had been shut down since March 24^th.That’s how late the lockdown was inaugurated in the UK: Italy’s began on 8^th March over two weeks before! Meanwhile, Wuhan, where it all started, came out of lockdown on April 8^th just over two weeks after the UK entered its own lockdown.

Garden centres reopened in Italy on May 2^nd; it’s not surprising, therefore, that these essential delights for the green and not so green fingered UK public have followed so soon after.

We decided to visit our nearest garden centre which is Birchen Grove, next to the Welsh Harp reservoir, (described in my post at https://longoio3.com/2019/10/23/i-laghi-di-londra/)

Birchen Grove is one of greater London’s largest garden centres and is placed in idyllic woodland surroundings making it appear that one is in the middle of the countryside although, in fact, Brent Cross shopping centre is just a few minutes away.

The method of entry into Birchen Grove was very civilized with the usual socially distancing queues. We didn’t have to wait more than a quarter of a hour before we were immersed into the panoplies of indoor and outdoor plants, shrubs, trees, garden furniture and tools. The flowers were in particularly good shape after all the hype that they were suffering and would have to be thrown onto the compost heap.

For me, however, the highlight was the fish section. Tanks upon tanks of often minute tropical fish were laid out in long rows.

There were examples of the pig-nosed turtle native to Northern Australia and New Guinea In the larger tanks. These were not, however, for sale for a notice advised the public that they required very specialized conditions and knowledge for their rearing and survival.

The largest tank was actually an indoor pond teeming with koi carp. Nearby was a food dispenser for one to feed the amazingly large and beautifully coloured fish.

These koi are particularly loved by the Japanese who recognize several distinct types. Indeed, the word ‘koi’ in their language means love and friendship so these fish are symbols of deep affection.

On our way back we came across further examples of the off-beat houses designed by Ernest Trobridge in the first half of the last century and to be found in this area of North West London.

They made an interesting contrast to the standard semis which otherwise line Kingsbury’s residential streets:

All in all it was a satisfactory enjoyable excursion in a London which, sadly, still remains the centre of the worst pandemic in any European country.

Suburban Flowers

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Francis

Spring has truly sprung in these islands. Remembering my past spring times in the UK I can’t recollect bird song being so vibrantly vociferous, skies so blue, air so refreshingly clear, heavens so clear of aircraft noise and flowers so profusely blossoming.

(The current blooms in our garden)

It’s clearly a lot to do with the lockdown imposed by the current health crisis but the weather has also much to do with it: we’ve had hardly any rain in this month. Perhaps a drop now would be more than welcome; today looks greyer anyway.

Maybe, it’s also a time to celebrate with a poem. So here goes with something I wrote for last month:

SUBURBAN GARDEN

Camellia petal’s on the lawn in March

while daffodils sway with a clear blue wind

and buds burst forth from lime and oak and larch

as sleeping generations wake and find.

Spring’ s ritual begins a thousand fold

anew, and earth anoints the rising seeds:

they part the soil and disregard the old

in lively flurry of galactic breeds.

Upon my neck the rays caress, so warm

they’re lovers’ hands that rise beyond this sphere;

once more I am reborn before a dawn

dispelling all the darkness and the fear.

Can spring be really now and here and bright;

My body’s filled with this transcendent light.

A Walk Along the River Brent

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Francis

At last parks are now legally open to the public in the UK (provided correct social distancing procedures are practiced). We have wandered through some of our local parks in recent days and there was nothing to say we couldn’t have but now it’s nice to know that London’s open spaces are freely allowed to us.

The borough where we are currently staying is called Brent. It’s named after the eponymous river which, sourcing at the London borough of Barnet, flows eighteen miles before joining the Thames at (appropriately) Brentford.

A couple of days ago we decided to walk a stretch of this river by doing part of the Brent River Park walk.

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Brent River Park has recently been improved with a new cycle path and wildlife conservation area. It’s now full of flora and fauna and, with its meadows and colonies of bats, is a truly welcome escape from the current claustrophic times. The only thing is that the park’s entrance is rather difficult to find, sandwiched as it is between a ‘normally’ busy junction of the Harrow Road with the North Circular.

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On our route to the park we noted some interesting examples of urban art which pointed to the fact that nearby is the famous bikers’ Ace Cafe about which I have written about at

Ace Cafe

Sadly the children’s playground has been cordoned off for the duration. It’s so frustrating for parents and their young offspring, but then it’s easy for children to forget the rules of social distancing when they are playing.

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The park has a pleasant mix of meadow and woodland.

In one area we came across a large concrete ball. It turned out to be the remains of the flag post on top of the eastern of Wembley’s twin towers from the old stadium demolished at the end of the nineteen nineties

A general view (GV) of the Wembley twin towers before the England game against Brazil – 19th May 1987. (Photo by Mark Leech/Getty Images)

It was quite an emotional experience to come across this remnant since I remember the old stadium very well, especially when we went to the market which used to be held before this iconic building where the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final took place between England and West Germany. It was the first and, so far, only time that England has won the World Cup. Of that fabulous team just the two Charltons, Stiles, Hunt and Hurst are still alive.

The_Queen_presents_the_1966_World_Cup_to_England_Captain,_Bobby_Moore._(7936243534)

(That glorious moment for England in 1966)

We could have continued our walk for a further few miles but decided to turn back at a housing estate called Saint Raphael’s where we noted a pretty ecological growing area which supplies fresh food locally and a red.skin tipi:

(Photographs of Brent River Park courtesy of Alexandra Cipriani Pettitt)

A Place in the Country

Posted on February 28, 2020 by Francis

There are a total of 1121 UNESCO World Heritage sites – places which are essential witnesses to the cultural and natural history of our planet and which are, therefore, deemed of the highest importance. Of these Italy has the most: fifty cultural and five natural sites. More particularly it’s the Lombardy region which has the highest number – over ten – somewhat unfortunate in view of the current pandemic sweeping the world and which this part of Italy holds the highest number of quarantined towns.

Cultural sites include such tourist favourites as the historic centres of Florence, Naples, Rome, Pienza, Urbino, Siena, Verona, Vicenza, Genoa, San Gimignano, Ivrea (a fine example of twentieth century town planning), the baroque towns of Sicily like Noto and Ragusa, Mantua, Sabbioneta, Syracuse, Matera, Alberobello and, of course, Venice.

No Lucca? Our local big town is still on the second, ‘tentative’, list of sites which also includes the historic centres of Parma, Volterra and Orvieto. Of particular interest for those living in our area of Tuscany is part of the Via Francigena, the old pilgrim path from Canterbury to Rome, Bagni di Lucca which makes up one of the great spa centres of Europe, together with the UK’s Bath and the Czech republic’s Carlovy Vary, and the marble basin of Carrara.

I’m not too sure how one gets promoted from a tentative to a permanent world heritage list but I’m sure that it won’t take too long for Lucca to get there.

In 2013 an addition to Italy’s list of world heritage sites were the Medici villas and gardens of Tuscany. These are rural dwellings originally founded by the Medici to serve three purposes: defence outposts to protect their territories, summer retreats, and agricultural centres supplying food and wine for the Medici court.

Twelve villas and two gardens make up the list of villas. Most of them are placed around Florence’s hills but there are four fine examples near Lucca including one that’s regularly opened to the public: Serravezza.

This week we found ourselves in Florence’s environs and were able to visit one of the Medici villas, perhaps together with that of Poggio a Caiano, one of the grandest: Villa la Petraia.

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Dating originally from the fourteenth century the villa was expanded by Cosimo I de Medici and its garden embellished by terraces constructed with stone excavated from the surrounding land (hence its name: ‘pietra’ means stone). These gardens were enhanced by beautiful lawns of anemonies when we visited it.

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Eventually La Petraia became the property of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a newly united Italy, who added an elegant iron glasshouse structure over the inner courtyard (elaborately frescoed by Volterrano) turning it into a spacious ballroom for the reception party of his son’s engagement to Blanche de Larderei.

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Around this courtyard are the state rooms which range from the grandeur of the dining room to the intimacy of Rosina’s (the king’s lovely morganatic wife Rosa Vercellana) boudoir.

I was particularly fascinated by the games room which also included an early pinball machine.

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The paintings decorating the walls of this luscious villa comprise the lunettes painted by Giusto Utens at the start of the seventeenth century and showing fourteen of the Medici villas including La Petraia. These valuable insights into the villas’ past also show the Villa of Pratolino which was demolished in the nineteenth century.

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The remaining service buildings were subsequently refurbished by the Demidoff family, famous in Bagni di Lucca for the hospital they built. I was amazed to find the lunettes at this villa for formerly they had been exhibited in the ‘Firenze com’era’ museum which is now closed.

La Petraia is open free of charge most days and visitable only in accompanied groups. More details are available on its web site at http://polomusealetoscana.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/185/firenze-villa-medicea-della-petraia

The Last Princess Demidoff

Posted on September 9, 2019 by Francis

My name is Maria and this is my grave where I was buried in 1955, the last Demidoff princess.

That name may be familiar to you, especially if you know Bagni Di Lucca where, in 1825, my grandfather, Prince Nicholas, built a hospital for the poor who had come there in search of a cure from the healing thermal waters. The hospital, with its miniature pantheon of a chapel, is still there and now used by the global village.

My family made their fortune from iron and steel. The first Demidoff, Demid Antuf’ev, was a smith from Tula in Russia and invented a gun which was adopted by Tzar Peter the Great for his army and used successfully to ward off a Swedish invasion of Russia. (Tsar Peter’s visit to Woolwich dockyard in London, where he learned how to build effective fighting vessels, also came in useful).

By the nineteenth century our family had become the second richest in Russia after that of the Tsar. If anyone today thinks we simply exploited our country’s serf to build our wealth they are wrong. My forebears did much for health and education in my country, founding several schools and hospitals and giving grants to Moscow university. In addition Prince Nicholas was appointed ambassador to the grand duchy of Tuscany and that’s how my Italian connection began.

My husband, Simon Amabalek Lazarev, became a noted archaeologist but tragically was killed in 1917 in the October revolution, leaving me a childless widow for the remainder of my life.

Our wonderful palace in Florence’s Novoli quarter was badly damaged in the last war and had to wait until 2012 to be restored and converted into flats. Meanwhile, I needed to find a new home and found it in the park of the former Medicean villa at Pratolino.

Of the score of country retreats built by the Great Medici dynasty of Florence Pratolino was the grandest. It was surrounded by formal gardens built along a central axis on which were placed the huge colossus of the Appennines by Giambologna:

The fountain of Jupiter:

And the statue of the river Mugnone.

Francesco Medici, a curious and scholarly person, (rather like my poor Simon), adorned the villa’s parkland with a thousand wonders all centred around the theme of flowing waters. There were fountains which formed watery pergolas, water flowed over the colossus, there was a sequence of ponds which were used as shrimp nurseries, a lake of lilies and, underneath the villa itself, a maze of decorated grottoes and hydraulically powered automatons.

Alas, it was this miraculous water that proved the undoing of the most beautiful of all the Medici villas. In 1821 the building was dynamited as it was decided by the dynasty succeeding the Medici, the House of Lorraine, that the damage caused to the foundations by the water flowing through them was too expensive to repair. The rubble was used to fill in the prawn ponds and the original formal park layout converted into a landscape English garden more in keeping with the new romanticism and certainly easier to maintain.

It was in 1872 that my family bought what was left of this park of wonders. They converted the service buildings into their summer villa and added a stately salon.

This is where I spent the last stage of my life. Every afternoon I would be driven round my estate to make sure that everything was in order. If I came across children from the adjoining village I would distribute candies to them and It was behind the chapel, built by Buontalenti in the sixteenth century and one of the features still remaining from the original park layout, that I requested to be buried.

I am happy that people still remember me, for every year, on my birthday, the priest and choir from Florence’s Russian orthodox church come to my tomb to pray and sing for me.

I Giardini Pensili di Londra

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Francis

Fu da amici che abbiamo scoperto l’esistenza di una pergola fantasiosa sulla collina che domina il parco di Golders Hill, descritto nel mio post a https://longoio3.com/2019/07/17/il-parco-oltre-la-brughiera/

In quell’occasione non avevamo il tempo per godere la pergola. Questa settimana decisi di visitarla verso la fine di una gita che mi portò alla cima di Parliament Hill Fields a sud di Hampstead Heath, l’immenso spazio verde del nord di Londra.

La vista della metropoli da Parliament Hill fields è vasta, anche se non così panoramica di quella di Primrose Hill poiché è un po’ oscurata dagli alberi.

Sono entrato nella grande foresta di Hampstead, dove ci si trovano laghetti dove si può praticare il ‘nuoto selvaggio’.

Guardando i nobili alberi pensavo al poeta Keats che li descrive come quei senatori vestiti di verde di possenti boschi.

(‘Those green-robed senators of mighty woods’.)

Nella foresta si perde. Il verde mi avvolge. Dimentico di essere in una delle grandi città nel mondo affinché ritorni il suono del traffico. Attraverso la strada e ricomincia Hampstead Heath.

Prendo un sentiero a sinistra. Apro un cancello e poco dopo mi trovo all’inizio di una pergola. Ma che pergola! Sembra continuare per sempre. Si svolta a sinistra, a destra. Continua con cupole di legno, tempietti, balaustre. Guardando giù dalle pareti ai prati mi pare di essere in una magica revocazione dei giardini pensili di Babilonia, come immaginati nelle illustrazioni che vidi nell’enciclopedia per bambini sulle sette meraviglie dell’antico mondo.

La pergola fu l’idea di un filantropico industrialista e produttore delle prime saponette confezionate di sapone, William Lever, Viscount Leverhulme, che costruì un villaggio ‘ideale’ per i suoi impiegati a Port Sunlight e che fu anche Massone e patrono delle arti. Insomma, un vero capitalista socialista …

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Era una sua stravaganza che ha anche un uso pratico come contrafforte della collina sulla quale sorge il palazzo che Lever costruì letteralmente sulle bolle di sapone ‘Lux’ e ‘Pears’.

Immaginate che belle serate di feste saranno state svolte qui con le lanterne sotto quest’immensa pergola. Oggi, certamente diventerà meta per fotografie degli sposi novelli.

(John Singer Sargent)

E tutto questo è quasi andato perduto; la pergola fu abbandonata nel dopoguerra e solo negli ultimi anni è stata salvata dal degrado.

Adesso non può che rinascere sempre più bella. Attendo il tempo quando sarà fiorito il glicine. Sarà allora veramente un paradiso terrestre camminarci sotto con l’amata!

Sogni scomparsi

in bolle di sapone:

olezzo dolce.

Via col Vento

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Francis

Londra possiede tra le più belle oasi di pace che si possa mai incontrare in una delle grandi metropoli mondiali. In queste oasi si possono trovare flora e fauna incontaminate; si può perdersi in riflessioni sulla mutabilita’ della vita, sulla fragilità del filo che ci lega si nostri cari, sulla futilità delle nostre ambizioni e sul minimo tempo che abbiamo per riflettere sui grandi temi che ci dovrebbero avvolgere, come l’edera gli alberi, con quel infinità che è l’amore vero e proprio, donato senza prezzo, senza premio terrestre, in tutta la sua purezza candida.

Dove si possono trovare queste oasi di suprema gioia, di melanconia trascendentale?

Nei cimiteri di Londra…

Non parlo di quei edifici, palazzine per i defunti che si trovano in Italia, vere necropoli per gli scomparsi. Invece, riferisco ai genuini ‘campi santi’, pieni di foreste, di uccellini cinguettanti, di gatti randaggi, di volpi e di tassi, di bacche di rosa che respirano vita attorno le tombe muschiose che sorgono tra i fiori selvatici e le erbe alte.

Ho già scritto sui sette monumentali cimiteri di Londra nel mio post a

https://longoio3.com/2017/12/26/i-magnifici-sette/a

Con le loro catacombe, il loro tempietti, i loro archi trionfanti del potere della morte, le loro vie alberate questi ‘magnifici sette’ sono sicuramente impressionanti. Esistono, però, altri cimiteri più piccoli e meno noti in tutte le altre parti di Londra.

Visitai una di queste ieri. Si chiama Brockwell and Ladywell cemetery e si trova in una parte di Londra ben nota a me perché ivi nacqui, crebbi e fui educato: il sud-est.

Il cimitero aprì le sue porte ai morti nel 1858 e occupa uno spazio di 150,000 metri quadrati. Tra le sue tombe si trova quella del grande editore del famoso dizionario della musica noto in tutto il mondo, Sir George Grove, e il tragico poeta crepuscolare inglese Ernest Dowson.

In più ci sono le tombe dedicate ai caduti delle guerre e, solo qualche anno fa, ne fu inaugurato uno ai civili uccisi dai bombardamenti. Ero sorpreso di capire che anche nella prima guerra ci furono vittime dei bombardamenti, questa volta dai dirigibili zeppelin.

Forse il poeta italiano che si avvicina di più alla vita e ai sentimenti di Ernest Dowson è Guido Gozzano. Ambedue morirono giovani, Gozzano nel 1916 all’età di 32 e Dowson, anch’esso al la stessa età nel 1900. Furono poeti di salute fragile, di pensiero pessimista, di relazioni amorose mai compiute, Gozzano con Amalia Guglielminetti e Dowson con Adelaide Foltinowicz.

Oscar Wilde, sapendo della morte di Dowson in estrema povertà a Catford, scrisse ‘povero, ferito, meraviglioso poeta. Fu la rappresentazione di tutta la poesia tragica, un suo simbolo. Poiché sapeva veramente cosa fosse l’amore.’

Anche se non conoscete questo delicatissimo poeta avrete tutti sulle labbra una sua frase ‘gone with the wind’, ‘via col vento’; la stessa frase, tratta dal suo poema ‘Cynara’, e usata dall’autrice Margaret Mitchell per il titolo del suo meraviglioso libro e dell’omonimo film.

Ricordiamo altre poesie di Dowson (che non è ancora stato tradotto in Italiano), con queste sue strofe (mia traduzione).

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

***

Non durano a lungo, il pianto e le risate,

L’amore, il desiderio e l’odio:

Penso che non abbiano alcuna parte in noi

Dopo che si ha passato il cancello.

Non durano a lungo i giorni del vino e delle rose:

Fuori da un sogno nebbioso

Il nostro sentiero emerge per un po ‘, e poi si chiude

In un sogno.

***

Ecco qualche scorcio del cimitero con la tomba di Dowson e molti altri cari dimenticati, se non dalle foglie, e ricordati solamente dal canto dei merli.

Snowy May?

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Francis

This year the seasons have gone really crazy in Italy, especially in our area of Media Valle, just north of Lucca. For much of the first three months of this year temperatures were often well into their twenties and for weeks we had no precipitation at all. Camellias, which normally blossom at the end of March, were already budding in January and are still blossoming now over three months later, the longest time I have known our own camellia to come into flower.

Then in April things changed; temperatures actually went down and we had days of often precipitous rain. We hoped that things would brighten up in May yet worse was to come; our mountains, so long without their hoary blankets, were covered by snowfalls, clearly welcome to skiers but not so longed-for by farmers and gardeners.

A couple of days ago we went on one of our favourite trips: to the highest village in the Italian Apennines, San Pellegrino, nestling on the side of the main ridge at a height of 5003 feet. Our route became marked by extensive snowfalls; it truly seemed that we were just emerging from winter instead of being at the start of the merry month of May!

San Pellegrino strides between the regions of Tuscany and that of Emilia Romagna. Indeed, one of the bars has its counter divided between the two very different parts of the peninsula…

The village grew around a refuge for pilgrims crossing the mountains on the via Francigena in their way to Rome. The views we have enjoyed from this spot are truly wonderful but on this day everything was enveloped in mist.

What was still visible, however, were the two saints, San Pellegrino and San Bianco, in all their mummified glory. Pilgrims still come today and write their prayer wishes on a slip of paper which is deposited by the graceful shrine.