Day 17: UNESCO site Matera, the cave-dwellers

September 25, 2015December 20, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

Matera is one of the most interesting sites in Italy, if you enjoy history. The town is literally 9000 years old, one of the oldest in the world. It is home to one of the earliest sites of human habitation in Italy, and is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Because it’s a living town, there’s no admission free, and no waiting times. There’s a public parking garage about two blocks away from the site, and an official information booth where they give out maps is right on the corner by the garage.

Across the valley, you can still see some of the caves, that were abandoned centuries ago. People started living in the caves, and just never left the area. They just kept improving their housing.

What’s even better about it, is that it is still inhabited. No thanks to the Italian Government, which tried to move out all the residents in 1952, embarassed by the poverty there, and the possibility that this was not the image they wanted of modern Italy. Luckily, a lot of people refused to move.

The settlement started with people living in caves, which they hollowed out and improved as the centuries passed. When they learned to work wood, they made doors; when they learned how to built cisterns under the floor, they built cisterns which held the rainwater for the families within. It may be the only place in the world where a person can boast of living in the same place as his forebears from 9000 years ago.

Some of the habitations look half like caves, and half like stone houses, with typical Italian red roofs, chimneys, and even TV aerials sprouting from the roofs. No satellite dishes that I saw. It’s clear that people make themselves comfortable with outside seating areas, modern doors and windows and build extensions onto their houses with the same stone.

One part of the “Sassi”, as it’s called is all residential, with a few small restaurants along the main road to cater to tourists. Another area, still built out of the caves, contains hotels and businesses.

One of the caves, not lived in any more, has been outfitted with the household goods that were used here in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There would have been one large bed for the couple, and a few pieces of furniture, mostly with large drawers which would be used as beds for small children. A hen and her chicks would live under the raised bed, and there was a small stable area for a donkey or mule, and perhaps a goat.

Churches are also carved out of the rock, and contain frescoes which are still quite beautiful. In one church, I saw frescoes dating back to the 11th century. Photography was forbidden, and there was a small entrance fee to this and some other sites, to aid with preservation. These “Ruperian churches” can be found around the area, although we didn’t have time to discover exactly where, but I did see a sign as we left the town, advertising a church with a tour bus pulling into the driveway.

In another cave, the people had stored snow during the winter months for use in healing and relief from the heat in the summers. Clean snow was kept for the humans and the dirtier snow for animals.

It is a fascinating site, well worth a visit, and took us so far south that on our way back we saw the Gulf of Taranto in the distance, the body of water between the toe and the heel of the boot of Italy.

On the way home, I decided to stop for gas, and we found a gas station-coffee shop-snack bar-gambling parlor and bar – all rolled up into one. A few men were off to the side, betting at the machines. Two men were drinking beer, a couple of women had expresso at the bar. We and another couple were having sandwiches. Right beside us was a shelf selling 5 liters of wine for about $10. I noted that one of the wines was labeled “rough”. Obviously where the locals come.

Day 16: Grisolia and the beaches of Calabria,

September 25, 2015December 17, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

I wasn’t in the mood to drive much today, so we explored the local area. First of all we drove up to Grisolia, the hilltop town you can see from the piazza of Maiera’. It is separated by a deep and just about impassible ravine from Maiera’, so the only thing to do was plot another course down the mountainside and up the next.

Grisolia is clearly much larger than Maiera’, but not nearly as nice, although probably as ancient. We drove in, parked, walked about 50 meters past grey buildings with crumbling exteriors and weather-beaten, unpainted doors. My enthusiasm for the project had folded, and I suggested that we just bag it. So we did, and headed down to check out the beach.

The beach looked blue, warm and inviting from our hotel.

From the shore, it looked calm out to sea, but the waves pounded the shore with a thundering boom, and looked very rough. How rough it was, I found out when I waded out into the surf up to my knees. The force of the surf all but knocked me over, although the water was not cold at all. There was only a little sand, the rest of the beach was stones ground fine from the rocky shore by the sea. It was hard to walk on. Without sandals, it hurt your feet, and with sandals, the stones got caught under your feet and hurt, too.

The beach experience on these shores is very different from that in the USA. It seemed to me to point to a very different philosophy about the ownership of natural resources in a country. There seems to be little or no idea that the shoreline, for example, should be owned by the public. Theoretically while this is true, it is in fact under the control of the government, which uses this resource to garner more income, rather than for the enjoyment of the public. Sorry, public, you have to pay.

As in Castiglioncello, a lot of the shoreline was given over to beach concessions, where you have to rent your chair or lounge, and you get an umbrella. Since it was a weekday, the concessions were deserted, but so was the beach, except for one group of women with a small boy. We had brought our bathing suits to Italy, and were hoping for another swim, but it was clearly not a swimming beach.

Day 15: Verbicaro, Calabria

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

Tom’s grandparents on one side came from Italy; his grandmother came from the small hilltop town of Verbicaro, which is why we were in this neck of the woods in the first place. Having got a good night’s sleep, Tom got out the GPS and plotted a route back down our mountain and up the next.

Approaching the town, it looked very lovely, but the outskirts weren’t attractive. Lots of blocky apartment buildings with fading paint stood around like strangers with nothing to do. Strangers who didn’t know each other, either, because there was no cohesion to it. We found a church in that neighborhood and looked in. The parish offices seemed to be in a building around the back, and we went back and rang both the doorbells, to no avail. I was mentally practicing what I could say in Italian to explain our presence on the doorstep.

Having had no luck, we descended into the older part of town, looking for the town cemetery. We thought we might find Tom’s great-grandparents, whose names we knew. We got as far as a small piazza, but then could drive no further. We asked directions, and found out I had the wrong pronounciation for “cemetery”, but finally got directions, and found the place outside town, down a badly-maintained slip road.

There was no sign with a phone number to call for information, so we went in and browsed, “Hi, anyone home?” A small older center of the place held a grassy area with older, simple iron crosses. Some had names, but they were either rusted away completely or so hard to read, it was hardly worthwhile.

All around, like the more affluent neighbors of the suburbs, stood family mauloleums, some very eleborate with standing areas inside and glass doors; some with marble slabs announcing the name of the deceased within. In some cases the tombs were so tightly packed together that you had to kind of slide sideways and crouch down to read the names. We came across some familiar family names, but no hits.

I had picked up a Sunday bulletin in the church and once we got back to the hotel, I called the number. Unfortunately, I got a recorded message which was so fast, I couldn’t understand a word. I got hold of the number of the Diocese, and tried to call there, hoping there would be cemetery records which might help. No answer at all.

Feeling a little let down by the whole thing, we decided to let it go until we could pursue family research from home.

We were beginning to be a little disappointed by the appearance of Italian houses and villages. Maiera’ was apparently an exception, being well-kept and even decorated, with a sense of identity. We noticed that houses we passed seemed to have no attention paid to their outside areas; curbs were crumbling, weeds grew everywhere, paint was fading, peeling or non-existant. There was a sameness to the styles that reminded us of the shapes of ancient Roman houses; maybe all the decor and sense of comfort is inside? The outsides were very uninviting, in any case. It was late afternoon by this time, and we decided to call it a day.

Day 14: Calabria

September 25, 2015December 16, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

We got to the hotel last night after a spine-tingling drive up hairpin curves after dark. We were greeted at the hotel by oil lamps set on the ancient stone steps, like medieval travelers arriving at a hostelry.

The village is called Matiera’, founded by the Greeks at the time when southern Italy was a Greek colony.

Our room is a marvel of modernity, high ceilings, but not a lot of floor space. The space problem has been solved by creating a very modern sleeping loft with a king-sized bed. The bathroom is attractive and comfortable, and there’s the original balcony, its stone floor set securely into the wall with a stunning view of the plain below and the sea.

We hadn’t had dinner, and were starving, but I wasn’t up to driving around looking for food. We were asked what we would like, and asked for bread, cheese and some meat. There arrived a plate with a selection of cheeses, prociutto, bread and a plate of fresh fruit.

In the morning, we explored this ancient town, which has the flair of an artists’ colony. The main road (a few residents with small cars drive it), and the pedestrian streets are all paved attractively with stone and tile. Ceramics are imbedded along the walls of houses, which are well-kept.

From the tiny piazza at one end of the town, where I sweated out my ten-point car turn of the night before, you can see the next hilltop town of Grisolia, separated from our mountain by a scary ravine. At another side of the town, we discovered another view of the sea from someone’s patio.

Day 10: Naples Day 4 – Pompeii

September 18, 2015December 20, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

You would think we would have made the connection between cruise ships and the crowds on Capri, but we didn’t. So, still clueless, we headed out to Pompeii on the Circumvesuviana Rail Line. You can get this train from the main “Garibaldi” station in the heart of the city. It was walking distance for us, although I have to admit we wimped out and took a cab.

This is a suburban commuter train with several lines, cheap and un-airconditioned, that connects among other places, Sorrento with Naples. Along this line you can get off at Herculaneum (Ercolano) and Pompeii (Pompei). The trip costs 2.60 euro each way, a bargain, and takes about 35 minutes. You get out at the stop Pompei, Villa dei Misteri. Then you wander about in a state of confusion for a few minutes, while hawkers size you up, figure out your native language, and yell at you in your language that there are tours in (insert language here).

On the train, it was hot and crowded, and we were treated to the sight of very run-down apartment blocks and abandoned buildings, covered often with graffiti at the beginning of the trip. Gradually the buildings became cleaner and more comfortable-looking, and the Bay of Naples appeared in the near distance. A group of Roma (I think) got onto the train with a boom box, and kept time to the very loud music with tambourines and bongos. It was deafening, and the Italians rolled their eyes as a man moved down the aisle holding a plastic cup and asking for money. The tourists avoided looking at him and held onto their bags, unnecessarily, I thought. I rocked back and forth, trying to catch the breeze from the half-opened windows.

When we arrived and walked the short distance to the entrance, we found a very long line already in place. Our friends were disgusted, and said there was no way they were waiting that long in the heat, but Tom and I really wanted to see the excavations, so we queued up, and immediately discovered that we were moving quickly. As well as that, you could hide under the adjacent hedge and escape the worst of the heat. I hid.

Admission is 13 euro, free for EU citizens under 25. We got an official map, bought a guide book and set out.

You have to watch your step on the ancient stones of the street, which also has a sidewalk on both sides, here and there with modern repairs. Pedestrians could use stepping stones set at intervals, to cross the street during flooding, or to avoid dirt and manure from animals. In many places, the ruts left by centuries of carts are still visible. (The pattern of the street paving stones is similar in Italian cities today – stones are placed at angles, which makes it safer for wheels to avoid getting stuck in parallel ruts. I saw this in Florence in the old city as well.)

We walked down the main street, which led to the Forum, a huge space. The size of it surprised me at first, until I considered that this was really the political and business center of the city, and its size indicated its importance. Some of the original marble paving was still intact, in other places simpler stone paving. We found one of the biggest complexes of baths, with separate areas for men and women. The ceilings were intact here, and considerable remains of beautifully delicate carvings and wall paintings.

The Forum

The Baths

Outside was the remains of a swimming pool, originally a meter and a half deep.

There was a remains of a restaurant/snack bar, with the serving counter inset with terracotta pots for the food. An area in the back would have offered a seating area for customers, and the owner and his family would probably have lived upstairs. I imagined the seating area, which was not roofed, covered with an arbor of vines for shade.

It was hard to figure out what was what. One map had numbers of buildings up to 45, and we found buildings with numbers into the 60’s. Then we found the same number again on a different building. We gradually realized that the city, for modern interpretation, is divided into sections. I have no idea if this corresponds to an original way of figuring addresses. We were both confused, and wondered if we should have got a tour.

There were crowds everywhere. Masses of people were trotting along behind guides with umbrellas or other long items held aloft for identification. I hate the idea of tours. We tried to get to see the brothel, obviously a highlight for tours, but the lines were too long and we were too hot. The reality of the cruise ships started to dawn on us.

Amphitheater Great Palestra

We did see the larger amphitheater. Unfortunately, a rather ugly plywood pyramid had been built smack in the middle, with an exhibition of art inspired by Pompeii, but its placement made it impossible to get a good all-round view of the theater. Behind it was the Palestra, the Roman equivalent of organized youth sports, where young men got exercise, learned sports, and were taught to value Roman and Imperial ideals.

The necropolis

We found the necropolis at the edge of the city, and tried to discipher the inscriptions with our high school Latin, with limited success. I was amazed I could figure out anything, and thought nice things about my Latin teacher.

The crowds were thinning out, so we could finally get some good photos of the streets of the city, much more evocative without crowds of modern tourists. I had got to the end of my tether, and Tom wasn’t looking too good either. We followed the exiting masses and got some cold drinks before climbing back onto the Circumvesuviana, and heading home to our apartment.

Days 7 & 8: Naples, Days 1 & 2

September 13, 2015December 20, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

At 6:20 a.m., we left the apartment, and hauled our cases down the street about 3 blocks to the train station. We had reserved seats for the 5 1/2 hour trip to Naples, and were glad we did.

We had reserved our seats months in advance, and got our seats for 9 euro each (about $11), an incredible bargain. In general, train travel in Italy is very cheap, especially if you can plan ahead. Another bonus: having reserved online, all you need to show the conductor is a copy of your email confirmation from Trenitalia, the Italian Rail Service, showing your booking number. No standing in line or thumping the ticket machine.

We also learned how to use the coffee machine on the train platform, which I foresee being useful.

My rudimentary Italian has proven useful on this trip, and it proved so again when we got to Naples. The cab driver didn’t know exactly where our address was until I sputtered something about it being “next to the Duomo” and having a “Monumento” in it. Having arrived, we were faced with a huge, intimidating door with a small people door cut into it, locked tight. I had been told that someone would be there to let us in, but how to find her? Rob tried calling her number, I tried, and all we got was a message telling us in two languages that “this number has not yet been assigned”. Click.

I channeled my inner Neapolitan, and yelled up at the lower balcony. A head appeared, and someone said, “Angela?” “Si”, I yelled, and a few minutes later, Giovanna let us in. Our apartment is a bit quirky, but very nice. We have three bedrooms (one single, which we don’t need), and two bathrooms. We have wifi, and a nice TV with lots of stations, one even in English. The only problem is the curved archway which isn’t high enough to walk through at the side. The men have found this out through experience.

We have two balconies which look out, not onto the street, as you would think, but onto a courtyard which serves as the entrance for a hotel, and another balcony directly on the piazza. Cardinal Sforza has a huge monument to himself in the piazza, which rather cuts off our view, and takes up about a quarter of the entire piazza. It’s all situated on an ancient street called Via dei Tribunali, which was one of the three central Roman streets crossing the city in parallel in Imperial times, from east to west. As such, most of the oldest buildings and archaealogy finds are located here.

The old city is gritty and run-down, smelly and has an edgy, slightly dangerous feel. I like it. Everybody yells. Apparently I was behaving absolutely in line with everybody else by screaming in the street. Smaller streets branch off the Via dei Tribunali north and south, approximately, and they are densely populated with immigrants, and I would say it approximates the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the 20th century. You look into apartments as you pass, and there’s a table, one light, the door open and people sweating over dinner.

The people are intense, good-looking and dark. They crowd the streets, cars zip down our street one way; there’s no sidewalk, only cobbles, and barely room to step around people out of the traffic. Motorcycles roar up and down the streets at all hours, and the Duomo sets up a racket of booming bells, right into the bedroom, at six every evening, and in the mornings on Sunday. Laundry hangs from balconies, and I can attest to the fact that this is practical. It’s right there for you, and dries fast. Why not?

Audrey and I had been chomping at the bit to do our own laundry, and there was a washing machine in the apartment. Unfortunately it came with rudimentary and confusing directions – in Italian, of course – and it didn’t take us long to run into one snag that almost had us stumped. It appeared that once the cycle was over, you couldn’t open the door to liberate the dripping contents without getting the procedure correct. Click a certain knob, walk away for about fifteen minutes, then come back and open the door. We found this out, after I got the door open prematurely and got water all over the bathroom floor. Durp.

Today being Sunday, day 2 here, I trotted around the corner to the Duomo for nine o’clock Mass in the Chapel of San Gennaro. S. Gennaro was a martyr who was executed in Pozzuoli in 305 A.D., and whose blood apparantly liquifies miraculously every year on September 19. That happens to be next weekend, the day we’re supposed to leave Naples. Pozzuoli isn’t Naples, but no matter, close enough. Naples has adopted him.

The Chapel is beautifully painted and full of items of the “Treasure of San Gennaro”, silver candelabra, and other items of value and art. Look at the floor of the photo on the right, below. Even the floor is inlaid with three colors of marble in a precise design.

When I got “home”, we set off for the Naples Archaeological Museum. It has a great collection of ancient sculpture and some Egyptian artifacts, as well as an exhibition of hundreds of items from Pompeii, which were looted by collectors, before people realized that we would all understand much more about these things if we could see where they had been, in context. The mosaics were very intricate at times, being made up of so many tiny pieces that if you stand just a few feet away, they are as subtle as paintings. I hadn’t realized that mosaic had ever been used so finely.

The museum had a lot of interesting items, but was poorly curated. There was no guide to the museum, except for one we found afterwards in the bookshop, for 12 euro. Since the entrance had cost 13 euro already, it’s unlikely we would have forked out so much for a guide. But all that was available was a poorly xeroxed plan of the museum, with numbers in each “room”, and no indication of what might be there. I had to go back to ask what floor we were on, since you can enter on so many levels in these huge Italian buildings, I couldn’t tell if I was on the ground floor or the first. There were no signs directing you to one floor or the other, you just had to wander around. Having said that, it was definitely worth a trip, and I would even put it at the top of the list.

All of these items came from Pompeii. The last image is of braziers and stoves found in one of the houses. Amazing that they should still be intact.

When we came out of the museum, we were accosted by a well-spoken young man, who offered to walk us to the restaurant he worked for, where, he assured us, we would have a great lunch. Rob and Audrey agreed to go with him, so we tagged along, and he was right; we were off the main road in a quiet side street, in the shade, and had salads and light, white wine.

Then we went home and I had a two-hour nap. Tomorrow: Capri.

Day 3: Lucca

September 9, 2015December 20, 2015 / angelahynes / Leave a comment

Today we were ready for a more relaxing day, so it was suggested that we visit Lucca, a walled city founded by the Romans (who else?), and completely intact as it was during the Renaissance. The walls are brick and high, and you enter through one of several gates that give you an idea of how strong the fortifications would have been. When we left, we passed through two layers of walls at least twenty feet thick, lined with cobbles, and sloping downward out of the town, which would have been a very hard push uphill by armed men. But I digress.

We had taken the train from Livorno via Viareggio. Luccanis one of the most beautiful walled cities in Tuscany you can find. It’s definitely worth a trip.

Near St. Martin’s church

After entering the city, we headed toward a campanile we could see above the rooftops, and were suddenly in a huge piazza with St. Martin’s church at the side. A street musician was playing and his voice echoed around the piazza, rather amplifying the space. I could imagine velvet-hatted businessmen in the fourteen hundreds hurrying across, to disappear into one of the narrow alleys at the end.

You can just make out the original Roman street plan, from the fact that the two main streets intersect at right angles, but the rest of the town developed piazzas, and curving streets that seem to go in circles. Don’t try this without a map. The town is small by modern standards, but you can still get confused. The churches are interesting: St. Martin’s is white marble with green marble inlay, and a campanile that gets more intricate the higher up you look. In my photo above and across the piazza is a house I am convinced is very old; the stone window sills were word down almost nothing in spots. Shopping in the town offers nice leather goods at quite good prices; the olive oil from the region, as well as Tuscan biscuits, cookies and honey are offered at shops that have narrow fronts, but are surprisingly large, because the buildings are so deep.

The city walls are so wide, they are wide enough for a park that circles the city. You can rent bikes, including tandem bikes, and I saw families pedaling a kind of car with a perch up front for babies and small children. Lots of walkers were out with dogs. You have to watch out for the bikers. They are too polite to ring a bell at you, so they continually almost run you down. From this height, you can see that some of the houses have large gardens surrounded by their own high walls; other buildings have terraces and balconies hung with flowers to catch the breezes.

It was a nice, relaxing day. We stopped for a leisurely lunch, and got back to Livorno in time for another big family dinner. I have officially reached my gustatory breaking point.