by Paola Fornari
I open the shutters and look out across the Maiella National Park. The Adriatic glints in the distance. Closer in, pale blue flowers in the field below bob their heads in greeting. The cool mountain air fills my lungs. It seems incredible that Rome is just a two-hour drive west.
After a warm shower, I head up the drive behind the stone house, plucking a handful of cherries as I go. I turn right on the country road, uphill. The sky behind the distant snow-capped peaks of the Maiella mountain range is streaked with pink. In the flowery verges butterflies tango in pairs. The air is heady with the scent of broom.
I wonder what it would be like to live here in Abruzzo all the time, far from the pressures of city life, far from tourist traps, close to nature, and to inner peace. Like Celestine. Back in the thirteenth century, he lived higher up these rugged slopes, in a cave, until he was called to the Papacy. But he hated all the glitz and glamour, and missed his life as a hermit, so he swiftly issued a decree allowing popes to abdicate, and returned to his cave.
Yesterday afternoon I trekked for an hour and a half to reach Celestine’s hermitage. On the way, I passed the tholos, round stone shelters built in the nineteenth century by shepherds. I clambered down a ridge into a deep gorge, paddled in the river at the bottom, and scrambled up the other side to the hermitage. I dipped my blistered toes in the healing spring water inside the tiny chapel. This is the sort of place where miracles can happen.
Yes, I think, turning back down the mountain, there’s a spiritual energy here. But I would want a little more material comfort than Celestine had: perhaps I could buy that stone ruin over there on the slope, and convert it. Like Ezio and Mariangela did. A few years ago, they decided to flee the pressures of city life, and bought an eighteenth century property here. They restored it using original materials, and made it into a four-bedroom B&B. They named it Casa Giumentina, after this valley. That’s where I’m staying…and I’m getting hungry. The sun is now warm on the back of my legs. As I approach the house, I see that breakfast has been laid out on the table under the oak tree. I can already smell the cappuccino…and Mariangela’s freshly baked apple cake.
After breakfast, I consider what I might do with my day. There are many places to visit, less than an hour’s drive away. I could swim in the Adriatic. Or I might spoil myself at the spa in Caramanico, a half-hour trip up into the mountains. Or visit Pacentro, the beautifully kept medieval village which is superstar Madonna’s ancestral home. Or Sulmona, Italy’s centre for sugar-coated almonds. No, today I’ll stay closer to home, and stroll to the town of Abbateggio, just a quarter of an hour down the road.
As I enter the village, I notice that the roads have been recently paved. There’s a feeling of progress, of development. After the war, this was one of the most depressed areas in Italy. People left in their hundreds, looking for work, often in mines in northern Europe. The population dropped from 2000 to 450. But things are changing: people are trickling back.
Halfway down the main street an elderly woman eyes me curiously, then begins to chat. She is elegantly dressed, her black hair neatly permed, and she’s wearing high-heeled shoes. This is Orsolina. She’s ninety-seven. She invites me into her home, and prepares an espresso.
‘My husband died in the war,’ she says. ‘I never married again. I couldn’t have my sons calling another man “papà”.’
She shows me her fine crochet work. ‘I don’t wear glasses to do it,’ she says, smiling.
‘What’s your secret, Orsolina?’ I ask.
‘Lead an honest life, eat very little, do plenty of exercise, and have a glass of red wine with every meal.’
I take my leave, and climb up to the main church, the Madonna dell’Elcina. Legend has it that the Virgin appeared to two deaf-mute children. She was sitting in a holm oak tree, holding the baby Jesus. She asked that a church be built on that very spot. Miraculously, the children’s power of speech was restored. The Madonna’s feast day is celebrated in September every year.
I stroll down to Il Carro, a restaurant which serves local delicacies. I start with an antipasto of salame and pecorino cheese, then have wild boar, with spelt, which is the staple cereal in this area. I accompany it with a glass of Montepulciano wine, and finish up with a fresh strawberry sorbet and an espresso.
Back at the Casa Giumentina, I’m ready for a siesta. Will it be the hammock today? No, I want to smell the warm earth, so I lie down on a towel under the fig tree. Perhaps I should come back in September, when the tree will be heavy with fruit. I watch a ladybird clamber slowly up a fine blade of grass, and admire her diligence. Then I drift off…
When I awaken, it’s still early afternoon. I could go canoeing on the River Tirino, one of the cleanest in Italy, where the transparent spring water maintains a constant eleven degrees centigrade all year, and where the banks are lined with crunchy river celery. Or I could visit a local winery, or olive oil press, to see the production process, and stock up on wine and extra virgin olive oil.
But no, here is where I want to be. The view is too beautiful. I feel warm and relaxed. I’ll sit in a deckchair and read, or write, or perhaps just gaze into space until sunset.
As evening falls, the sky behind the mountains to the left becomes a fiery kaleidoscope of reds, oranges and purples, and I wonder how the sun can get any rest after such a dramatic exit.
Ezio and Mariangela draw up in their 4×4.
‘Want to learn to make a good risotto?’ Mariangela asks. ‘I went to Tocco today and bought saffron. It’s the best in Italy. And fresh mozzarella.’
We chop and stir together in the large kitchen. Before settling down to dinner on the terrace I slip on a cardigan. Up here, fifteen hundred feet above the sultry plains below, the evening air is cool.
The moist, perfumed Arborio rice is accompanied by a smooth Trebbiano white wine.
‘We have a surprise for you,’ Mariangela says, covering my eyes with her hands. After a moment, she releases them. Ezio has turned off all the lights, inside and outside the house.
In front of me, all the way down into the valley as far as the eye can see, millions of sparkling fireflies dance, mirroring the spangled sky above. Yes, this is the place to be.
A day with the shepherd milking sheep and
making cheese in the National Park of Abruzzo
If You Go:
Flights: Ryanair flies from London Stansted to Pescara, which is forty-five minutes from the Casa Giumentina. www.ryanair.com
Accommodation: www.casagiumentina.it
Wines and Olive Oil: www.cantinazaccagnini.it and www.guardianifarchione.com
Caramanico Spa: www.termedicaramanico.it
Canoeing on the River Tirino: www.vacanzefaidate.com
Restaurant Il Carro: www.ilcarro.it
About the author:
Paola Fornari was born on an island in Lake Victoria, and was brought up in Tanzania. She has lived in almost a dozen countries over three continents, speaks five and a half languages, and describes herself as an “expatriate sine patria”. Wherever she goes, she makes it her business to get involved in local activities, explore, and learn the language, thus making each new destination a real home.
All photos are by Paola Fornari:
1. Canoeing on the River Tirino
2. Casa Giumentina
3. In search of Celestine’s Cave
4. Maiella Mountain Range
5. Tholos
6. View from the Casa Giumentina
7. Trekking to the hermitage
8. Cherries at the Casa Giumentina
Entering ancient Porta Marina’s pedestrians-only passage, our guide introduces Pompeii. “Just like now, thousands of visitors traveled here,” Massimillio informs us. “And many different languages were spoken.”
Wealthy nobles lived along via de la Fortuna where elegant homes covered with bright-white ground-marble stucco stood next door to smaller houses. At House of the Faun, an undamaged mosaic displaying the original sign HAVE meaning ‘hail-to-you,’ welcomes us into the entrance hall and open courtyards. Then covering an entire block, its forty stylish rooms included magnificent dining rooms, one for each season. Carved columns had lined two immense gardens filled with marble and bronze statuary and beautiful fountains.
Nearby, the House of the Vetti belonged to bachelor brothers, prosperous wine-merchants. This patrician villa retains original mosaics in green jade, white Carrera marble and indigo-blue onyx; vibrantly colored frescoes decorate well-preserved entertainment rooms. At a smaller house next door, we linger over frescoes in rich earthen tones depicting delicate flowers and winged cherubs, among my favorites for their simple whimsy.
Raised sidewalks wind along the street to one of the 34 bakeries needed to feed Pompeii’s population of over 20,000. “Those squat towers made of volcanic stones milled flour on-site,” reports our guide. Amazed that the well-built ovens so closely resemble today’s brick pizza ovens, we imagine tantalizing aromas floating on the air. During excavations, centuries-old loaves of blackened breads were found inside many ovens.
Inside, surprisingly small cells held stone beds once covered by mattresses. Using a separate entrance, wealthier clients had used the more private second-story rooms bedecked with rich frescoes leaving little to the imagination.
Onward past a former Temple of popular Egyptian goddess Isis, we pause among columns remaining in a second public Forum. This is where theatergoers had mingled in bars and cafes before open-air performances at their Grande Theater. First built in the 2nd-century BC, this theater seated over 5000 citizens in three price ranges. Its smaller semi-circular neighbor, the Odeon staged more intimate mime, plays and musical events.
Knowth, specifically, was first established in the early Neolithic six thousand years ago. First settlement is the ancient remains of a wooden/wattle rectangular enclosure with probably a thatched roof. Knowth is one thousand years older than Stonehenge, England and five hundred years older than the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt yet most people have never heard of it. The first use of the tombs was marked by cremated human bones and other material inside and elaborate ceremonies outside.
Knowth’s most impressive passage tomb is a great grass-covered mound measuring 80m by 95m. It is encircled by 127 kerbstones, a ring of engraved huge stones. Our word ‘curb’ must come from the same idea of being marked as a boundary. Passage tombs have certain features: being in the shape of an egg, or tumulus; being outlined by kerbstones, having a passageway and also an inner chamber often in the shape of a crude cross.
There is evidence that the art developed over many centuries and also ideas were apparently borrowed from Britanny on the continent. A picked cup mark is a feature of Knowth stones and may well represent the idea of a tunnel, a symbol of death. Also, unlike Newgrange, the stone work is developed based on the shape of the rock itself.
Still burdened with my pull-along bag, my pack sack and umbrella I entered the mound through the entrance which faced east. I slowly made my way along the stoned passageway to the crude cross-shaped chamber, delighting in the subtle light and the energy of the countless many who had also walked as I now did. What will be revealed in the years to come?
Certainly the buildings were different. Nature, it is said, abhors a straight line. So did Gaudi; the builders, glaziers and carpenters of Barcelona must have hated him. But, we didn’t stop at either of them. We were on our way to the Güell Park, where some of the best of Gaudi’s work is to be seen. Indeed, Gaudi used to live here, in a pink, fairy-tale house which is now the Gaudi Museum.
Güell wanted to build a model village, on the lines of similar villages in England, such as George Cadbury’s Bourneville, in the Midlands. But, Cadbury built his village for workers in his chocolate factory. Güell was much more ambitious. He intended his village for the more affluent and influential people of Barcelona.
Gaudi was a devout Catholic, and, in his later years, made the building of the Sagrada Familia his life’s work. However, Barcelona already had a perfectly good Cathedral, and this could have been the reason that no money at all came from the Church. The building was founded solely by public subscription. So, construction progressed very slowly.
by Maria Antonietta Crippa, ISBN 978-3-8228-2518-1
As my husband Kent and I strolled on the cobblestones ringing Warsaw’s Old Town Square Square, we bumped into a young man, briefcase slung over his shoulder, reading aloud in Polish. I was intrigued; he was either religious or political. Quite by surprise he was an American from Los Angeles and had come to evangelize the Poles. (Poland is 90% Catholic) Next to him an elderly lady, seemingly unaware of his readings, was selling homemade hats. A few feet away three nuns in full habits walked by without a glance.
Part of the charm of the Rynek Starego Miasta is sitting on one of the many stone benches and watching what goes on. There is virtually no trash or graffiti. Mimes, violinists and accordionists are almost constantly performing.
If you’re looking for souvenirs, there are many venders and shops on the Old Town Market Square. For example, PolArt is three rooms of Polish folk art, including folk costumes, paper art, textiles, dolls, and traditionally decorated eggs.
In the fountain’s shadows, an unsmiling accordionist sat playing on a bench. Across the square a violinist was doing the same. See if you can come across a, Chopin bench. Each button plays a different Chopin melody.
After fortifying ourselves with a late lunch, we headed for the Square’s book store. Very few books are in English. Even current American best sellers like, “Steve Jobs’ are exclusively in Polish.
