Out and About in Pisa

Out and About in Pisa, on Euromaxx City, Deutsche Welle

Tuscan Lunches

'I had never cared about lunch, until I was introduced to Sunday ones in Tuscan vineyards. Celebrations of food and wine amongst friends and family, they transcend the notion of mere meals and transform into a theatre for the senses.

It has much to do with the setting, the compelling beauty of ancient surroundings, of land which has yielded produce for millennia, of eroded stone walls and roads which wind through hills, and row upon row of vines. There is little more glorious then sitting through hours of golden summer afternoons at a long wooden table with twelve or sixteen or twenty others, or in winter warming limbs and souls with fires and food and wine.

Gianfranco has friends at Montespertoli and we go there often, mostly for winter lunches. We crunch up the circular gravel driveway and arrive at the back door, which leads into a vast stone kitchen filled with people. The ancient stove roars with flames, heating an assortment of saucepans that steam forth wonderful aromas. Someone is carving a prosciutto, claret-red slices sliding off the edge of the knife. There are women to stir the saucepans, wash the salad, slice the bread. I make myself useful by carrying cutlery to the dining room where men pose around the leaping fire, clutching glasses of Campari and smoking. Handpainted jugs of water and flowers clutter the table. I set for eighteen people, folding paper napkins into tiny triangles beside each plate. Two-litre bottles of homegrown chianti, translucent red, line up like soldiers. Outside the tall windows mist wraps around bare trees and church spires.

Platters are placed on the table: slices of wild-boar salami, tiny spicy venison sausages, rounds of toast topped with coarse chicken-liver pate sweetened with marsala, shiny black olives tossed in garlic and parsley. Wine is tipped into glasses and wedges of crusty, spongy bread passed around. Lunch has begun.

Pasta comes next, a deep ceramic bowl of steaming spaghetti in a simple tomato sauce fragrant with fresh basil, or a rich cream redolent of wild mushrooms. On top of the fire have been placed two metal grills which clip together to enclose the main course: thick slabs of prime beef, a handful of quails, fat homemade sausages. Passed around the table they are black-striped and crisp from the flames, perfumed with fresh rosemary, garlic and good oil.

Afterward there is a chunk of parmesan, aged and crumbly, and a tangy pecorino from Sardinia to eat with a large bowl of various fruits. This is the winding-down stage of the lunch, when women begin to push back chairs and carry out plates and men light up cigarettes and pour whisky. Coffee brews aromatic from the kitchen, conversation subdues and becomes sleepy, comfortable and confidential, Pastries accompany the coffee: a wealth of shortbreads, crunchy almond biscuits, macaroons and iced eclairs bulging cream. Vin Santo, sweet and dark, is pouted into small glasses; outside the evening has begun to descend and Sunday lunch settles.'

from Amore and Amaretti - Victoria Cosford

Flooding Hits Tuscany

The swollen River Arno flows under the Ponte Vecchio in Florence

Three dead as Italy flooding hits Tuscany Three people died on Tuesday when their car fell into a swollen river as torrential rain caused widespread flooding in Tuscany and Umbria.

by Nick Squires, Rome

13 November 2012

The flooding in central Italy followed heavy rain and an unusually high tide in Venice – the sixth highest level since records began in 1872 – which left nearly three-quarters of the lagoon city under water. The three people feared to have drowned – two men and a woman – were believed to be employees of Enel, Italy's biggest electricity company. The car they were travelling in was swept off a collapsed bridge in Grosseto, a few miles inland from the Tuscan coast. The deaths brought the death toll from the bad weather to four – on Monday a 73-year old man was swept away in his car by floodwaters near the town of Capalbio, also on the coast of Tuscany.

Elsewhere in the region, normally known for its sun-baked summers and idyllic landscapes, people were plucked from their roofs of their flooded homes by rescue helicopters. As rivers broke their banks, more than 100 people were forced to flee their homes and take refuge in emergency shelters. The towns of Orbetello and Albinia were inundated with water, with the latter "looking like Venice", according to Italian news reports. In Rome, the Tiber was so swollen that it was no longer possible to walk or cycle along its banks. Major roads and railway lines were blocked.

Enrico Rossi, the head of Tuscany's regional government, said the flooding was so severe that it required intervention by the army. He said floods had worsened in recent years and blamed global warming. "Climate change is causing ever more serious flooding," Mr Rossi told Corriere della Sera. "We can no longer postpone the work that needs to be done." He called for 50 million euros a year for the next 10 years to build new bridges and embankments. The flooding in Venice on Sunday and Monday allowed tourists to pull on their swimming costumes and go take a dip in St Mark's Square, the lowest lying part of the city. The level of the water reached 149 centimetres – the highest since 2008.

The flooding underlined the need for a multi-billion pound flood protection barrier to be completed as quickly as possible, the consortium behind the project said. The Moses flood prevent project entails the construction of giant steel gates across the three inlets through which water from the Adriatic surges into Venice's lagoon. The 300-tonne hinged panels will be fixed to massive concrete bases dug into the sea bed and will be raised whenever a dangerously high tide is predicted. Inaugurated by Silvio Berlusconi, the then prime minister, in 2003, it was due to be completed this year but is now expected to be operational in 2016. The consortium, the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, said that had the much-delayed project been up and running on Sunday, Venice would have remained dry. "This high tide underlines the urgency and necessity of completing the project quickly," it said in a statement.

Source

Fido

La Domenica del Corriere

22 June 1958

La morte del cane Fido: E' morto Fido. Il cane, al quale era stata assegnata una medaglia d'oro ed eretto un monumento, è morto. La sua storia è quanto mai commovente. Nel 1943 perse il padrone, vittima di un bombardamento aereo. Per quattordici anni, tutte le sere, la brava bestiola si recò ad attendere la corriera che solitamente riportava il suo amico a Luco di Mugello e si fermava finchè non c'era più speranza di vederlo. Da qualche tempo, stanco e deperito, aveva sospeso le visite. L'altro giorno, presentendo la fine, volle recarsi all'ultimo appuntamento. Due ragazzi trovarono il suo corpo inerte sulla strada.

The death of the dog Fido: And Fido is dead. The dog, who had been awarded a gold medal and a monument, has died. His story is very touching. In 1943 he lost his master, the victim of an air raid. For fourteen years, every night, the good animal went to wait for the bus that usually brought his friend into Luco di Mugello and stopped until there was no more hope of seeing him. For some time, tired and emaciated, he had suspended visits. The other day, sensing the end, he wanted to go to the last appointment. Two boys found his lifeless body on the road.

Many dogs are named Fido, but the most famous of all was an Italian streetdog who was born in the Autumn of 1941 in Borgo San Lorenzo, Tuscany, Italy.

A street dog without a home, Fido was found by Carlo Soriani, injured and lying in a ditch. Soriani was a brick-kiln worker returning home, and not knowing where the dog came from, he brought the dog home and with his wife, they nursed the dog back to health. They adopted him and gave him the name 'Fido', a Latin name meaning 'faithful'. Extremely loyal to his master, Fido would follow Soriani to the bus stop as he left for work, and would wait patiently in the piazza until the bus would bring him back, and the pair would walk home together. This continued for two years, but on the 30th of December 1943, during World War II, Borgo San Lorenzo was attacked by allies, and many factories, including the one in which Soriani worked, were hit. Soriani tragically lost his life on this day. Fido, however, did not know what had happened to his master and went back to the bus stop that night, waiting for his return. Eventually he went back home, but for the next fourteen years, the ever faithful companion would go to the bus stop at the piazza, waiting for Soriani to come back. Many were enamoured and touched by his faithfulness, and his story was told by Italian magazines and on the newsreels. On the 9th of November 1957, the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo awarded Fido a gold medal in front of Soriani's widow and many townspeople. The sculptor Salvatore Cipolla was commissioned by the town to sculpt the dog in honour of his love and faithfulness. The finished work was displayed in Piazza Dante. However, mere months after its placement, vandals destroyed the majolica statue, and Cipolla was commissioned to recreate his original work in bronze, still seen in Piazza Dante.

On the 9th of June 1958 Fido passed away, still waiting in vain for his friend to return from work. He was buried beside his master. Both La Domenica del Corriere and La Nazione dedicated their front pages to Fido and his heart-warming story of devotion.

Pratariccia

Recently eBay listed the Tuscan village of Pratariccia for sale. At 850m altitude the medieval village looks over the beautiful Casentino valley, and has been abandoned since the early 1960's when villagers traded their farming and shepherding lifestyles for jobs in Italian factories during the economic boom. It is believed the owners of the village are a monastic order, and are looking to sell the village, which includes 25 cottages and eight hectares of land, for only €2.5m. At the moment, deer, wild boar, and wolves roam the land, and without proper road leading to the site, after driving within 800m, Pratariccia must be reached on foot. It is approximated that a further €1m would be needed to do renovate the cottages, add the road, and connect to electricity. However, only 40km east from Florence, €3.5m or so seems like a steal for an entire village. Neighbouring Pratariccia are the hilltop villages of Bibbiena and Poppi, and a national park from where the river Arno is sourced.

Pratariccia is in obvious need of a lot of restoration work, but I think that if it falls into the hands of the right developers it could become a great investment and would make a beautiful holiday retreat for private or tourist use. What fun it would be to be a property developer and work with such richly historical sites.

Toscana

Toscana, Italia

Jure Kravanja

National Geographic

Val d'Orcia

Val d'Orcia, Toscana

Giovanni Simeone

National Geographic

Costa Concordia

This satellite image of the Costa Concordia shipwreck off the Tuscan coast of Giglio has just been released.