See You in the Piazza

by Frances Mayes

  * * *

  THE MORNING HAS turned warm and, as we skirt Roma, from the backseat rise the humid scents of tomatoes, celery, strawberries. Lazio! When you travel, you’re trying on a life to see how it fits. We’re always asking, “If we were moving to Italy today, where would you live?” Lazio would be an easy life to choose. Close to Roma, close to Napoli, Gaeta especially seems ideally balanced between the place of myth it occupies in history and the vibrant, everyday market and fishing village of today. We have the stash of mozzarella, a box of mixed Lazio wines, bags of taralli, the olives of Itri. Our own heart’s needle, chosen long ago, lies north of here. We can’t wait to get home.

  NOTES:

  Article from Vogue archives on Cy Twombly in Gaeta: https://www.vogue.com/​article/​from-the-archives-cy-twombly-a-painted-word

  Ciociaria is an unofficially named area around Frosinone—the lands of those who wore le ciocie, thick leather soles tied over the feet with straps.

  Orata all’Acqua Pazza

  SEA BREAM IN “CRAZY WATER,” SERVES 2

  Si mangia bene, one eats well, in Gaeta and nowhere better than at Chef Walter De Carolis’s table. Acqua pazza—seasoned water—is a common cooking medium in Italy.

  2½ cups fish broth

  16 cherry tomatoes, halved

  2 cloves garlic

  A handful of parsley, snipped

  Extra-virgin olive oil, QB

  Salt and pepper, QB

  2 large sea bream fillets

  4 slices bread, toasted

  Boil the fish stock and add the tomatoes, garlic, parsley, a little oil, and salt and pepper. Reduce to simmer, and add the fillets. Poach for 4 to 5 minutes.

  To serve, place two slices of bread on soup plates, lay a fillet over them, and ladle the broth over. Drizzle some oil.

  Ristorante Antico Vico, Gaeta, Lazio

  Early spring, far south. “Of the great experiences of our travel lives, does anything rival seeing these olive groves?” Turning onto a back road, soon we are passing far-as-the-eye-can-see stretches of olive groves, casting dappled shadows on mosaics of yellow and white wildflowers in the lush grasses. The fabled oliveti of Puglia! Twisted old dancers, gnarly dwarves, sinister giants, personifications of endurance. Silvery green seas of trees abut blooming fields of plum, peach, and cherry trees, then almond orchards fluffed out in white. I let down the window to sniff but only catch a faint dusty smell.

  Driving from Cortona, we skirted Rome, then Benevento, heading for the Adriatic coast. Italy is long. I’m reading aloud to Ed about Puglia’s convoluted history. We’ve never heard of the early settlers, the Messapians or the Peucetians. And we barely can keep track of the successive invasions: Greek, Ostrogoth, Lombard, Byzantine, Norman, Saracen raiders, Swabian, Angevin, Aragon, Austrian, Spanish, French, on and on. Everyone had their turn. I’m liking the most prominent ruler, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Stupor Mundi, astonishment of the world, born in Le Marche to an older mother who, it’s said, gave birth at age forty in the piazza to prove him legitimate. Of the invaders, he seems to be the only one who loved the land and was loved by the people. One legacy: He scattered his redheaded genes among the Puglia population.

  Puglia seems to have been an open invitation for every warmongering brute who took a fancy to its ports and peasants. After Frederick, his son Manfred was loved as well. He quickly came to a bad end. Puglia: wars. (And sheep. In the seventeenth century, four and a half million of them roamed the land, gnawing it down to the dirt.) The Risorgimento, unification of Italy, made more chaos. Mussolini began to pull Puglia up, but then it was bombed and occupied by Germany. Dio! I’m not sure why I had to study so hard in college. American history is a snap. Italian students must truly suffer—it’s as if the American Civil War lasted two thousand years!

  * * *

  THE DREARY OUTSKIRTS of Trani quickly become narrow lanes lined with pollarded trees not yet in leaf. Palm trees, my favorites, announce that we have left behind any remnant of a cold climate. The cafés look inviting but in early afternoon no one is out. These towns in the south shut down firmly in deference to the after-pranzo pausa.

  Was the old town carved out of a huge, single clump of stone? This color—ivory as piano keys. The stones trap the light and send it back out, transparent. Trani glows. Sunlight strikes the campanile and skitters along the water. As long as I’m here, I will be watching the play of cloud shadows on the surface of the harbor and the façades of buildings reflect shades of cream to cool gray to pearly blue. “Reason enough to live here,” I say to Ed. “Imagine the privilege of this light.”

  “The Tuscan light is special, too,” he maintains.

  “Yes. Different. This is white light. Tuscany is mellow.”

  * * *

  WE MEET AND are warmly greeted by Michele Matera at Corteinfiore, the restaurant we’ve chosen for tonight. Anticipating dinner, we look into the glassed-in dining room, which is crisply laid with white linen. Down the street we’ll be staying in his six-room residenza, or residence hotel. Michele’s friendly colleague walks us there, along the harbor to a quiet piazza where boys must dodge benches as they kick around a soccer ball. Nothing keeps Italian boys from soccer.

  A few years ago, the B & B concept didn’t exist in Italy. There were signs for CAMERE, rooms, but they were spare rooms in someone’s house, very cheap and incredibly plain. Recently, what has cropped up are suites of rooms—a residenza in a renovated building where someone operates a mini-hotel with minimum staff—or a diffuso plan, rooms let around town by an agency. You’re met at an appointed time and given the key. We enter Dimora Corteinfiore through its welcoming common room, where breakfast will be served and we can make coffee or tea anytime. Our bedroom and living room overlook the piazza. Wood floors, dark gray walls, monochromatic beiges, sand, and white for the sofa and bed—a trendy minimalist design. Two rooms help because of all our electronics. What did I used to do without these devices to charge constantly? I carry two zipped bags of cords. I can push open shutters and see palm trees full of chattering birds.

  * * *

  THE FIRST PLACE we look for is a forno. The bread of Puglia is known to be the best in Italy. We find one but morning customers have decimated the daily supply. We’re able to buy only a quarter of a ten-pound loaf—sixty cents. The baker looks amused as we immediately reach into the sack. “I’ve never had bread before,” Ed claims. “It’s cakey and the crackly crust doesn’t rip out your teeth the way Tuscan bread does.”

  “Semolina softens the texture of the hard wheat flour,” the baker tells us. We must look hungry; he wraps four pistachio biscotti in tissue and hands them to me.

  “I could live on bread when it’s this good,” I tell him.

  * * *

  THE HARBOR INSCRIBES a large C, like a crab’s reach. The startling white buildings follow the curve, with a street between for the capricious drivers to indulge their wrongful turns and random parking. Fortunately, there’s not much traffic.

  What inspires instant happiness more than blue fishing boats, weathered row boats, nets drying in the sun, people walking peppy little dogs, a boy selling a pile of lemons, and an afternoon to wander? Trani’s harbor gives way to a walk along the sea and to the open piazza where rises the astounding cathedral San Nicola Pellegrino. Because of the great space left open around the building, you’re allowed to admire the four differing sides. The magnificent siting is also odd. The church does not face the sea but is angled so that the back, with its three graceful apses, and the long side of high arches are on the water side. People have been repeating this walk for almost a thousand years.

  My mind spins. This little town’s magisterial cathedral took a visionary to build. How? The structure is vast and high and complex. Ancient. And someone once stood on the beach and said let’s do this thing. A pity
the word “awesome” is worn out by things that aren’t because this truly is.

  * * *

  A BEGGAR WELCOMES us into the lower church crypts. Inside, many marble columns support the arches of the grand edifice. I have a flash of center poles holding up a vast tent camp of desert fathers. The upper church, cool and bare, lets the architecture have its way, unlike churches covered in gilt and frescoes and paintings. Any Baroque additions have been banished and without all that, the raw energy of the building asserts itself. I slip off my shoes, since the nave is empty, to feel the white stone floor still holding on to winter chill. As we leave, we give coins to the gray-skinned beggar, who is so wizened that he might very well have been standing here when ginger-haired Frederick II’s son Manfred swept across the esplanade with his Greek bride, Helena of Epirus, in 1259. Bells are clanging. How far out at sea can you hear them?

  * * *

  ACROSS THE EXPANSIVE piazza, we skirt Castello Svevo, one of Frederick II’s stalwart fortifications. Formerly, a seawater moat surrounded the walls. The massive, blocky building became a prison in 1832, and held that ugly role until 1974. It’s now a small museum and exhibition space.

  Ed spots a café with red velvet chairs outside and we pause for his—what?—fourth espresso of the day, then wander the old town. In medieval Trani, there were four synagogues, all refashioned as Christian churches after the Kingdom of Naples demanded that Jews become Christians or go into exile. One, Scolanova Synagogue, recently returned to its heritage. Even though there are few or no Jews living in Trani, services are sometimes held there. Puglian history is littered with conversion motifs—become a Muslim, or die; become a Christian, or die—according to which group was invading.

  * * *

  OFF THE PIAZZA della Repubblica—which contains two immense piazzas with rows of shapely trees—we happen on Anice Verde, a café with walls papered with pages from old books and retro lightbulbs hanging on single cords. A perfect place for an intimate talk over tea and biscotti. A perfect place for an aperitivo, too. We talk to the pretty Romanian waitress, who is surprised to see Americans. She wants to know what New York is like. And how did she get here? We want to know. Came on vacation and never left. Ah, I can see that. The appeal seems obvious: arched entrances to narrow streets, many leafy piazzas, and most of all to be bathed every day in this swimming light.

  * * *

  GOOD THING WE reserved, even off-season. We take Corteinfiore’s last table. As we come in, we pass the fish on ice. Ed has his sights on a bright-eyed San Pietro but we check the menu first. Many fish! Only fish! If we were in a group of friends, we’d order the chef’s choice antipasti—five tempting preparations from a list that includes cod, octopus, mullet, swordfish, anchovy, and canocchia, the large Mediterranean shrimp that look like a cicada. When Ed asks the waiter what he recommends, he comes over with the glistening San Pietro. This fish (John Dory) has a darker round mark on its side that’s supposed to be the thumbprint of Saint Peter, fisherman. We begin with spaghetti and sea urchin sauce for Ed, and spaghetti alla chitarra with red prawns for me. Chitarra (guitar) refers to the frame with bronze wires that cuts the pasta into spaghetti. Bronze cut assures better adherence of sauce, and over the years I’ve opted for that method when using dried pasta.

  Our San Pietro arrives at the table, where it’s deftly filleted, the delicate pieces tumbling onto our plates and served with olives, capers, and sautéed datterini tomatoes, the oblong ones shaped like dates. Oh, chef of the New York temple of seafood, take a trip to Puglia! All around us, platters of the freshest catches arrive to the big smiles of diners. Lemon slices I’ve learned to ignore ever since our friend Edo said, “Do you want to taste lemon or do you want to taste the fish?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Italian squeeze lemon juice on seafood.

  Now to begin tasting Puglian wines. Michele helps us select Vigna Pedale Castel del Monte by Torrevento, a 2012 reserva, which comes full-mouthed and winningly right out of the bottle. The nero di Troia grape ensures a deep garnet color and a touch of fruit. Big red with fish? At tables all around us that’s what’s in the glasses. Why not?

  First night in Puglia. Tomorrow we turn even farther south.

  Spaghetti alla Chitarra, Gamberi Rossi, Olive Leccino, and Calamaretti Spillo

  SPAGHETTI ALLA CHITARRA, RED SHRIMP, OLIVES, AND SQUID, SERVES 4

  The wooden form with bronze strands that cut the pasta resembles a guitar. Chitarra is known for the way sauce clings so nicely. Chef Alessio Di Micco’s quick and easy shrimp recipe is redolent of the South. I add a few shakes of hot red pepper flakes.

  2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  16 cherry tomatoes

  12 leccino or taggiasca olives (or niçoise), pitted

  16 red shrimp, shelled and deveined

  ¼ pound young squid, cleaned and cut in small pieces

  Salt and pepper, QB

  1 cup fish stock

  1 pound spaghetti alla chitarra

  In a large skillet, in the oil, sauté the tomatoes and olives. Add the shrimp, squid, and seasonings. Add the fish stock, bring to a boil, then immediately lower the heat and simmer for about 12 minutes.

  Cook the pasta al dente in copious salted water. Drain. Serve on a hot plate with the seafood and sauce.

  Ristorante Corteinfiore, Trani, Puglia

  Leaving Trani, we pause in Ruvo, just south and slightly inland. The tree-lined main street is of normal width but the sidewalks are wider than the street; this town favors strolling. People sit on their white iron balconies that front the creamy-stone residences, looking down as their friends and neighbors take a passeggiata.

  Weirdly, as we walk, we see effigies of an old woman in black hanging from electrical wires above our heads. Is that a fish hanging from the wire? She’s holding a spindle. Near the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Jatta, we spot two of them. What’s with that? I’m from the American South; a hanging black figure counts as nightmare.

  * * *

  THE MUSEUM, ON the bottom floor of the Jatta family’s nineteenth-century palazzo, is closed. We weren’t expecting much anyway, just brothers Giovanni and Giulio’s collection of locally discovered artifacts and vases. Two women sit by a stove in a side entrance room and when we ask about opening hours, one of them takes a key and lets us in. Four rooms, just as the paterfamilias collectors left them. I love the tall wooden cabinets, with wavery glass doors and sequential Roman numerals, filled with objects and hand-inked tags. House museums fascinate me; they manifest individual passion. The brothers gathered their trove in the early nineteenth century, long before anyone regulated digging in a field or your backyard and unearthing a pre-Christian frying pan, Roman pins for a cloak, or stunning red clay vases painted with scenes from mythology. There must have been late-night furtive knocks at the door; some stealthy man unrolling a blanket wrapped around a small statue with an archaic smile. The brothers must have been awed by the terra-cotta drinking vessels shaped like animal faces, whimsical and graphic. I imagine Giovanni wandering down here at night with a glass of wine, moving among his cases, taking out a red-orange plate from 340 B.C. and admiring the two painted orate (sea bream) and the flowing tentacles of seppia (cuttlefish) filling the surface, exactly what he had for dinner. He picks up the even more ancient beads—his wife has worn them to celebrations—turning the pre-Roman glass and stones over in his fingers.

  Just as he did, I can run my hands over the amphorae and precious vases displayed outside the cases. Oh, they’re vulnerable, up on pedestals in the open. Watch that backpack! Several kraters (wide-mouthed urns used for mixing water into wine) found here were imported from Greece from the eighth until third centuries B.C. and were used not for all-male symposia parties, as they had been in Greece, but as accompaniments to the departed in their graves. What a pleasure to see these vases up close, the delica
te leaves and spiraling tendrils of a grapevine, a half-reclining nude and winged woman—long before Christian angels—holding aloft what appears to be a casserole topped with a mountain of whipped cream.

  Outstanding, among a lot of outstanding objects, is the vase depicting the death of Talos, who was invulnerable except for a vein in the malleolus—the bony knob on the side of the ankle. Sent by Jupiter to guard Crete, Talos was bewitched by Medea and somehow banged his malleolus on a stone and died—a rather ignominious death for such a hero. His pale body is supported on either side by Castor and Pollux. What dark night yielded this treasure?

  The woman with the key returns after leaving us alone for an hour. She knows everything about the collection, the family, and the gardens behind the villa. On one vase she points out, a serpent twines around a tree, slithering upward to a young woman who holds out a plate to feed him. “The snake and the beauty,” she says, “and we read about this pairing centuries later in the Bible.” Among the iron objects, I see a crusty grill much like my Tuscan neighbors use for veal chops in their fireplaces. The quotidian items bring close the ancient people of Puglia.