Personal Note: I
have written
hundreds of articles about wildly different aspects of Italy over
decades. A list of titles/subjects is available upon request, but they
range from Il Palio and soccer stories to Olive Oil in Italian Cooking
, extending geographically from the Swiss border to the southern tip of
Sicily. Tuscan Interiors, environmental issues and literary history are
some of the less common subjects that I've addressed. Interesting
aspects of behavior, attitudes and customs are incorporated whenever
possible, in the name of increasing respect for and appreciation of
cultural differences. It would be my pleasure to know what, if
anything, you'd like me to send you. -- Richard
On the Field of Miracles: The Leaning Tower of Pisa
by Richard Oxman (March, 2005, European Architectural Itineraries)
"In Pisa we climbed to the top of this strange edifice which all of the world
knows -- The Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is seven hundred years old, but
neither history nor the legends say anything about it, if it was built the way
it is standing now on purpose, or if one side of it has sunk. There are also
no records which tell us if it ever stood straight. And yet it is the airiest and
most beautiful building." -- Mark Twain, Travels Through the Old World, 1869
Many travelers to Italy have believed it was intentional: that the builder planned a leaning tower, fully aware of what he was doing -- out of "willfulness," "cunning," as a "brazen protest against the laws of gravity," or "as a special test" of his art, in order to remain "in the minds of men in time immemorial." Without a doubt, the architect succeeded at the latter.
In fact, the campanile of Pisa cathedral was not designed to lean. That was what Johann Caspar von Goethe assumed as he set off on a tour of Europe almost half-a-century before the birth of his famous son Johann Wolfgang. After his visit to Pisa, he noted: "It would have been truly mad to construct the tower as it stands today, especially since its entire inner structure, as well as the different floors into which it is divided and which overhang to the same degree, convince us to the contrary." Even Bonanus, the first builder, who, according to legend, is buried in the foundations of the tower, felt forced to give up on account of the increasing slant: when the third gallery was finished, he stopped work.
Some hundred years later, the architect Giovanni di Simone summoned the courage to continue where others had left off. He built three more galleries and thought he could compensate for the tilt by bending the axis into a vertical position. That did not impress the tower, though. It leaned still further -- so much, in fact, that in 1372, when the bell tower was put on top, four steps were necessary on one side and six on the other just so that the belfry could be entered. The diplomat and writer Robert Dvorak says: "Is it not like a symbol of Italy itself, of its art, of crooked, precarious equilibrium, of that which is feared but does not occur; of unforeseen surprises?" Everyone has been waiting for the tower to topple. It has not yet fallen -- but it has not become a world-famous building just because it leans. It is an architecturally fascinating structure that was built for a very specific purpose.
At the time when its foundation stone was laid, Pisa was located directly on the sea and was a powerful, independent port. The Near East, Greece, North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands were controlled by the republic of Pisa since the Pisans and the Normans together had defeated the Saracens in 1063. To give thanks for the brilliant victory, the Pisans began work on the cathedral.
Completed by the additions of the baptistery and the Camposanto, the superb building ensemble in the northwestern corner of the old city was named the "Campo dei Miracoli," or "Filed of Miracles." The Pisans wanted to impress the world, yet their plans went awry, as did the tower.
The soft alluvial soil is to blame for the tower's predicament, into which not only the campanile continues to sink deeper but also the cathedral itself; its facade has already sunk more than eighteen inches -- nothing compared to the seventeen-foot tilt of the Leaning Tower, but nevertheless threatening.
It's interesting to note that whereas the mathematical genius Galileo Galilei, a native of Pisa, was delighted with the tilt of the tower -- which he made use of to try out his famous free-fall experiments -- today the world is wondering what can be done to set the tower aright.
But all attempts to save the tower will be in vain, a legend says. This is not a technical problem, but a problem of a much more exalted variety: the Leaning Tower is the revenge of St. Reparata, whose church was torn down in the eleventh century to make way for the new cathedral and its campanile.
For me, personally, the miracle of the tower's angle resonates in the same way as the seemingly inevitable sinking of Venice. And the ongoing talk about both phenomena simply begs for one to visit while the possibility of partaking in such magnificence still exists.
Rome to Palermo
Mainland Italy to Sicily by Train
by Richard Oxman (January, 2002 for Travel Tracks)
To ride along Italy's western coastline from Rome to the Sicilian capital of Palermo is to view some of the Mediterranean's most spectacular coastlines. There are glimpses of 2,000 years of civilization, dating back to Roman times, and vistas of the rugged terrain around Europe's most active volcanoes.
The 569-mile (916 km) journey can take a marathon 11 1/2 hours. However, one can save 40-minutes by taking a Pendolino tilt train over the brand new 140-mile (225 km) high-speed line between Rome and Naples, which follows a more direct inland alignment.
Electrified throughout with 3,000v DC overhead current collection, the "traditional" Rome-Palermo mainline has been part of Italian State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato, or FS) since nationalization in 1905-1907, although its management changed in 1985 from a government department to a state corporation. The route's principal engineering features include three of the world's longest tunnels. Two of them are between Rome and Naples: the Monte Orso, at 4 miles, 1,230 yards (7,562 m) long, and the Vivola, at 4 miles, 1,004 yards (7,355 m).
Both opened on October 28, 1927. However, both are significantly outdistanced by the 6-mile-662-yard (10,262 m) Santa Lucia tunnel, which opened between Naples and Salerno in 1977. The Rome-Naples section of the line is famous for a spectacular speed run on July 27, 1938, when a three-car electric train covered the 132.9 miles (213.9 km) at an average speed of 96.1 miles per hour (154.7 km/h) with a top speed of 125 miles per hour (201 km/h).
The departure from Rome, through its drab, sprawling suburbs, gives little hint that the city is a world cultural center, but history is soon apparent as the countryside opens up into the flat, fertile plain that is the Campagna. The train runs parallel to the Via Appia Antica road once used by Spartacus and his followers; it still has its original cobbles. Other notable sights are the hundreds of arches of the ancient Colli Albani aqueduct, and the Pontine Marshes, which were drained by the ancient Romans and again in the 20th century by Mussolini.
The train reaches the chaotic metropolitan city of Naples, with its extensive suburban rail system that includes a metro, tramways, and funiculars, in two hours. This railroad played a vital role in the mass migration of impoverished agricultural workers from the south in the early 20th century to feed the country's rapid industrial expansion.
The landscape is dominated by the volcano Vesuvio (Mount Vesuvius), which normally erupts every 30-50 years. It had its own funicular railway from 1880 until an eruption in March 1944. This was the first and only line to be built on top of a volcano. Today, frequent services on the SFSM Circumvesuviana narrow-gauge railway serve the area around the volcano, but the top is now reached by a bus service from Pugliano and a chairlift.
The view of Vesuvio is soon replaced by the Bay of Naples and Sorrento peninsula and the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procidia. The train hugs the coastline for the rest of the journey. After the modest intermediate towns of Battipaglia, Sapri, and Paola, the end of the Italian mainland is reached at Villa San Giovanni, just north of Italy's southernmost major town, Reggio di Calabrio. Here the train is split into sections and shunted aboard one of Europe's last train ferries for the short crossing of the Strait of Messina to Sicily.
The final 113-mile (182 km) section of the journey is along the northern coast of this picturesque island to Palermo, infamous home of the Sicilian Mafia. It takes a marathon three hours because the railway is single track. But the views of the Tyrrhenian Sea are compensation. To the south there is the spectacular sight of a second great volcano, which at 10,902 feet (3,323 m) is one of the world's largest and the highest point in Italy south of the Alps -- Mount Etna.
Tuscany
by Richard Oxman (Summer, 2003)
Part One of a Seven-Part Series for Italian Paintbox Newsletter
[Ghostwritten version for "P.R." much earlier]
There is no shortage of beautiful countries in the world, and each one visited leaves its own memories. But Tuscany is a place you fall in love with at once. The region is one of Italy's greatest attractions, with its endlessly varied beauty, the stinging Tuscan wit, and the infinite threads of history woven into its cultural fabric. Tuscany's country lanes are like capillaries, spreading through the land a longing for life, an emotion that flows on relentlessly even as it fades away into the far distance.
Indeed, it is such a lovely region that filmmakers keep coming back. The Taviani brothers, for instance, shot "The Meadow" (Il Prato), "Floréal" (Fiorile), "The Night of San Lorenzo" (La Notte di San Lorenzo) and a free adaptation of Goethe's "Wahlverwandtschaften" in Tuscany, and Bernardo Bertolucci made "Stealing Beauty" (lo ballo da sola) there. For Luchino Visconti's "Vaghe stelle dell'orsa," for James Ivory's "A Room with a View" and for "The English Patient" by Anthony Minghella, Tuscany became a gigantic film set with stunningly beautiful towns, superbly photogenic countryside and a soundtrack enriched by the biting irony of the Tuscans themselves.
In addition, Andrei Tarkovsky shot many of the scenes in "Nostalghia" at Bagno Vignoni and San Galgano. Jane Campion set her film version of "Portrait of a Lady," adapted from the novel by Henry James (1843-1916), in Tuscany, and Kenneth Branagh came here to shoot some of the scenes in "Much Ado About Nothing." The Italian film "The Cyclone" (Il Ciclone) was filmed by Leonardo Pieraccioni in the Casentino district.
But many television commercials, with messages that have nothing to do with the region, have also been set in Tuscany. Many Tuscans feel offended and exploited by this, so much so that a regional law has been passed denying access to the local landscape for such purposes, declaring infringement as "a basis for copyright litigation."
Tuscany is a region of great charm and serenity, almost a miracle come true. And that is how it has been since the 16th century when travelers began to throng the Tuscan countryside, fascinated by its unimaginable beauty.
It is a very sweet thought, indeed, that unlike many other lovely blessings in our world of itineraries, Tuscany is destined to retain its loveliness, remain... itself.
On the Field of Miracles: The Leaning Tower of Pisa
by Richard Oxman (March, 2005, European Architectural Itineraries)
"In Pisa we climbed to the top of this strange edifice which all of the world
knows -- The Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is seven hundred years old, but
neither history nor the legends say anything about it, if it was built the way
it is standing now on purpose, or if one side of it has sunk. There are also
no records which tell us if it ever stood straight. And yet it is the airiest and
most beautiful building." -- Mark Twain, Travels Through the Old World, 1869
Many travelers to Italy have believed it was intentional: that the builder planned a leaning tower, fully aware of what he was doing -- out of "willfulness," "cunning," as a "brazen protest against the laws of gravity," or "as a special test" of his art, in order to remain "in the minds of men in time immemorial." Without a doubt, the architect succeeded at the latter.
In fact, the campanile of Pisa cathedral was not designed to lean. That was what Johann Caspar von Goethe assumed as he set off on a tour of Europe almost half-a-century before the birth of his famous son Johann Wolfgang. After his visit to Pisa, he noted: "It would have been truly mad to construct the tower as it stands today, especially since its entire inner structure, as well as the different floors into which it is divided and which overhang to the same degree, convince us to the contrary." Even Bonanus, the first builder, who, according to legend, is buried in the foundations of the tower, felt forced to give up on account of the increasing slant: when the third gallery was finished, he stopped work.
Some hundred years later, the architect Giovanni di Simone summoned the courage to continue where others had left off. He built three more galleries and thought he could compensate for the tilt by bending the axis into a vertical position. That did not impress the tower, though. It leaned still further -- so much, in fact, that in 1372, when the bell tower was put on top, four steps were necessary on one side and six on the other just so that the belfry could be entered. The diplomat and writer Robert Dvorak says: "Is it not like a symbol of Italy itself, of its art, of crooked, precarious equilibrium, of that which is feared but does not occur; of unforeseen surprises?" Everyone has been waiting for the tower to topple. It has not yet fallen -- but it has not become a world-famous building just because it leans. It is an architecturally fascinating structure that was built for a very specific purpose.
At the time when its foundation stone was laid, Pisa was located directly on the sea and was a powerful, independent port. The Near East, Greece, North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands were controlled by the republic of Pisa since the Pisans and the Normans together had defeated the Saracens in 1063. To give thanks for the brilliant victory, the Pisans began work on the cathedral.
Completed by the additions of the baptistery and the Camposanto, the superb building ensemble in the northwestern corner of the old city was named the "Campo dei Miracoli," or "Filed of Miracles." The Pisans wanted to impress the world, yet their plans went awry, as did the tower.
The soft alluvial soil is to blame for the tower's predicament, into which not only the campanile continues to sink deeper but also the cathedral itself; its facade has already sunk more than eighteen inches -- nothing compared to the seventeen-foot tilt of the Leaning Tower, but nevertheless threatening.
It's interesting to note that whereas the mathematical genius Galileo Galilei, a native of Pisa, was delighted with the tilt of the tower -- which he made use of to try out his famous free-fall experiments -- today the world is wondering what can be done to set the tower aright.
But all attempts to save the tower will be in vain, a legend says. This is not a technical problem, but a problem of a much more exalted variety: the Leaning Tower is the revenge of St. Reparata, whose church was torn down in the eleventh century to make way for the new cathedral and its campanile.
For me, personally, the miracle of the tower's angle resonates in the same way as the seemingly inevitable sinking of Venice. And the ongoing talk about both phenomena simply begs for one to visit while the possibility of partaking in such magnificence still exists.
Rome to Palermo
Mainland Italy to Sicily by Train
by Richard Oxman (January, 2002 for Travel Tracks)
To ride along Italy's western coastline from Rome to the Sicilian capital of Palermo is to view some of the Mediterranean's most spectacular coastlines. There are glimpses of 2,000 years of civilization, dating back to Roman times, and vistas of the rugged terrain around Europe's most active volcanoes.
The 569-mile (916 km) journey can take a marathon 11 1/2 hours. However, one can save 40-minutes by taking a Pendolino tilt train over the brand new 140-mile (225 km) high-speed line between Rome and Naples, which follows a more direct inland alignment.
Electrified throughout with 3,000v DC overhead current collection, the "traditional" Rome-Palermo mainline has been part of Italian State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato, or FS) since nationalization in 1905-1907, although its management changed in 1985 from a government department to a state corporation. The route's principal engineering features include three of the world's longest tunnels. Two of them are between Rome and Naples: the Monte Orso, at 4 miles, 1,230 yards (7,562 m) long, and the Vivola, at 4 miles, 1,004 yards (7,355 m).
Both opened on October 28, 1927. However, both are significantly outdistanced by the 6-mile-662-yard (10,262 m) Santa Lucia tunnel, which opened between Naples and Salerno in 1977. The Rome-Naples section of the line is famous for a spectacular speed run on July 27, 1938, when a three-car electric train covered the 132.9 miles (213.9 km) at an average speed of 96.1 miles per hour (154.7 km/h) with a top speed of 125 miles per hour (201 km/h).
The departure from Rome, through its drab, sprawling suburbs, gives little hint that the city is a world cultural center, but history is soon apparent as the countryside opens up into the flat, fertile plain that is the Campagna. The train runs parallel to the Via Appia Antica road once used by Spartacus and his followers; it still has its original cobbles. Other notable sights are the hundreds of arches of the ancient Colli Albani aqueduct, and the Pontine Marshes, which were drained by the ancient Romans and again in the 20th century by Mussolini.
The train reaches the chaotic metropolitan city of Naples, with its extensive suburban rail system that includes a metro, tramways, and funiculars, in two hours. This railroad played a vital role in the mass migration of impoverished agricultural workers from the south in the early 20th century to feed the country's rapid industrial expansion.
The landscape is dominated by the volcano Vesuvio (Mount Vesuvius), which normally erupts every 30-50 years. It had its own funicular railway from 1880 until an eruption in March 1944. This was the first and only line to be built on top of a volcano. Today, frequent services on the SFSM Circumvesuviana narrow-gauge railway serve the area around the volcano, but the top is now reached by a bus service from Pugliano and a chairlift.
The view of Vesuvio is soon replaced by the Bay of Naples and Sorrento peninsula and the islands of Capri, Ischia, and Procidia. The train hugs the coastline for the rest of the journey. After the modest intermediate towns of Battipaglia, Sapri, and Paola, the end of the Italian mainland is reached at Villa San Giovanni, just north of Italy's southernmost major town, Reggio di Calabrio. Here the train is split into sections and shunted aboard one of Europe's last train ferries for the short crossing of the Strait of Messina to Sicily.
The final 113-mile (182 km) section of the journey is along the northern coast of this picturesque island to Palermo, infamous home of the Sicilian Mafia. It takes a marathon three hours because the railway is single track. But the views of the Tyrrhenian Sea are compensation. To the south there is the spectacular sight of a second great volcano, which at 10,902 feet (3,323 m) is one of the world's largest and the highest point in Italy south of the Alps -- Mount Etna.
Tuscany
by Richard Oxman (Summer, 2003)
Part One of a Seven-Part Series for Italian Paintbox Newsletter
[Ghostwritten version for "P.R." much earlier]
There is no shortage of beautiful countries in the world, and each one visited leaves its own memories. But Tuscany is a place you fall in love with at once. The region is one of Italy's greatest attractions, with its endlessly varied beauty, the stinging Tuscan wit, and the infinite threads of history woven into its cultural fabric. Tuscany's country lanes are like capillaries, spreading through the land a longing for life, an emotion that flows on relentlessly even as it fades away into the far distance.
Indeed, it is such a lovely region that filmmakers keep coming back. The Taviani brothers, for instance, shot "The Meadow" (Il Prato), "Floréal" (Fiorile), "The Night of San Lorenzo" (La Notte di San Lorenzo) and a free adaptation of Goethe's "Wahlverwandtschaften" in Tuscany, and Bernardo Bertolucci made "Stealing Beauty" (lo ballo da sola) there. For Luchino Visconti's "Vaghe stelle dell'orsa," for James Ivory's "A Room with a View" and for "The English Patient" by Anthony Minghella, Tuscany became a gigantic film set with stunningly beautiful towns, superbly photogenic countryside and a soundtrack enriched by the biting irony of the Tuscans themselves.
In addition, Andrei Tarkovsky shot many of the scenes in "Nostalghia" at Bagno Vignoni and San Galgano. Jane Campion set her film version of "Portrait of a Lady," adapted from the novel by Henry James (1843-1916), in Tuscany, and Kenneth Branagh came here to shoot some of the scenes in "Much Ado About Nothing." The Italian film "The Cyclone" (Il Ciclone) was filmed by Leonardo Pieraccioni in the Casentino district.
But many television commercials, with messages that have nothing to do with the region, have also been set in Tuscany. Many Tuscans feel offended and exploited by this, so much so that a regional law has been passed denying access to the local landscape for such purposes, declaring infringement as "a basis for copyright litigation."
Tuscany is a region of great charm and serenity, almost a miracle come true. And that is how it has been since the 16th century when travelers began to throng the Tuscan countryside, fascinated by its unimaginable beauty.
It is a very sweet thought, indeed, that unlike many other lovely blessings in our world of itineraries, Tuscany is destined to retain its loveliness, remain... itself.
