Not the only thing leaning in Pisa…

Labyrinth, Lucca Cathedral

Ten days of flu and tonsillitis and one week of missed classes later, I rejoined the real world on Saturday with an art history excursion to Pisa and Lucca.   It was a perfect autumn day, bright and crisp, and warm enough for a light blouse and a scarf most of the time, especially with Dr Cirri’s constant cries of “Veloce, ragazzi, veloce!” as she kept stringently to a schedule of bus to Pisa, breakfast (pastries or panini and coffee taken standing at a bar), Pisa, bus to Lucca, lunch, Lucca, bar, and Florence by 6.oo and not a minute later.  Still recovering, my body had a huge issue with this, but managed to get by, relieved to have done with dizzy spells, a painful throat that kept me up nights, and prolonged bouts of coughing that after a few days felt as painful in the abdomen as the day after about 1000 crunches.

Yes, folks, the tower on the right-hand side is...

Incapable of giving the lectures more than scant attention, it was nevertheless very satisfying just to keep up with the group, speak,  catch up with people, lift my face up to columned facades, blue skies, the sun, light a candle in the cathedral, listen to the stunning acoustics in the baptistery, and just soak it all in via osmosis – Romanesque and medieval architecture, domes and arches influenced by Islamic architecture,  marble, stone, curved walls, lions, mythological figures, nativity scenes, Byzantine mosaics, the light…

Our 15-strong language group at the Camposanto, Pisa

I was impressed most by the Camposanto, Pisa’s ancient cemetery, which is unsurprising because, a, I love cemeteries, and b, it is quite, quite beautiful, with its arcades, sarcophagi, statues and frescoes, its columns, arches and mullions, and its peaceful inner courtyard, the appreciation of which was much enhanced by a complete absence of crowds.

But no such luck in Lucca, where but for the annual Lucca Festival of Comics and Games, in full swing this weekend and with nearly 85,000 visitors mingling with its nearly 85,000 strong local population, it might have all been just what you would expect from yet another stunning Tuscan city surrounded by well-preserved 17th century walls.  In my effort to keep up with the group, I unfortunately missed taking a photograph of my favourite superhero, a tall, muscular, and exquisitely latexed Batman, quite ominous though obliging enough to spread his cape out for photographs.  I rather like this one though.

Feeling elvish in Lucca

And in the portico of Lucca Cathedral, the façade of which is a beautiful example of Tuscan Romanesque architecture and sculpture,  carved into a pillar, the 19½ inch labyrinth that heads this post.  Theseus and the Minotaur have long been effaced from its centre over centuries of people tracing its path with their fingers, something meant to still your mind before entering, fusing pagan and Christian traditions quite beautifully.  And for another circular feature, here we are, together with a bystander, at the elliptical Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, built on the site of a Roman amphitheatre.

Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, Lucca

And just because that lean really is quite remarkable, and in my eyes more pronounced than when I was last in Pisa about 17 years ago, which is possibly helped by either a lean specific to my recovering state, or a camera which often seemed heavier to lift than usual, or both, here’s the tower in all its tipsy glory.

San Miniato angel and Italian verbs

San Miniato Angel

There has been so far a rhythm and logic to the past few weeks that’s been seductive:  I don’t think I’ve ever fronted up to a lesson on time, though I make a fair effort during my 30-minute, early morning sprints from one side of the city to the other, but with the streets and piazzas comparatively empty there are new perspectives and a few too many things that distract you along  the way.  Now that my landlady has agreed to install a washing machine I no longer have to leave this beautiful and unbelievably quiet street from where it’s all been happening: a couple of tiny, glass fronted studios on a parallel street, from where a photographer and a ceramicist  work and sell their work, is as commercial as it gets.  Not a single shop, not a single ad.  It’s so quiet that it is entirely a world away from the crowds, noise and traffic around the Ponte Vecchio, which is no more than five minutes away.  The old couple across from me spend a great part of their days painting their balcony and rearranging their flower pots; most people nod to each other or go so far as to say ‘buongiorno’.  There are at least three old churches up the hill, one which dates back to the year 1000, and the Forte di Belvedere, the ancient city walls, and all topped by San Miniato al Monte, where I went again today, finally able to stay for the monks’ Gregorian chants at 5.30, in celebration of the Eucharist  – beautiful and quite intense.

Ancient city walls and Florence along the Arno, from San Miniato

So, the point of all of it is I’m feeling more settled and less like a tourist.  Having some grasp of Italian has led to certain changes: I am now so accustomed to the lectures that like the other students can barely suppress a yawn when our esteemed professor goes on an  extended rant – very informative but a rant – about the role of the intellectual in Italian society.  I now know my way around the Mercato Centrale: the best day to purchase fish, where the locals go for freshly made ravioli, am happily experimenting with different prosciuttos and Tuscan olive oils, have taken to Tuscan olives and Calabrian anchovies, have given myself another month to become acculturated to the unsalted Tuscan breads, and have enough Italian to hold my own when a stall owner decides he is going to be as fresh as his produce, which is pretty fresh, let me tell you.  But enough Italian is not enough Italian.  So I need to hit the books which means this is the last of my daily posts, and will from now on post about twice a week.  So goodbye for now, and I’ll leave you with Florence at dusk, on my descent home from San Miniato to a long and gruelling night of Italian verbs.

Musica dell’acqua

Musica dell'acqua

I wish they would put these old posters away, so you don’t come across them on your way to study first thing in the morning and suffer huge pangs of regret for the rest of the day.  Back home a precious hour and a half when you should be studying is spent searching for the music on YouTube.

So, this piano recital at the Bargello on 6 October had the Florentine pianist Riccardo Sandiford playing: Liszt, from Années de Pélerinage, Au Lac De Zallenstadt, Aubord d’une Source, Orage, Les jeux d’eau à la Villa D’este; Jeux d’eau by Ravel, and from Miroirs, Une barque sur l’ocean, and from Gaspard de la nuit, Ondine; Debussy, Ondine from Preludes, Reflets dans l’eau and Poissons d’or from Image, and Jardins sous la pluide from Estampes.

These pieces for Musica dell’acqua were quite simply among the standout features today for me in Florence, and Ravel’s Ondine played by the great French pianist Vlado Perlemuter (1904 – 2002), who had been half-blind from the age of three and at least an octogenarian at the time of playing, is indeed seductive, and unforgettable.

And rushing home, I came across these guys having a well-deserved break in Piazza della Signoria.

Lunch at Nerbone, Mercato Centrale

Locals queueing up at Nerbone, Mercato Centrale

One of the things you ought to have at Nerbone, an institution among Florentines, and which has been serving cucina povera, or poor people’s food, from a stall on the ground floor of the Mercato Centrale since the market opened in 1872, is the lampredotto, or offal.  It is one of those Florentine experiences you cannot possibly miss, just postpone: having had a challenging week I just didn’t have the… stomach for it the day I caught up with a friend for lunch.  It’s definitely not the sort of thing I would do alone – I can see a forlorn lampredotto bun resting on its juices on wax paper and me looking down on it with a dubious look on my face – and I couldn’t really try it with my Italian friend, due to a possible charge of cultural insensitivity arising from that same dubious look on my face.  Next week though, among a small group of foreign students with some sporting that same look for moral support and a carafe or two of the house red we will see.

Nerbone's daily changing menu scribbled on wax paper

What my friend did order for us was some crostini toscani, the classic Tuscan antipasto of chicken liver on pieces of toast, and which made me feel as though I’d died and gone to heaven.  I regularly have this feeling with my mother’s cooking, and I am lucky to have found a similar sublime in a cuisine which is entirely different.  Spezzotino cavolo nero, a tasty stew with black leaf kale, the Tuscan winter vegetable; risotto fiorentino; a Greek salad; and a small carafe of the house red were all piled higgledy-piggledy onto a tray lined with wax paper along with glasses, cutlery and a bottle of water, and etiquette demands that you jostle for room among the locals along the few tables that line the wall across the stand.  The markets close at 2 on weekdays, and are open only on Saturdays in winter, so lunch at Nerbone, a robust and honest affair, is something I will get to know quite well over the next few weeks.

Amor on the Ponte Vecchio

Amor on the Ponte Vecchio

Rushing home one afternoon, I noticed an American couple getting quite excited over some watercolours on the Ponte Vecchio, quite  taken, I think I heard, by the yellow tones in the work, and asking where the nearest bank was.  Having always bypassed these watercolours of the Arno and the bridge and similar scenes for Pinocchio ones, this time I decided to postpone lunch for a little bit to see what the commotion was about.  So, let me introduce you to Amor, yes, as in ‘love’, and yes, I thought at first he was being allegorical.  He is one of many artists who work and sell their watercolours around the Ponte Vecchio and especially Piazza della Repubblica and similar high-traffic areas.

But there’s more to Amor than his watercolours: he is a writer and his stories have won prizes and can be found in literary journals and numerous anthologies, and with his novel, I lupi della notte, was finalist in 2008 for the prestigious Italo Calvino Prize.  You can read his story, ‘Salvation’, online, in the anthology, Multicultural Literature in Contemporary Italy (2007).  He was born in Sétif, Algeria, lives and works in Florence, has studied in both places, has lived and worked in Germany and elsewhere, and rightly calls himself a citizen of the world.  “I am anywhere”, he said, which I thought quite expressive, and a sentiment I can well understand.

At the end of a Florentine day…

Aperitivo at Abiko

… is a Florentine night.  Starting with an impromptu tour of Santo Spirito (means a small group of my fellow students and I had some trouble finding an aperitivo bar), the aperitivo we did go to, at the stylish, minimalist Abiko, and courtesy of G, more than made up for the 20 minutes of wandering around, in my case, in heels…  A gamble, I remember thinking when I put on my boots, having thought so often in the past month that Florentines must have really strong ankles considering the state, charming though it often is, of the paved, flagged or cobblestoned streets.  But it went without mishap except for a wobble or two, which had nothing to do with the mojitos and cosmopolitans which were the order of the night, or the just gorgeous red I’d like to have a bit more of very soon…

Rigoletto at Teatro Comunale

And the experience of the opera for me, apart from the chance it gave me to Florentine watch, and to enjoy one of the best things there is – a conductor going ballistic, and the orchestra with him – can be condensed into the heart-wrenching Rigoletto and Gilda arias, “Piangi, fanciulla, piangi” and “Si, vendetta”.  But it is, after all, my very first Rigoletto, a few more will no doubt deepen and broaden my appreciation.

Autumn’s definitely here

I love scarves, but over the past month I’ve walked past every single stall in every single market and on every single street without a sideways glance – too humid, too hot, can’t be bothered.  But today, with the  air clear and cold and sharp and with just a few more chestnut vendors on the streets, I must admit that this little stall at the foot of the steps leading to the Basilica di San Lorenzo, just a few paces away from the main market, did catch my eye.  And though I didn’t find the perfect green scarf, I do own one of the fuchsia ones you can see to the right, and have it snugly wrapped around my neck as I write this very very quick post.

What a day!  An intense morning with Dante’s inferno, purgatorio and paradiso sketched out in texta on the board, then a fantastic lunch with a friend at the markets – about which you’ll hear more later – plus negotiations with my non-English speaking landlady to have a washing machine installed in what is an otherwise excellent little studio…  I’d be exhausted if I weren’t so excited about going to Rigoletto in a few hours, and before that, aperitivo!  Ciao!

The madonnari are back!

At 2.03 pm

It rained heavily the day after I posted about the madonnari, so I haven’t seen them for a couple of days, and believe me, their paintings and presence have a huge impact on the life of the street.  But a flash of colour on the pavement on my way home today, and, yes, there they were, across the street, photocopies in hand, occasionally shaking their heads and drinking from a plastic cup of red wine.  It would be some hours yet before the completed work, so I turned my back on the cool, crisp and glorious blue-skied, fluffy-clouded autumn day…

Lungarno to Ponte Santa Trinita

… returned to my studio to have lunch and study, before going back just before sunset to see the finished work.

At 6.35 pm

And unless it’s raining, they tell me, no matter how cold it gets in winter, they are always there.  Good to know.

Goddess of the hunt

I know her well as Diana and love her most as Artemis; not by any means an exhaustive list but at different times and places under different guises – Arcadian, Taurian, Phrygian, she is goddess of the hunt, the moon, of nymphs, and is protectress of the young, including animals; she holds the oak, the laurel, the stag, the boar, and fish, sacred; is all nourishing nature personified, yet with bow and arrows fashioned by none other than Hephaestus can send plagues and sudden death to mortals.  She loves the chase, particularly that of stags, and as the Roman Diana had a cult and was worshipped on the shores of Lake Nemi, not far south of Rome, where her priests engaged in a terrible, ancient ritual.

Not an ‘easy’ goddess by any means, but then again, none of them are.  This Diana I found on the ground floor of the Archaeological Museum.

At the cocktail hour

Aperitivo at Piazza San Marco

A gorgeous day in Florence, which began with me conjugating verbs in my head while negotiating zebra crossings, bicycles and drivers along Via Ricasoli and Via Luigi Salvatore Cherubini on the way to the university, continuing with Dante and il fin amor and a guided visit to the Museo Archeologico…

to feed my interest in Etruscan art…

…and ending with aperitivo, the Italian tradition of meeting up for a pre-dinner drink at the end of the day’s work.  Included in the price of the drink are the appetizers that a bar lays out, and which encourage you to tarry and linger and chat and unwind.  The aperitivo at the bar above, at Piazza San Marco close to the university precinct, was surprisingly inexpensive: prices are usually double that in the centre.  But what made the day even more lovely was the rain, and the bursts of beautiful light that silvered the cobblestoned streets in between.