… which crossed my mind when we arrived back at the Rome Terminus to connect to a southbound train (Great! song by the way – for all of us boomers – by a classic Canadian rock band, Steel River. When you’re in the mood for an interlude, it’s here. But I digress.)
The Rome rail station, travellers take note, is an excellent place to have a meal while you’re waiting for your train – southbound or northbound. On the upper level, they have a huge multi-station buffet covering just about every kind of food you can imagine, hot or cold, along with some very well-stocked coolers full of some really good beers and wines.
Once aboard – this time on the Frecciarossa AV, which departed to the minute precisely at its scheduled departure time, we sped south towards Naples, covering roughly three times the distance as we had covered from Orvieto to Rome in the same amount of time. The reason for this is that AV is an abbreviation for “Alta Velocità” – “high-speed” in English. And is it ever! A helpful overhead monitor shows you your velocity en route and, at one point, we topped out at 300 km/h.
Even at that, I had time to notice as we passed one of the most famous monasteries in Italy, best known for all the wrong reasons.
During WWII, the 6th century Abbey at Monte Cassino dominated a commanding view of the land approaches to Rome. The Germans, on the defensive as the Allies pushed north, used it as an observation post to keep an eye on the approaching allied armies in order to help them better plan their defence of Rome and as an artillery spotting post to guide their guns in an all-out effort to prevent the Allies from reaching the capital. In one of the saddest examples of deliberate monument destruction in the war, the Allies eventually opted to flatten Cassino by aerial bombardment, rather than risk any more soldiers’ lives trying to take it by means of an infantry assault.
The Abbey on February 15, 1944, after 1400 tons of Allied bombs had done their damage. (Photo: www.monumentsmen.com)
The full story is here. It is liberally laced with ironies, including (i) the German commanders, sensing the likelihood of an Allied bombing mission, saved dozens of truckloads of priceless Abbey artworks, papal documents and library archives when they evacuated them to the comparative safety of the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome; (ii) after the bombing, the shattered rubble provided even better cover for the German defenders. As a result, it took no fewer than four brutal ground assaults until (iii) a Polish unit finally moved onto the hilltop only to discover that, by that point, only 30 German soldiers – too badly wounded to be moved – remained among the Abbey’s ruins. The rest of the defenders had pulled out.
The Abbey today is a beautifully restored structure, but its bitter WWII struggle stands as both a tragedy and a triumphant story of tremendous heroism depending, of course, on whose history you’re reading. Military cemeteries that are the final resting place for soldiers from several nations – one of the biggest is Poland’s – have been added to the surrounding terrain. Even passing at 300 km/h from a couple kilometres away, it was a moving sight to see.
Naples
One of the things we learned on this trip is that most Italians classify themselves first by the region from which they come, rather than as “Italians”, and that there are feelings ranging from a spirit of friendly competition to outright animosity (the kind that leads to violent soccer riots today and, before the unification, outright war) between certain regions. On two separate occasions we were told that the “calmer” part of the country is found northward from Rome, while the “livelier” section flows southward from the same city.
One thing on which everyone agreed when they described this regional difference to us… Naples is pretty much insane.
There are lots of clichés about driving in Italy that, in Naples, are not only true, they are understatements! Our taxi ride from the Naples rail station to our hotel (The Palazzo Turchini on Via Medina) was, from the passenger seat, an exercise in frequently repeated eye-closing (mine, not – thank God – our driver’s) and the discovery that any pavement markings seem to be doing nothing more than serving as attractive graphic street paintings.
The evening we arrived, we met the rest of our group tour and at this point I insist on the blog author’s privilege of a digression to applaud this particular tour company.
Leslie and I have annually attended an Ottawa Christmas house party at a friend’s for years and it was at the 2012 edition that we got talking with another guest about our upcoming trip to Italy, some aspects of whose planning at that time were still in the options-under-consideration stage.
Somewhere during the conversation, she suggested we look into a small-group tour company called Back-Roads of Britain. (Despite their name, they also have packages all over the continent, not just in the UK.) Leslie’s online research, coupled with our party friend’s ringing endorsement, led us to sign on because, as it happened, they had a weeklong tour that included a great many of our “things we wanted to do on this trip” wishes, and a very big “thing we did NOT want to do” – visit the Amalfi coast but NOT by driving ourselves around the region in a rented car.
The next few hundred paragraphs (basically until we get ourselves back to Rome) will be related to the tour we took with this company. We were ten paid tour members typically in the company of at least two guides – the full-time tour organizer and a graduate student in archaeology. Plus a driver for those portions of the tour spent on the road.
Here’s their website’s Canadian front page. Our particular tour was their “Enchanting Southern Italy” program. From this point in the trip diary until we get back to Rome, the organization and planning was all their work. And yes, that was a shameless plug.
So… back to Naples.
Our introductory group event was a sidewalk café dinner gathering over pizza and wine and it wasn’t long before our introductory event began to feel like a class reunion. In addition to Leslie and myself, there was one other Canadian couple, three people from Australia and three Americans (two from California and one from the east coast).
On the recommendation of our waiter, a couple of the pizzas were “Pizza Margherita” and being who I am, I expected to see it arrive festooned with lime wedges and a ring of salt around the outer edge of the crust.
You won’t be surprised to discover it is nothing of the sort and, in fact, comes with a significantly more important pedigree than simply being a popular way to work tequila and lime onto flatbread.
Now you might hear, “crust” and “tomato sauce” and “mozzarella cheese” and “basil”, and think, “Really? McCain’s does that and freezes them rock solid in boxes of four for those desperate nights when you’ve got the munchies and can’t wait for the delivery guy to show up.” Well, the Margherita is actually the signature pizza of Naples and its official preparation is every bit as fiercely regulated as the famous Bavarian purity laws (Reinheitsgebot) that govern the ingredients allowed into German beer.
Its crust is restricted to a specific flour, natural Neapolitan yeast (or brewer’s yeast), sea salt and water (Neapolitan water preferred but others allowed). The mozzarella has to be mozzarella di bufala Campagna. And if you haven’t had authentic buffalo mozzarella, I cannot suggest strongly enough that you put it on your bucket list of foods to try. It has the appearance of an oversized ball of hardboiled egg-white and is so creamy that slicing it releases a small amount of milk. You won’t find it in a generic grocery store; in Ottawa, for example, it requires a specialty cheese shop or a well-stocked Italian grocery, but it is truly worth the hunt. But look at the label carefully; there are quasi bufalas in abundance and some people even claim that the much more widely available bocconcini is simply “baby bufala”. That might be true in Naples and environs, but not on this side of the ocean. So accept no substitute; you’re looking for a label that says “mozzarella di bufala Campagna”.
As an aside (actually, this whole pizza thing is an aside, so never mind) the “buffalo” as Italians understand it is a monstrous and monstrously ugly example of the bovine family.
Personally, I would require an uncommon reservoir of courage just to tuck a milking stool under one of these things – even the girl version (‘cause that’s where the milk comes from, city folk!). Maybe that’s why authentic bufala mozzarella is so darned expensive! (Photo source: www.castlehill.org)
Other components are just as carefully regulated, including the basil and extra virgin olive oil, and of course the tomatoes. (I’m not making this up. If you’re interested, check out the Wikipedia note that describes “Neapolitan pizza”. You don’t ever want to cross the Italian division of the European authentic national food regulatory board, the Specialità Tradizionale Garantita, or STG.) ‘cause they’ll break your kneecaps if you try to make a Margherita ‘za with anything but authentic ingredients.
And finally, not only does the pizza have a fortress of protective regulation, it has a royal history. In 1889, Neapolitan pizza baker Raffaele Esposito baked three special pizzas to mark a visit to the city by King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. (See what’s happening here?) As the story goes, the Queen was especially taken with the simplest of the trio he made because, to her, it evoked the colours of the Italian flag: red (tomato sauce), white (buffalo mozzarella) and green (basil leaves). In return, he named it in her honour and the rest, literally, is history. (“The History of Neapolitan Pizza”, at www.famoso.ca Photo source: www.Italianfoodforever.com)
Every day’s a school day on the internet!
Next day was, I think, planned by our guide as an early test of group dynamics to see how we managed the simple act of keeping together on a city walkabout. I think our post-tour report card likely would have an “F” in the box beside “sticks together”, with the notation, “rather too easily distracted”.
Well, duh! There’s something about being in a bustling city teeming with activity that routinely causes one’s head to snap around every which way, often at the expense of keeping an eye on the direction the rest of the group went – even a small group like ours. By afternoon, our guide Sharon (for the record, an absolutely delightful whip-cracker, and her name is pronounced with the stress on its second syllable – sha-RON) assembled us for the first of what would turn out to be a few “it’s important we try to stick together” reminders. (Frankly I was amazed she managed to assemble us all in one place to get that message across!)
A couple of the highlights on Day 1… Naples has an ancient history, hardly surprising considering that the sheltering Bay of Naples offers an ideal harbour to what has always been a maritime part of the world. In fact, it has been a continuously inhabited city since at least 1500 B.C. Its residents heard sermons delivered by the apostles Peter and Paul, survived the eruption of Vesuvius across the bay in 79 A.D., the fall of the Roman Empire, the Gothic Wars in the mid-500s, the French revolution, the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s and it was the single most frequently bombed city in Italy in WWII.
In the late 1200s, Charles I, an Angevin Duke, was crowned King of Sicily (with which Naples was amalgamated at the time). He relocated his capital from Palermo to Naples and built the Castel Nouvo to mark his rule. That massive fortress still stands today and a brief stop at its huge bronze gates was the first stop on our walkabout.
There are two other highlights to mention in today’s walkabout before we leave this update. Leslie is our resident family art historian and over the decades of our marriage, she has introduced me to some amazing artists, their techniques and artworks in locations as diverse as Paris, New York, Chicago, Montreal, London, Rome and yes, even Ottawa. But I have never before encountered such an incredible representation of stone-carved fabric as I saw when we entered Naples’ Sansevero Chapel Museum in the heart of the “Old City”.
In the middle of this beautiful chapel is a work by a sculptor named Giuseppe Sanmartino called Cristo velato – in English, the “Veiled Christ” – a gorgeous example of the subject we know as a “Pieta”, a representation of Christ after his body has been taken down from the cross. In most, the body is typically shown cradled in the arms of His mother, Mary, but Sanmartino has chosen to cast it as the only figure in the sculpture, draped in its shroud before being entombed.
But it is in the carving of the shroud that the work earns its label among some as “renowned the world over”. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe its effect on the sculpture. So delicate is the stone “fabric” that the brutal wounds the Romans inflicted on the body as Christ was dying on the cross are visible through it. Yet, at the same time, in Christ’s face, one sees almost a repose, a knowledge that, His purpose having been fulfilled in redeeming all of mankind by allowing Himself to be crucified, He could rest.
(Hmmm… obviously, if it is the kind of work that could allow a typically flippant observer like me to become a little philosophical, it’s damned impressive.)
And speaking of “typically”, it is also something that has to be actually seen because no matter how good the camera, the typical two-dimensionality of photography can only hint at the power of this sculpture.
So here’s one image I found online (at www.the-fresh.it) that does provide just such a hint.
Back to flippant.
The Naples National Archaeological Museum is exactly what one would expect in the heart of a region with such an overwhelming body of Greek and Roman antiquities from which to choose for display – with one admittedly giggle-inducing exception. It is also home to the world’s worst-kept secret – a “secret cabinet” that presently is off-limits to minors under 14, unless accompanied by an adult, because of the – not to put too fine a point on it (so to speak) – “priapic” imagery in the sculptures, Pompeii mosaics and “objets d’art” displayed in it.
The cabinet (actually a room) has an almost slapstick history of being opened, closed, opened again, closed and triple-locked, even literally being bricked up in 1849 in the hopes that the corrupting memory of its contents would fade and eventually vanish (Oh yeah, that’s going to happen), all depending on society’s views of morals, censorship, eroticism and pornography each time the rules of “secret cabinet” access were changed.
On a more traditional note, the Museum is particularly renowned as the home of some really beautiful and unbelievably detailed mosaics recovered from the excavated ruins of Pompeii.
Leslie and I ended the day separating ourselves from the group (because we were allowed to do so since the Museum was not all that far away from our hotel and our day was officially concluding with “free time”) and enjoying a relaxing dinner at a wonderful restaurant about a half a block away called the Osteria L’Angolino on the Vico Medina.
There’s the old adage that goes, “When in Rome…” etc. Well, when in the ancient seaport of Naples, order fish. Leslie had a perfect bluefish fillet and I had a perfect tuna steak with which we defied the white wine with fish / red wine with meat custom and ordered a wonderfully robust red, specifically a 2005 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.
That night, we slept like the proverbial logs.
No comments:
Post a Comment