Ten Days in Tuscany and Umbria (3) - Terni and the Marmore Falls

12th April 2008 - Terni and the Cascade de Marmore

Today I'm in Terni. The hotel is a comfortable one in the ugly industrial suburbs of the city and at first I thought I'd made a mistake, especially as the promised computer in the room turned out to be a slow, strange arrangement that couldn't deal with Myspace technology - no bulletins, no editing blogs or other fancy stuff. The view from the hotel does include the mountains, beyond the motorway bridges, but you wouldn't venture out on foot....

But now that I've spent a day here I've changed my mind - as I so often do once I settle in. I first parked in a street off the centre, and walked around a quiet business area. I found the usual Chiesa San Francesco,



which was in its own quiet piazza, and a street market selling very pretty things. I shall have to jettison some of the unnecessary clothes I threw into my suitcase at the last moment, to fit in the lovely shells I bought so cheaply. The onyx earrings are much easier to deal with, of course.




The man selling the shells flattered me by asking if I was Russian - for some reason I'm irritated when Italians instantly spot that I'm English, even before I open my mouth. But then, this is the Adriatic coast, not Sorrento. It could have been my new flat boots (bought cheaply at the station in Florence after the cobblestones had ruined the heels on my high-heeled ones). They do make me look as if I'm hoping someone will play a balaleika. I took a photo of this man as he blew a loud trumpet noise on a conch shell. He asked me if it was a video with sound and I rather wished it had been.



Next I looked for the way out of the city to the Falls of Marmore. This turned out to be much easier than I expected. I drove through the civic centre, which is graciously laid out and backed by the beautiful mountains that surround Terni. Then it was easy to follow the signs up to the mountainside where the highest waterfall in Italy tumbles and roars down in at least five stages, raising a huge cloud of spray that soaks everything around it. It's been made part of a hydroelectric scheme but it's also a lucrative tourist attraction, with 5-euro tickets enabling visitors to walk very close to the lowest torrent, and of course a thriving minimarket of souvenir stalls and cafes.







As tourist attractions go I rate it pretty highly. It's the most stunning sight. The water pouring endlessly down, round and over the rocks to the fast stream at the bottom - no man-made attraction could rival that. I sat in the cafe at the bottom and as usual got my sketch book out to record my version. Of course I took dozens of photos as well. But there's something about drawing a place that gives me such satisfaction afterwards, however inadequate the finished work may be. I had to work fast on this one, and managed to cover an A3 sheet with marks in pen and ink that will be the basis for another work I expect.

The sun came out in Terni and it was really warm for the first time this week. I have to leave tomorrow, to go to Arezzo, but I think I'll be back.

I stopped in Terni on my way out, to withdraw some cash and check the route to my next hotel, in Arrezzo. I decided to stop in Orvieto which is on the way. Even though it's Sunday, the internet point I used last night is open and the Indian owners are friendly and helpful. It's right near the bus station, where there's free parking all week, too.

Last night I got completely lost, trying to find my way back to my hotel just off the E45 and only a mile from the centre of Terni. It's a skyscraper block and I could see it all the time but couldn't get near the entrance - I was always on the wrong side of the dual carriageway! Just like Alice Through the Looking Glass, as my life often seems to be! I really must invest in a SatNav next time I drive in Europe.

Last night I had the best night's sleep I've had since leaving England. The double-glazing worked perfectly and I think the room next door was empty. So I'm in very good spirits, driving off to find the A1/E35 to Arezzo via Orvieto.

13th April 2008

I've arrived in Arezzo, the birthplace of Michelangelo. I don't know what he'd make of it now. Like all the towns with evocative names that I've visited this week, it's spread and developed ugly industrial zones like pustules round the core of the historic centre that has been allowed to survive to feed the tourist trade. I know that sounds harsh, but as I'm doing this trip on a budget while trying to be as comfortable as possible I find I've booked hotels on the ring roads and in the trading estates that keep Italy afloat - they are great inside but the environment outside is a forest of concrete and giant advertising signs.

I've walked into the centre of Arezzo tonight - "Only a kilometre" said the nice receptionist as I left. But a kilometre is easily far enough for me to get lost in, and I must have walked about two miles, wishing I'd brought the car. I've promised myself a taxi back to the hotel and as I'm right by the railway station now, that should be easy to arrange.

But back to my day.... Orvieto turned out to be the exception to the rule I've set out above. Like Arezzo, it's just off the A1, which runs between Rome and Florence, but being high on a hill it's escaped the ravages of modern life, unless you count being turned into the most chic and pretty tourist town I've seen so far as a ravage.


I found myself missing Terni and its soft green mountains almost as soon as I set off. The road ran through gradually lower land until the attractive lumpy mounds of Umbria changed gradually to Latzio, where the uplands were set well away from the road, just in sight across a wide plain. There are clay and I suppose marble works along the way, and the trees are dusted white in some places.
The forms of the landscape along the autostrada remind me of the various areas of North Devon that I know - except that you don't get all those lovely narrow conical cypress trees in England. The delicate greens of the deciduous trees here are lovely at the moment, too. And the buildings are warm cream and yellows and peach colours.

At Orvieto I first went up the Funicular from the station, thinking that this was the only way up to the old town. Once I reached the top I realised I'd better take the car up because I was going to need more parking time than I'd calculated for when I left the car outside the station.

Having gone back for the car I drove up the hill past the strong mediaeval walls that barricade the place from all invaders - or did in the Middle Ages, before we were all invited in. It was a very good choice of citadel - I can imagine any army that laid seige to it getting a good helping of boiling oil and arrows on its head from the battlements.



Now, however, Orvieto is a very charming town, full of flowers and expensive stylish shops. Plenty of souvenir shops too, but tasteful ones.



The shops were closed as it's Sunday but I found a good bookshop open and bought a guide book to read later. I'd parked outside the Chiesa S. Domenico, rather an austere church but with a faded little fresco above the main entrance. It is faced in part with the dark and light marble patterns that are a feature of Tuscan churches, it seems. From there I walked towards the Duomo, discovering other churches, towers and beautiful ornate doorways on the way.









The Duomo itself, though, was as much of a surprise as Florence's cathedral. It has a gigantic gothic facade, which took 300 years to complete, was started in 1290. Several architects were involved, therefore, and the building had safety problems - the transepts were in danger of collapsing from the start because of inadequate foundations, I read in my guidebook. The whole facade is a riot of decoration in carving, fresco and mosaic. The barley-sugar twisted pillars are there, with inlays of mirrored and coloured mosaic, and there are wonderful panels of relief, depicting sacred scenes, along the facade. Behind the facade the nave and transepts are faced with stripes of dark and light marble.






Inside, there are beautiful frescoes and carvings, free-standing figures and a lovely organ that I tried hard to photograph. The huge rose window and other stained glass is also very lovely from inside. I spent a long time trying to take my own photos of the interior, laying my camera flat on the floor and propping it up on things, but I really needed my tripod.





Almost everyone in the streets seemed to be American or otherwise English-speaking. I got a lady from Australia to take my photo in front of the facade of the cathedral but I was wearing my rather strange blue Russian looking tunic and jeans that were a little tighter than was flattering so my vanity won't let me post it here....




I went into the little Museum of Etruscan Archaelogy, too, to look at the archaic smiles on the faces of the statues and the delicate depictions of stories about conversations and flying horses on the black and yellow pottery.









The sun was coming and going and by now it was about 4pm and getting cooler. I got back on the road and realised I was going to have to get some petrol before I went on to the motorway again.

Now, you learn something every day and today I learned that you can't trust automated petrol stations in Italy any more than you can in England. All the gas stations seemed to be closed (it is Sunday) so I took the risk. The thing rejected my Visa card, my Mastercard, and demanded cash. I fed it 20 euros and it clammed up. No assistenze button, no cancel button and no petrol. I gave up, wrote 20 euros off to experience and drove on. Just round the corner was an open and friendly manned Shell station where I filled up. So there was a relatively happy ending to that story...

Ten Days in Tuscany and Umbria (2) - Ravenna and Rimini

10th April 2008 - On the trail of St Apollinare

I went from Florence to Ravenna for a couple of nights and realised that what I had hoped would be an atmospheric, historic Byzantine town is now a huge sprawing industrial complex surrounded by all the infrastructure needed to support the port and the industrial estates that give it a livelihood.

The reason I wanted to see Ravenna was that I wrote a thesis in my first year at art college about images of the Pantocrator (God the Father) in Byzantine and Romanesque art and I'd got all my illustrations from books and never seen a single relevant mosaic. One of the finest is in the basicila of St Apollinare, always said to be in Ravenna. So I booked my hotel right opposite St Apollinare, Ravenna, found the place with huge difficulty because like all Italian cities it has a labyrinthine one-way system, and went forth next morning to draw the mosaic.

BUT I should have read my guide book - which I now did, and discovered that the original St Apollinare is in Classe, a bus-ride away.... I was staying next to the new church, which has only fragments of ancient mosaics on display, and none in its ceiling - in fact it has no cupola or apse big enough to house one.




So I got on the bus because I'd had enough of circling around in Ravenna in the car the day before. It all worked out very well. I spent the afternoon drawing in the ancient basilica and as usual providing welcome relief to the school children of all ages who were trying to avoid their history teachers lectures.







Then I went back to the historic centre where my hotel lay and had a very pleasant look around the local area. I found the Piazza S. Francesco where there is a beautiful church which has a Roman pavement, underwater, in the crypt. For 0.5 euros in a slot you can switch the light on in the crypt and peep though a hole near the altar at the strange sight of goldfish swimming around in a few feet of water over the remains of the Roman floor, among the graceful pillars and arches of the vault below.





Dante's tomb is there too, in a sepulchre that is being restored at the moment. I took a lot of photos of this area of Ravenna, which was interesting and pretty in the evening light.



The hotel where I stayed is a converted seventeenth century palace with lovely marble staircases, a beautiful little garden and a chapel. It's called Ostello. Galletti Abbiosi Dimora Storica. The breakfast was very good for an Italian hotel, the people were friendly and helpful and the bed was comfortable and the shower hot. It's quite near the train station and Upim and more expensive shops are on hand too. It was medium priced and good value and I would stay there again. This is the main staicase, with a rather grand, green marble balustrade.



The only thing that I thought might turn out a problem was that there is no restaurant in the hotel and at first I couldn't see anywhere to eat when I went out into the rain on the first night. When in doubt, I was taught by my mother, "ask a policeman". So, seeing a police van with some extremely paternal looking moustachioed officers sitting on the corner of the Via Di Roma, I did just that and was rewarded with directions to a lovely little place called "La Gardela".



There I had three delicious courses, half a bottle of wine and some water, for what I thought a pretty reasonable price, 33 euros. The place was packed with local people though next to me was a couple who reminded me very much of myself and my ex-husband in another life. That didn't spoil my evening at all - quite the contrary.

I discovered that Ravenna has its own leaning tower - a very ramshackle affair compared to Pisa's, and square in section, not round.



I didn't like to walk too close to it though it is clamped with metal stays to a height of about 10 metres, perhaps more. It looks ready to collapse. I couldn't see a name on it and it's not shown on the little tourist map I have, but it's in the area of the Basilica di San Giovanni Evangelista.



In that church I found a Neapolitan nativity scene, a big construction with a cave leading down to hell (you can see the demons and their unfortunate victims who are hung up by the heels and probably doing their best to repent fast) and angels hovering above. There's a group of priests gossiping and clearly ignoring a poor beggar, too. The whole scene is alive with gesturing hands as the characters converse, pray, lament, joke, poke fun and generally enact their lives. I didn't actually spot the crib because the surrounding action was so interesting. Of course I made a donation.

I also went shopping and bought some pretty things.

So though I did tell one of my myspace friends that I didn't think much of Ravenna (I was tired and the car and I were still not seeing eye-to-eye) I've changed my mind as so often happens.






11th April 2008

Yesterday, 10th April, I was in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. In my usual careless fashion I failed to find the sea, though this town, and Ravenna, where I stayed the night before, are seaside towns and important seaports. Except in Praiano, where the sea is a source of continual pleasure to me all year round, looking at beaches seems a pointless exercise in April in the northern Mediterranean.So on this trip I've stuck to the towns and I haven't been disappointed.

Ravenna and Rimini are at the sea's edge of a huge coastal plain. The Netherlands are not less hilly. Bicyles are everywhere, especially in the towns. They greatly outnumber the scooters. Very different from the South, where bicycles are ridden almost exclusively by the very fit and lycra-clad.

Rimini seemed to me to have a very welcoming centre. I kept thinking, "This is a smiling town". It's calm, unhurried, at this time of year at least. I parked behind an immense crumbling castle, hugely castellated and buttressed.



Later I found this on the map I bought in the Piazza Cavour. It's the Castello Sigismondo. A plaque on the wall, erected at the same time as the castle by the look of it, dated it in the early 1400's. It's in extreme disrepair and I couldn't see an entrance though there were boys sitting chatting high up on the walls.

I walked towards the centre and found the Piazza Cavour, lined with dignified mediaeval looking buildings. The plaque on the most impressive one was in Italian and German, reminding me of the role of Italy in the Second World war but also that this coast is a favourite holiday area for German and Eastern bloc tourists.



I went on to the Piazza Tre Martiri.



I could see the Piazza San Francesco to one side. Every town in Umbria and Tuscany seems to have a church and piazza dedicated to this attractively gentle saint. In the Tre Martiri I found smart shops and brightly stuccoed buildings in Naples yellow and white, including a pretty white temple (hexagonal I think), il Tempietto di Sant Antonio.


From the far end of the square I walked down to the Arco d'Augusto that stands between the historic centre and the Parco di Bondi, a lovely green area.



A beautiful tree nearby was covered with magenta flowers, worth a photo on its own.



I retraced my steps and stopped in the Piazza Cavour for a very good tuna and bean salad in the Caffe Teatro. The owner, a cheerful, whistling man, was here, there and everywhere, welcoming clients and shooing away the cheeky pigeons that kept coming down and knocking over the tableware and pecking at the warm bread on the tables. The bill (6 euros for a salad and a large bottle of water and warm bread) was very reasonable, considering the status of the location and the large helping of fresh tuna in the salad.



Today I'm in Terni. I would never have thought of visiting Terni were it not that two of my Myspace friends work there. Neither of them live there but I made it part of my circuitous route back towards Florence, to see Terni out of simple curiosity.

Ten days in Tuscany and Umbria (1) - Florence

7th April 2008 - Arriving

It’s one thirty in the morning of my first day in Florence. We are trying to lock the car. The car is a grey Renault Scenic that’s been wished on me by the hire car firm – I’m already planning to give it back as soon as possible. "We" is S and me.

The car and I already have a history, before S came. For the first twenty minutes of our acquaintance it sat stubbornly refusing to give up the secrets of its operation. I managed to unlock the doors but the boot stayed impregnable. It was after eleven at night (the plane was 6 hours late). I hadn’t thought to look for a handbook – the Fiat Punto I hired in February had had none.

I gave up and put my cases on the back seat. Next, found my way round the gears. OK. Now to start it. No key, just a card. I inserted it hopefully into a slot near the steering wheel. I was rewarded by an LCD dislay in Italian which included the word "Start". I pressed the button on the dashboard which also read "Start/Stop". Nothing happened.

Timing is everything with this car. You can’t rush it.

Finally it shuddered into life and I looked for the handbrake. In vain. There wasn’t one. This was a blow. How was I to make hill-starts? Hill-starts are my best subject when it comes to driving. I felt disempowered. But I edged out of the car-park and looked for the road to Porta Al Prato – eleven minutes away, according to the Internet information.

Now I realise the value of travelling with a companion. I need a navigator. I can’t read the directions and drive at the same time. And this is where my acquaintance with S begins. As I head back towards Forence, having driven some miles south down the autostrada in the wrong direction, S on his scooter draws alongside me while I pause indecisively at a junction on the almost empty A1. He’s observed my erratic progress down the highway and is in knight errant mode.

I have so much to thank S for. Having established that (1) I am English and (2) I am alone and (3) I need to get to a hotel near the Porta Al Prato (he corrects my pronunciation carefully) he tells me to follow him and we set off, through a maze of streets. We draw up in the street next to the one where the hotel should be and start circling round the block on the one-way system, looking for it. We park and take stock of the situation.

S speaks no English at all and relates his circumstances to me at length in strongly accented Italian, with charming smiles and a gentle politeness on his thin face that I can’t resist admiring, leaning through the open passenger-side window. He is also living in a hotel, he tells me, because he has quarrelled with his brother and has had to leave the family home. He works, mostly in the leather industry. It’s a hard life but he seems philosophical. He does mention that he’d like to visit England.


And now, here we are. We’ve found the hotel with difficulty – S has trundled my case up and down the street, insisting that it must be here, or there, or the other end – and we are, conversationally at least, almost on married terms – with S knowing best and me arguing (and in the end, both being right and both being wrong too).

Now we’ve found the hotel and parked in the street. We’re trying to lock the car. Every time we think we’ve done it, we try the handles of the doors to check, and find it unlocks itself again. This goes on for ten minutes.

It’s 1.30 am at least. We leave the car apparently locked (we dare not try the doors ) and find the hotel dark and closed. There is a notice, though, with a phone number for the night porter. S interprets it for me. I phone and the door is unlocked. S, behaving like a perfect gentleman, explains my circumstances and departs.

The night receptionist is all smiles, despite being woken up at this unearthly hour. He helps me to find the car again (I have forgotten exactly where we abandoned it, temporarily – it’s been a long day, after all) and leads me into the secure parking area of the hotel. I sink thankfully into bed at about 2.30am.

Florence 8th April 2008



It should be raining today but the internet is wrong, at least for the morning.

The first scooter comes past my window (three floors up but I might as well be under its wheels, it's so well defined) at 3.30. I've had about an hour's sleep. By 4.30 it sounds like a tank invasion outside, heavy vehicles trundling and roaring past – no hooting, though. This is not Naples.

At 6.30 I give up pretending to sleep and get up. The apartment is great. Spacious and everything the agancy promised. Except that it needs double-glazing.

At 8.30 I sally down to reception to negotiate for a quieter room. The hotel is full and two single rooms are out of commission because of a water leak. I resign myself to either another short sleep period tonight, or spending more money on another hotel because this one will charge me for two nights regardless.

I set off for the centre of Florence, a fifteen minute walk away, to visit the Duomo and other historic buildings that I last visited about ten years ago. There's a bus, number 17, the receptionist tells me, but I always walk if I can, because I more often come across things I'm not looking for then.






And so it turns out that as I take a turning down towards the Arno across a wide piazza I see a modern art exhibition of work by a Polynesian artist called Adi Da Samra, advertised on the wall of a Franciscan monastery, the Cenacolo di Ogonssanti..

I cross the square and investigate.



Led into a cool arched cloister I find myself in the presence of a beautiful fresco that I've never appreciated before this moment. It's in a long vaulted hall, the refectory of the monastery, which was built in 1290. The modern art lines the two long walls leading up to Ghirlandaio's "Last Supper". Though the modern artist's work, hanging along the walls leading up to the fresco, is brilliantly coloured and meticulously constructed, Ghirlandaio holds his own down all the centuries since 1448 when he painted this fresco. It runs the full length of the short wall at the end of the hall. The monks ate their dinners in the presence of Christ and his apostles.

I commit the faux-pas of allowing my camera to flash as I photograph it and am punished with what looks like the lifelong enmity of the guardian of the hall. She even objects when I sit down to draw it, briefly, until I am rescued by a pleasant colleague of hers who speaks (and probably is) perfect American. (Later she relents when I am speaking for a long time to the curator of the modern artist's work, and she brings us both four leaved clovers from a plant she has discovered in the cloister.)

I want to draw the fresco because it's so perfectly situated in its context. Framed by simple, elegant arches of white stucco, it echoes, imitates, plays with the real space around and outside it. The light, the perspective, the composition of the figures as they celebrate the last meal with their friend and leader Jesus, are so moving when you are actually there with the picture. The mystery of perspective and tonal trompe l'oeuil is parallel with the religious mystery that surrounds the subject, it seems to me.

Each of the figures has a distinct character, which I'm sure every observer has said before. And dominating the group is not Christ, but Judas Iscariot, the traitor, who sits as it were symbolically confronting Jesus from the other side of the table. His head is tilted up in interrogation and challenge, his beard pointing towards the leader's face. He is more in focus, more defined, than Jesus or any of the other disciples.



There is so much to say about this work, and I haven't time or space to write it now. I drew my sketch, which was even more difficult than I anticipated, then admired Adi Da Samra's art (genuinely because it really is stunning) and went out to continue my progress towards the Duomo. It started to rain, and I took this as my excuse for ducking into a little cafe and enjoying a really delicious plate of linguine, tomatoes and olives.





The Piazza del Duomo in Florence is an amazing place. I was last here ten years ago and it takes me aback as I round the last corner on the narrow streets leading up to it. I shall post some of my photos here when I get home and you will see how rich the architecture is. But you have to be actually surrounded by all that black and white marble, all the sharply defined windows and gables and pilasters and towers, the barley sugar stick twists of the pillars at the huge doorway, the profusion of architectural geometric forms, the huge rose window above the doorway and Brunelleschi's huge dome topping it off, with people like ants up there looking down from the gallery round the lantern - you have to be there to experience all the drama and richness of it.



By now you may be able to tell, I'm a big fan of the Duomo in Florence.



When I get there after lunch, the piazza is thronged with tourists, school parties and female beggars. The beggars are annoying and no-one seems to be giving them anything. I resort to saying "go and get a job" when they whine at me, but as the words for working and washing are only one syllable different from each other in Italian, I may have accidentally insulted one or two of them. They leave me alone after a while, anyway.




As the rain has stopped and there are queues to go inside the buildings, I decide to draw a sketch of the main entrance to the Duomo. There's nowhere to sit so I lean up against the railings round the Baptistry. As usual I've brought too small a sketchbook. My hand isn't very steady, the proportions go a little awry, but I'm soon engrossed and get the gist of it down on a double page. I'm seeing and understanding much more than my photos will give me, whatever the finished drawing is like.

After about two hours the skies open and a serious rainstorm begins. My cue to duck into a bar for cappucino and cake. I choose a seat overlooking an unusual, tilted view of the cathedral and start another drawing. The boy camerero (he looks like a painting of a naughty boy by Caravaggio but is probably about thirty) is chatting to four girls on the next table. He quickly knows their names, where they are from (Bari) and that they have lots in common with him.

All five take an interest in my drawings. When I show them the sketch of the temple of Hera at Paestum the waiter tells us that this is where he lives. He keeps such a straight face that later I'm still wondering if he really comes from Paestum.



The weather's clearing again but it's getting late. I walk on, to the huge piazza of Santa Croce, where I've been told there's an internet point. I take more photos - the enormous facade of the church, the statue of Dante Alghieri who was born in Florence. Then I go on to the banks of the River Arno.





Again I'm struck by the firmness and rigour of Tuscan architecture. Across the river are the solid rectangular blocks of palazzos and hotels, their carefully proportions rows of shuttered windows picked out in green and red-brown against the ochres of the stucco. Topped with shallow triangular prisms of roofs, they look as though not a millimeter should be changed, for the balance between positive and negative is perfect.



I can go across the Ponte Vecchia, with its gold and jewellery shops, to the Pitti Palace, or turn right and reach the Piazza della Signoria through the cloister of the Uffizi. I'm getting tired and dusk is falling, so I stay this side of the river and pass under the sombre windows of the dark grey Uffizi. There are still street traders on the steps, selling both originals and cheap prints (I bought one of each last time I was here). As usual, there's a chancer among them who tries to get himself invited for a drink with me, but it's all in fun and nobody loses face when I say "no".






A small glass of wine at the bar facing Michelangelo's statue of David costs 6 euros but it does come with nice nibbles - almost sandwiches - and olives and crisps.I sit there for some time, drawing the arcade that houses a range of statuary, all on violent themes. There's a rape, at least one killing, and Cellini's young Perseus holding up the dripping, writhing head of Medusa. Lions prowl the foot of the pillars.





The Rape of the Sabine by Gianbologna is particularly beautiful - composed like a pas-de-deux by ballet dancers. The woman is hoisted up high on the shoulder of the attacker, while her husband lies vanquished under his feet. Later, after i've bought a guidebook, I find out that the sculptor's original title for this piece was "The Three Ages". The "Rape of the Sabine" does seem a more appropriate title. I make a separate study of the sculpture as I sit nibbling and sipping my wine.

Dead on my feet, having survived the day on two or three hours' sleep and done five drawings, I fall into bed back at the hotel. I expect to be woken up again at 4am and I'm not surprised, this time, when the convoy of tanks rolls through.