Once a swamp

On a grey and mizzling day we drove to Livorno. It is not the prettiest town in all of Italy, though we found so much of interest here that we stayed engrossed all the day. 

Long ago it was a malaria infested marshland frequently flooded by Mediterranean waters and tossed like unwanted booty between Pisa, Genoa and Florence. Livorno can likely thank the Medicis for assuming control in the Middle Ages. They employed engineers to hold back the lowland flood waters and built strong canals that set Livorno up as a decent sized port servicing the Mediterranean. 

And while much of its beauty from those days was bombed to bits during the Second World War, much, too, has been repaired and rebuilt. 

The old fortress, Fortezza Vecchia, still stands, blocky and substantial, incorporating many of its earlier entities: a Roman military camp or castrum, a small fort built when Pisa controlled the docks, and an ancient keep built by Countess Matilda of Tuscany. All supplanted, though, by a new fort that the Medicis decided to build in the late 17th century, Fortezza Nuova. This was linked to the sea by a series of picturesque canals and waterways earning Livorno the title of "Venice of Tuscany". 

Growth and trade did not happen fast enough for the Medicis so they thought to declare Livorno a 'free port', making all goods traded there duty free: thereby attracting an increase in trade. They also offered the right to freedom of religion, even amnesties, encouraging different minorities to settle and trade in Livorno. 

That strategy worked. We visited an interesting Jewish Synagogue--new, to replace the bombed one that provided succour to Jewish traders who came in goodly numbers from various countries around the Mediterranean to live in Livorno. The new one is built of reinforced concrete to look like the Bedouin tents in the desert that protected the Tablets of Stone, or the Ten Commandments, as was written in the Book of Exodus. Stained glass windows at one end of the Synagogue are blood red, symbolising the blood shed by Hebrews over time. It is an unusual building hidden almost in a jumble of small streets, back alleys and twisted lanes.

Not far away was a Dutch German Church and a Waldenesian church, so the population was diverse. But, tucked even deeper, almost lost now between a sprawling parking lot and a tall stack of high rise dwellings, we found an Old English Cemetery, which started way back in the late 16th century when the English ran a Naval Base in Livorno in order to patrol shipping routes in the Mediterranean. 

Evidently Grand Duke Ferdinand 1 came to a commercial agreement with Elizabeth 1, allowing it. Consequently, a large English population came to live, and die, in the city. The names on the tombstones have attracted a hoard of international visitors over time, including Charles Dickens, who paid his respects to the tomb of a Scottish writer he had admired who had likely retired to Livorno for his health, as so many others had done. Another visitor was James Fenimore Cooper who, while visiting the cemetery, came upon the grave of one of his old seafaring mates from Lake Ontario twenty years earlier. What are the chances of that happening! Sadly, the cemetery is quite tattered now, and seems to be in the hands of volunteers, who likely don't have the time or the money to keep it maintained as it really deserves, given its history. 

Livorno has, thanks to the long ago strategy begun by the Medici's, become Italy's second largest port, next to Genoa, and has a very authentic feel to it, making it a really interesting place for us to visit.

Ancient Fortezza Vecchia with its Roman Castrum and ancient keep built by Matilda of Tuscany

Fortezza Nuova of the 17th century linked to a canal area that became known as the Venice of Tuscany

 

Medici's freedom of religion resulted in a Jewish Synagogue being constructed

Old English Cemetery dating back to the late 16th century

Famous visitors from abroad visited the cemetery 

Today, Livorno has some gorgeous homes stretching  along its extensive waterfront.

Gorgeous homes along the waterfront

Lookouts still  amidst the palms

Livorno is still a port today, looking in all directions for trade 

The port today

Pretty in pastel

Cinque Terre has become one of the fabled tourist destinations in Italy these days: five little fishing villages clinging to the side of the barren and rocky Ligurian mountains, in perilous and inaccessible terrain, once subject to frequent pirate attacks and natural disasters that often reduced the village population considerably. 

Today, there are boats, trains, cars and water-mobiles of all shapes and sizes between many of the villages, stretching from Genoa to La Spezia. 

We, like many tourists, had too little time to spend visiting Cinque Terre: just one day; so we really only had the choice of a boat trip one way touching in on many of the villages, and a return by train, the latter after a walk between villages. 

We opted for the boat leg first, leaving from the pretty harbour of La Spezia, where we were able to park our car for the final road leg home after our rail return. 

Almost immediately, tiny villages, not part of the famous five, tumbled down to the sea, so it became tricky trying to remember which was which by the end of the boat trip. 

But, they were all pretty in pastel, and interspersed with rocky ledges and low growing shrubs and garrigue. 

Some so slanted on the edge of ravines that it was too easy to imagine another natural disaster taking all of it into the sea in one giant gulp. 

From the boat we could see the railway lines built through gallerias and tunnels bored into the mountains, set low: 23 bridges; 51 tunnels. Today, trains stop regularly at many of the little villages, even at stations just a couple of minutes apart, and tourists, in the main, are the passengers. 

We could also see one and occasionally two roads looping over viaducts and excavated through the mountains high above the villages that were built in the mid nineteen hundreds, though vehicular use is restricted down in the villages as the roads, carrugi, are just too narrow. 

Tourists are everywhere, waiting in snaking lines for ferries, bottles of water, lunch and tickets to ride. 

Many, though, are taking the time to walk, but often have to compete for road and footpath space with local taxis and delivery vans servicing hotels and restaurants: most servicing the tourists. 

Way back, the only people living here were fishermen and those producing wines and good oils, eking out a subsistence living. The toughened villagers built dry stone walls, muretti, to contain their lands, and dug out terraces, ciàn, where they planted vines and olive trees that most years produced for them. 

Way back they built round towers as lookouts for pirates. Often their rare visitors were penitents, seeking forgiveness for their sins, and in so doing were taking the Sanctuary walk between churches as part of their atonement. Times were tough, days were filled with hard work and very little reward, except for the scenery around them, and the fruits of their labour. 

These days the villages are jam-packed with tourists, with gift shops, galleries, trendy cafes, seafood restaurants and boutique hotels, with stoney beaches to lie in the sun when folk are exhausted from all of that. 

A dramatic change from Cinque Terra's early days.

One of the Cinque Terra villages dipping down to the Ligurian Sea 

Boats and even peeking submarines are in the Ligurian sea

La Spezia, pretty harbour where we caught a ferry to Cinque Terra

One of the famous five villages tumbling to the sea

Pretty in pastel 

A village above perched on the edge of a ravine

High roads loop the villages over viaducts behind 

Tourists bottleneck the hotspots 

Walkers enjoying the best of it

Toughened villages dug out terraces for grapes and olives

Towers were for holy sanctuaries and doubled as pirate lookouts

Chianti Classico, still wrapped in raffia

Aperitif in style

Cactus amidst the dry stone

Faded, but beautiful still

Like so much in Italy these days so many of the palazzos and piazzas are a little faded; those in the city of Pisa amongst them. However, the big money items, the Leaning Tower and the other beautiful UNESCO buildings surrounding it, have all been maintained, given a spit and polish, and some look much smarter than the last time we were here.  And there are no jacks now holding up one side of the Leaning Tower as there once were: stopping the tower falling has clearly been successful, at least for now. 

The Duomo with its classical exterior of three doors, rising to four floors of pillars and statues, still attracts huge crowds on a lovely sunny day like today. As do one or two funny little animals dressed up to go.  The circular Baptistry with a statue of John the Baptist atop the dome is gorgeous As is Il Camposanto Monumentale, the monumental cemetery, which claims to enclose dirt inside its walls from Golgotha, which was brought back by the crusaders.  

The city today is a faint shadow of its former powerful self. It was once one of the largest maritime entities operating around the Mediterranean. Its old bridges across the Arno were bombed during the Second World War and have been rebuilt for functionality,  not for aesthetics. 

A tiny and rather beautiful Gothic church, Santa Maria Della Spina, was reconstructed on higher ground as protection against floods, as, reputedly, it holds a thorn relic from Christ's crown of thorns.

Old buildings that were bombed out in the war have been repaired. Along with the colourful bridges connecting them. 

Tourists and university students fill the piazzas today, and Keith Harings, 1989 wall art, TuttoMondo, draws them all.  While faded, Pisa is beautiful still, on this delightful day for a city walk. 

Leaning Tower of Pisa 

Lovely detail 

Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Pisa 

Tourist toys

Soil from Golgotha brought back by crusaders in the monumental cemetery 

Baptistry in Piazza del Miracoli

Bridges bombed in the war rebuilt over the Arno

Santa Maria Della Spina holds a thorn relic from Christ's crown of thorns

  

Repaired cloisters

Connecting bridge 

 

Keith Harings iconic 1989 TuttoMondo wall art

Showing the detail 

Purest whitest marble

We have a friend now staying from the Netherlands who is happy to accompany us on some of our day trails. Today we visited Carrara, just north of here. 

Not all Carrara town is of marble. There is a spike at the end of via Santa Maria as it connects with the medieval piazza, that is of metal, not marble at all. From this were hung guilty sentences of recalcitrant locals, be they for mayhem or murder: idiomatically referred to as "hanging from Negroni's hook". 

Though much in town is made of marble - footpaths and kerbing in the main. And very slippery on a damp day it is, too. Caryatids supporting arches are typically carved from marble, as are piazzas, bench seats and cobbles. A naked marble bas-relief, 'Modesty', was here to urge the locals to be restrained. Tales tell of adulteresses brought here for public shaming. This fine naked marble cherubic figure surely was not. 

Juttings that were bedpans built into an external wall of one the residential buildings in a side street were reportedly made of marble, too. Though, they were a bit too high for us to check. Or to determine how on earth they might even be used as such. A very odd fad, this bedpan idea, even for Carrara. Though it was not at all an ordinary place. 

The locals, here, have long been quarrymen, miners, draymen: stone labourers. They have long been among the poorest paid workers in all of Italy. Their plight at times has been dire; their revolts and political actions highly abrasive. They are remembered as anarchistic in temperament and in their politics; but their aggrievements very likely date back to Roman times when slaves were lashed to cut marble out of the mountains that rear up behind this town. 

Long ago deposits of calcite and limestone under intense pressure and heat morphed into the marble here. Mountains of it. Solid with stone. Carving has been going on for over 2,000 years: shipped out once to decorate Roman villas needing precisely-cut tiny mosaic floor tiles all over the empire. These days the marble from here decorates glitzy hotels and spas from Dubai to Russia and on to the Americas. The mountains keep on giving. 

But the most dedicated stone worker to come searching for the purest whitest Carrara marble was surely Michelangelo, for his David, for his Pieta. And for the palatial commissions that came his way given the sheer beauty of those stupendous works. He is known to have camped out on these mountains with the quarrymen for months at a time. And crawled all over them. Passionate. Committed. Unwashed, even. Single-minded in his search for the perfect stone. 

He sometimes used a pink house in town as his Carrara abode from which to explore the stone for some of his projects. It must have felt luxurious in comparison. 

Massive blocks would have been carefully rolled down the mountain by expert stone handlers and dragged along rough tracks by teams of white oxen pulling wagons through the streets of town, down to the Carrara port for shipping. Day after day, year after year. A never ending parade of creatures plodding through town. 

I wonder if the oxen ever felt anarchic. If they occasionally kicked. 

Guilty sentences of recalcitrant locals were hung from 'Negroni's hook'

Marble even on footpaths in Carrara

Caryatids carved from marble

Piazzas in Carrara are paved in marble

Bench seats made from marble

Marble cobbles in Carrara

Bas relief of Modesty statue encouraging locals to self restraint

Marble nude is hardly modest

Odd bedpans built into external wall are made of marble 

Marble mountains rise up to the rear of town

Michelangelo selected his own Carrara marble for his masterpieces

Pink house where Michelangelo stayed when selecting his marble

White oxen once pulled wagonloads of marble through Carrara's streets

Explosions, rapes and bonfires

We took a quiet inland route of terraced olive trees to our next destination: a home exchange near the coast of Viareggio, where we have three floors to play in.

As the day after we arrived was Easter Sunday and we read that the museums were all open and free, we jumped on a train down our street, that went to Pisa, changed there for Florence and were in the city centre in a little over an hour, which saved having to think about parking there. Not that we would have found a carpark. The entire city centre was literally seething with people out in the sun. The weather was in the early 20°C and folk were making the most of it. 

Not to mention that there was a special Easter Sunday service on in the Duomo, that we only caught part way through as we didn't realise anything special was on until we came to a standstill with the crowds encircling the Duomo. Scoppio del Carro, or the Explosion of the Cart, it is called, is a festival that occurs because a young Crusader, Pazzini, brought back three flints from the Holy Sepulchre in 1099, which are now kept, like relics, in Firenze. To celebrate the Resurrection church officials, for the last 300 years and more, have built a tall wooden wagon then loaded it with fireworks in the square, then had the Archbishop use the flints to light the Easter Candle, then later to set flame to an artificial dove shaped like a rocket representing the Holy Spirit, that then shoots down a wire, like an old postal receipt return, to collide with the cart outside the Duomo. Then, poof! Fireworks happen, as if the cart is truly exploding. Celebrating the Resurrection. 

We missed much of that as we were in the Archeological museum absorbing more of the loveliness of the Etruscan era. We simply could not pass this opportunity up since we were so deeply fascinated by the Etruscans this trip. Here we saw the magnificent bronze Chimera di Arezzo found by construction workers near the city gates. It is simply exquisite. Probably one of the loveliest displays I have ever seen in a museum anywhere. 

Another gorgeous find was a glorious bronze flabellum, or fan. So large, too. Amazing to think many of these pieces are at least 2,500 years old. They are such wonderful work. We saw lots of Etruscan ex-votos; and a particularly lovely small statue of Laran, the Etruscan God of War. 

We will have to revisit to see the tomb recreations, as they are only open on a Saturday. We often sigh over such complications in Italy. 

When we came out of the Archeological museum we passed the beautiful Ospedale degli Innocenti which now has charming plaques of bandaged children set up on the external facing of the loggia of the building. This was one of the first ever orphanages in Europe and has looked after children for five centuries and more. Its philanthropic construction was funded by the Silk Guild in Florence in 1419. They had enormous power and funds, sufficient to employ the great Filipo Bruneleshi, one of the earliest and influential Renaissance designers who impacted Michelangelo's work so effectively. 

On we wandered through the crowded Renaissance heart of Florence, reminiscing about when we once spent a gorgeous week here, enjoying the city, wandering the same streets. The Duomo is even more beautiful than then. We think it may have been washed clean of pollution. Such beautiful colours in the blue, white and pink marble are showing clearly this time on the Duomo, the Campanile and the Baptistry. 

Bruneleshi's amazing dome tops the Duomo. Bruneleshi won the contract for the dome, while his pupil, Lorenzo Ghiberti, a goldsmith, defeated him in the competition to win the contract to decorate the Baptistry doors. Ghiberti included an image of himself in his beautiful Baptistry doors. 

We stood back enjoying them, as Michelangelo stood, studying the dimensionality of this beautiful work, learning from it. An impatient student, Michelangel often quit with teachers, who were too slow for him. He preferred following his own needs, wishes and passions -- learning at the source, often by dissecting the works that he admired.

We wandered down past the Palazzo Vecchio, now the Town Hall, once the home and the prison of the powerful Medicis, ogling the statues in the loggia to one side, though the originals of these have now been safely tucked into museums. Here, the Rape of the Sabines, an amazing piece of twisted arms, legs, bodies and emotions all carved from one block of Carrara marble, reminds us that there was a time, at least in mythology, when the Romans were prepared to forcibly run off with the women folk of neighbouring tribes, in order to perpetuate their own nation. Terrifying times for the Sabine women. 

Just a few steps back from here we came across the exact spot where Savonorola died in 1498. As a young man of twenty-three, Girolamo Savonarola secretly left his home and studies in medicine and philosophy, saying nothing to his parents of his move, as he feared they might stop him. His passion was to be a Dominican monk. His beliefs, over time, became even more rigid, more doctrinaire. He attracted a large band of religious fanatics and for a time developed a power base that swept him to power in Florence, when the Medicis were out of favour. His zealotry and sermons in this square attracted vast crowds. He urged citizens to simplify their lives, throw off all their vanities: their books, their lavish clothes, their art. These, he encouraged them to burn, in great bonfires, in this very piazza. Bonfire of the Vanities. 

But, as often happens with zealots, their popularity wanes, they fall out of favour, and their word is no longer supported. Savonarola's time came when the city finances were cut off by the political opposition and the common folk were starving. Savonarola came to be the sacrifice. He and two of his friars were hung, then burned, on the very spot marked by this circle. As the fire raged beneath him two of his fingers rose, as if in blessing. Seeing that, many in the crowd ran from the spectacle. Such was the ensuing crush that children died in the exodus. 

Today, Florence was nearly as crowded as the day Savonarola died. I cannot imagine what it is like in the depths of summer, during tourist season. There were buskers everywhere: albeit very imaginative and prolific.

We walked, rather sombrely, down to the Ponte Vecchio, before heading back to the station to catch our train home, sad to leave. 

Terraced olive trees enroute to our new home in Capezzano Pianore, near Viareggio

Florence was seething with folk on Easter Sunday

Explosion of the Cart Festival using the flints from the Holy Sepulchre crusade in 1099

Magnificent Etruscan bronze Chimera di Arezzo unearthed near Firenze's city gates

Another Etruscan find, small statue of Laran, the Etruscan God of War.

Glorious Etruscan bronze flabellum, or fan, some 2,500 years old

First ever orphanage, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, with its charming bandaged children plaques

The white and pink marble colours of the Duomo, the Campanile and the Baptistry

Bruneleshi's amazing dome tops the Duomo

Ghiberti's image of himself on his beautiful Baptistry doors

We stood back enjoying the door panels, as Michelangelo once stood, studying the dimensionality of the work

Flemish artist Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines

Savanarola was hung and burned in the very square from which he attracted vast crowds to his sermons

Imaginative buskers everywhere

Ponte Vecchio enroute to the station