Time in Volterra
Views from Le Balze, Volterra
The ascent to Volterra felt as though I was rising to the top of the world, with the usual Tuscan suspects a feast for the eyes – houses isolated on the crowns of hills, cypresses forming inexplicable rows and lines, vineyards and olive trees, burnt raked fields. Add to that the drama of an abandoned 11th century abbey and church about to tip over the steep, bare crags into the abyss, it would only be a matter of centuries…
Suffering from serious piazza, palazzo and pietra exhaustion, I could barely wait to get out of the centre: streets, arches, walls, museums, palaces, history and alabaster a blur as I rushed from grass and trees in the archaeological park to the ruins of the Roman theatre and baths, here viewed from the walls, over which Volterra’s medieval inhabitants used to throw their refuse. Quite a picture when imagined vividly, which I of course did.
Roman Theatre
Neolithic, Etruscan, Roman, Lombard, Frank and Florentine – time has dug its heels into Volterra, but, secure in the fact that I would be returning, I turned my back on it all and walked two kilometres west to Le Balze – the crags – getting a look into tiny rooms open to the street sometimes: a mother and daughter examining a bit of sewing, a stove and oven in the background; a woman’s silhouette as she peers through the curtains of a second-storey window; a poster of Astor Piazzolla among wheels and tools; a man working on a motorbike; another on a door handle; and on wooden benches lining the front of the resthome on Borgo San Giusto: three women poring over their Conad plastic bags; five elderly and well-dressed men in colloquy; and among the shouts of children playing in a park next to San Giusto Church, a lone woman who addresses me and with whom I pause for the briefest of moments.
Needing bright air and wind and the sensation of being stranded in space, a sense of being “on a towering great bluff of rock that gets all the winds and sees all the world” as DH Lawrence put it, I clambered over the remains of the Etruscan wall and got exactly that.
Slices of Val D’Orcia
View from Pienza
Housebound and inert during two days of rain – rain, 19 degrees, summer. Unfortunately lost the weekend at the beach which had been planned, though I did manage some good reading before the skies finally cleared this short Sunday, and did have some time for Pienza, its famed cheeses at lunch with F, some candles lit to memory, and the Val D’Orcia with its classic lines…
…and light-and-shadow-pooled curves…
And I’ll shout it to the blue summer sky
Lion, Siena Cathedral
Hours of prowling, pawing, growling… Purrrrr-fect WordPress theme…
Big-skied, fluffy-clouded Siena
Siena Cathedral
A perfect day in Siena: soaking it all in, like everyone else: the Scottish wedding at the Piazza del Campo, which was complete with kilts and bagpipes; an unbelievable gelato at Grom; photo ops around every corner; F being fantastic if challenging company; but most of all – the simple, hurriedly thrown together picnic lunch at a public park just inside the city walls: prosciutto, salami, mozarella and tomatoes, a crisp and lively salad, a baguette, grapes and a handful of apricots, a Corona. All finished off with a piping hot espresso – of course. Trees, benches, green public spaces away from traffic – something I really miss in Florence. ‘Twas good for the Aussie soul.
San Galgano Abbey, Chiusdino
San Galgano Abbey, Chiusdino
Just 80 kilometres from Florence and 30 from Siena stands the beautiful San Galgano Abbey, evocative enough quite without the cypress stands and rolling hills, and wheat and sunflower fields catching fire in the late afternoon sun: add in the flare of brilliant light striking at centuries old stone, and warmer, deepening tints soaking in, and one hears yet another note to ‘the still, sad music of humanity’.
In fine Gothic style
Built in the 13th century by Cistercian monks, an order originating from France and which was dedicated to the precepts of St Benedict, San Galgano Abbey was gradually abandoned over the centuries – with famine, the plague, and rivalries beween Siena and Florence playing their part in its decline. A bolt of lightning – in fine gothic style – felled the bell tower, and the roof finally caved in in 1781.
The abbey stones
Early evening and the trees are as still as the abbey stones. The birds are restless, in arcing trajectories across the transept and along the nave searching for a place to roost. The hills rise and fall in soft waves and flicker in the brilliant light; sunflowers weave patterns on endless swathes of green.
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A troupe of dancers are silently at work on glissades and lifts on the stage in the altar; in a room off the south transept, a frisson of energy and the soft rustling of material as performers don costumes and pose and pirouette for each other. There are very few people around, and the abiding sense is one of ease and silence under the press and flight of the abbey stones.
Excalibur – the Tuscan connection
Up the hill from San Galgano Abbey stands the circular Montesiepi Chapel, which houses the remains of both a man and a saint, and possibly, some have argued, the beginnings of a myth: a dissolute 12th century knight, a visitation from the Archangel Michael, repentance, a vision of a round temple, a sword thrust into a stone…
Once believed to be a fake the sword’s make and materials have since been dated by scientists to 1180; and the similarities in name – Galgano, Galwyn, Gawain – as well as the fact that Cistercian monks are well-acknowledged to have spread the Arthurian legend are among the most intriguing aspects of the theory.
Nothing for it but a gelato
A steamy slow-moving Sunday afternoon in San Gimignano, with a lunch light enough to keep the senses alert – despite the glass of wine – among pots of red and pink oleander, shrubs of rosemary, a diffuse light filtering through the apricot trees, and lizards darting across the stone walls, glossing the edges of your vision with a flickering green. By this time, around 3, I think, a cool delicious wind occasionally.
While the cafe crowd around Piazza della Cisterna got somewhat agitated watching the World Cup, I enjoyed a pistachio gelato from the Gelato World Champion, 2006 to 2009, and was therefore on Sunday treated to, as promised, the best gelato not just in Tuscany or Italy but in The World. Crikey. How do they judge these things?
Vernaccia, Santa Fina, saffron, Etruscan and medieval history – things one ought to pay attention to in San Gimignano tussled with the easy tempo of the afternoon, but briefly, as the Tuscan I was with was as disinclined to do the historicultural tour thing as I was, and we were quite happy to simply gaze up at the towers and wander along the streets, which had a quality of magic to them somehow.
And on the walk trail outside the walls: stone steps descending onto a path strewn with pine needles, red poppies and pale yellow flowers I can’t name, cool shadows under the cypresses and pines, a bench, and views of Tuscany.
Escher’s San Gimignano
This was Escher’s first Italian print, created during his travels in 1922 through Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra and Siena. A landscape both cultivated and convulsive – that boiling tree, those Van Goghian lines upper left – out of which the medieval towers of San Gimignano coolly rise to meet the blazing Italian sun… And yet, what blazing Italian sun? My bright as a daisy day quickly turned to overcast skies, rain and thunder… A beautiful day, regardless, particularly because I have a long drive in the Tuscan countryside, the promise of the best gelato in Tuscany, and the real San Gimignano to look forward to tomorrow.
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.
The sirens at Chiusi
Woman beating her breast, detail on funerary urn, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Etrusco
On the bus home from Chiusi I was woken from a nap by Professor Camporeale standing by my seat, peering at me through his glasses, and smiling. “Ivy,” he said suddenly in his strong, deep voice, startling everyone, who, as far as I could see, had been napping, slumped in their seats as I had been. “Ivy,” il professore said again, and proceeded to elaborate, as spry and full of energy as he had been all day, holding court in ancient tombs, balanced precariously on all manner of objects and surfaces, squeezing into narrow spaces and dragging us behind him, holding us spellbound with his knowledge of and clear passion for ancient Etruscan culture.
Professor Camporeale, with plastic bag full of student essays and spellbound audience of 12 on Chiusi's main street, Via Porsenna
On the way from Tomba della Scimmia to Tomba del Grand Duca I had asked about a detail on the ceiling of the innermost room: in beautifully preserved colours, four sirens, a mythological creature with the body of a bird and the features of a woman, one on each corner, and a simple four-leaf design in the centre. What was the leaf, I wanted to know. Il professore gave me edera, and in Tuscan, ellera, and hours later, wide awake and upright in the aisle of a moving bus, triumphantly gave me the English equivalent.
I can’t say enough how special this day in Chiusi was, though it had started with the threat of rain and a 50-minute traffic jam. Chiusi is around 150 kilometres south-east of Florence in the province of Siena, and the site of an ancient Etruscan city which flourished between the 7th and 6th centuries BC. From the riches in the Museo Nazionale Etrusco, to the three tombs we visited out of the hundreds burrowed into the hillsides, to our walk around its quiet streets, taking in the cathedral, parks and beautiful views of Tuscan hills and low-lying cloud, seeing through the eyes of the professor, who has made the Etruscans his life’s work, has tweaked my interest in their history.
