Homeland

Alta Valle Pesio, Italy (August 6, 2014)

I have never been the patriotic type. I don't care about soccer, which for somebody born on Italian soil is borderline treasonous. As a kid, during the World Cups I used to hang the Soviet Union flag at my balcony, instead of the "tricolore", just to piss off the conservative bigots that lived in the same condo (they were not amused). I have always considered myself an atypical Italian. Yet...

Piazza San Carlo, Torino

We just came back from a trip to Italy. Mayli had a meeting in Torino, the city where I was born, and I tagged along for a few days taking advantage of the Labour Day weekend. A very short visit. Two days of travel to get there, thanks to the most inconvenient connections. Two days in the Alps where my sister live. Two days in Torino, and finally one day to get back, in time to resume teaching my class. My last visit one summer ago was also very brief, and only touched the mountain valley where my family live. It has been now many years since I last spent any real amount of time in the city where I lived for the first quarter century of my life.

Chiusa di Pesio, CN

Yet, despite all I said above, there is something epigenetic in how the place where you grow up interfaces with the little nooks and crannies of your cerebral cortex. It is the sentences not said. The soles of your feet that just bounce right on the stones carrying your footprints even before you step on them. The familiarity of acts and reactions that 20 years living abroad do not manage to erase. And I do have changed. And Italy has changed too. I do remember the country as a bastion of uniformity, offering such little diversity that when my parents first came to visit us in Cambridge, they could not avoid commenting over and over about the multitude of ethnicities roaming the streets around Harvard Square. After decades of intense immigration, Italy has finally become the home of people with many different shades and cultures, as it had been two millennia ago when the citizens of Rome were born from all corners of the known world. An ethnically diverse society has finally become the new normal, even in the small villages of the Alps like the one where my sister live, where a significant fraction of my nieces' schoolmates have names betraying their parent's far away origin. It is a good sign, of a country that after all may find a way of renewal, solidly anchored to its past, but also projected towards the future of an integrated world.

Alta Valle Pesio, Italy (August 6, 2014)

Roaminations Across Italy

Umbria, Italy (October 28, 2007)

Before I took my two suitcases on a plane to l'America, I was very much into caves. Living in Trieste, at the center of a region crisscrossed by deep caverns and tunnels as if it was a form of swiss cheese, it was just a matter of time before I would fall into one of these holes. And indeed I fell, multiple times, in fact, together with my friends in our exploration of the karstic underworld.

Sarteano, Tuscany

One could argue that the caves where, in fact, an excuse for other kinds of exploration, more attuned to the study of human nature, rather than hidden geological mysteries. Adventures typically involving good wine, food, and other forbidden pleasures that are not fit to write on a respectable blog. Yet this was all part of a journey of discovery across the landscape of Italy and its people, above as well below the surface of a land that barely exists as a country, yet is impressed in three full millennia of recorded history. And we traveled a lot, along the forgotten paths meandering across the mountains, peppered with small medieval villages still preserving the memories of multiple centuries in their walls of recycled stones, stolen from an ancient Roman road. But it is not the stones, or the marble in the monuments, that we were looking in our roaminations. It is the people we would meet on the road. The boy still carrying the face immortalized half a millennia ago by a Raffaello in some Renaissance painting. The owner of the closed bar that had run out of cheese when we were begging for food during the afternoon break, but still opened his store and made the best lard sandwich that I will ever eat in my life. Or the old lady that two of my friend helped back to her house on the top of the hill, disappearing then for hours because she insisted serving them a five course meal, in gratitude, before they could leave.

If you truly want to discover a country you may perhaps skip its muddy caves and concentrate on its surface, but please dump your Baedeker and find its living history in the people you meet.

Perugia, Italy (September 15, 2009)

‹tran·su·màn·za›

Gias Sutan d'Sestrera, Valle Pesio (Aug 6, 2014)

When I was a little kid, I had a cow. Her name was Frôla, which in piedmontese means strawberry, because of a strawberry-colored spot on her forehead.

Well, to be precise, Frôla was not really my personal cow. Up until my sister was born, my parents were renting a small apartment in Depot, a tiny village in one of the Occitan valleys between Italy and France. The apartment was part of a farm, and the farm had cows. I don't have many direct memories of that period (I was 5 years old or less) but I do know that I liked to spend time with Frôla in the pasture of the farm. I also remember, though, that I could enjoy my favorite among all the cows only for a small part of our estive vacations, because for most of the summer she was sent with her sisters to the high pastures on the Alps. Because of transumanza.

Valle Pesio

Transhumance is the practice, still very much followed, to move cattle and sheep to the high pastures during the summer. If you have read Heidi (or seen the excellent Japanese anime with the same title) you know what I mean. As soon as the snow melts the cows are taken out of their stables to graze on the fresh grass near the village. As the season progresses they are moved higher up in the valley, until by the end of the summer you can find them climbing all the way up on precarious slopes in the shade of the rocky peaks of the Alps. The whole system is supported by a patchwork of paths cutting through the woods filling the bottom of the valley, and a network of stone building (gias) where the shepherds could find shelter at night, and leave the cheese to age.  Paths and gias are part of the "commons" of the valley, owned by the community for the benefit of everybody. Speaking of the shepherds: at the time of Frôla the task to take care of the herd during the summer fell to the three brothers owning the farm. Now this is a job mostly done by workers hired from outside the valley, often from far away countries in eastern Europe.

The photos in this post show some of the gias in Valle Pesio, which is where my parents now live. The valley is part of a State Park, which is now in charge of maintaining the paths and the gias, and ensure that this tradition will live on. Unfortunately I could not find any photo of Frôla.

Gias Suvran du Margüareis, Valle Pesio (Aug 6, 2014)

The Vineyards of the Langhe

Langhe, Italy (August 4, 2014)

Don't trust the GPS. One would think that I would know well the area in the south of Piedmont where my family is from. After all I have lived there for many years, and spent many summers in a little valley where the Alps starts, right at the head of the wine region of Piedmont. Yet, when at the end of the long drive from Trieste, Waze decided that we should get off the road to take a "shortcut" through the hills, I decided that technology must trump memories. Sure as hell, we found ourselves in the middle of the Langhe, in pitch dark, driving on roads getting ever smaller and steeper.

Vineyards in the Langhe

The Langhe are the wine region at the south of Torino, where the finest wines of Piemonte are produced (and the more-precious-than-their-weight-in-gold white truffles are found). Traveling through the area is like reading through a restaurant wine list: Barolo, Barbaresco, Neive... all little towns on the top of a hill, with a castle, a church and vineyards producing the unique wines carrying the local toponyms in their names. To those famous wines one should add the least known ones, among which the red Dolcetto and the white Arneis, which I actually prefer to their better known brethrens. The center of the Langhe is Alba, a pre-roman town that became a free city during the late middle ages, and was a center of fierce resistance against the german occupying forces in WWII. Cesare Pavese, one of my favorite writers, was from Santo Stefano Belbo, one of the centers in the area. My family has also their roots in the Langhe, with my paternal grandparents born in Bra and Cherasco. On the other side of the river Tanaro these two small centers are in sight of La Morra, an ancient village where the Nebiolium (Nebbiolo) wine was already grown in roman times. It is said that the vineyards were so highly regarded that the penalty for cutting down a vine were as severe as hanging, or having the offending hand amputated.

My only regret of getting lost in the finest wine area in Italy was that it was the middle of the night, and in full darkness we could not enjoy the beautiful vistas of the region (recently declared UNESCO World Heritage Site), nor the wines or the food. This was however to be remedied just a few days later, when we went back to the area on a wine expedition.

Mr. Drocco and his dogs

The attitude I was taught as a kid with respect to alcohol consumption, is that you drink wine for its flavour, not because of its inebriating qualities. A corollary of this is that there is no point in drinking crap wine: you go for quality. While in the US that would be synonym with expensive, in Italy it rather means that you only drink the wine from a producer you trust. That often means going to the source. The trusted vineyard of my family is a friend of my father, Mr. Renzo Drocco. A small family business, his production is mostly sold to local restaurants. And to a few friends. So, the next day after getting lost at night in the hills of the Langhe, we did the same route in reverse, in full daylight, to Mr. Drocco vineyards in Rodello. You can see the landscape in the area in this post's photos: rows after rows of vines, owned by small producers that strive for quality, rather than quantity. You can see him in the little photo on the right, in the cellar where his wine matures, and where he offered us a taste of his wines accompanied by a fresh slice of his own excellent salami (the latter explains the laser-focused attention of the two very interested pooches in the photo).

As I am writing this post, now that I am back in Iowa, one of his bottles is on the table, in front of me. A bottle of Arneis, a highly perfumed wine with the aroma of apricot, peaches and pears, sometimes called "Nebbiolo bianco". In the local dialect, Arneis means "little rascal", and refer to the difficulty in properly growing the vine. An art that Mr. Drocco has mastered to perfection.

Langhe, Italy (August 4, 2014)

The Troubled Life of an Unlikely Emperor

Trieste, Italy (August 3, 2014)

There was a time in history when a selected group of individuals, because of their birth, marriage or money, were more equal in society than everybody else. A few families controlled the governments of Europe, and the flow of capitals across the world. Their offsprings were groomed since a tender age to be the future enlightened leaders of their nations. Borders were drawn to accommodate their rightful necessities, and preserve the balance of power among these powerful families and their entourage. To us, living in the modern world of full equality, where everybody has the same political influence, economic possibilities and education opportunities, regardless of gender, race or inclinations, this may seem a quaint world out of touch with reality. But this was the world at the beginning of the XIX Century, after the Congress of Vienna in 1814 repaired the upheaval caused by the Napoleonic wars and set a new order by restoring the old powers to their rightful place.

Votivkirche, Vienna

This was the world in which Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine was born, in the imperial palace of Shönbrunn in Vienna. The second surviving child of a cadet branch in the Austrian imperial family, he devoted himself to a life of study and military action when his brother Franz Joseph become the new Holy Roman Emperor (that is, the ruler of Austria and half of Europe). Franz Joseph (Ceco-Beppe as he was nicknamed by his faithful italian subjects) had been elevated to the crown to bring some new, militaristic blood to a throne tainted by the European revolutions of 1848, and roll back some of the democratic concessions forced upon his feeble-minded uncle. After suppressing a revolt of the Hungarians, that somehow resented the Habsburg centralized rule, the emperor suffered an assassination attempt by the hands of the Hungarian nationalist János Libényi. He barely survived, and to celebrate this event (the survival, that is) the emperor's brother Maximilian called upon the reigning families of Europe to donate for the construction of a church on the site of the attack. Thus the Votivkirche in Vienna was constructed, located, as it happens, just facing my hotel room when I was in town two weeks ago for a meeting. The little photo on the left was my view from the window. Thanks Maximilian for your efforts.

Miramare marine reserve 

Maximilian efforts, however, didn't stop with the beautification of my hotel room view. At just 22 years of age he became commander in chief of the Austrian Navy, and was instrumental in the creation of the naval ports of Trieste and Pula. He was then named Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia (at the time part of the Austrian Empire), but he didn't last very much in that role. The emperor became enraged by the liberal policies attempted by Maximilian, and he was removed from the post. He then retired in Trieste with his wife Carlota. In Trieste he built their love-nest, the Miramare castle. The villa (built with the characteristically eclectic architecture of the time) is shown in the large picture above. It happens to be just a few step down from SISSA, the school where I did my graduate studies, and ICTP, which is where Mayli took a year of courses after her university degree.  You can say that Mayli and me met on the grounds of Maximilian and Carlota love-nest. The residence is surrounded by a beautiful park facing the gulf of Trieste, now a protected marine reserve. Next to the reserve and directly at the end of the road to the SISSA/ICTP buildings, there is a stone and concrete pier projecting into the gulf. The only public access to the sea, between the protected waters and private marina, this pier is where SISSA students spend the late afternoons waiting for the traffic to abate along the coastal road, before heading back to the city for dinner. You can see the pier in the small photo below (you may notice, keen-eyed reader, as women of any age sunbathe topless in Trieste, and nobody makes any fuss about it).

Miramare, Trieste

Maximilian however was restless. When a delegation of Mexican conservatives approached him in Miramare offering the crown of the newly created Empire of Mexico, with some little hesitation he accepted. He embarked on the imperial yacht Phantasie with his wife towards this new american adventure, ready to bring to his new subjects the wisdom and the enlightenment of his european education. He received the blessing of his peers: the benediction of Pope Pius IX and a ceremonial firing salute ordered by Queen Victoria as his boat crossed the Gibraltar strait.  He was not told, however, that the plebiscite supporting the creation of the new empire succeeded only with considerable help from the french bayonets of the occupying Napoleon III armies, nor that the liberal forces of Benito Juárez were less than ready to recognize his rule. He landed in Veracruz on 21 May 1864 welcomed by the wild enthusiasm of the crowds, and an ongoing revolution of the republican forces led by Porfirio Díaz. He didn't last long: his liberal policies once again enraged his conservative supporters, while the republican revolutionaries made huge gains as the french troops were retired, and with indirect help from the post-civil-war, Monroe-doctrine-directed United States. While Carlota was in Europe trying to rally support for her husband, Maximilian was taken prisoner by the forces of Juárez, court-martialed and sentenced to death. Despite the pleas of many liberals of the time (including Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Garibaldi) to spare his life, he was executed on June 18, 1867. His wife had a nervous breakdown following the news: she never acknowledged his death and spent the rest of her life, insane and recluse, on the grounds of the Miramare castle.

From the terrace of the Miramare castle, Trieste, Italy (Aug 3, 2014)

About Writing

Trieste, Italy (August 3, 2014)

+Rurousha tagged me in her blog to write about writing. She wants to know "how/where I find the time to take so many photos and write posts that are both scientific and lyrically beautiful". Uhmmm... I don't know about beauty, but the question about the time is easy to answer: I don't [find time], as evidenced by my taking more than two weeks to raise to the challenge and write this post. Now, I am supposed to comment a little more about my writing process. I'll do that while posting a few photos from Trieste taken last week, which is where I was while not writing this post.

What am I writing?

Trieste, Italy

I am not actually writing, this is a photoblog. Well at least it started as a photoblog, than I got distracted by the photo captions, and the photos became secondary to the text. Early in my career as an astronomer I traveled quite a lot, often in exotic locales which is where observatories are situated, or where conferences are held. Add to these work trips the visits to our families (mine in Italy and Mayli's in South America) and my photoblog rapidly morphed in a sort of unstructured travel diary, where lots of words are spent over-analyzing the places and situations utterly unfamiliar (and for that exciting) I come in contact with. Even after many years I still enjoy to be surprised by people and locales outside my comfort zone, which is what keeps me on my toes and keeps me real. I share a lot of this thinking on this blog. More recently, mainly because of my teaching duties as university professor, my travels diminished a little, and my posts have detached from the topics directly related to the photos. The images have become only the excuse to talk about whatever touched my mind, be it science, or society. And this is where usually I get in trouble.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, I am not sure my blog adheres to any specific genre. I mainly write to scratch the itch of the day (or rather of the month, considering the sparseness of my posts, lately). For a photoblog, my posts are way too wordy. For a blog, my images have way too much prominence. I am stuck in this in-between land where I cannot decide if I like more taking pictures or writing about them. Since I write mostly for me, this is not a problem, but this lack of focus is something I would not advise to anybody interested in increasing the volume of their readership (mine is ridiculously small)!

Trieste, Italy

My style is heavily influenced by a bunch of italian journalists that are more writers than reporters, spaghetti Hemingway of sort. First of all Paolo Rumiz, reporter for "Il Piccolo" of Trieste (you see, there is a connection to the photos) first, "La Repubblica" now. Rumiz is a gentle man writing with huge sensibility of his slow-paced travels around the world. One time he traveled from north to south in Italy with a "Topolino" (a car from the '50s) through little roads and even smaller villages (in "The Legend of the Floating Mountains"). Another time, he traveled along the path of Hannibal, from North Africa to the tip of the Italian peninsula. A few years back, he went all the way to Vladivostok along the Trans-siberian railway. The stories of his voyages are the high point of my summer months. From him I have learned that great stories are not written by focusing to the heroic acts of few actors, but rather on the daily struggles, little victories and annoying defeats of the ordinary people; like me, like us...

Sometimes I write about science. Science is what I do in my daily job (yes, astronomers work mainly in daytime, like everybody else). The science posts that appear in my blog are very different from my official science writing, the one of the scholarly articles. In my ApJ papers every word is measured and exact (at least it tries to be), a direct translation of math into english. My science posts have instead escaped from the cage: they liberally use forbidden analogies and figure of speech, and blur the lines between scientific rigor and misleading fantasy. My goal is to stimulate curiosity, not provide answers: don't try to learn science from my posts! I think I fault this to Italo Calvino.

Why do I write what I do?

I have no agenda. Well everybody has a hidden agenda, I just don't know what is mine. I started to write as a way to practicing English. When I arrived in the US my American English was quite awful. The little English I knew was British/international slang (my Ph.D. thesis advisor was from the UK), with a technical slant focused on my field of studies. American everyday-life-language was a big mystery for me (I remember a long conversation with the car insurance guy that ended with the poor man hanging up in frustration after saying "oh my dear God" because of my lack of understanding; I still hate to talk by phone). Writing a blog was a way to experiment without anybody hanging up on me (at least on my face). The topics I chose don't have a method: they are just something that happen to cross my mind, upset or elate me, or result from free association chains from the subject of a photo I shot.

How does my writing process work?

I use a computer, of course. If I had lived in the XIX century I would have used a quill, but now we have the magic of electronics that makes publishing easier. Oh wait, you mean to ask about my writing method, do you? Oh well...

Trieste, Italy

I am not sure I have a consistent process. I spend a couple of hours every day, weather good or bad, walking my dog. During these walks I let my mind wander; sometimes thoughts occur to me that I cannot easily shake off. Writing about them is a way to exorcise these mind-worms, a physical way to purge them from my mind and let them roam free one electron at a time, from my keyboard to the screen. Digital catharsis. When this happen, I mumbe for a few days about the subject, then try to find some photo in my archive that is remotely connected to the topic, and I start to write. Inevitably ending up to a different place from when I intended to be. But that's ok, isn't that what happens to characters anyway, once they leave the fingers of their writer (this is a reference to Luigi Pirandello)?

At the beginning (10 years ago, when I started the first incarnation of this blog) I posted more frequently, and the process what the reverse: first I chose the photo, then I wrote a caption for it. Now that the internet has changed (with the raise of social media) my photos go mostly on Google+, freeing my hand to tell stories on my blog, albeit at a slower pace.

Ok. what's next? Ah, I have to tag somebody to continue with this. Mmm, let's send the ball back to Japan to +Elizabeth Tasker. Why? Because she is a fellow astronomers and she also writes a mix of science and lifestyle posts in her blog. If you think I travel a lot, think how she has made her travel status permanent by moving to beautiful Sapporo. Elizabeth, the ball is on your court!

Trieste, Italy (August 3, 2014)

Flying over the Alps

Somewhere over the Alps (February 4, 2005)

Almost 6% of the surface of Earth is mountains. This corresponds to 20% of all available land (once you take out the oceans). As much as I like Italian mountains, it is time to move on. Let's take a plane and fly over the Alps. This route I have taken many many times, from west to east when visiting my family in Italy, and from East to West when getting back to the US. Hop on a plane and fly. Piece of cake, right?

Well, maybe not so easy, after all. In fact, in my brief jet-flying career (700,000 miles so far) I have already suffered two emergency landings as I was crossing the Alps.

Somewhere over the Alps

The first time was almost uneventful, thanks for my cluelessness. This was one of those planes with the little screen attached to the seat in front, showing the live map with the plane route. Well, at some point I noticed that the plane was making an unexpected U-turn, as to get back to Paris. People on the plane were kind of agitated but I could not understand what was going on. Then the pilot announced that we were getting back because, "as you may have noticed" there was a strong smell in the main cabin, which he was positive it wasn't gourmet cheese, and we were getting back to investigate. So we landed on a separate runway with the fire trucks ready to intervene... and intervene they did, as the reason of the smell was that one of our engines has gotten on fire mid-flight, and the smoke was already entering the cabin (so much for being pressurized). Of course, due to my anosmia, I didn't notice anything, but it must have been terrifying for the passengers that could see the right wing of the plane with its trail of smoke.

The second time was in fact more directly connected to the mountain crossing (which appropriate given that I am running this series about mountains). The flight was between Torino and Paris. As soon as we got over the Alps we started to feel very strong vibrations at the back of the plane. Horrible noise and shaking, like the worst turbulence I have even gone through. We did an emergency landing at Lion, nearest airport at that point, just on the other side of the mountains. No fire trucks, that time, but as soon as we landed one of these service trucks with the elevator cart approached our plane. We could not get out, but from the window we saw that the service crew was looking very carefully at the tail section of our plane. Nothing... we were stuck on the plane and these people were just looking and looking. As the passengers and the flight crew were getting just a little too nervous, one of the workers outside grabbed the tail of the plane, hanging to it, as to see if he could pull it out! As that happened the pilot, that by then was in the main cabin looking outside as everybody else, became red, said something like "that's it" and declared that he would not have flown that plane ever again. That was it indeed. We disembarked, managed to get to Paris with another plane before nightfall, and then took yet a different plane the next day, to get back to the US. All this happened a few months before a plane of the same model crashed in Queens (New York) because, you guess it, the tail section snapped due to excessive turbulence.

Despite all this, I still like the experience of flying (and I would not mind flying to space, if it was economically feasible). And that's nothing compared with what happened to a friend of mine that crashed twice with a helicopter, the same day, in the middle of the Amazon jungle. But that's a story for another day.

Somewhere over the Alps (February 4, 2005)

The Etruscan Kings of Rome

Umbria, Italy (September 18, 2009)

I have a few more photos of the hills and mountains of central Italy that I want to show. That's a perfect excuse to elaborate a little more about the etruscans and their relationship with ancient Rome. As I mentioned in the last post, the etruscans were a large and rich civilization when Rome was still a newly founded hamlet. Rome was protected from their mighty neighbors by the forests growing on the mountains and hills surrounding the city and isolating it from Etruria (these forests are still existing, see the photo above taken in southern Umbria). As Rome grew in size, power and economic importance, the partnership and alliances with the etruscan cities became more essential, until the two civilizations merged. This is symbolized in Rome's foundation myths by having an etruscan dynasty for the last three roman kings. This story is actually worth of a Shakespeare play.

A Tower on the hill

The story began with Lucius Tarquinio Priscus. Born in Tarquinii (in Etruria) by a greek father and etruscan mother, he became disgruntled with etruscan politics and traveled to Rome with his wife Tanaquil. It is said than when he entered the city by chariot, he had his cap stolen and then returned by an eagle, which Tanaquil interpreted as an omen of future greatness. Once in the city he was noticed by the king (Ancus Marcius) who made him tutor of his two sons.

One peculiarity of the roman monarchy was that it wasn't an hereditary institution: kings were acclaimed by the people and ratified by the senate. So, when Ancus Marcius died, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus was preferred to the previous king's sons, and became the new monarch. I won't go in the details of his reign. He fought his quote of wars (including one in which he subjugated several etruscan cities), build the Circus Maximus (the famous stadium for chariot racing) and the Cloaca Maxima (the great roman sewer). All in all he is said to have reigned for 38 years, when he was finally murdered by the sons of his predecessor, that organized a riot in the city, and used the confusion to mortally wound the king.

That was however not the end of the etruscan dynasty. The king's widow Tanaquil took the situation in her hands, hid the death of the king from the roman people, and convinced the senate to appoint one of her servants, Servius Tullius, as regent. Servius, who was born to a "virgin" slave (allegedly impregnated by the god Vulcan), was Tanaquil's protege and had was married with one of Tarquinius Priscus and Tanaquil's daughters. Tanaquil put him forward for the throne, before her two sons Lucius Tarquinius (the older, named after his father) and Arruns Tarquinius (the younger). Once the death of king became apparent, Servius was acclaimed as the new ruler. His reign is remembered as the golden age of the roman monarchic period. He expanded the city, was successful in wars and, most importantly, enfranchised the populace (the plebs) giving them the right to vote and to bear arms, in exchange of taxation and service in the military. In doing so he dramatically reduced the power of the oligarchy that previously dominated the political life in the city, and laid the foundation for many of the institutions that would later evolve into the Roman Republic.

Not everybody, however, was happy. The two sons of Tarquinius Priscus and Tanaquil, in particular, resented being passed over by their mother for the throne. To appease them, Servius gave them his two daughters in marriage. That didn't work, in fact made matters even worse. Lucius Tarquinius (the son) conspired with the wife of his brother (Tullia the younger) to get rid of their siblings and spouses (Arruns Tarquinius and Tullia the older). Then they married, and conspired to overthrow Servius (the king and Tullia's father). After some suitable bribing, Tarquinius walked armed into the Senate, and denounced the king for his policies in favor of the populace: when Servius attempted to intervene to defend his position, Tarquinius pushed him down the steps of the Senate, where he was killed by Tarquinius men, and run over on purpose by the chariot driven by his daughter Tullia. Tarquinius became king and refused to give proper burial services for his father-in-law, and became known for that as Tarquinius the Superbus (the "arrogant"). The street where this tragedy happened is still called "Vicus Sceleratus" ("street of infamy").

Tarquinius the Superb was not a particularly bad king for the standard of the time (made his conquests, built the obligatory temples), but was certainly not a loved one. In part because of the way he acceded to the throne, but most importantly because he tried to restore the power of the oligarchy at a time in which the roman society had already moved on towards more democratic principles. In the end his reign ended when one of his sons raped a respected noblewoman, leading to a revolt of the outraged population and to the founding of the Roman Republic, based on the institutions started by Servius Tullius, the last roman benevolent king.

The rest is history.

Umbria, Italy (September 18, 2009)

The Long Spine of Italy

Umbria, Italy (October 28, 2007)

When thinking about mountains in Italy, Alps come first to mind. That's only half of the story, though. Just a few valleys down from Valle Pesio, the Alps end, and a long chain of gentler mountains starts: the Apennines. While the Alps divide Italy from central Europe, the Apennines are like the spine of the peninsula, and divide the coast of the Adriatic sea on the east from the Tirrenian coast to the west. They go on for 1,500 km, as far south as the tip of the italian "boot", actually crossing the Scylla and Charybdis straits into Sicily.

Between the Alps and the Apennines, it should be clear by now that Italy is mostly a mountainous country. You cannot really go from one coast to the other, or enter the river Po valley from south, without crossing some mountain. Fortunately the Apennines are not as high and fierce as the Alps, and numerous roads have been made to cross them since the times of the romans. The romans were also the first to dig tunnels through the Apennines, like the gallery of the Furlo pass (next to an even more ancient tunnel dug by the Etruscans), which is still in use today. Today these mountains are criss-crossed by the italian excellent highway and railroad system, consisting of a long sequence of very impressive tunnels and viaducts, where italians drive at impossible speeds in narrow lanes without even the concept of safety distance.

The photos in this post were all shot in Umbria. This is one of the few landlocked italian regions, completely cut off from the sea by the Apennines. We have been in Umbria several times, as one of my collaborators works there, providing me an excellent excuse for repeated visits. Mayli also had one meeting in the area. In those occasions we usually fly to Torino, get my parent's car, and drive south, trying to stay away from the highway as much as possible, to maximize the chance of scenic roads driving, up and down the gentle mountain passes, from secret valley to hidden lake, along the ancient roman's roads.

The first great civilization to arise on the Apennines, having the epicenter in Umbria and Tuscany, was the one of the Etruscans. They were a mysterious population, unrelated to Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherer european populations. Recent mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests that their origins may be found in the middle-east, corroborating the theories of Herodotus, about the etruscans being refugees from Lydia (in Anatolia) seeking new fertile lands after a devastating drought. Their language is still undeciphered, so we know very little about their history, except that at some point they were controlling the northern part of the mediterranean sea. That came to the end with the expansion of Rome, that like the borgs gradually assimilated all etruscan cities, giving rise to a single state under the roman republic. It is not by chance that the last three of the seven mythological kings of Rome had etruscan origins: the legend symbolizes the birth of this merged civilization destined to dominate all the lands around the Mediterranean sea in the millennium to come.

Umbria, Italy (October 28, 2007)

Les Château de la Vallée d'Aoste

Fort Bard, Italy (March 14, 2009)

The Aosta valley is the smallest italian region. In the north-west corner of Italy, bordering with France and Switzerland, it is a long valley meandering through the highest mountains in the Alps, including the Mont Blanc, the Monte Rosa and the Matterhorn. It has a special autonomous status within the italian republic, not least because the main language spoken in the valley is a form of Franco-Provençal patois (dialect). Due to its geographical position, the Aosta valley had a special strategic place in history, as keeper of the high mountain passes allowing access to Italy from France. Hence, the castles.

Fort Bard

There are 72 castles just in the main valley, originally built as military fortifications, later on as residences to show the power and wealth of the local nobility. The two castles shown in the photos of this post are among the most famous of the lot. 

The Fort Bard you see in the photo, is a XIX century reconstruction of the original fortification, located in the narrowest point in the valley, already existing in roman time. In 1034 the fort was known as the "inexpugnabile oppidum", the one that cannot be conquered for its perfect strategic position. After being occupied by a litany of feudal families (including the powerful Bard), it came to the possession of the House of Savoy in 1661 (this is the same dynasty that in 1860 managed to unify the whole of Italy, and that was unceremoniously booted at the end of WWII -- thankfully), and heavily fortified. The rise to fame of the fort came in the year 1800, when the 400 austrian soldiers garrisoned at Bard managed to stop the advance of Napoleon's 40,000-strong army for more than two weeks. Napoleon was so upset by this delay, caused by what he called "the vilain castel" which ruined the surprise attack he had envisioned, that once the fort surrendered he razed it to the ground. Rebuilt 30 years later, it is now open to the public, and hosts a museum.

The square castle in the panoramic below is the Verres castle. Built in the mid-XIII century, it is one of the first examples of medieval castles built as a single massive building (rather than multiple smaller buildings enclosed by a fortified wall). The castle has a rich history, concerning mainly the wars of successions within the family (the Challant) that owned the area. In 1442 Frederico Challant died without male heir, and the castle was inherited by his daughter Caterina. The testament was however challenged by her cousin Giacomo di Challant Aymaville, invoking the Salic law preventing inheritance by a female member of the family. War ensued, and Caterina was finally defeated when her husband was killed by Giacomo in an ambush. After surrendering all her possession to her cousin, she was accused of witchcraft, but then pardoned. She never managed to recover her land, but remained very popular among the people of the valley: an episode on May 31 1450, during the war with Giacomo, in which she left the fortress with her husband to dance with the populace is still remembered fondly by the villagers, and re-enacted every year during the carnival in Verres. The castle is one of the most visited in Valle d'Aosta.

I took these photos while we were driving to La Thuile, at the end of the Aosta Valley, where Mayli was attending a physics conference (and skiing if I remember correctly). There are many other castles in the valley, and from time to time I had the chance to visit some of them. One of them, in fact, was the stage for a wedding I attended when I was a small kid, the one where I gave the bride a bunch of bugs as wedding present. But that's an old story you can read in full here.

Verres Castle, Italy (March 14, 2009)

Skiing in Valle Pesio

Parco Alta Valle Pesio, Italy (March 21, 2009)

Valle Pesio is where I learned to ski. Cross country skiing, that is, since the valley doesn't have any real downhill skiing slope, which is good because downhill slopes cuts through the forest and you don't want that in a natural park. Cross country skiing instead gets you everywhere. If there is snow you can ski on it as if you were hiking, skiing on the mountain trails all the way to the end, up to the last gias on the crest of the mountain, in view of the Marguareis veiled by the morning mist.

Pian delle Gorre

The photo on the panoramic below is taken on the road to the gias Mascarone. In summer it is a nice walk through sparse birch trees chattering in the wind with their persistent murmurs. In winter it is an easy ski route, with a gentle slope that goes from the end of the road to the summit of the homonymous mountain. At the end of the fall, when the first cold air announces the coming of the snow, it is like walking in Lothlorien, as the larch trees all turn to a golden shade (larix decidua is one of the few pine-like tree that loses its leaves in winter, and you can see some in one of the small photos here, on the road to the gias  Mascarone). 

My favorite winter trail, however, goes from the Certosa to the Pian delle Gorre. The skiing trail, which is in part groomed as shown above, follows the road that leads to the end of the valley, where most of the park trails start, including the trail to the rifugio Garelli. It goes back and forth on the two sides of the river Pesio, to avoid the steeper spots of the road, and the place where avalanches are more common, a turn in the road aptly named "malavalanca". By the time you reach the pian delle Gorre you are skiing in a forest, right in the heart of the park. It is not uncommon to be the only skier along the trail, with only the crackling noise of the crunching snow interrupting the continuous music of the wind. That's when you can meet the inhabitant of the forest, like the shy roe deer or the massive wild boar (yes, I met both while on the ski, the sight of one more welcomed than the other).

Even now that I live so far from these mountains, I eagerly wait the first few inches of snow, to put on my ski and Kero's skijoring harness, and walk out on the snow on a skiing exploring adventure.

Gias Mascarone, Italy (November 4, 2007)

Bastianin and the rifugio Garelli

Pian del Lupo, Alta Valle Pesio, Italy (October 3, 2008)

When I was in high school we were living in the "big city" of Torino 5 days a week, but we were spending most of our weekends in Valle Pesio. This was our routine: at noon each Saturday, when both me and my sister finished school, we packed out Fiat (later on it was an Alfa Romeo) with all five of us (that included our cat) and drove to the mountains of Valle Pesio. We did this even in winter when we probably were the only tourists (not residents) in the Valley. In those dark and cold winter evenings, if I didn't have to do my homeworks, I spent an awful amount of time visiting Bastianin, the old mule conductor of the valley, and the caretaker of the rifugio Garelli.

The Garelli is the CAI (Italian Alpine Club) mountain hut in the valley. It is the Valle Pesio stop along the Grande Traversata delle Alpi, the long distance hiking trail that goes from one end to the other of the alpine chain. It is located at the Pian del Lupo (Plateau of the Wolf) at the feet of the Marguareis massif, about 2 hours hike along a scenic mountain trail. It is named after Piero Garelli, president of the CAI of Modovi (a nearby town), who died as prisoner in the Mauthausen concentration camp during WWII.

The original rifugio Garelli was built in 1949, just after the war. Shaped as an half-barrel, like an hobbit-house, it could only host about 20 people. This is the Garelli I associate with Bastianin, who was its custodian for many many years. Every spring, as soon as the snow started to melt in the high valley, Bastianin and his mule left their home in San Bartolomeo, to open the rifugio and make it ready for the mountaineers aiming to climb the Marguareis, for the skiers competing in the annual "three refuges mountain-ski race", or for the tourists seeking just a few days off from the city. Bastianin was the human counterpart of the Garelli for a lifetime. Even in his retirement, when I was visiting him in those long winter evening, while he was making straw brooms in his stable, heated by a cast iron stowe and the breath of his last mule, he was the off-season keeper of the Garelli's keys.

Bastianin's rifugio burned out, in mysterious circumstances, in 1987. The people in San Bartolomeo only heard loud bangs when the gas bottles in the hut finally exploded due to the intense heat, after the structure burned for several days. I visited the site a few weeks after that happened, and all you could see were the corrugated tin foil of the roof, and the glass sculptures made by the windows as they melt (I still keep some of those in my parent's house). Being the rifugio one of the symbols of the valley (and one of its main attractions) it was decided to rebuild it on the same site. To save money, everybody was asked to contribute in kind for the construction work: a pile of sand and concrete bags was left at the beginning of the trail for the hikers to put in their backpacks, and transport up to the construction site. I did my part, and even had my very brief career as construction worker. One day while I was there unloading my sack of concrete, a crazy irresponsible guy decided to hand me a huge pneumatic hammer so that I could do my part in demolishing the burned out foundation of the rifugio. As soon as the diabolic power-tool was turned on, I was shot through the air while the pneumatic hammer jumped around destroying everything in its path. The crazy guy finally decided that I didn't have the physique du role to be a construction worker, and from then on I stuck to carry concrete bags and, a few years later, to physics.

The large photo above shows the new Garelli, a large structure that can host as many as 90 people. The panoramics below shows the Garelli in his setting against the magnificent rock wall of the Marguareis. The small picture on the left shows the view from the Garelli, looking down the valley. The stone construction is the Gias Suvran d'Sestrera, one of the temporary housing for the seasonal herders that live with their cows, goats and sheeps in the high valley during the summer. If you look carefully, you can actually see, beyond the opening of the Valle Pesio, the mists of the Po valley and, even farther away under the clouds, the mountains on the opposite sides of the Alps, all the way to the Matterhorn.

Pian del Lupo, Alta Valle Pesio, Italy (October 3, 2008)