* * *
EARLY THIS MORNING, after feeding our feline friend, whom we’ve named Tabitha because it seems to suit her, we are returning to Buriano for a look in daylight. We break our own rule: Do not drive into the centro through a narrow gate designed for donkeys. We go because we followed another car in. Mistake. That car was a vintage Fiat the size of a grasshopper. How many times have we made a similar mistake? Okay, we’re done for. We have to fold in the mirrors, as the car barely scrunches through. Then we’re in a minute piazza with no exit sign that looks feasible. I jump out, and a woman points to what I thought was a sidewalk. Down we go. Unscathed. Released at last.
We park and walk back, up to what remains of a tower and the Rocca Aldobrandesca. Famous in Tuscany, the Aldobrandeschi family were feudal overlords here from the ninth century. They later lost the town, regaining it in the eleventh century. Siena and Pisa had their way with it, too. (I used to think Tuscan history was the most complicated until I learned more about Puglia and Sicily.)
In the piazza, a few women buy produce at a shoebox-size stand. Stony lanes crank up and around the hill, offering views over the Maremma. I look at the women’s legs to see if they have well-developed calf muscles. The churches are closed, but we are offered a glimpse into the intimate history thanks to the photographs from the past posted on stone walls all around town. War, harvest, weddings, schoolchildren, festivals. Beneath them, names are listed. The faces are full of life. Young men carousing, a bent-over priest, girls with linked arms, chapped-cheek baby. Ubi sunt…where are those who came before us? Only 178 souls live in this tranquil hill town.
* * *
THIRTEEN KILOMETERS AWAY from Buriano, Montepescali is even smaller.
From our flat-land agriturismo, we can see it capping yet another small peak in the Maremma, its towers glowing at night.
These sights in Tuscany are common. Driving around the Cortona area, we can identify the profiles of Montepulciano, Foiano della Chiana, Sinalunga, and Monte San Savino. Since Italy is 40 percent mountain, you see a Monte this or a Monte that nearly everywhere you wander.
We asked Alessio last night about Montepescali. We knew its nickname, “the Balcony of the Maremma,” and that Corsica could be seen from its ramparts.
“Bella,” he said, “and you’ll have it all to yourselves.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that the entire population is nine, down from ten a year ago.” Someone had died. “Montepescali was different in the 1960s. People lived there. Now you have to say ‘Buongiorno’ every day to the same nine people.”
* * *
TODAY, FULL OF sunshine, we take the excellent road up to see these nine people who live within the impressive medieval ramparts of Montepescali. Nothing about the town gate hints of life after the Middle Ages; time here is arrested. The eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth centuries never arrived. The round brick fortification, high walls, and watch towers are straight out of fantasy. It’s quiet as the day after doomsday. In Piazza del Cassero, three cats sleep on the steps of Chiesa di Santi Stefano e Lorenzo. Three women huddle outside a facility for the elderly. Most windows are shuttered but as we walk around the upper neighborhoods, I see over a wall a tended garden profuse with plumbago and jasmine. From a doorway where a woman is sweeping her stoop, the aroma of roasting meat drifts out. Is she dining alone? Would she like two guests?
“I’ve already counted twenty,” Ed says, matter-of-factly. “And the 2010 census says two hundred seventy-five live here.”
“Are you sure you’re not counting the same people twice? That number is probably for the outlying areas as well.” We’re at the perfectly scaled Chiesa di San Niccolò, with its pretty campanile.
“Beautiful town, but a bit remaindered.”
“Nine people isn’t exactly a crowd!” I say. “Maybe the Russians will repopulate it.”
* * *
FIFTY-EIGHT KILOMETERS TO Campiglia Marittima. Big town! Thirteen thousand people. The olive and the artichoke reign, along with the hazelnut and, of course, vineyards. Any script set in medieval times could start filming without rearrangement—like Buriano and Montepescali, this place is fabulously intact, but it isn’t encased in amber. Campiglia’s piazza is awake, the bar’s terrace a hive of teenagers and locals stopping in after lunch. We’re starving and happy with a prosciutto and cheese panino. I hoped to find addormentasuocere, oddly named “send-the-mother-in-law-to-sleep,” but alas, I cannot find these clusters of caramelized local peanuts today.
Campiglia, like the other hill towns, has Etruscan roots. The remains reveal sulfur, iron, and silver mining, copper processing, and also marble quarries. They were, after Roman times, traded back and forth among feudal families, then became a Florentine military stronghold. Similar histories, these quiet places. The miracle is how they endure. Americans are accustomed to everything being leveled frequently. That the two white arches in the piazza, the stony lanes, covered steps up between streets, the clock-tower building covered with stemmie, coats of arms of local rulers, have endured untouched always seems so preposterous to New World people.
We look in the door of the public library and a woman comes downstairs to see who’s there. The library isn’t open, but would we like to see the paintings of Carlo Guarnieri, local artist who lived from 1892 to 1988? We say yes, though we do not expect to be enthralled. “He lived with his mother,” she says, and that’s all the detail we get as she leaves us among his paintings and engravings.
We are enthralled. He has painted six old men who might still be lingering near the stalls on the local market day, just as you still see all over Tuscany. One is seated, back to his companions, holding a cane. He’s contemplative, a beret, a far-off expression on his face. Here’s the artist’s mother, sideways in a chair. The painting is as much about the folds in the drapery backdrop as it is about her. A portrait of a young woman in a blue armchair centers on a creepy fox stole around her shoulders, and the way her hand cradles the head. Marvelous, the woman in white against a red background. She’s stern except for the white plume on her hat.
Ed is most intrigued by Guarnieri’s many woodcuts, especially the one of Dante at the final moments of his journey. He calls me over to look at the clasped hands. The posted note says, “The vision just ended, the verses are over, the book is closed between the hands, and the eyes look down…divine prelude of a dream that dialogues with death and goes beyond life on earth…” His self-portrait shows him also with clasped hands and a strange coat of flowers, a forceful, chiseled face. The woodcuts—he began at age thirteen—are extensive, the technique masterful, and the intent stated on the notice seems accurate: “…woodcut is not only engraving an image on a wooden table that must be inked and printed on paper…it brings out that vitality restrained in the wood, mysterious in its nature of unconscious matter that suddenly offers a glimpse of the secret of life…”
We walk out rather dazed. “He had a big talent and who has heard of him outside his hometown? He should be known—he did significant exhibits in his time. Did you read? He was a war hero. World War One. He falls right into the Italian modernist traditions we’ve admired at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome and Museo Novecento in Florence.”
“Many a flower is born to blush unseen…,” Ed quotes.
* * *
VIA CAVOUR, VIA Pietro Gori—under many street signs hang round frames with portraits of the person the street name honors. Marked with a marble plaque is the house of Isidoro Falchi, the archeologist who discovered Velutonia, carried out important excavations at Populonia, and practiced medicine in this town. His medallion shows a man with strong features and an unruly beard. Behind him a symbolic heap of stones.
On a second-story shuttered window I spot a for-sale sign, the property listed by Bella Tuscany Immobiliare. Since any Italian would say “Bella Toscana,” I have to assume they have named their agency after
my second Italian memoir, Bella Tuscany.
* * *
ED IS GOING through a Mina phase again. Mina being Mina Mazzini but everyone knows her as Mina—one of the great Italian voices. Speak of her in the same breath as Whitney Houston, more octaves than you can count on one hand. Driving back to our abode, Ed says, “I read that Gino Paoli had or still has a vacation house in Campiglia Marittima.” He tells me that Paoli started Mina’s career in the sixties.
He turns on his music. “What’s this one?” I ask.
“ ‘Il Cielo in una stanza.’ You’ve heard it a hundred times. This is Gino Paoli. ‘Heaven in a Room.’ I read that he wrote it in a brothel.
“And I know you like Ornella Vanoni’s ‘L’appuntamento.’ ” Ed smiles. “It’s coming up next.”
Blissful to fly through the bucolic Maremma countryside with the music turned up.
* * *
TABITHA IS WAITING. She runs up to us and follows. I’m worried. The agriturismo is closing. I asked the housekeeper this morning if she belonged to anyone. “You take her,” she exclaimed. “She is a good cat.” We can’t. We don’t live here all year and though I might be foolish enough, Ed refuses to haul animals across the ocean. She’s darling. I write my friend Sheryl in Cortona, who has two cats plus a couple who stop over daily for food. Will you take her?
* * *
WE ARE CURIOUS to eat at the Slow Food restaurant Oste Scuro Vin Osteria in a residential neighborhood in nearby Braccagni. We are the last guests of the season; the owners have packed their car this afternoon with prosciuttos and cheeses and wines for the drive to Sicily, where their relatives live. Unusual: He’s out front, she’s in the kitchen. The space has an industrial look, with bright yellow walls and contemporary angular green tables and yellow chairs.
After a long day, we savor a leisurely dinner. Red shrimp with farro, a plate of anchovies and parsley under curls of butter—we are off to a good start, especially with a bottle of Leonardo Salustri, Montecucco Sangiovese, 2013. We are big fans of Montecucco, and this one tastes as expansive as we feel tonight. The menu proves there is a chef who knows her traditions. Her gnocchi, made from the red potatoes of Cetica near Arezzo, are puffy and delicate. We go forward with tender lamb tornedos on a bed of spicy chicory. For dessert, a homey lemon meringue tart. It’s dense and custardy, with the intense lemon flavor only Italy can achieve. Imagine, a restaurant of this quality in a town of fifteen hundred people. Miracle of Italy.
* * *
SHERYL SAID YES. (But her husband, Rob, is not thrilled.) Tomorrow I will find a box, food, litter, for the trip home. Ed remains dubious.
* * *
LATE START. I’M engrossed with Calvino’s Palomar. Also, I look up Bella Tuscany Immobiliare. I am shocked at the comparatively low prices of houses, 30 or 40 percent less than in our part of Tuscany. Why? This is a stunning area, well located for exploring and for the beaches. Food, check. Wine, check. I send off links to two friends who’ve despaired of finding a Tuscan retreat.
Ed is writing a poem. Tabitha waits outside the door as we start to leave for Populonia. I give her milk and a can of food I bought yesterday. She weaves her skinny form ingratiatingly around my legs. Yes, I’m smitten. As we reach the car, all of a sudden another cat emerges from the bushes. Almost identical to Tabitha. Oh, no. Will Sheryl take two? I know she can’t. The new one comes right up to Ed. “It was never meant to be, Franny. These are farm creatures. They’ll be okay.”
* * *
ON A BLUFF above the Tyrrhenian Sea, the village of present-day Populonia is the remnant of the only Etruscan town built directly on the water. Remnant, indeed—we find a stupendous view of sea and sky, a forested hill plunging to the strand, and a tiny village protected by massive fortifications. One atmospheric main street with a few shops and cafés, a side opening into a fortress-walled piazza with a small, plain church. Capers spill down the walls.
That’s it. A brief turn around town and then down to the beach and fishing harbor. Glimmers of anthracite in the sand recall the Etruscan mines and the excavations of Isidoro Falchi, indefatigable archeologist. Ancient iron slag heaps once besmirched this beach. Now along the Bay of Baratti, there’s this sweet curve of blond sand extending into a pine forest. A heavy-set woman braves the water, out to her waist. A short walk and we find ourselves seated on the terrace of a seaside restaurant. At the entrance, men play cards. Suddenly this seems like vacation. Maltagliata—“badly cut” pasta (usually made from leftover pasta dough)—with shrimp, zucchini, and tomatoes, with a mezzo-liter of house white. A view of boats and mimosa trees seems just right.
* * *
SAN VINCENZO, WHERE we came years ago to dine at the world-famous Gambero Rosso. The waiter wheeled over a cart of olive oils. Which did we prefer for our salads? We were dumbfounded, knowing little about olive oil at that point. I selected the greenest, and the waiter smiled and nodded. The dinner I still remember thirty years later. Gambero Rosso is gone now, and in early October, the beach town is getting ready to fall into a long doze. We stroll down the wide main street, made for the evening passeggiata, with ample bars and gelato shops.
What is glorious about October travel is that we walk San Vincenzo’s eleven kilometers of sandy beach and have it to ourselves. San Vincenzo will be hopping in the summer, but now how peaceful. Costa degli Etruschi, the Etruscan coast, stretches from Livorno to Piombino, eighty kilometers of beach. Spring and fall, you’ll have it to yourself. Resolution: Return to the Etruscans in spring and fall for my necessary beach fix.
* * *
TABITHA IS NOWHERE to be found, nor the companion cat. Ed leaves two open cans for them. Sheryl had to decline the gift of two. She does not want to become a cat lady. They must stay, and if I don’t see them again it will be easier to go.
On our last night, we pop over to the village of Braccagni again. We noted Ristorante Bernasconi by the train station when we drove through last night. It’s open, they have a table, though it’s crowded with locals, and soon the waiter has brought us—his suggestion—the same wine we had in Buriano, the Elisabetta Geppetti Morellino di Scansano. We’re right at home with the cozy red walls and white tablecloths, the old-style menus. We waste no time ordering the mixed antipasti and ravioli with classic ragù. What’s better on a crisp fall night?
* * *
TABITHA, STORYBOOK CAT, we leave behind. She comes to the car as we pack to leave. Let me not anthropomorphize, though I could. Just to say, she knows. We drive away and she watches, tail straight up. “Turn on Mina,” I say. “Loud.”
NOTES:
“Many a flower…” from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Thomas Gray.
Other winning villages in the Buriano–Vetulonia area: Scarlino, Caldana, Ravi. Very well known and appealing are the wine centers Bolgheri and Castagneto Carducci, with a magnificent cypress-lined entrance. We love Marina di Bibbona for the pleasure of dining at La Pineta.
While in San Vincenzo, we were not able to go to Ristorante Il Bucaniere, owned by Fulvietto Pierangelini, son of the owners of the famous Gambero Rosso. A must on the next visit.
“Can we veer by Massa Marittima? It doesn’t look far out of the way.”
“We have time. Remember that church up on an angled stone platform, how the piazza goes wonky because of that?” Ed pulls over to recalculate our route. For three days, we’ve been wandering around the Tuscan coast and small inland towns and now are headed home to Cortona.
“Remember when I called it Massa Mari-TTI-ma?”
“Yes. You were corrected and admonished. Ma-RI-ttima. A trill with the r. She did it to me, too. I’ll never forget the mocking ‘Not G-Ovanni. Say Joevanni, all together.’ Then there was geometra.” A geometra is a quasi-architect who has to approve building projects. “I put the accent on -met. She let me know it was on the –om. I was humiliated.”
She refers to our great
friend the writer Ann Cornelisen, who preceded us in Italy by a couple of decades and spoke excellent, if a bit stiff, Italian. It was her mission to minimize what fools we made of ourselves those early years. She was always right. Would that she’d remained to correct other mistakes.
* * *
MASSA MARITTIMA—QUIRKY TOWN. Piazza Garibaldi, usually called Piazza del Duomo, is ringed by medieval buildings—the town hall, the wheat granary, Palazzo del Podestà (now the archeological museum)—and by cafés well placed for viewing the imposing church. The placement is pleasing and disorienting, as though the piazza tilted to its side and stuck.
Did I say quirky? On via Ximenes at the entrance to the centro, we find the covered thirteenth-century public water fountain, Fonte dell’Abbondanza, which has a tree-of-life fresco on one wall. On second glance, I see that the branches are decorated not only with leaves but with testicles and erect penises! How bizarre, this Albero della Fecondità. And next door, a reminder of fascist Italy, Casa del Fascio, built in 1935 in the prevailing rationalist architectural style, with the requisite balcony for speeches, and the carved, flat eagle over the door. This architecture, which used to scream Mussolini, now takes on a period patina. The rigid, some say brutal, architecture of the era always had, in Italy, a foot in classicism. Travertine of the area links this building with a longer past. Here, the primitive phallic tree and the stylized eagle coexist.
See You in the Piazza Page 20