Angelic Annunciation

Outwardly the Church of Santa Maria Annunziata al Meschio doesn’t seem to merit a special visit but its modest neo-classical facade contains within a treasure of renaissance Venetian painting.

On entering the church’s sober interior one’s eye is drawn to the apse.

On the high altar Previtali’s masterpiece, his Annunciation, enchants with its delicate colours, its light-enhanced draperies, the exquisitely drawn faces of the Virgin and the Angel

and, especially, its magically realistic landscape framed by the window of the Virgin’s intimate chamber with its oriental carpet.

Indeed, the greatest of Venetian painters, Titian, would be in the habit of making a special detour from his home in Pieve di Cadore to his commissions in Venice just to see this painting.

Who was Previtali? Known as il Cordeliaghi, Andrea Previtali was born in Brembate, in Bergamo province, around 1480 and died in Bergamo in 1528. Already well-known for his skills as a painter Andrea moved to the artistic powerhouse of Venice where he trained under Giovanni Bellini. His youthful paintings, which include portraits and landscapes, are influenced by Carpaccio, Giorgione and Palma il Vecchio, whom the artist met during his stay at the ‘Serenissima’ republic.

Around 1511 Previtali returned to Bergamo where he carried out four commissions. In 1512 he painted his first important works: the ‘San Sigismondo’ in the church of Santa Maria del Conventino, the ‘Saint John the Baptist and other Saints’, for the church of Santo Spirito and the ‘Pala di Sant’Orsola’ now in the Carrara Academy, for the church of Sant’Agostino.

In 1512 Lorenzo Lotto arrived in Bergamo and Previtali collaborated with him on various projects including the inlaid work of the choir of Santa Maria Maggiore by Giovan Francesco Capoferri.

Previtali’s numerous, mainly religious, paintings are full of refined realism and supreme skillfulness.

Nothing is known about Previtali’s private life: there are no documents indicating marriages and there is no documentation of wills. The only known fact is that he died of the plague on 7 November 1528 in his house near the church of Sant’Andrea in Bergamo.

Fortunately for Londoners one doesn’t have to go far to appreciate Previtali’s sensitive oevre. The following paintings, for example, are to be found in the National Gallery.

• Stories of Damone and Tirsi ((purchase for the BG by Sir Kenneth Clark)
• The Virgin and the child adored by two angels
• The Virgin and the child with the saints John the Baptist and Catherine
• The Virgin and the child with a supplicant friar and St. Catherine
• The Virgin and the child with olive shoot
• Salvator mundi
• Scenes of the Eglogues of St. Theobald

Andrea Previtali, about 1480 – 1528 The Virgin and Child adored by Two Angels about 1505 Oil on canvas, transferred from wood, 67.9 x 93.8 cm Layard Bequest, 1916 NG3111 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG3111

Andrea Previtali, about 1480 – 1528 The Virgin and Child with a Tonsured Supplicant and Saint Catherine about 1505-6 Oil on wood, 53.3 x 69.2 cm Bought, 1862 NG695 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG695

Andrea Previtali, about 1480 – 1528 Salvator Mundi 1519 Oil on poplar, 61.6 x 53 cm Salting Bequest, 1910 NG2501 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG2501

Andrea Previtali, about 1480 – 1528 The Virgin and Child with a Shoot of Olive about 1515 Oil on wood, 50.2 x 66.5 cm Salting Bequest, 1910 NG2500 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG2500

For us, however, the most significant point about the church of Santa Maria Annunziata al Meschio is that it is the Church where my wife, Sandra’s mum was christened.

Troublesome Priests

Canonic (church) law in the Roman Catholic church states that it is the Bishop who appoints a parish priest and certainly not ‘the will of the people’. Hence the rise of often troublesome situations.

Bagni di Lucca suffered one recently in its parish when the newly appointed vicar was accused by his parishioners of favouring radical religious opinions (e.g. ecumenical services with other religions, advanced views on gender etc.). For the somewhat conservative Bagni church goers this was all too much and they complained to the Bishop of Lucca.

The situation was further complicated by the new appointee accusing the former parish priest of interfering in his parochial affairs despite the fact that the previous incumbent was now officiating at a church over thirty miles away. It’s true to say that the former parish priest was very popular and was particularly dexterous in organizing youth and music activities. His ex-parishioners were sorely disappointed at Don R’s departure but he made occasional return trips to meet them.

The difficult event made its way to the newspapers and the local TV station NoiTv; it was only the intervention at Bagni of the bishop of Lucca which has obtained a workable solution to the parishioners’ stand-off. After all, locals still love a church wedding and for a new-born not to be christened would be anathema.

A rather clearer and certainly more intolerable situation occurred when a parish priest from North of the Appennines was found in delicto flagrante with an underage girl in his car. He was relieved of his duties and escaped to a relative’s house in a village near to Bagni. Everyone thought that the priest should be immediately arrested and put on trial for abusing minors (indeed, parents withdrew their children from the local school for fear of this ecclesiastical predator) but this did not happen for months until, recently he was brought to justice and given a long prison sentence.

An incredible situation regarding unpopular and troublesome priests occurred back in 1967 in a village we passed on our recent peregrinations in the mountain regions of the Veneto. Called the Schism of Montaner it led the entire population to renounce their Roman Catholicism and espouse the Greek orthodox religion.

How did all this happen? In 1967 Don Giuseppe Fae’, a very popular priest who had led the partisans against the nazi-fascists during WW2 and who was considered a saint by many, died.

Everyone thought he would be succeeded by his helper and vice-vicar but the bishop (who would later be appointed one of the Church’s shortest lived pope, John Paul I) thought otherwise and appointed a less than popular candidate. The locals were outraged: they barricaded the new priest in his vicarage, there was talk of an armed insurrection and eventually the Bishop turned up, protected by a bevy of carabinieri. The bishop’s answer to the problem was short and sharp: he withdrew the consecrated hosts placed on the parish church’s altar and forbade all priests to celebrate Holy Mass or to administer the sacraments until the Montaner parishioners accepted the new vicar.

The parishioners’ answer was to renounce their Catholic faith. Thanks to a lady who was herself of Greek orthodox persuasion an orthodox priest was invited to the village and converted all the inhabitants to a religion which, ironically, had itself been the product of a schism, this time some hundreds of years previously.

Regrettably, the orthodox priest and his acolytes proved to be less than orthodox in their behaviour and there were instances of drug-dealings and mass sex orgies. Other variants of orthodoxy were tried out: Nubian, Assyrian and even Nestorian. Eventually, a less unorthodox orthodox priest was appointed and the Montaner parishioners returned to a less sinful path. An orthodox monastery was founded which still continues to the present day; indeed a foundation stone for a new cloister was inaugurated in 2018.

We did not have time to investigate the monastery in further detail but looked sadly upon the remains of the original orthodox church which was burnt down, due a short circuit, almost ten years ago.

I was, however, informed that several inhabitants had returned to their Catholic faith and that the previous troubles were just a dim memory. I think part of the reason for this is that religion plays a rather less important part in Italians’ lives than it used to at the time of the scism fifty years ago.

It’s all a bit sad, anyway. There was a time when ‘vox populi ‘ was indeed ‘vox Dei’ but today, with increasing secularism aided by paedophilia scandals in the Church, collapse of recruitment for priests, nuns and monks and the decline of religious axioms had meant that it would be difficult to have entire communities change their other-wordly directions just because they were afflicted by the imposition of a troublesome priest within their parochial boundaries.

Of Storks and Births

In Italy a rosette fixed on a front door signifies a birth in the family: light blue rosette for a boy and pink for a girl. Sometimes a stork makes an appearance too. This was certainly the case with the daughter-made-mum of friends we visited in Italy’s Veneto region. As owners of a considerable vineyard, producing some of the country’s best prosecco, they decorated the approach to their holding with an ample array of rosettes and …. a stork. As it’s been a particularly good year for this bubbly wine, that flowed plentifully.

But why is the stork a symbol of birth? One tells children about that personable bird, making its home on European chimney-tops and carrying the newborn in a bundle to the family, but not everyone knows why the stork has become such an important symbol for births.

For many ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, the stork was considered sacred and was endowed with almost divine characteristics. It was worshipped in ancient Rome where it was associated with Juno, the goddess of fertility and protectress of pregnant women.

At the dawn of Christianity the stork became a symbol of purity and was given the task of hunting snakes which have always depicted sin and debauchery.

The stork’s large wingspan has helped to give the idea of ​​the angelic nature of this extraordinary bird and its disappearance for nine months, when it migrates south for warmer climes in the winter, the length of a normal pregnancy, also enhances the stork’s mythical role.

We have enjoyed stork-watching on the continent but have never come across these birds in the UK except on one rare occasion when a stork took off from a small lake in a Welsh heath. It was a quite unforgettable vision.

STORK

Had you lost your way, mistaken
a wind-tide when I watched you
among Celtic hills far away
and alone in the blue?

You’re quite in the family way;
through the Burgenland
we passed few chimneys near the lake
without your nesting stand.

Untidy heaps yet loved the more
for talismanic force,
no house could be conceived complete
without your vast resource.

Loveable bird, bringer of life
in European plains
Healer of wounds, ender of strife,
through you all earth sustains.

Did you ever then find your way
back to the lake of reeds,
return to favoured chimney stack,
appease our inmost needs?

A Gorgeous Gorge

While visiting friends in North East Italy, yesterday, on a beautifully gold-hued autumn afternoon we explored the Caglieron caves, located in the municipality of Fregona, province of Treviso. Strictly speaking they are not caves but rather a series of cavities created partly by natural erosion activities and partly by human action.

The natural erosion part consists of a deep gorge carved by the Caglieron stream through alternating layers of limestone, sandstone and marl laid down in the Miocene. One can admire numerous waterfalls, some over thirty feet high. In the deepest part of the gorge one can observe large calcareous concentrations which, closing part of the vault, give the whole the appearance of a cave.

 

 

 

The artificial formations are due to the extraction of sandstone blocks which provided the material for the construction of jambs and architraves adorning many buildings in the surrounding area thanks to the stone’s easily workable nature. The particular method of extraction included the creation of inclined columns to support the vault that otherwise would have collapsed. The result is a collection of picturesque artificial cavities, below which the Caglieron stream flows.

 

 

 

 

The whole area can be visited thanks to the creation of a slightly hair-raising path which seems to fly across the gorge and its cavities. We visited after a night of heavy rains so the sound of the caves’ cataracts was especially impressive.

 

 

 

At the end of the trail there’s an old mill converted into a restaurant bar where, on a previous visit to this site we enjoyed delicious wild boar.

The caves are free and always open, although I would hesitate to visit them by night. Watch out for summer events including theatre and parties!

Bagni di Lucca and the End of the Great War

Have you ever noticed this plaque in the foyer of Bagni di Lucca’s town hall? Have you ever stopped to read what’s on it? It’s going to be particularly relevant this November 4^th.

There’s a plaque like this in every commune’s town hall in Italy, often cast using the bronze of captured enemy artillery. This is what’s written on it:

“Comando Supremo, 4 novembre 1918, ore 12 Bollettino di guerra n. 1268

La guerra contro l’Austria-Ungheria che, sotto l’alta guida di S. M. il Re, duce supremo, l’Esercito Italiano, inferiore per numero e per mezzi, iniziò il 24 maggio 1915 e con fede incrollabile e tenace valore condusse ininterrotta ed asprissima per 41 mesi, è vinta. La gigantesca battaglia ingaggiata il 24 dello scorso ottobre ed alla quale prendevano parte cinquantuno divisioni italiane, tre britanniche, due francesi, una cecoslovacca ed un reggimento americano, contro settantatré divisioni austroungariche, è finita. La fulminea e arditissima avanzata del XXIX Corpo d’Armata su Trento, sbarrando le vie della ritirata alle armate nemiche del Trentino, travolte ad occidente dalle truppe della VII armata e ad oriente da quelle della I, VI e IV, ha determinato ieri lo sfacelo totale della fronte avversaria. Dal Brenta al Torre l’irresistibile slancio della XII, della VIII, della X armata e delle divisioni di cavalleria, ricaccia sempre più indietro il nemico fuggente. Nella pianura, S.A.R. il Duca d’Aosta avanza rapidamente alla testa della sua invitta III armata, anelante di ritornare sulle posizioni da essa già vittoriosamente conquistate, che mai aveva perdute. L’Esercito Austro-Ungarico è annientato: esso ha subito perdite gravissime nell’accanita resistenza dei primi giorni e nell’inseguimento ha perduto quantità ingentissime di materiale di ogni sorta e pressoché per intero i suoi magazzini e i depositi. Ha lasciato finora nelle nostre mani circa trecentomila prigionieri con interi stati maggiori e non meno di cinquemila cannoni. I resti di quello che fu uno dei più potenti eserciti del mondo risalgono in disordine e senza speranza le valli che avevano discese con orgogliosa sicurezza.”

(General Armando Diaz)

Here is a translation in English of the ‘Bollettino della Vittoria no. 1268’:

“The war against Austria-Hungary, which the Italian Army, inferior in number and equipment, began on 24 May 1915 under the leadership of His Majesty and supreme leader the King and conducted with unwavering faith and tenacious bravery without rest for 41 months, is won.

The gigantic battle, which opened on the 24th of last October and in which fifty-one Italian divisions, three British, two French, one Czechoslovak and a US regiment joined against seventy-three Austrian divisions, is over.

The lightning-fast and most audacious advance of the XXIX Army Corps on Trento, blocking the retreat of the enemy armies from Trentino, as they were overwhelmed from the west by the troops of the VII army and from the east by those of the I, VI, and the IV armies, led to the utter collapse of the enemy’s front. From the Brenta to the Torre, the fleeing enemy is pushed ever further back by the irresistible onslaught of the XII, VIII, X Armies and of the cavalry divisions.

In the plains, His Royal Highness the Duke of Aosta is advancing at the head of his undefeated III Army, eager to return to the previously successfully conquered positions, which they had never lost.

The Austro-Hungarian Army is vanquished: it suffered terrible losses in the dogged resistance of the early days, and during the pursuit it lost an enormous quantity of materials of every kind as well as almost all its stockpiles and supply depots. The Austro-Hungarian Army has so far left about 300,000 prisoners of war in our hands along with multiple entire officer corps and at least 5,000 pieces of artillery.

The remnants of what was one of the world’s most powerful armies are returning in hopelessness and chaos up the valleys from which they had descended with boastful confidence.

Chief of Staff of the Army, General Diaz”

 

(Scenes from the Battle of Vittorio Veneto)

The plaque declares the victorious end of the Great War for Italy and is especially relevant since this year is the centenary of that occurrence.

(Triumphant Italian troops entering the town of Vittorio Veneto on October 30th 1918) 

How are we to truthfully interpret this inscription, especially beloved by former Bagni di Lucca resident Ian Greenlees? (Do read my post on him at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/r-i-p-ian/ ).

How much of what is written on the plaque is true and how much is fantasy? Clearly the proclamation is highly triumphalist in tone; unsurprisingly so when so much of Italy had suffered long under the Hapsburg regime. It is, however, based on fact and is, indeed, located in place of honour at the ‘Altare Della Patria’, Italy’s wedding-cake like Vittoriano monument in Rome where her unknown warrior is interred.

I have written quite a few posts on Italy’s role in the Great War. The main ones are at:

https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/lest-we-forget/

https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-the-great-war-from-an-italian-perspective/

https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/bagni-di-lucca-and-the-lie-of-war/

One of my post readers, supreme United Kingdom guide and military history expert Stephen Liddell, commented: “I think the Italian role in WW1 is always forgotten outside of Italy, perhaps because they were on the wrong side 25 years later”. Do read Stephen’s book on WW1 available at

Lest We Forget: A Concise History of WW1

The final battle of Italy’s role in the Great War took place between the 24 October and 3 November 1918. It’s called the battle of Vittorio Veneto and forms the most decisive part of the third battle of the Piave.

Let’s remind ourselves of the three battles fought over a river which is sacred to the Motherland and whose waters turned red with the blood of slain soldiers.

First battle of the Piave: November 1917. After the disastrous defeat at Caporetto the Italian army held the line at this river and halted the Austrians’ advance into the Po valley and the industrial towns of northern Italy

Second Battle of the Piave. (Also called by poet and military hero, Gabriele D’Annunzio, ‘the solstice battle’ as it was fought in the middle of June). The Austrian tried again to overcome the Italian Piave line but suffered over 11,000 dead against the Italians’ 8000. More than that, the Austrian army had become exhausted and demoralised. This battle was truly the beginning of the end of the Hapsburg Empire

Third Battle of the Piave. The battle of Vittorio Veneto. The definitive Italian victory fought between 26 October and 3rd November culminating in the entry of victorious troops into a town until then not even familiar to the Italian General, Cadorna, who is supposed to have said “where the f***  is this Vittorio Veneto?” (Actually, Vittorio Veneto is also the birthplace of my mother-in-law for whom, obviously, I am grateful to for having produced my wife, Alexandra.)

(Broader picture of Italian strategy and tactics in the third battle of the Piave)

It’s important to understand that other factors other than sheer good commanding and outstanding bravery won this battle for Italy. These are:

1. The Austrians had become exhausted and demoralised by three years’ war against Italy.
2. The diverse populations of the Austrian empire Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Rumanians and, especially, Hungarians were deserting the Austrian army and supporting the independence of their own ethnic groups. Indeed, there were Czech soldiers fighting on the Italian side.
3. Germany had asked extra troops from Austria to support its Western front, especially since the yanks had entered the war in 1917.
4. The new emperor, Charles, I was desperate to end the war and sued for an Armistice with the allies in mid-1918 but without success.
5. The Austrian nation was running out of food and had to import supplies from Germany.
6. The Italians had to win the war by the end of 1918. The commander of Italian forces, General Cadorna was prudent saying that a major assault would not be possible until 1919 as the army was not sufficiently prepared. However, allied pressure, the thought that an armistice might be granted without a final victorious battle (and diminish Italian influence at the subsequent peace treaty) and, above all, that Italy was running out of cannon fodder to recruit – it was now 18 year olds who were being conscripted.
7. The Italians were supported in the battle by allied divisions. As the victory inscription states, the Italian army was joined by “three British, two French, one Czechoslovak and a US regiment “. I rejoice in the fact that the Brits were on the Italian side in this war (but sadly not in the next). The principal commanders of the British Expeditionary Force (which friend David Reid was kindly enough to bring to my attention) were Rudolph Lambart, 10th Earl of Cavan and Italian Enrico Caviglia (who spoke excellent English and was subsequently made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath by King George V.)

(Commanders Caviglia and Cavan)

Last month we actually passed through Vittorio Veneto. (See my post on the town’s patron saint Augusta at https://longoio3.wordpress.com/2018/10/26/my-story-of-abuse-by-augusta/ ). Throughout the year the town has been commemorating the battle which had finally put it on the map. Various regiments from the bersaglieri to the alpini to the cavalleria to the corazzieri to the fanteria have paraded in Vittorio Veneto and there will be a major display on 4^th November to mark the hundredth anniversary of the end of the Great War for Italy. I wish I could be there for that!

Meanwhile Bagni di Lucca is commemorating the momentous event that occured on November 4th one hundred years ago with this programme:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My History of Abuse, by Augusta

Hi. I am so glad you have climbed all those steps and stopped at all those shrines to come and see me in my lovely chapel which dates back at least a thousand years.

My name is Augusta. Please cancel from your brain any memory of the formidable Aunt Augusta in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of being Earnest’ for I am a quite different kettle of fish.

I am the daughter of Matrucco, one of Alaric’s captains when the Visigoth king invaded the Italian peninsula. Matrucco established himself in a fort on Mount Marcantone in Treviso province and became known for his despotism and cruelty, especially towards Christians. My life, as you’ll find out, was to especially suffer because of this.

My mother’s pregnancy proved very difficult and so she was taken to the more comfortable surroundings of a loyalist’s castle near the town of Fregona. I was born there in 410 but, sadly, mum died in childbirth. My father was evidently filled with grief for he truly loved my mother and gave me the name of Augusta as a sign of good luck, for the name was given to the daughters of Roman emperors and means ‘magnificent’.

Although my father didn’t believe in Jesus Christ I was baptized by a hermit who lived not far from the castle of Serravalle. From an early age I practised the teachings of the Gospel and helped and consoled as far as I could all those Christians who were being persecuted by my dad. Some of these Christians escaped death by miracles attributed to me!

My father tried to tell me off but I defended my faith. He then decided to imprison me in a small room but I refused to change my mind and my faith. Then, horribly, he hired a local dentist who came with his instruments and had him pull out all my teeth to spoil my beauty. I was locked up again.

My teenage life was largely spent being imprisoned and then tortured. Then the ogre of my father, for the redemption of whose soul I prayed daily passionately, decided to send me to the stake to be burnt alive. But the blood of Jesus, our Saviour, kept me from being touched by the flames and I miraculously emerged unharmed.

Unrepentant, Matrucco then had me tied to a wheel and thrown down from a nearby hill. Because he was such a powerful despot there was no-one to step forwards and plead for me. But God, in his infinite love, preserved my life yet again. At this stage my dad went wild with anger and ordered his chief executioner to behead me. It was, thus, that I finally found myself among the saints and angels in the kingdom of the Lord.

Forgiveness is a great virtue and I forgave my father for the horrible life he’d given me on earth and for his abuse against, not only my innate freedom of thought, but my sex too,

From my forgiveness I saw Matrucco slowly realise what he’d done and he finally repented. He buried my body with dignity in the place you can see now. Matrucco then self-flagellated himself with remorse, accusing himself of being the most evil being on the planet. He subsequently left the area where I’d been born to travel back north to find a little peace in the Germanic lands where he had been brought up in. If God is great then he will have surely given Matrucco at least a little peace. I hope that all those men who abuse and kill women today may realise, like my father,  what they have done before they die.

Incidentally every saint is a patron of some cause. I am the patron saint of all those who suffer from diseases of the head. These could range from a simple headache to that spreading syndrome of your times, psychological ailments and maladies of old age. In fact, if you go behind the altar where now I lie you’ll find a stone with a hole in its centre. Place your head in that hole and all ills will disappear from you and you will feel as if you’ve never suffered from any mental anguish.

 

Praise his Holy Blood,

gaze upon his scarred body:

as I was, be saved…

 

La Serenissima Fights Again

Napoleon (the emperor of France, not our dear cat who died last year on December 17th), is a figure who is regarded positively by most Lucchesi. His sister, Elisa, was appointed Princess of Lucca (indeed the first paragraph of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ directly refers to this fact) and in this role assuredly put the city back on the world map. Elisa held a magnificent court and ordered many urban and social projects for the benefit of her principality. For example, the ‘Piazza Grande’, also known as Piazza Napoleone and where the city’s summer festival is held, is due to Elisa (although two ancient churches and many houses were demolished to create the square).

Other projects include the beautifully restrained neo-classical Porta Elisa and the beginning of an arcaded street which would have connected the gate to piazza Napoleone.

The Luccan respect towards and interest in the Corsican is reflected to this day in the conferences and events held by the Fondazione Ragghianti in its attractive headquarters in the ex-Clarissan nuns’ convent near Porta Elisa. I have been to several of these and found them always full of interest. (See, for example, my post at

https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/200-years-after-waterloo-napoleon-return/).

Napoleon is, however, held in the opposite regard by the inhabitants of ‘La Serenissima’, the honorific title given to the former Venetian Republic. Bonaparte, then not yet emperor, destroyed a nation that had a glorious history dating back to the time when a group of refugees found protection from barbarians in a group of marshy islets set in a lagoon and, from these humble beginnings, began to build a trading and cultural country that eventually extended down the Dalmatian coat to Cyprus and, beyond, to the Crimea.

Napoleon has never been forgiven for his action by the inhabitants of the Veneto region. He brought no benefits to them. He put Lucca on the map, but he removed Venice from it.

The end of La Serenissima, the most serene republic of Venice, influences today’s Italian politics. Like Catalonia in the Iberian peninsula, there is a movement for the independence of Veneto: the area has its own distinct language, which is not merely another dialect but has a great literary past. (Just mention Goldoni). As for music, Venice invented not only opera but the concerto – just consider Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’.

Indeed, the present populist government in Italy has its roots with the ‘Lega’ in these parts. There are historical reasons why a nation destroyed by the French, subsequently sold to the Austrians, only joined to Italy after two wars, 1866 and 1915-8, and then just partly, because its Dalmatian territory was given to Yugoslavia, should harbour such resentments.

Such negative feelings, however, were drowned by pride in having fought bravely against Napoleon and winning two battles against the French before the final terrible defeat led to the death knell of ‘La serenissima’ and the scandalous 1797 treaty of Campo formio which formalised the end of the Venetian Republic.

(Napoleon at the time of his Italian Campaigns)

For the fairy-tale palace where the last doge of Venice, Ludovico Manin, died see my post at

Where Venice’s last Doge died, where Napoleon stayed and where Sting played

This pride was fully evidenced by the recent meeting we came across quite by chance, while on the former republic’s territory, of the re-formed regiment which had fought so valiantly against the enemy.

Counting a total of 120 soldiers, including some women, the faithfulness of this re-enactment society towards the apparel and equipment of the late eighteenth century was astounding. The details were quite marvellous!

Here are a few of my photos to show you why:

The fall of La Serenissima is surely one of the major tragedies to have hit the ‘bel paese’ of Italy. Such, however, is the inevitability of history from which few people ever learn and from which ever more nations repeat its errors.

A Missile Base Turns into a Peace Park

The Pizzoc is a mountain in the Treviso Pre-Alps. It is 1,565 metres high (5134 feet), one of the highest points in Treviso Province in the Veneto Region of northern Italy.

It’s what I would call a mountain for the lazy (useful if one has an aged parent in tow) as its top can be reached by a hair-raising but stunningly beautiful road.

 

 

We visited the Pizzoc earlier this month when Autumn tints were beginning to show their full beauty. The majesty of leaf colours was a wonder to behold.

On the top of the Pizzoc (etymologically “Spizt Hoch”, “high peak” in the Cymbric language spoken by the teutonically descended forresters who still live locally in their own villages there) is the Piazza della Pace (peace square), used as a viewpoint and marked by a cross and an altar.

Here, from 1962, during the period of the Cold War, a missile radar base was established in connection with the launch base located nearby. Operationally closed in July 1977, it was definitively abandoned on August 21st, 1979.

The ex-base site is an excellent vantage point from which to view the Alpago mountains, the lakes of Revine and Santa Croce and the dolomitic Col Visentin-Monte Cesen ridge.

On clear days the view ranges from the Gulf of Trieste to the Euganean Hills and the Venetian Lagoon.

Although a bright blue day our view was not of the clearest. It was still wonderful to be there, however. Even at this height it was hot enough to be wearing a T-shirt.

It’s sad how many beautiful places in the world are disfigured by military establishments. I think of Salisbury plain, for example, and certain areas of the Dorset coast.

Paradoxically, however, the exclusion of the public has preserved nature in these places meant for defence and destruction.

I think also of another missile-tracking radar station, that established on Britain’s remotest island, St Kilda, now belonging to the National Trust for Scotland and unpopulated on a permanent basis since 1930. We were fortunate enough to be on a SNT work party last century and it was truly difficult to believe that this wildest and loneliest of places was used for a weapon that, in the wrong hands, could spell the end of life as we know it on our blue planet.

Here are some photos from that unforgettable time of our lives.

Peace replaces war,

the land returns to its birth:

primaeval nature.

More on Castelfranco Veneto

I’ve already mentioned our second visit to Castelfranco Veneto magnificent walled town at https://longoio3.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/a-giorgione-beauty/ .  I promised more photographs of this highly attractive north Veneto town. So here they are for your delectation.

Hope you can make it there one day, even just for the fabulous Giorgione painting in the Duomo:

Notice also that in the height of the Italian tourist season you can come across quiet places. The worst mistake for any traveller to Italy is to hit such places as Venice and Florence in the height of summer. Not only are they intolerably hot but they are massively crowded and overpriced. Choose autumn or spring for these towns. Place like Castelfranco Veneto; however, can be enjoyed at any time of the year .We ate rather well at the Torre restaurant at Pizzeria at Castelfranco, just by the walls. (Although I’m sure you’ll find several other equally good places to eat.

Note also the opening hours for Giorgione’s house (which contains further of his works).

 

 

Montagnana’s Magnificent Walls

Why are there so many magnificent fortified towns in the Veneto region? In our previous posts we’ve mentioned our visits to Castelfranco Veneto, Monselice and Este, quite apart from the several others we’ve seen but not yet written about.

The answers are easy to see. The Veneto region lies at the crossroads of three major invading powers: the Saracenic, the Hapsburg and the north Italian Visconti and Sforza. Venice itself, it will be remembered, was founded on the natural defences of lagoon islands by fleeing refugees as a protection against invading goths. When Venice developed and expanded its maritime republic, its outposts away from the seashore needed to have equally strong defences – especially if they were situated on a vast flat alluvial plain with no protective hills on which to perch fortifications.

It would be difficult to say which are the finest fortifications in Veneto but the detour to Montagnana suggested by guests from that same town was more than worth the extra time added on our journey.

Imagine an almost Disneyland-like walled mediaeval town and there, in Montagnana, you have it for real.

It’s no wonder Montagnana, part of the Venetian republic until 1797, was never conquered!

Enclosed in a quadrilateral 600 by 300 metres, giving a perimeter of two kilometres, Montagnana’s walls are clearly not as extensive as Lucca’s but they are much older, dating from the fourteenth century and, thus, before the development of firepower changed the whole logistics of city fortifications.

Montagnana’s walls are eight metres high and a metre thick and are fully battlemented, so that archers could protect themselves from one arrow launch and the next. Every 60 metres there is a tower around 19 metres high. There are 24 in all! Encircling the walls is a vallum, or moat, over 30 metres wide, much of which is still filled with water from the river Frassine.

Within the walls are launching areas for catapults, armament storage depots and accommodation for the military. There are even extensive vegetables gardens, essential for withstanding a long siege.

Even if the invading forces managed to get anywhere near the magnificent Montagnana walls they would have had to go past four outer bulwarks and, if that wasn’t enough, wade through malaria-infested swamps and flooded fields.

Entry to the town is through the gates of San Zeno castle, controlling the route to Padua, and the Rocca degli Alberi, controlling the westward route to Verona. Later gateways were opened much later when the railway was built…

We didn’t have much time to visit the town enclosed within these superlative walls. But it looked architecturally rich with fine palaces and glorious churches, some of which contained paintings by such greats as Veronese.

I think we’ll definitely have to return to the area for there is still another extraordinary walled town we have to visit, Cittadella.

I’d never imagined such glorious wealth of walled towns in the Veneto region of Italy. I should have known better of course. After all who hasn’t delighted in such places as Verona and Padua? The difference here, however, is that the walls stand clear in their own ample ground, (rather like Lucca) and are not smothered by later accretions.

O for a time when the ultimate development in defence technology were such things. Could there possibly be anything approaching such beauty when talking about nuclear bunkers or missile stations