Hidden Tuscany

by John Keahey

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  To the memory of

  Kathlyn Eliza Turgeon Keahey, Joe Judson Keahey, and Todd Judson Keahey

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  DEDICATION

  PREFACE

  CHRONOLOGY

  MAP OF WESTERN TUSCANY

  MAP OF EASTERN TUSCANY

  MAP OF VERSILIA

  1 A Starter

  2 Art and the City

  3 Working in Stone

  4 Versilia

  5 The Great Loop

  6 Sant’Anna di Stazzema

  7 The War

  8 Far from the Madding Crowd

  9 L’Arcipélago Toscano

  10 The Deep South

  11 Colli di Maremma

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  ALSO BY JOHN KEAHEY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  PREFACE

  WATER SHOULD always be nearby. I like being around it, on it, close enough to catch occasional glimpses of gray-blue sea bubbling with whitecaps. I don’t necessarily like being in it, unless I am merely sitting close to the surface on a rock or on cool, soft sand, and not moving around a lot. I have my reasons for my unreasonable dislike of immersion. I experienced three near-drowning experiences, once during toddlerhood when I fell into a canal and was saved by my older brother, once during childhood in a YMCA pool, and once as an impetuous twenty-something off the beach at Malibu, California. Each time fate intervened by placing my brother or a couple of strangers next to me who would make sure I survived.

  When I decided to visit western Tuscany to discover places most Americans either quickly pass through en route to somewhere else or never even think about while standing, elbow to elbow, in hours-long lines in Florence or Siena, I figured I wanted to be close to the sea, both of them: the Ligurian and the Tyrrhenian. This 180-mile-long western coastline has numerous beaches for all degrees of sunbather, from plebeians like myself with a few euros in their pockets to royalty with their much-deeper pockets. It has islands where visitors, after reasonably short ferry rides on the water, can take long walks through Mediterranean shrubs and forests, through vast swaths of wildflowers, the likes of which are not seen in North America. There are ruins to abruptly discover and explore, some going back to the Middle Ages, some to the Romans, some to the Etruscans, and some well beyond, back to protohistory and even farther into prehistory.

  Of course, those travelers who do not possess my fear of floating can have remarkable adventures in the sea. They are able to observe a multitude of creatures and reefs while snorkeling or scuba diving around the edges of the tops of subterranean mountain ranges that poke out of those two seas between Tuscany and Corsica.

  So why did western Tuscany become the subject of a travel narrative? It began with a conversation with Anna Camaiti Hostert, a former government official in Tuscany and a film and literature professor at various U.S. and Italian universities. She had helped me with my third book, Seeking Sicily: A Cultural Journey Through Myth and Reality in the Heart of the Mediterranean, and spoke with me often of her home in Tuscany’s Maremma. She suggested more than once that its story deserved to be told. Time went by, and with her recommendation in mind I eventually proposed a book examining Maremma and other little-known places in what may be Italy’s best-known region.

  I knew, and the publisher agreed, that it had to go beyond Maremma—the southernmost area, and perhaps one of the most unique areas, of western Tuscany. We settled on the western part of the famous region simply because many guidebooks skim over it, and because we sensed it is generally unknown among Americans. We would studiously avoid writing about the whole of Tuscany, concentrating on the coastal area, its islands, and a handful of its inland villages—never straying far from the sea—that Americans seem to seldom visit.

  Americans know well the eastern half of Tuscany and places such as Pinocchio’s birthplace of Collodi (for the kids), Pistoia, Florence, Siena, San Gimignano, and Montepulciano. Few of the places along Tuscany’s western coast make it into guidebooks. The big ones are there: Carrara and its marble. Pietrasanta usually gets a mention, along with Pisa and its Leaning Tower, Livorno and its canals, Grosseto and nearby Etruscan sites. Some of the seven major islands of the Tuscan Archipelago also get a few paragraphs.

  What are missed are the small villages in between these tourist havens, each with its own festivals and customs. Many have some of the most spectacular scenery in all of Tuscany and offer food unique only to the particular village, as I found, for example, in Santa Fiora, a tiny hill town virtually unknown to outsiders.

  I don’t expect travelers who read this book to follow in my footsteps. This is not a traditional guidebook with must-do itineraries, hotels, and restaurants. My goal is to engender a spirit of discovery, to get folks who consider themselves more traveler than tourist to rent a car, invest in a detailed road map, pick places that look intriguing, and make spontaneous stops. Learn some history, find something out about the Etruscans, and pick a few of the little-known sites to visit. It would burn out all but the hardiest etruscologist to try to hit them all.

  And it doesn’t matter what time of year the traveler chooses. While some major coastal destinations could be booked solid by European and Asian tourists during July and August, smaller beach communities and tiny inland villages just a few miles from the coast are worth using as a base for daylong forays.

  This book is the result of several trips around Tuscany during the spring, summer, and early fall of 2012. For purposes of economy, parts of some journeys are blended in with others, and, to avoid confusion, some traveling companions during two trips were not mentioned.

  Except for a few weeks, I mostly traveled alone, enjoying the freedom of movement such solitariness provides and not having to make compromises or explain why I suddenly wanted to go in this direction and not that one. Late in the day, or in the midst of some great discovery that I instantly wanted to share with someone who wasn’t there, were the loneliest times. But there was always one thing I could count on to take me out of such a feeling: conversations with Tuscans. This was true whether they happened to be the waiter who patiently explained to me why a dish I wanted calls for tagliatelle, not spaghetti, or the clerk in a bookstore describing her island’s flowers and birds. Or perhaps it was the clerk in a small one-star hotel who asked me each evening what I experienced that day in his beloved corner of western Tuscany and then, with growing excitement, would describe other places I absolutely should not miss experiencing. “Experiencing is much better than just seeing,” he told me one evening.

  Little things like that keep the traveler’s soul charged.

  CHRONOLOGY

  BC

  c.a. 1000—The earliest indication of Etruscans in what today is known as Tuscany. Seventeenth-century historians began referring to the area by the name Etruria. It included portions of today’s northern Lazio and western Umbria regions. Ancient Greek writers referred to these early peoples as Tyrrhenians. Of course there were protohistoric and prehistoric peoples in the area who preceded the Etruscans, but little is known about them.

  c.a. 900—Populonia, in today’s western Tuscany, begins to be established along with other Etruscan centers. Eventually, these early peoples expanded as far south as Rome and as far east as the Adriatic Sea coast, wh
ere they established Adria and Spina as trading ports.

  509—Rome removes its Etruscan king, launching the Roman Republic.

  358—Etruria is swallowed up by Rome, which then establishes its own colonies, usually at sites previously occupied by Etruscans and their predecessors.

  AD

  476—Western Roman Empire ends. While the end was a gradual process and not entirely sudden, this is the date cited by eminent English historian Edward Gibbon.

  568—Germanic Lombard rulers conquer Tuscany. By 700, it had become a Lombard dukedom. The name for the region during this period was Tuscia. This lasted until 773, when Charlemagne, soon to become Holy Roman Emperor, moved down from France into Italy, extending Frankish rule to the southern border of Tuscany.

  Early 1100—Countess Matilda of Tuscany orders construction of the Ponte della Maddalena over the Serchio River. It later becomes known as the Devil’s Bridge.

  1050—City-states ascend; Pisa becomes a dominant naval power. Over the next several centuries, Pisa battles with Florence and Genoa, and even pirates and Saracens, for domination of Mediterranean trading routes.

  1348–1352—The Black Death claims as many as 60,000 of Tuscany’s 110,000 souls.

  1397—The Medici family in Florence begins its ascent.

  1406—Pisa becomes a Florentine port. Later, in the fifteenth century, Pisa’s influence declines as its port on the Arno River silts up. In ancient times, the Ligurian Sea was two miles from the city, and ships sailed up the Arno. Today, the sea is six miles west of Pisa’s historic center.

  1569—Tuscany becomes a dukedom under the Medici ruler Cosimo I.

  1737—The Grand Duchy of Tuscany falls to the Habsburg-Lorraine upon the death of the last male Medici of the Grand Ducal line, Gian Gastone.

  1799—Napoleon occupies Tuscany and much of northern Italy.

  1814—The government begins draining some of the swamps that have consistently plagued western Tuscany with malaria, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths since ancient times. (Centuries earlier, Countess Matilda also had attempted to drain swamps, but Fascist Duce Mussolini had the most success, accomplishing significant land reclamation in the 1930s.)

  1848—Tuscany produces its first constitution and, within a year, declares itself a republic.

  1861—Tuscany joins the newly formed Kingdom of Italy under Vittorio Emanuele II as part of the long process of unifying the country. It took an additional nine years for all of Italy to come under the national flag.

  1870—With the fall of Rome’s papal forces, all of Italy is united.

  1920—Mussolini comes to power; Fascism begins its rise.

  1936—Hitler-Stalin Pact.

  1939—The Rome-Berlin Axis becomes a military alliance.

  1941—Italy and Germany declare war on the United States following the December 7 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

  1943–1945—During the Italian Campaign, the war between the Allies and Germany in and around Italy, Tuscan cities such as Pisa and Livorno are devastated, along with numerous towns and villages, as Allies drive Germans northward from Pisa and toward the Po Valley that runs east–west across northern Italy. The Allies’ routes north include the western Tuscany coastline and through the Serchio River Valley.

  1943—Italy surrenders to the Allies on September 8, 1943. Mussolini is deposed and arrested, but German commandos rescue him from his mountain prison in central Italy. After meeting with Hitler, he sets up a new government, the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI), on Lake Garda in northern Italy.

  1944—On July 19, Allies take over the heavily bombed port of Livorno, which becomes a supply base for the Italian Campaign’s drive toward the Po Valley. On August 12, 560 citizens—elderly people, women, teenagers, children, and infants—are massacred in the western Tuscan village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema.

  1945—On May 2, German and RSI forces in Italy surrender. On May 7, Germany surrenders to the Allies, ending World War II in Europe. The instruments of surrender are signed the following day.

  1946—The Kingdom of Italy is dissolved by popular vote, King Vittorio Emanuele III and his family are deposed, and the Italian Republic begins.

  1948—Tuscany, at 8,900 square miles, becomes one of the country’s regions, which today number twenty.

  ONE

  A Starter

  The greatest legacy of the old tenant-farming system is what is now—all too fashionably—called the cucina povera—the poor kitchen. Cucina povera is a misnomer. Tuscan food may be simple but it isn’t poor. It can be amazingly imaginative, occasionally even innovative, and always based on the freshest local produce. The cooking is still well available in rural trattorie and unpretentious restaurants throughout the region.

  —Beth Elon, A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany: Exploring and Eating Off the Beaten Track (2009)

  THE TALL, slender man, fashionably dressed in black slacks and a knitted shirt and with hair cropped close to his head, set a bone-white bowl in front of me. It was half full of something pureed. He reached for the bottle of mineral water to fill my glass. This, I thought to myself, is something I can eat. Finally. The meal was supposed to be a simple one—my first major sit-down after arriving in western Tuscany three days earlier. A bug I apparently picked up in Spain had laid me low, curbing my usual robust appetite and forcing me to seek a doctor’s help in Naples.

  Armed with proper medication and after an overnight rest, I had left Naples via coastal train for Pietrasanta, a six-hour journey through Rome and Pisa. A few hours after arriving, I met my landlady, signed a six-month lease, paid lots of euros for two months’ advance rent, and settled into my two-room apartment—three if you count the bathroom. I spent the next few days in light spring rain wandering the small town’s half-dozen or so streets and lounged under an umbrella in the piazza in front of the Duomo. On day three, I felt ready for a regular meal—a dish of lasagna sounded just right. Along one of Pietrasanta’s pedestrian-only streets just off the main piazza there appeared a cheery place with a half-dozen tables tucked into a medieval-era building. Its small sign simply read FILIPPO. Surrounded by a few clusters of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and children, I ordered the lasagna al ragú.

  The man walked away, and I examined the contents of the bowl more closely. In the center, on top of the puree, was a bright green ring of something else, along with other embellishments here and there. Its taste was remarkable. I hastily downed the concoction with a few swipes of my large spoon. The bowl disappeared, and a new bowl, this one holding a large square of lasagna, was put in its place.

  This version of something I grew up with in a non-Italian home was different: the pasta squares were not overcooked like I had experienced over most of my life. Filippo’s version was lightly al dente, with a creamy cheese infused between tender slices of pasta and doused appropriately with a meat sauce like I never had, even long ago when I was in Bologna, a city famous for its ragú. It simply melted in my mouth.

  Sipping strong Italian coffee afterwards, I got the man’s attention and asked his name. It was Filippo himself, Filippo di Bartola. He spoke good English—better than I spoke basic Italian—so I asked him about that strange dish I had at the beginning of the meal.

  Filippo seemed surprised by the question. He shrugged. “It has no name. It is simply a starter.” He said its ingredients were heavily pureed potato; celery and zucchini, also heavily pureed; plus touches of pesto and fennel.

  I wanted to talk to him some more about his food and about western Tuscan culture, but it was 3 P.M. and the restaurant was closing—I was the last to leave—and he had had a long day. Two English tourists walked in, and Filippo politely directed them down the street. He told them it was late in the day on a Sunday for a restaurant to be open, but they might find a pizza seller farther along.

  “Let us meet in three days,” he told me. “I would like to talk to you; it will help me practice my English.”

  * * *

  I had arrived, sh
aky from the Spanish bug, in Pietrasanta in mid-April 2012, and was prepared to use this near-coastal town in northwestern Tuscany as a base for a six-month visit to the region’s western coast. At an elevation of only forty-six feet, Pietrasanta is about a mile and a half from the sea, with nearby beach communities—Marina di Pietrasanta, Forte dei Marmi, Lido di Camaiore, and Viareggio—getting the sun-seeker action by European tourists and Italians alike. Pietrasanta, close to the marble quarries of Carrara, Massa, and Seravezza, is famous as a center where artists live and work. It is home particularly to sculptors from all over the world, because the town of some twenty-five thousand souls backs up onto the foothills of the marble-rich Alpi Apuane, or Apuan Alps.

  Pietrasanta is positioned, between Genoa and Pisa, along the major north–south routes of the A12 autostrada and the parallel state highway SS1, known locally as “Via Aurelia.” In addition, Pietrasanta sits on the ancient narrow pathway known as Via Francigena, which, in the age of growing tourism, is clearly marked along Tuscany’s entire length for walkers and bicyclists. The Via Francigena is the route that pilgrims from all over Europe once followed to Rome, the capital of Christendom. From there, many would move on by land and boat to the holy city of Jerusalem.

  These ancient routes along Tuscany’s west coast still draw travelers, but this part of Italian tourism’s most popular region is not as well known as its more famous eastern half. The 180-mile-long coastal area, from Carrara in the north to Grosseto and Orbetello in the south, draws European travelers but few Americans.

  The part of western Tuscany where I am living—the area around Pietrasanta, the Apuan Alps—is known as Versilia. It generally includes Pietrasanta, Forte dei Marmi, Seravezza (which plays heavily in the area’s marble-quarry history), Stazzema, and Camaiore. There are other villages included in this mini region, most notably Sant’Anna di Stazzema, the village tucked in the hills a few miles above Pietrasanta. It was this village where German soldiers, on August 12, 1944, executed 560 men, women, and children.