Prepare the sauce: Melt the butter in a medium-size skillet and add the mushrooms, zucchini, and zucchini flowers. Sauté for 5 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
Stir in the cheese and add the “tadpoles” to the vegetables.
For each diner, take a flat plate. Lay down a vine leaf and arrange the tadpoles and vegetables. Sprinkle with a little oil and the crumbled goat cheese. To taste, add the oregano, basil, or flowers of ursino garlic. Finally, add a small dash of vinegar.
Trattoria Al Cacciatore della Subida, Cormòns, Friuli Venezia Giulia
Only a half hour from Cormòns, Aquileia is another world. A Roman world. Once you come here you cannot imagine why you’ve never heard of it—one of the great sights of Italy, of anywhere.
Founded in 181 B.C., Aquileia is a sleepy village of thirty-five hundred. Once, its population was as many as one hundred thousand, the fourth largest in Italy after Rome, Milano, and Capua. First established as a military bastion against barbarians, the settlement grew large as Rome expanded toward the Danube. Rome recognized its position on strategic roads, and saw that boats could ply the river to the Adriatic outlet. Trade eventually extended as far north as the Baltic amber routes and as far east as Arabia.
Entering town on via Giulia Augusta, you immediately see on the left a spectacular row of fourteen tall intact columns, plus a few stubs and bases, hints at what once stood there. The whole site is like this: Everywhere you wander, you come upon remnants of forum, circus, port, town wall, houses with bits of mosaic floor, amphitheater, all unguarded, open, just lying around among the cypresses, pines, and long grass, as though just unearthed. There must be much left to discover. As many ruins as I’ve seen, I’ve never, with the exceptions of tourist-central Pompeii and Herculaneum, felt the living reality of the town as I do here. The way it existed eerily rises in the mind’s eye.
* * *
AFTER ROMAN RULE ended, Aquileia was subject to sieges, fratricides, martyrs, and plagues. The Christian patriarch Theodore built a basilica in 314. Attila destroyed the town in 452 and salted the earth. He left in his wake the legend that fleeing citizens forced slaves to construct a well that they filled with treasures; then they killed the slaves to erase memory. Fallen to ruin, the basilica was reworked from 1021 to 1031. After: a dizzying succession of power grabbers, patriarchs, earthquakes, and extraordinary artistic triumphs.
* * *
THE MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO Nazionale di Aquileia, housed in a large villa, beggars description. Everything here was excavated locally. The cemeteries must have been like museums. The signage tells us that funeral monuments were arranged along roads leading into town: sepulchral roads organized according to social order. We get to see quantities of finely executed marble busts that marked the graves. Stone lions—protectors of tombs—from the first century B.C. A head of Venus. A headless, armless whole Venus, tall, realistic. A Janus face. Decoratively carved sarcophagi for those buried whole, cinerary urns for cremated bodies, with carved scenes like film strips encircling the urn. A dead man is shown nude lying on a bed. Ah, here’s a surprise: Across from him, another man makes the sign of the corna. Index and pinkie pointed down, like bull’s horns, the gesture that all over Italy means let it not happen here. The floors of black-and-white mosaics, exquisite, lifted from houses in the area. Fragments show scenes from the Iliad. One of the Trojan war, and a vast wave about to subsume all. Useless to catalog; you must see.
The marble portrait busts make me linger longest. Real faces. Full of lived life. One, very old. One, a boy with an ivy wreath. Delicate young woman with corn-row hair; most of the women show elaborate hair. Some have smashed noses. We’re alone here with these former citizens. Conversing.
In the garden, we find the lapidarium, an immense salvage yard of Roman stones—tombstones, stone carvings, bits of buildings, monument markers, stele, round pots for ashes of slaves. And more mosaics. Ed is photographing the carved, precise Roman lettering, no font ever as pleasing to the eye. Jumbled storerooms off the loggia are jammed with pots and glass objects—major craft of ancient Aquileia—surprisingly enduring all this time. Coins, of course. All speaking loudly of vibrant life.
* * *
NOT FAR AWAY, we’re in a later era. The basilica, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, hid a secret for almost a thousand years. Imagine the surprise of Austrian archeologists in the early twentieth century when they lifted the eleventh-century floor and found under deeper layers of straw and mud the intact mosaic of the 314 church. What a moment.
This is the largest mosaic surviving from the ancient world. Traveler, this is why we find ourselves in places we never dreamed of! Scenes of the Old Testament surge across the huge floor. What is moving: You sense the presence of the maker. The person who picked up stone after stone and formed images of the allegories, stories, and symbols from early Christian times. Daily moments, too: a man sleeping under a pergola, a swimming octopus, many animals. Oh, Jonah and the whale, and the pagan Perseus, the winged horse. Fishermen—the Apostles?—wielding a somehow transparent net. I identify many types of fish, which speak of the citizens’ riverside life.
* * *
THE WELL OF treasure was never found. For centuries, any property sales contract excluded buyers from the wealth inside the well if it were later discovered on the land. I’m dreaming. When I win the jackpot lottery, I’ll fund a crack team of archeologists to uncover what must still lie under the earth. Magnificent sculptures, a preserved kitchen, a chariot. In an undiscovered dip of the ground, they’ll come upon an octagonal stone, and when they lift it, they’ll look down into the golden well.
Called Chrysopolis (“Golden City”) in Byzantine times, Parma is a snow-globe town—shake and it dazzles—a seventeenth-century steel engraving of a city on a river, a place of street music and opera, a solid market town, a stop on the antique via Emilia that ran from Rimini to Piacenza. And a major food destination because of—what else?—Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus the range of prosciuttos and other salume, and the reputation for a bountiful and varied table. But a major art exhibit of Correggio and Parmigianino in Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale last summer spurred us to visit. We were mesmerized by the portraits from these two Parma artists, struck by how intimately and precisely the subjects were observed.
Twenty years ago, we visited Parma briefly with a friend who was writing her dissertation on the Correggio fresco on the dome inside the city’s Romanesque cathedral. From that long-ago weekend, I remember buying a packet of candied violets (violet—the signature fragrance of Parma), the sweet-meaty aromas along a narrow street, a boar’s head leering down at me from a shop, a violinist playing something tremulous from Verdi in the Piazza Garibaldi. I remember a general sense of an elegant city on a small river and of staring up into the cathedral dome at an off-center figure whose legs seemed to be kicking. I thought, how strange.
We’re settling in at Palazzo dalla Rosa Prati, right on the piazza of the duomo and baptistery. Wisteria, branching from a trunk thicker than any prosciutto, clambers all over the courtyard walls and up to the third floor. Gold-leafed in early December, it must have flowered for a hundred years. Our room is old world—a high wooden headboard, a dressing table, flowered fabrics, and a round table perfect for spreading out our books, maps, and snarls of cords. With bold confidence, someone selected a red rug and floral draperies in a riot of coral, pink, and rose geraniums. We’re concealed from the courtyard but mellow light seeps in between wisteria leaves. Any old English duchess, especially one who smokes hashish, would feel right at home here.
After cross-checking the Gambero Rosso, Touring Club Emilia-Romagna, Osteria d’Italia, and Mangiarozzo restaurant guides and finding too many promising choices, we set out. First stop, Libreria Fiaccadori, the bookstore, open since 1829, just down the street. We find a regional cookbook and a couple of locally written city guidebooks, then head for Piazza Garibaldi on the spot of the Roman forum, w
here we settle in for coffee. We make lists of what to see, while taking in the grand yellow-and-cream building surrounding us and an arcaded building, the Portici del Grano, where wheat, fish, meat, salt, wood, and other goods once were sold. There’s a predominant Parma yellow, like lemon butter cream; I’d like to paint every room in my house this delicious color. I admire the sundials on either side of the clock tower. I love all sundials, but especially those looming over piazzas. Time both slows and becomes more real as it falls across the face of your companion, across the cobbles, across the checked tablecloth and the empty cups. To know time by a shadow.
* * *
WE ENCOUNTER OUR man Correggio first in San Giovanni Evangelista, Saint John the Baptist, a substantial church with a soaring bell tower. Correggio is the nearby town where he was born and christened Antonio Allegri. His dome here, frescoed prior to the duomo I remember from years ago, shows another dynamic mid-sky event with haphazard limbs flailing. Maybe it’s Gabriel, maybe it’s Christ; one or the other is descending from upper heaven to collect Saint John, who is old and surrounded by a crowd of Apostles in clouds, along with decorative putti. What is remarkable, other than the sulfurous sky, is how awkward the whole composition is—yet that awkwardness creates a frenetic energy totally lacking in most such scenes. (I’ve seen a few!) How bold and new his off-center placement, the odd sky, and the dynamic movement. Ideally, you’d lie flat on the floor with binoculars to see the details. The light shed by my euros in the machine hardly illuminates the particulars.
Off to the side over a doorway, and very visible, is Correggio’s lunette of the young Saint John writing the Apocalypse, accompanied by an eagle. “That eagle, I know it symbolizes John, but signifying what quality?” I ask Ed, whose intense Catholic education gave him expertise in iconography that my Methodist background left lacking in me.
“Soaring upward. Ascension toward heaven. Here’s a surreal quote. Let me look it up exactly; it’s from Ezekiel.” He scrolls around a minute then finds it. “Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side, each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle.” He clicks off the phone and laughs. “That sets off a bit of an image storm.”
“The eagle looks a little ratty. Not sure he’d ascend all the way.”
Walking out, Ed says, “Check out this floor.” A dizzy expanse of trompe-l’oeil colored marble cubes laid to trick the eye. During long sermons, you could hypnotize yourself by finding patterns in the connected squares.
A monk with a face the color of congealed oatmeal guards the entryway to the church’s Benedictine monastery. We want to see the three cloisters and the library. His hooded, iguana eyes look at us as though we’re barbarians at the gate, which I guess we are. My smile brings no response. Instead, he seems to puff up, the expansion that happens the moment before an explosion. Almost empty shelves around the room hold a few jars of fruit confitures that monks made somewhere back in time and space. I fear we would be poisoned if we spread a spoonful on our toast. Even out of good will, I don’t buy. His head sinks lower into his cowl as he glowers and gestures toward a door.
The once-lovely cloisters stand empty. The library is closed. All dreary. I try to imagine life here when the monastery thrived. Wandering in and out of several thousand churches over the years, I often fantasize about how the world would look if all the money and talent and effort that went into church building had instead been lavished on libraries and schools.
We must exit through the stony monk’s room. His rheumy, hard eyes look trapped. A chill runs over me. I think he might die today.
* * *
IN THE SAME complex, we stop into the old herbal pharmacy, Spezieria di San Giovanni. A round woman bundled in sweaters, her determined nose almost touching a crossword puzzle, smiles and waves us into dark rooms lined with cases holding ceramic jars labeled with plant names. In these old labs, nuns and monks were deeply into investigations of cures. They cultivated complicated gardens of simples (plants that heal). The workroom with its well and marble sinks remains totally intact. What if you depended on the monks to cure your TB or mushroom poisoning? We’re out of there in ten minutes and off to lunch at number one of our eight meals in Parma.
* * *
ANGIOL D’OR, A greenhouse room with windows overlooking the great piazza, is a lucky choice. Risotto with crunchy pancetta, a touch of pumpkin cream, and sprinkled lightly on top, fine crumbs of amaretto cookies. Pumpkin isn’t a favorite of mine but this tastes delicate and creamy. A glass of the wine I’m late to appreciating, malvasia, a dry one with a flowery upper note. Not of Parma violets. More carnation, if that undervalued, unappreciated flower were distilled to its most delicate note. And don’t I recognize downfall when I see it? The owner brings over a basket of crisp, golden torta fritta, puffs of fried bread. I know it’s lard. I don’t care.
Wine at lunch. Dessert. What a way to start a trip. We cannot continue this or we will be leveled for each afternoon, missing half of what we want to see. But it’s useless to resist the traditional sweet of this area, sbrisolona. The recipe comes out of cucina povera. Made with equal parts polenta and flour, with abundant toasted nuts, it’s crumbly like shortcake but grittier in texture. In the tradition, grappa often dappled the top; but this one is raised a few powers by the little cup of rich zabaglione on the side. You break the crunchy pieces and dip. And dip. And I don’t want more but I dip again.
* * *
WORTH THE TRIP to Parma: Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, the duomo! It’s good to stand on the opposite side of the cobbled piazza, near the bishop’s palace, and rest your eyes on the buildings. The octagonal baptistery in pink Verona marble rises out of a dream. The duomo face is rhythmic with arches. Wider than you’d expect, it does not soar but sits solidly on the earth. Three large doors invite you to come closer, where gigantic lions flank the center, and the frieze above shows not the heavenly orders but people fishing, harvesting grapes and wheat—ordinary labors of the months, including a pig butchering. Yes, the salume tradition goes way back in Parma. High up, you glimpse a golden angel weathervane guarding the piazza. That’s Archangel Raphael, a copy of the thirteenth-century one now protected in the nearby Museo Diocesano.
Inside, how lofty the dome. Layers of the happily dead in circles of cotton-candy clouds, along with wingless putti playing musical instruments, pile in layers toward the yellow vortex. I knew Correggio’s subject matter was the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. She looks wonky, disjointed as she ascends. With the dome lit, I finally see what I missed on my previous visit. Not the Virgin Mary! The awkward figure just off center in the dome is Jesus coming down from heaven to snare Mary, who’s jammed into the beatific crowd around the sides of the dome. Through my zoom lens, I see the soles of his big feet and his white garments billowing upward as he descends.
The risky choices Correggio made forever step out of line and jolt the history of painting. Why did he decide to paint Jesus coming for Mary instead of the usual Assumption into heaven? Possibly because it makes a more interesting story. And as we know, frescoes were narratives for those who had no books.
Ed is ready, again, for an espresso. He’s sitting on a pew, reading a guidebook on his phone. “I like this.” He looks up at the dome. “One observer from that time commented that all that commotion in the sky looked like a stew of frog legs.”
* * *
FROG LEGS ACTUALLY appear on the menu at Trattoria dei Corrieri, the venerable spot we’ve chosen for dinner. It’s brightly lit and packed with local people who’ve probably been eating here all their lives. The service is, for Italy, uncharacteristically chaotic. Also on the menu is pesto di cavallo, which someone might gloss over as cavolo, possibly some kind of cabbage. But there’s the double l. Cavallo: horse. When I ask the waiter how it’s prepared, he says, “Caval pist. Tartara,” as if to say any fool knows
that. Caval pist, we figure out, is dialect for horse pesto. Tartara, we know.
Raw horse. I won’t be placing an order but I’m interested when a bowl of fresh, bright red meat is served to the man at the next table. It looks good. He spreads it on bruschetta. “We eat cow. Pig. Why not horse?” Ed reasons. But he orders tortelli with spalla cotta di San Secondo, a hallowed recipe in Emilia-Romagna. Pork shoulder is soaked, then boiled in water with some wine, spices, and seasonings for around three hours. The meat is soft with a whiff of cinnamon and a hearty pork flavor. San Secondo is near Le Roncole di Busseto, the town where Giuseppe Verdi was born. An early foodie, he loved spalla cotta. He wanted a lot of things on his plate—especially spongata, a sugar-coated jam cake. Food crops up constantly in his letters. The tag on a spalla cotta in butcher shops features a photo of Verdi.
I’m happy when my plate of gnocchi with Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts arrives. This is an old-school trattoria where house wine rules. We order the red fermo and learn a new word. Not the same as unbottled house wine (sfuso) in Tuscany—fermo means “still.” That’s opposed to frizzante wines, a sparkling malvasia or lambrusco, so loved locally. At their price for a half-liter, they might as well give it away. A big, mouthy red with nice balance—it goes quickly. After we wave at the server a few times, he plops down another pitcher.
When the man next to us borrows our olive oil, I ask him, “How’s the horse?”
See You in the Piazza Page 14