Ristorante da Uto, part of an inn, is two small rooms. The owner’s young daughter, about ten, periodically glides through on roller skates, providing us with a Fellini moment. She looks neither right nor left as she sails past like a spirit. The weirdness doubles as the owner shuffles through in slippers. Scuff, scuff, glide, glide.
* * *
OUR ROOM NOW is toasty warm. We set the alarm. Up early and onward to other towns in Le Marche.
* * *
WE SKIP THE large breakfast, wave good-bye to the friendly owners and their dog.
We’re heading to Ancona on the coast. En route, we make several stops:
Fermignano, also along the Metauro. We enter this pale brick town over a three-arched Roman bridge with a medieval tower perched nearby. We stop for a cappuccino and a little wander, then move on.
Fossombrone. A sprawling market is in progress. I find two sweaters for my daughter, and a scarf. The long town with arcaded sidewalks along cobbled Corso Garibaldi also spurs the shopping instincts. This town is incredibly rich in archeology, Baroque churches, handsome palazzi, and lively cafès. I’d hoped to see the Nativity by Federico Zuccari, our discovery in Sant’Angelo in Vado. But Sant’Agostino is closed, as are other churches and galleries. Everyone must be at the market. Fossombrone deserves at least a day or two.
Mondavio. This is a spur-of-the-moment stop, and a lucky one. Hugely fortified with brick walls and towers, the town also owns several wooden catapults, huge launchers of whatever they once flung at approaching enemies. I’m surprised to see that they, and the imposing castle, La Rocca, were designed by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who was the architect for one of my favorite churches in Cortona, Santa Maria del Calcinaio. The earthquakes terrorizing Le Marche recently have shut down the museum and the Teatro Apollo, whose floor rises to meet the stage and form a dance floor. The bakery, however, is open and we get to sample polenta biscotti and other cookies made with fava bean flour.
* * *
WE’VE BEEN TO Ancona before. It has treasures but it’s not an easy place. A port town. Confusing to drive in, confusion heading toward frustration and perhaps some sharp words about turns that should have been made. This is an improvement in travel: With all the navigation prompts, the curses get directed at the disembodied voice that steers us astray. Not at each other.
Finally, we are checked into the super-serene SeePort Hotel overlooking the Adriatic. A few hours to unwind, take notes, read. The in-house Ristorante Ginevra shocks us out of our country ways with its glamour and finesse. Ah, the pea and garlic risotto, the succulent langoustines.
News is that earthquakes are shaking the area where we are going. Onward early tomorrow.
Si– and –rolo. The break, hiss, roll of waves. Sirolo, what an evocative word for this jewel perched above the Adriatic, a pastel, leafy town where the main order of business seems to be gelato. Everyone else is strolling around on this warm October day, gelato in hand, so we follow. Coffee and hazelnut for Ed, plain vanilla and melon for me. We find a bench and gaze through the trees at the sea. The town may be medieval in origin, but the new and old blend so seamlessly that the place seems timeless. For Ed, gelato calls for espresso afterward. We light at Caffè Centrale, surely the heart of this town, for a chance to watch fellow travelers and dogs and babies in strollers already displaying their bella figura clothing.
* * *
SIROLO IS ONLY a half hour and a world away from Ancona, the ancient Greek port, now a convoluted town where we were lost more often than found. Ancona has important monuments and museums, as well as the stunning Trajan arch, built in A.D. 115, a veteran of millennia of war and earthquakes. Since we’d been here before, we surveyed port activities from our windows overlooking the docks at the cool SeePort Hotel and spent the afternoon reading, then taking a long walk. Sometimes, while traveling, the greatest luxuries are the quiet hours spent with a notebook and a companion.
Last night, we were thrilled by Ginevra, the hotel’s ambitious restaurant. Arched windows overlook tankers, ships, cranes, and fishing boats, but I was glued to the interior. I took pictures of the distressed walls and layered paint, thinking of our bedroom at Bramasole that I want to revise—something more interesting than white walls and white linen.
* * *
WE EXITED EARLY this morning, ready to see Monte Conero and the Conero peninsula. We’re only passing through Sirolo, en route from Ancona to Loro Piceno in Le Marche, but I’m checking out Sirolo’s hotels for when we can come back. At the end of a street of artisan shops, I see Locanda e Ristorante Rocco. It looks secluded and I imagine a room overlooking the sea.
We’re off, driving to the coast before heading inland to Fermo and Recanati.
* * *
A FEW KILOMETERS from Sirolo and we’re in another seaside town, Numana, whose charms must not be apparent—we didn’t see them as we made our way down to the beach at Portonovo. The Adriatic can be green-gray like the Atlantic, but today shades of blue and aqua layer out to the pencil-drawn line of the horizon. Although they’re hell to walk on, I love white stony beaches. It’s as if millions of little moons have fallen. Who can resist taking home one of these smooth white rocks, perfect paperweights? I pocket one that looks like a round of pizza dough. We have the beach to ourselves: another checkmark on my pleasures-of-off-season travel list. Flocks will swarm in warm weather but today no one is out. We can walk the edge of the strand and look back at the Napoleonic fortress (now a hotel) and marvel at the limpid water.
* * *
I DID NOT expect this morning to see one of the most magical objects I’ve ever encountered. I did not expect it to be inside one of the most soulful buildings I’ve ever entered. Leaving the beach, we look for the church I’ve just read about. We follow an arrow to La Chiesa di Santa Maria di Portonovo, but we almost turn back because we’re walking a path through fenced residences with private property signs. I’m glad we pressed on because soon we face a white stone Romanesque church of such pleasing proportions and grace that we fall silent as we walk around it. It seems that only ascetics in long robes should be here. Pine, scrubby bushes, and olives surround the area, cutting the church off from views of the sea just below. We walk twice around the exterior. Such sweet curves and shadows cast by deep-cut windows and blind colonnades.
This is holiness living in a form. Three naves, three apses, three domes, a low bell tower. (I would like to hear them ring.) The interior is all curves. Compact as the space is, there are two side aisles, both arched. Here is the argument for less is more: I’m spinning from the beauty. The church is unadorned, silent, and luminescent. Easy to imagine the eleventh-century Benedictines chanting in the nave, the dove of the holy ghost flapping against the dome, even if you don’t believe.
I’m indebted to Ellen Grady, who wrote Blue Guide: The Marche and San Marino. If I hadn’t opened the book to the page on Monte Conero, I would not have known about the unusual object in the narthex of the church. It’s hidden behind a standing bulletin board announcing church activities. With no one to stop me, I squeeze around the notice board. Embedded in the wall, I see a smooth marble disk with a carved Maltese cross and mysterious letters arranged around it. You can find disks of Saint Benedict in religious shops and on the Internet, protective medals with letters and symbols. But this one is ivory-colored marble rubbed to the sheen of wax by centuries of hands touching it as they entered Santa Maria.
Ellen Grady says this is “a talisman used by exorcists.” The letters on the disk are the first initials of the words Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti. Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux. Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux. Vade Retro Satana! Nunquam Suade Mihi Vana. Sunt Mala Quae Libas. Ipse Venena Bibas. IHS. (The Cross of our Holy Father Benedict. May the Holy Cross be my light. May the dragon never be my guide. Get behind me, Satan! Never tempt me with your vanities. What you offer me is evil. Drink the poison yourself! In the name of Jesus Christ our Saviour.) Rubbing the pl
aque is part of reciting the prayer.
Of all my thousands of church visits, I’ve never seen anything like this. I rub it. Exorcism! Drink the poison yourself!
As we drive south from Portonovo, we hear more about last night’s earthquakes in Le Marche. Macerata, where we’ve been in summers for the opera season, is shaking. The exquisite Ascoli Piceno has escaped major damage but is also trembling. After some jolts last week, Recanati and Fermo now seem calm.
Recanati, birthplace of the poet Giacomo Leopardi. And there he stands in the middle of his piazza, high on a pedestal, arms crossed, looking down on us voyagers. The piazza is empty. In the one open bar, we hear the word again. Terramoto. Earthquake. No restaurant is open. We eat ham and cheese on focaccia at the bar and that’s that. The barista tells us that public buildings, including the Leopardi library, the historic Teatro Persiani, and the museum, are closed until possible damage is assessed. She looks a bit shaky herself. “Yes. My nerves are torn up. You know what happened to Norcia and Amatrice.” We do.
* * *
WE’RE LEFT TO admire the handsome town hall, arcade, and Torre del Borgo with its clock running since 1562, and to walk the streets of this pretty town. How much the citizens revere the poet! Many wooden pallets are hung on walls. Studded with succulents and flowering plants, each displays a poem. Leopardi, however, did not admire Recanati. How could he? His over-protective family practically imprisoned him: He was not allowed outside alone until he was twenty. He considered the Papal States village an ignorant backwater that he could not escape. At that time, you had to have a passport to leave town; his father made sure he couldn’t get one.
The tall, neoclassical palazzo where the poet spent his miserable youth looks like a fine place to grow up. Leopardi practically lived in his father’s library, where he began writing seriously as a boy. By fourteen, he’d written Pompeo in Egitto (Pompey in Egypt), a book about Caesar. Sources and his own writing agree that his parents were tyrannical, fanatical, and loveless. His mother thought it best for children to die before they could be spotted with sin. The general wretchedness he endured was alleviated by his closeness with his sister and brother. At least his aristocratic father (gambler, failed writer) accomplished the remarkable library, where the boy learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. He wrote across subjects from philosophy to philological treatises but is loved for his lyric poetry. Unlike his English contemporaries, his was not a poetry of elegiac romanticism; his message is unrelentingly dark. Leopardi seems to have landed in Recanati from the future, bringing atheism, alienation, and confirmed hopelessness. As an adult, he finally escaped to other cities.
He possessed the rare gift to re-create sensory experience with a palpability that predicts modern poetry. His I touch the world talent gives joy, even though he found his subjects in the “unhappy and terrible strangeness of life in the universe.” He is still read. Most Italians I know can quote the Leopardi they learned at school.
Besides his poems, perhaps the most astonishing work he left is the commonplace book, Zibaldone di pensieri (Hodge-podge of Thoughts), 4,526 pages of ideas, fragments, quotations, speculations, and responses to readings.
Frail, with failing sight, and suffering from scoliosis (and possibly cholera), he died at thirty-eight in Naples.
Leopardi’s descendants still live on the upper floors. Outside, they’ve constructed a little glass-fronted take-a-book-leave-a-book box. Saul Bellow and Marguerite Duras are side by side.
* * *
WE’RE LOOKING FOR Casa Azzurra, our inn outside Loro Piceno. We’re lost for a while—there’s another inn of a similar name—and have the chance to see big swells of agricultural land and sweeping skies. Fallow fields have been plowed, and I roll down the window for the sweet scent of turned earth. Finally, we arrive at a blue house in the country with a lauded organic restaurant, Seta Cruda. Nothing special architecturally, the two-story farmhouse looks homey and casual. We know it’s all green, with environmentally friendly heating and cooling, and even feng-shui attention to arrangements. I’m delighted to be greeted by two Lagotto Romagnolo dogs, the truffle hunters. They’re matted and rowdy, jumping on me with dirty paws. Barking. We meet the friendly, bearded owner of inn and dogs, Elia Quagliola, and his assistant Giusi. They show us the glass-box dining room, a library of art books, and the pool and spa. Giusi asks if we want ground floor or upstairs. “You might feel better down because of the…” Her voice drops. “Earthquakes.”
Having lived so many years in San Francisco, we’re wary. We check in downstairs and quietly discuss leaving altogether. We don’t. When I take a shower before dinner, a torrent of water runs onto the floor. Flood and earthquake. Not good.
* * *
WHAT IS GOOD: Seta Cruda. It’s warm enough to have a spritz under the mulberry tree. Ah, I get it: The restaurant name—raw silk—is because of the mulberries on the grounds. The dogs join us. Although we are the only guests at the inn—they’re closing for a winter break—the dining room soon fills with locals. I love this kind of restaurant, where the food is like what you’d have at the home of a friend who happens to be a super cook. We choose salads and pizza margherita, the most ordinary of orders. But the salad is a toss of several lettuces, all primo, with green and piquant olive oil. The pizza is classic and superb. Crunchy crust not too thin or too doughy. A lot of cheese and a few accents of truffle. “Best pizza you’ve ever had?” I ask Ed.
“That would take an hour of calculating but it’s definitely up there.”
Ed chooses an extraordinary Le Marche wine, Tenuta di Tavignano Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore Misco. That’s a long name for something that doesn’t linger long in the glass. A hint of pear, a slight flash of minerals, a wine that calls for a second bottle.
* * *
AT THREE IN the morning I wake up because a hard flash of rain hits the window. All those dusty fields soaking. They were filled with sunflowers all summer; now what will be planted in the friable soil? Winter wheat? I am about to drift off again when a low, unmistakable rumble starts shaking the bed.
“Ed! Wake up. Earthquake.” Glass rattles like teeth chattering.
“What? Oh, Christ!” We fly out of bed. As I stand up the room seems to tilt. We rush outside in the rain. I’m in a thin nightgown, Ed in underwear. Dark. We’re on the back side of the house. My feet feel the current in the ground. Then it stops. How long do we stand out here getting wet? After a few minutes, we cautiously enter our room. Nothing seems amiss. Maybe the feng shui kept the lamps and chairs in place. Was it the rain that woke me? Or primal instinct? I think we’d better go home until these seizures stop.
* * *
ALTHOUGH THE MORNING is innocent again, we cancel our next three days. For me, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area never faded away. We leave right after the warm pastries and commiserating conversation with Giusi and Elia. I regret not having another night at Seta Cruda. The dogs quietly follow us to the car and stare as we leave. We snatch a quick look at tiny Loro Piceno, which has an unbelievable number of churches and a castle. We must skip for now the lakes and trails of Monti Sibillini National Park, and San Ginesio, selected by Touring Club Italiano as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy. Suddenly having to make hard choices, we opt for Fermo.
* * *
DIGNIFIED AND NOBLE like Recanati, Fermo surprises us by looking lively this edgy morning. Surely they shook, too. We quickly find out in the tourist office that, yes, public buildings are closed until inspected for damage. We won’t get to see inside the asymmetrical Gothic Duomo, but we do get to admire its façade with many grapevine carvings. The inspiration came from a quote: Jesus said, I am the vine. An angel holds out her gown to collect in her lap the grapes she is picking. A woman hands grapes to a child who puts them in a basket. A bird pecks grapes. A hooded creature eats them. All grape imagery. The early viewer would have known the symbolism: Eating the grape me
ans tasting the mystery of the Eucharist while on earth. There are also puzzling shellfish images. Then I read that they symbolize the resurrection because they shed their shells in spring. Dragons, lions, scorpions—a rich panoply of meaningful images. And what a pretty rose window! Twisted stone spokes radiate around circles and circles of curvy carving.
* * *
I ESPECIALLY WANTED to see the town library. Established in 1688. Imagine! In photographs, it looks magnificent: An enormous old celestial and terrestrial globe, double tiers of mellow wooden shelves lettered with Roman numerals and stacked with pale volumes bound in vellum. Can’t we see it? Impossible. But the helpful young woman at the tourist office offers to unlock the Teatro Comunale dell’Aquila, the 1780–1790 “eagle” opera house. Ah, the people of Fermo at that time were enjoying opera! A thousand seats. I make a mental note to check future schedules and bring friends for a weekend in Fermo. I would wear my best velvets and jeweled shoes! The gilded wedding-cake tiers rise to five levels. The ceiling frescoes by Luigi Cochetti depict the gods of Olympus singing to Apollo. I hope to hear a pure Monteverdi opera where they play the sackbut and cornetti and the voices rejoice.
See You in the Piazza Page 24