I have adopted a beach.

One of the lingering problems with choosing another landlocked city to settle in is of course the lack of water... And I do love the sea. So what to do? Fortunately there is a good bus service which takes one from Siena to the Tuscan coast in an hour and a half. 

Yesterday was billed as – probably- the last summer day, supposed to produce 30C, so I decided to squeeze the last out of the Tuscan summer and took that early morning bus from Siena once more down to the coast with the final destination Castiglione della Pescaia.

I got off at the Marina di Grosseto because my plan was to walk on the beach from there. The beach was deserted there, the only sign of life was provided by a handsome life guard, lingering amongst the folded up umbrellas,  who was aghast at the fact that I was intending to walk all the way - a distance of 12 k. This was supposed to take 2hours and 21 minutes according to Google.    

  

Rather than the 30 C I had hoped for, my walk began with grey skies and cool sea breezes along the totally deserted stretch of sandy beach.  When I had reached about half way the temperature had already risen and I stripped off and swam in the glorious, salty water with its gentle, regular waves rolling in.

                                                 I also had to venture into that enchanted pine forest – the pineta, which stretches all the way, parallel to the sandy beach, making up the nature reserve Diaccia Botrona between the start and the end of my walk. 

These pines form fantastical, rhythmic shapes, brought into existence  by the same winds that roll those waves onto the sands- an exquisite harmonious environment that made me want to paint. 

I was curious to read that Italo Calvino, the great writer, whose delightful Barone rampante I am attempting to read at the moment, lived in the pineta by Castiglione della Pescaia at the end of his life, and and that he died in Siena. Now noone lives here anymore. 

The nature reserve protects this stretch of land from the perils of any encroaching developments, leaving it a sacred territory for lone walkers like me who will run into an occasional fisherman, or some drift wood shelters built by  like-minded wanderers. 

The approach to Castiglione di Pescaia was  announced by an increase of both sunshine and sunseekers until the beach umbrellas of my favourite family run seafood restaurant made a welcome appearance- it had taken me about three hours.

                                  I have adopted this beach as my refuge from my landlocked city... 

Le Fonti di Siena

 

is the name of a beautiful old book I found mentioned in an article -  I would love to find it in real life, not just on the internet...

because the water supply and the fountains of Siena are really something very interesting. A 'Fonte' in Italian means more than a fountain of course, it means a proper source of water. I will nevertheless use the word fountain here, because these 'Fonti' of Siena are decorative and monumental as well as practical.  Most great cities have been built either on the sea or on a river- but Siena was built on a few arid hills without any obvious source of water. How on earth did  this city, which in its hey-day in the late 13th century had

50 000 inhabitants and was as populous as Paris, manage to provide water for that amount of people? 

Today I took part in my language school's visit to the fountains of Siena, conducted by  our enthusiastic teacher Andrea. I had in fact come across them all in my extensive peregrinations throughout the city, but did not know much about them. The  most important one according to Andrea and the guide books, is the Fonte Gaia which is found in the Piazza del Campo. It is not the oldest, by the way- but it is the highest; one that is fed by underground aqueducts which stretches for many hundred meters across the subterranean expanses of this territory made up of both porous soil, able to filter the rain water, and of layers of impermeable clay, which , each in its own way has made the sophisticated system of water passages possible. The sculptures surrounding the fountain of Gaia at the Campo were created by Jacopo della Quercia around 1410, and are considered among the most  important and representative works  of pre-Renaissance sculpture.

                                                               

Because the Gaia fountain  is the highest, it is also important because it feeds the others, and among those is the celebrated Fontebranda, at the foot of the impressive, and enormous, Basilica di San Domenico (below centre). Andrea, below, is explaining how the water was transported to reach the important dyeing works which took place at this fountain. It was the centre not only of dyeing, but of other important industries such as the tanneries; the slaughter houses;  and finally the waste water was used for the turning of the mills which produced the flour for the bread ( and the pasta!)

The Fontebranda is mentioned in Canto 30 of the Inferno. It is therefore commemorated by yet another of those Dante plaques which are dotted around Siena. This one describes the fate and punishment of the counterfeiters, who are placed by the waters of the Fontebranda but not allowed to quench their thirst...

Another glorious Siena fountain is the one found in the North East of the city, by the Contrada of the Lupa, the She- Wolf. It is the  Fonta d'Ovile, built in 1260. Below a picture of the Lupa setting up for a Contrada dinner in front of their famous fountain: 

   

And finally, the Fonte del Casato, in the Centre of Siena, in the Onda Contrada, has seemingly suffered from a bad reputation  throughout history . It  was considered a dangerous place, situated  in an area inhabited by prostitutes and disreputable characters during the middle ages, and shunned during the plague years as  a possible  source of the disease. Even today, it is, strangely, the one beautiful place that our guide decided not to visit- and it is in fact less well kept than the other fountains- rather full of pigeon droppings and seemingly neglected however old and beautiful is really is...

 

On the search for Perfection, and Becoming a Giraffe

So, how is the hunt for the perfect Pensione faring? Well, it has made some progress with some help from my Swedish cousin Pelle and his wife Nanni who have been spending a week here, (arriving in Florence, top left) helping me to try and locate the stage setting for this next adventure- which ( who knows?) might last for the rest of my life, or, on the other hand, might never get properly started … after all, my track record as a hotelier has been uneven: many years ago I set off to Tobago where I bought half a mountain, only to have to sell it, with great difficulty and financial loss, some months later when I was unable to get permission to build and to start my little hotel.

 Then, a few years later I went to Mali and this time I managed to do what I wanted. Pelle and Nanni came to visit me at Hotel Djenne Djenno. 

This time around they are once again very supportive and they have been the most perfect and patient companions in my quest during last week. We started with something rather wonderful- it is part of the late eighteenth  century Palazzo in which I now live. A large flat here is for sale, and this large flat has a large garden… which is unheard of in Siena within the city walls. This is the flat which has frescos painted by Napoleon’s interior decorator, and, to use estate agent speak ‘enjoys the benefit of a private chapel’ with cherubs in the ceiling.                                 

       

                                                                                                      

 I became quite potty about this place and had to be brought down to earth gently by Pelle and Nanny who pointed out that however marvellous the place undoubtedly is, it would only ever have five rooms. These would have to be furnished in perfect Empire style and be let for a fortune. ‘Ah, yes, but there are a couple of suites at the Siena Grand Hotel which cost well  over E 1000 a night,’  I assured them optimistically. 'It is not impossible!' ‘Yes’, they agreed, ‘but do you really want to deal with people who are paying E 1000 per night for a room? Are you prepared to deliver the sort of service they would be likely to require?’ was their sensible comment.  With some regret I realized that they did have a point.

So, onto the next place, which we have called ‘the Office’. That is because for the last twenty years it has been an office for the Siena town council, which has been doing something non-descript there and are now selling it. It is a shell, but what a shell! Enormously high ceilings- it is very large and it is literally two steps from the Piazza del Campo- you can see the Torre del Mangia from most of the windows. It needs a lot of work- bathrooms put in everywhere- mezzanines built etc, but an architect has looked at it and will produce a quote. The only problem is that he said it would take about a year and a half to get it up and running! It apparently takes ages to get permissions to do interior structural alterations on these buildings. And the Office is from the 12^th century!

  

Last Saturday we went into the Crete Senese, a stunning part of Tuscany to the south, to see a farm close to Asciano  with Antonella, the estate agent who found me the flat I live in, in the Napoleonic Palace. We went to see a farm close to Asciano. What a beautiful place! BUT, having seen another couple of lovely possibilities outside the city walls, I felt quite strongly that NO! I want to be in Siena! Right inside the city and that probably isn't negotiable after all...                                                     

                                     

Back in Siena one of those important meetings finally took  place- by that I mean one of the  meetings with those contacts that Andrew managed to muster up for me here in Siena, through his Italian friend in London. I had not wanted to do anything about these contacts just yet, still stubbornly refusing to speak anything but my bad Italian; I felt that it would put me at a disadvantage, and that I did not want to put these potentially important contacts  off. But the other day I took courage. I wrote an email (in Italian!) to Laura, the top contact, who was gracious enough to respond and the other night night I met her for an Aperitivo with  her son, Niccolo,  who has the lovely ‘Barriera di San Lorenzo’, an elegant  b& b where I had actually stayed in July, when I was here and tried out a different place every night, to see what the competition would be like.

                                          

One might be forgiven for fearing that Niccolo would be less than enthusiastic about yet another person wanting to open up a b&b here, where there is more than enough already. But both Niccolo and his mother Laura were warm and welcoming and I felt they were genuinely glad to meet up with me. Laura is quite a star in Siena: one of the only women who have been ‘Priore’, or manager,  for a Contrada, she ran Giraffa for six years. When we walked down the Banchi di Sopra ( the main Street  of Siena) together every other person on the street greeted her.

‘I will make you a Giraffa!’ said Laura.

I always wanted to be a Giraffe…

Dante ( what else?)

Dante died 700 years ago the day before yesterday, just in case you had not been told. Dante is hot at the moment, as my friend Andrew puts it. He was of course one of the little band of Dante enthusiasts who met at my flat in London every other Wednesday for over three years (with some interruption due to the pandemic) while we slowly made our way through the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

                                             

 Above we find ourselves, on that very first evening, Christmas Eve 2017,  in that ‘selva oscura,' 

 'nel mezzo cammin di nostra vita’, where we set out to explore the great epic.

And here below we are, on the 26 June 2021, just before I left London, when we finally  arrived at the vision of God:  

                                   

During that journey, it must be said there were times when we- or at least I - found it something of a struggle, sometimes I could not muster up enough interest in 13th c. Florentine gossip- or sometimes the subject matter seemed too dry, too irrelevant. But then, there would be,  suddenly, a gem that sparkled that would make it all worth it. And perhaps not even  directly from the text, but the text would be a departure point that would take us off in other distant  directions,  far removed from 13th c. Tuscany, but universally relevant. Then sometimes it would feel as if perhaps Dante was sitting there among us, invisible, in the corner, smiling a bit, enjoying our exchange...and the fact that it came about through his words so long ago?   

There is plenty of order and symmetry not only in those great rolling stanzas of  terzo rima which Dorothy Sayers managed, incredibly, to reproduce in her masterly English translation, but also in a Dante's strong spatial architecture- we are travelling through finely described heavenly realms organized along the Ptolemaic system that was still used. Each of the Canticles end, rather beautifully, by a reference to the stars:     

                                           

When  Dante and Virgil finally escape Hell the last stanza of the Inferno :  ‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le Stelle’. ('And then we came forth to see once more the stars)  has become a saying  used in Italian when one wants to express joy at the end of a time of great tribulation.

At the end of Purgatorio, Dante receives a final cleansing to be ready to ascend to Paradiso:

‘lo ritornai da la santissima onda

  rifatto si come piante novella

rinovellate di novella fronda

puro e disposto a salire alle stelle’

'From the most holy water I returned

Regenerate, in the manner of new trees

That are renewed with a new foliage,

Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.'

(Longfellow’s translation)

And finally, at the end of Paradiso, God is  ‘the love which moves the sun and the other stars’::

‘Lamor che move il sole e l’altre Stelle’.

 Siena is the place most frequently mentioned in the Divine Comedy besides Florence. A hundred years ago, at the 600 anniversary of Dante’s death, the city of Siena put up a series of marble plaques on the walls of Siena with relevant quotations from the epic:

                                      

Here above  is one, which commemorates Sapia Salvani, a Sienese noblewoman  who lived between 1210 and 1278. Dante encounters her on the terrace of Purgatorio where the envious are punished and cleansed. She was a Ghibelline in her heart and therefore of another political persuasion than the Sienese people (and of Dante, who was a Guelph) She witnessed  the battle Colle Val d'Elsa on June 17, 1269 and prayed ardently for the Sienese to lose. She tells Dante of her sinful joy when they did: 

 

‘Savia, non fui avvegna che Sapia

Fossi chiamata, e fui degli altrui danni

Piu lieta assai che di ventura mia…’

‘Though called Sapia, sapient I was not

For I was more glad of others harm

Than I of my good fortune ever was’ .

                    

There is also another Sienese woman that Dante comes across in Purgatorio. She is called Pia, and is rather more of a local hero here than Sapia.  Pia de Tolomei was from another great Sienese noble family, and she too enjoys a marble plaque.  Little is known of her, but it is said that she was murdered by her husband, who came from the Maremma, a coastal region of Tuscany. She asks Dante to remember her in his prayers, to hasten her release into Paradise. Her brief appearance in the Divine Comedy has inspired many works of art, including one by Dante Gabriel Rossetti- Pia de Tolomei, below:

  

Her words on the plaque reads:

‘Ricorditi di Me, che son la Pia

Siena mi Fe, Discefemi Maremma’

Remember me who am La Pia

Siena made me, Maremma unmade me’

                                                         

-and just to end on another note of Dante celebration: I will enrol at the Dante Alighieri Language School tomorrow and do about a month of intensive Italian in the mornings. I am speaking it all the time of course, and I am refusing to speak anything else. Whether people actually understand what I am saying is questionable and there has been lots of misunderstandings....

New home

                             

                    

                    

          

                            

      

It is now one week exactly since I moved into my new abode. It is really quite nice- larger than my Notting Hill pad, and quite 'bourgeois' including a crystal chandelier and soffiti affrescati - or painted ceilings, which is a Sienese speciality. 

I am eating my supper in front of the telly- it helps with the Italian, and I am immersing myself. I have not spoken anything else apart from a few phone calls to London, Sweden, Berlin and Mali in the last week. 

I am watching a nature programme about adorable brown bears in Kamchatka... it reminds me of my Keita- he loved nature programmes. I miss him so much.

This Italian experience, although similar in some ways to the beginning of my new life in Djenne in so far as I know no one here, and I knew no one in Djenne, is nevertheless much different. This is Europe. No one really talks to one here if one is a stranger. In Djenne, the entire population who were involved in tourism- guides, souvenir peddlers etc., threw themselves at me and I had to fend them off. The rest of the Djenne population kept themselves quite aloof, but I know them now. I wonder how long it will take to build up some sort of net work of friends here?

But just at the moment that is not an urgent consideration- because tomorrow I will go to Florence airport and meet my cousin Pelle and his wife Nanni, who have been so important in my life for so many reasons. They will stay for a week and we will look at different properties, have dinners in lovely trattorias and aperitivos in the Campo...And soon afterwards, I am expecting  the next instalment of visiting friends, so I am not exactly complaining!

Here is a neighbour, as yet unknown to me, walking past:

                                                    

what are they like, the Italians?

Yes indeed, they were all out and about today, the Lupa. And here they are (1st pic) visiting the Aquila Contrada on their triumphant tour around Siena. Yesterday they baptised 48 new little Lupa members-some seen parading around the Campo above- they had been 'stacking up' during the last year and a half of Covid restrictions. This is another Sienese tradition- you are baptised into your Contrada and remain a member forever. 

I saw a part of quite a bad film yesterday- ‘Eat, Love, Pray’. Although I knew that I really didn’t like it, I nevertheless wanted to see the Italian part, the ‘Eat’ part. And I was struck at how much popular culture relies on tired old stereotypes- we seem to want them. If we see a film about an American woman arriving in Italy we expect her to run into some sort of charming chaos where women who look like Gina Lollobrigida shout insults at each other from their windows across the street; where the plaster is peeling tastefully off the ancient walls, where all older women are cheerful but garrulous, toothless ‘mammas’ who are good at cooking spaghetti; where all young men are handsome but very pushy and ride vespas and above all, we expect there to be washing hanging everywhere.

The thing is, a couple of these presumptions are undoubtedly true.  Especially the washing. How is it that Italians get away with it, and it seems a perfectly civilized thing to do, while to hang washing from my window in Ladbroke Grove would be unthinkable? And if anyone else dared, I would get straight onto the council and complain- if that didn't work I, and the rest of the neghbourhood would push for eviction!

 

As far as Italians being chaotic, a cherished concept,  this is not true according to Paolo, my only friend here so far.  (A contact dear Lucy was kind enough to share with me. ) He is very irritated by the conformity of the Italians. They all take their holidays in August, and (and this is the source of most of Paolo’s irritation): they all have to have their Cena (dinner) precisely at 8.30 at night. It is almost unthinkable that they don't. This means that mostly there are no tables to be had anywhere.

                                                                                                                                   And just look at the orderly way the Italians like to behave at their sea side holidays: they like rows upon rows of perfectly symmetrically placed umbrellas – I know because I saw it the other day in the lovely old seaside town of Castiglione della Pescaia... lovely white sand, beautiful clear, warm water- really quite salty, but not for me, really, the regimented beach style of Italians, in Tuscany anyway!

                                                   

And  finally, some hopeful  news about the Monte di Paschi di Siena: it seems a deal will be struck with the Milan based UniCredit after all...so the threatened strike might be averted.