Sermoneta

At the end of the week the school took its orientation trip, a two night visit based out of Terracina, by the sea midway between Rome and Naples. We stayed at a campground right on the water. The tourist season is over and they actually stayed open a few extra days just to host us. The section of beach we were on is a few kilometers from where a mafia boss known as Stumpy was recently gunned down. He was nicknamed stumpy because he blew off both of his hands in a bomb making accident – I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

On our trip down we stopped off at Sermoneta. The city, originally called Sulmo (by Pliny) and Sulmona (by Vergil), has been inhabited for centuries. As you approach the city you come across a structure built on top of a spire of rock. It was unusual enough, even for Italy, for me to take a picture of as we drove past in the bus.

For defensive reasons, the town is built on a hilltop and surrounded by a wall. It was the first experience with an Italian hilltop town for many of our students and definitely their first experience riding a double-decker tour bus up the winding roads leading to one.

Sermoneta is architecturally similar to Viterbo. Like Viterbo, it was a powerful, important fortified city of the medieval period. The narrow streets and stone buildings date from that period and have a very familiar feel. Unlike Viterbo, Sermoneta was not important enough for the Allies to bomb during WWII so it is much better preserved.

A visit to Sermoneta isn’t complete without a stop at the Cathedral of St. Mary with its Romanesque belfry.

There is also a heavily fortified 12^th century castle that was among the most powerful fortress of the Lazio region in the 16^th century. It was once the home of the Borgia family of the Lucretia fame.

Ironically, both of these important sites were closed during our visit. The castle is only open for guided visits with very restricted hours and the church had closed for lunch 15 minutes before our arrival, denying us the opportunity to go inside to see the paintings and other important artifacts. As Amy pointed out, you can’t have a spiritual crisis in Italy during lunch time. If you do, you have to go directly to the big man himself to sort out your problems, because there aren’t any priests available.

Festa dell’uva Pianoscarano

 The city of Viterbo is divided into neighborhoods, much as our home city of Springfield. The most famous of them is undoubtedly San Pellegrino, the Medieval Quarter.  Between San Pellegrino and the city wall, separated by a deep valley, is the Pianoscarano. Each fall in mid-September they have a four day long grape festival. There are concerts and booths, but the highlight of the festival takes place on the final night when they run new wine through the fountain in the middle of Piazza di Pianoscarano. When we arrived in the early evening there was a cake baking competition being judged. Amy said I should have entered if only to demonstrate the superiority of American baked goods. In the piazza they have a display of specially decorated wine barrels next to the fountain.

The fountain itself has been emptied of water and several of the spouts outfitted with spigots.

The wine is gravity fed from a large barrel perched atop a pole off to the side of the piazza.

It is transferred through a plastic hose into the top of the fountain and then served free to anyone who holds out a hand for a cup.

It is definitely a new wine, not meant to be cellared for long periods of time. It is light and certainly drank easily. The second cup was better than the first, the third tastier than the second, the fourth superior to the third. I think you get the picture. We had a fine time with our friends Keith, Steve and Pam, then rolled home.

Cerveteri and Tuscania

Sunday, the second full day of our visit with Walter and Luise was bright and sunny. They decided over breakfast that they could see interesting architecture and old historical buildings in Germany, so we opted to explore something unique to this area and visit the Etruscan necropolis at Cerveteri. As I mentioned in earlier posts, the Etruscans were essentially contemporaries of the early Romans, centered in what is now northern Lazio and Tuscany. In other words, we are right in the heart of their former world. We have little first-hand knowledge about them and don’t even completely understand their language since only small fragments of their non-Indo European writing remain. They were gradually assimilated into the Roman world and did have a lasting impact. Several of the kings of Rome (yes, Rome had kings at one point) were Etruscan and gladiatorial games were derived from an Etruscan funeral ritual.

Cerveteri is a 75 minute drive by winding back roads from Viterbo. The town is relatively close to the coast. We bypassed the museum and headed straight for the archeological site. Well, almost directly there. We stopped for an early lunch at the little restaurant on the Via di Necropolis, a few hundred meters from the entrance.

After a luscious lunch of antipasti and pasta, we continued on to the archaeological site. There is a new, short 3D film about the history of the area. It was in Italian, so I didn’t get as much out of it as I might have, but some of the 3D effects were nifty. Amy has been to the necropolis at least 7 times, yet she always sees something new to attract her eye and never tires of it. This year we caught a glimpse of cyclamen growing everywhere and even a couple of clumps of wild arugula.

The tombs were interactive, as always. One that I found interesting had interior rooms with windows. Remember, what you are looking at here is an entire room carved from stone with a relatively narrow entrance to the outside world.

Amy refused to lie down on the stone beds, but I did catch a glimpse of her through the window. While many of the tombs are dug into huge mounds, there are several other types.

These take on the appearance of a row of houses and give a clear indication that the necropolis really was meant to be a city of the dead since the layout of these streets of tombs mirrors that of Etruscan city sites.

We took a different route home, heading up the coast on the Autostrade, past Civitavecchia and on to Tuscania. There we explored the abandoned old church outside the city walls. We also attempted a visit of the Etruscan ruins there, but they were closed in spite of the fact that we arrived 15 minutes before the official end of hours. They don’t look like they get many visitors and are likely closed for a good portion of the posted hours.

On Monday Walter and Luise explored the area by themselves, taking a bus to Bagnaia in a failed attempt to visit the Villa Lante. That evening we had a cookout dinner under the stars and a good soak at the hot springs outside of town with our friends the H-P’s where we were also treated to a beautiful sunset.

Walter and Luise made their way back to the airport by train and on to their home on Tuesday. We greatly enjoyed their visit. Arrivederci.

Civita and Montefiascone

Walter and Luise Fischer arrived last Friday for a four-night visit. They found their own way on the train up from Rome where they had spent a few days exploring the city. That afternoon we wandered Viterbo, introducing them to the place we call home, and had a grand feast in their honor with our friends the H-P’s and Ale. The Aperol cocktails, cheese and olives followed by “turkey saltimbocca” was a hit.

The first full day of their visit found us making our way north to visit Civita di Bagnoreggio. If you see only one hill town, this one is unsurpassed for its stunning presentation. This time we drove all the way to the base of the bridge which yielded a slightly different perspective on the town.

We climbed our way up and around to enter through the main gate. It felt like there were plenty of people around, but in truth this is a dying town that is essentially dead. There are only a handful of permanent residents. Most of what you see there is effectively a Disney adventure, complete with hotels, restaurants and attractions set up just for you.

One thing which remained unchanged was the cat presence. In fact, in spite of the harsh winter (remember, we got more than a foot of snow) the number of cats has grown. This one was a friendly tiger that was likely one of last year’s litter.

The real stars of the show were the six young kittens that were cute enough to want to take home, but far too wily to be caught. We lunched in an underground Etruscan grotto. Walter, in true adventurous fashion, tried some of everything! As always, the scenery was spectacular.

After lunch we retrieved the car and headed off to Montefiascone to take in Lago di Bolsena. The overlook at the end of town was spectacular. Can you see the family resemblance between Amy and Walter? I can’t, but then again they are only distantly related. Their grandfathers were brothers making them second cousins. 

This time the duomo was open and we had a chance to go in before heading home for aperitivi at a nifty watering hole we recently found, complete with ½ liter bottles of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout. Quite the treat.

Our Dance Card

Last year was realtively uneventful as far as visitors were concerned.To be sure, we loved having the people who came, but not that many of those we invited actually showed up. This year is shaping up to be different.

Our first guests are Walter and Luise from Schwabisch-Hall in Germany. Walter is one of Amy's second cousins. We met him briefly at a party in our honor in Gaildorf when we were visiting two summers ago. When we sent out the link to our blog and invited Amy's German relatives to come, he was inspired to have a "Big Italian Adventure" of his own, so here he is! They spent a few days in Rome and then we met them at the train station this morning. We are looking forward to showing them the area and I will certainly include our doings in later blog posts.

Next up will be Maggie and company, sometime in October. No firm date yet, as they fly standby using Greg's pilot benefits and status, but they will be coming.

Our friend Jonathan will be dropping in at the beginning of November on the trailing end of a business related trip to Spain. He will be staying through my birthday and perhaps giving a presentation on his graduate work on second language acquisition to our faculty and/or students.

My sister Emily and her man Max are planning to be with us over Christmas break. Our break here and her break there start on the same day. No tickets yet, but we are expecting them. We have room for more over that break and perhaps other members of my family will join them. My Mom went so far as to price out tickets, but we don't actually expect her to make the trip as she visited us last Christmas and her husband, Jim, will have serious trouble getting time off from work a second year in a row. Nate and Fran are at least mumbling, but their current situations are too vague to be able to commit.

Finally, we have Amy's BFF Becky and her daughter Sarah joining us in mid/late April. It will be Becky's second trip to Italy. The first time was as a co-chaperone for one of Amy's trips with her students at ELHS. Sarah has never been. They already have tickets and are working on a passport for Sarah. Amy is psyched, to say the least!

It may seem like there is still a lot of open space for visitors, but once you factor in almost 3 weeks of overnight school trips, another 2 weeks of school day expeditions sprinkled around, a couple of trips we have planned for ourselves, the rush of ending the school year and our summer plans then, in truth, our dance card is nearly full. Anyone else looking to come should contact us and stake a claim to what is left before everything fills up!

Bits and Pieces

School has really started .... well, almost. We had our first full week with the students, but Monday and Tuesday not all classes met. Next week will be the first full week of the real thing.

We are legal! We picked up the renewal extension of our Permesso de Soggiorno at the Questura yesterday. We were done much earlier this year and did not need the auxilliary trip to be fingerprinted.

Our car is ready to roll for another year. We got an oil change and two new tires. They did away with one of the inspections we needed and another is good for two years, i.e. until after we are gone. One more big tax to pay by the end of the month.

The weather finally really broke. We went from three straight months of temps in the 90's and not a drop of rain to over two weeks with more rainy days than not. Today the temperature topped out below 60! We had all the windows in the house closed all night for the first time since we moved in during June (except when we were traveling and the house was empty).

Mensa meals and mensa meat are part of our life again. So far the huge lines have't been there, but classes didn't really start in Italian schools until yesterday.

Macchina di Santa Rosa

The Festa di Santa Rosa is one of the defining characteristics of Viterbo. A huge part of that celebration, both figuratively and literally, is the Macchina di Santa Rosa. For over 750 years, there has been an unbroken tradition of a procession through the city in honor of Santa Rosa, the patron saint of the city.

The celebration this year began around 6 pm. However, the first people were taking up their positions along the route to secure a good vantage point some 12 hours before that. When I ventured out shortly after 6 am they were already in place. Eventually people line the entire 2 km route some 3-6 deep. There are also reviewing stands at each of the stopping points along the route with a seating capacity of at least 1000 persons per stop. In the main piazza, there is seating for over 2000 people. Tens of thousands of people come to watch the spectacle.

The first stage of the parade this year began with the marching bands and costumed groups that were to have marched the previous evening, but who were rained out.

In truth, the entire event was almost rained out last night as well. Between the evening marching and the main event, there were several periods of light showers. The transport of the macchina is already dangerous enough without the hazard of rain. However, the forecast for the next day was substantially worse and the show MUST go on, so even the weather-wimpy Viterbese had to go for it.

The macchina is carried by the facchini or porters. There were 190 facchini this year. As darkness is falling they march through the city, ending at the Porta Romana where the macchina is constructed each year.

These men are local heroes. There is a museum dedicated to them and they even have their own social club nearby in San Pelligrino. They are Viterbese through and through; their families have lived here for generations.  Beyond that significant barrier is the requirement that they fall within a very narrow range of heights so that they can work together to carry the macchina. It isn’t a game, accidents do happen. When a 6 ton tower comes crashing down, people can die. In recognition of that, the facchini are given the last rites prior to the start of their labor.

Once it is fully dark, around 9 pm, the lights along Via Garibaldi go dark and the crowd gives out a cheer.

Then the lights on Via Cavour are also turned off, including all of the lights in shops and private homes. The macchina is HUGE. It stands some 100 feet tall; easily twice as tall as any of the buildings it is carried past. Your first glimpse of it is just the top, peeking above the buildings in the distance. The tower is redesigned periodically. The tower used now was put into service in 2009 and is called Fiori del Cielo or flower of the sky. In addition to hundreds of oil lamps it has computer controlled red LEDs.

The first stop is at the Piazza Fontane Grande. The tower is placed on wooden horses and the facchini are given a rest. Only 110 carry it at any one time and so at each stop fresh legs are added to the mix. In the picture below you can see them rushing in, row by row, to get in place for the next lift.

The rows of 11 men all link arms to provide cohesion and lift with a long beam across their shoulders. As they travel down the road, a group of facchini cordon off an area in front in case the tower should come crashing down.

The entire trip is coordinated by a group of handlers who ring the base, giving instructions and support.

Once the tower had passed our position in the school building, it continued to the Piazza della Plebiscito where it performed a pirouette before being placed on wooden horses for its second rest.

There are a total of 5 stops along the route. The transport ends at the church of Santa Rosa where the tower will stay on display for several days.

Cuore di Santa Rosa

The celebration in honor of Santa Rosa continued yesterday with the second event, the solemn procession of the heart of Santa Rosa. This is not a representation of Santa Rosa where people flock to the street with bouquets of roses. Instead, it is a manifestation of the Italian/Roman Catholic fixation with relics. The veneration of objects must surely be some form of holdover from pagan traditions. While it is true that relics can be things such as a shawl or burlap shirt worn by Saint Francis of Assisi, they more often than not take the form of mummified body parts such as the actual finger or ear of the person. Blessed indeed is the church that snags the part of the saint most closely associated with that for which the individual is famous. For instance, the tongue of a saint noted for conversion through preaching the word is highly prized.

Here in Viterbo, they go all out. Santa Rosa was a local girl and the city has laid claim to her entire body. However, it is not all in the same location. Each year the heart of Santa Rosa is reunited with the rest of her body in a parade which snakes through the city. Normally there is an historical procession containing many groups dressed in costumes representing the various periods in Viterbese history. This year, because of persistent light rain, that portion of the procession was eliminated. Additionally, the parade route was reduced to the shortest possible path between the two parts of her body. The process still began with the facchini walking arm in arm to bear the relic. These are the same men who will carry the macchina on the following night. Compared to that 6 ton monster, this berm must seem miniscule.

Unfortunately, the switch meant the route no longer went past the school where we were waiting to watch its passage. Thus we scrambled to find a place from which to view the procession. The various religious orders still participated including these sisters of mercy.

Local congregations participated.

Also present was the Cardinal of Viterbo who stopped along the way to bless the young children along the route.

He was immediately in front of the float bearing Santa Rosa’s heart.

This year I got a decent shot of the reliquary, although it is still essentially impossible to make out the actual heart contained within.

Those of the facchini not directly carrying the relic marched behind, still linked arm in arm. The parade concluded with different civic groups and elected officials.

Di Macchinini di Santa Rosa

Every town in Italy, by church decree, must have a patron saint. In the case of Viterbo, two saints guard the entrance to the city atop Porta Romana. San Lorenzo, he of the “flip me over. I’m done on that side.” martyrdom and Santa Rosa. The feast day for Santa Rosa is coming up in a few days and we have begun the sequence of events leading up to that occasion. Last night was the first of those, the parade of the mini-macchina or macchinini.

It is difficult to make sense of much of the event without understanding the traditions surrounding the parade of the Macchina di Santa Rosa which happens tomorrow. The macchinini procession occurs in the dark and is led by groups of costumed marchers and the traditional drums and flag twirlers.

The macchinini is essentially a small tower carried, in float-like fashion, by a group of male children. I only saw a small portion of the route, so I’m not sure if all of the marchers take turns carrying the macchina. From my vantage point, the first to pass were relatively young boys, probably aged 6-8. They strode past, linked arm in arm as their older counterparts will on Monday evening.

They were followed by ranks of increasingly taller and presumably older boys until the actual macchinini went past carried by a squad of young teenagers.

Atop the small tower, lit by enough candles that the fire department accompanied its passage, is a statue of Rosa.

San Martino al Cimini

Times are changing. It seems as though all at once Viterbo has awoken from its torpor and once again embraced life. The weather finally broke. The string of 100 and 99 degree days dropped into days with highs in the low 70’s across 3 days. Feragosto ended and the temporarily empty streets were once again filled with cars and people.  All of our colleagues, both American and Italian, have arrived back to the school.

On Friday, Amy and I drove with the new American couple, Steve and Pam, to San Martino al Cimino, a little town just outside of Viterbo to welcome this year’s crop of students to Italy. The busses pulled up and disgorged all of their passengers and luggage literally in the middle of the first measurable rainfall we have had in 3 months. During a break in the day’s activities, Amy and I decided to walk into the center of town and do some exploring.

San Martino al Cimino is a miniscule little walled suburb of Viterbo. Technically, it doesn’t even rate its own zip code although it is some 7 km or so outside of the main city. The main features of note are the city wall, built in the 1500’s more to discourage roaming vandals than to create a defensive bastion and a church. The city is accessed through the main gate, through which you can observe the church on the highest point in town.

After you enter, on the right, is a prime example of the shabby-chic I have blogged about before.

The main square has an interesting fountain with moss growing in the upper level at the end of a large parking area where people seem to just park randomly as they head in to do their shopping.

There was a Benedictine Monastery in San Martino in the 9^th century, but the church is actually in a building that was part of a 13^thcentury Cistercian Abbey.

The interior is in a dark gothic style.

Here we have Amy standing on the piazza outside of the church with the dark, foreboding sky whichy ushered in our change to lovely fall weather.