Unpacking Italy , livre ebook

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd - Tony Gates

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142 pages

English

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Tony Gates has a love affair with Italy. This book shares the affair with you. He has visited Italy more times than he knows. He brings to this "unpacking" of Italy the experience of many years, enjoyment of its many cultures, fascination with the events which brought a united Italy into being, deep appreciation of its art, and engagement with its people and places.This is not a guidebook. Tony wants to take you to the heartbeat of Italy, a journey which looks carefully at the events and scenes along the way and listens attentively to the pulse beats of the Italian peninsula. The journey reveals that there is really more than one Italy. Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Umbrians, Normans, Lombards, French and many others have ensured that.Where once Latin held pride of linguistic place, numerous dialects remain, pointing to the variety that is the Italy which the author shares with you. His hope is that you will find an exciting Italy as you join him on the journey.Tony wishes you Buon Viaggio.

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Travel writing

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Date de parution	30 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528995269
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Extrait

U npacking I taly
Passions of a Traveller
Tony Gates
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
Unpacking Italy About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Introduction Chapter 1: Through Simplon to Eden Chapter 2: High Culture, High Church and High Fashion Chapter 3: Shakespeare, Learning and a Useful Saint Chapter 4: The Most Serene Republic Chapter 5: Carnival Time Chapter 6: A Different Riviera Chapter 7: Miracle on the Arno Chapter 8: A Wider Look at Tuscany Chapter 9: Byzantium on the Adriatic Chapter 10: Unforgettable Umbria Chapter 11: An Apennine Interlude Chapter 12: Ecclesiastical Eminence to Imperial Retreat Chapter 13: Greeks, Romans and Invisible Mafia Chapter 14: Popes, Caesars and the Piazza Navona Epilogue
About the Author
Tony Gates was born in England and now lives in South Australia. His working life has included merchant seaman and army service, personnel and training, tour leading and extensive personal travel.
His interests include fly-fishing, classical music, railways, writing, language, travel, history, theology and art.
He has long been in love with Italy and does not know how many times he has visited the Italian Peninsula.
Father of two adult sons and an adult daughter, he is married to his beloved Ruth.
Dedication
To my precious wife, Ruth, whose comments and careful reading of the manuscript led to this being a better book than it would otherwise have been.
Copyright Information ©
Tony Gates 2022
The right of Tony Gates to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528995245 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528995252 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528995269 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
I express my sincere gratitude for the fellowship and critical comments of fellow members of the Sand Writers group in South Australia, to BH who read my early reflection on the Villa San Michele while he was there at Anacapri, and whose response encouraged me more than he can know to continue writing, and to Austin Macauley Publishers who decided the book was worth launching into the market.
Introduction
I have the Italian disease. I’m not sure that it is fatal, but it is certainly incurable. If you want to avoid contracting it, my advice is to give a wide berth to anything like an interest in this Mediterranean peninsula until you are comfortably into middle age. By then, you should be well set in your ways, which is the best of all immunities to the Italian virus.
My downfall was the early age at which I succumbed. I was ten. It started with a love of bluebell woods. At that tender age, I discovered an enchanting one on the northern edge of London and found within it an old, black, single-decker bus which had been converted into a home. Harold, the elderly man who lived there, became my firm friend until his death. It was Harold who introduced me to ‘The Story of San Michele’, the Swedish doctor Axel Münthe’s literary tour de force in the English language. How could I possibly have found that book interesting at the age of ten?
How I even finished it I cannot understand now, but the fact is I couldn’t put it down.
Münthe’s dream, centred on the isle of Capri, captivated me.
The result was that the ten-year-old boy developed a burning desire to go to Capri. I wanted to walk the byways of Anacapri where old illiterate Maria Porta Lettere , unable to read the envelopes, used to deliver the post to Capolimone, Zopparella, Rosinella Pane Asciutto and other colourfully nicknamed inhabitants of the high village, each one a part of Münthe’s world. I needed, as much as I needed air, to visit San Michele, the villa built on the site of one of Tiberius’ residences, the fulfilment of Münthe’s dream. I yearned to sit in the sun where La Bella Margherita had served macaroni and red wine, though red wine meant nothing to me then, but what romantic notions, even for a ten-year-old, clung to the words— La Bella Margherita !
Since then it has been my joy to visit Italy many times and to make a number of visits to Capri, an island I seem to love more each time I set foot on it. I first saw it as a seaman at the age of seventeen, though from a distance. I stepped ashore from a cargo ship in Naples and walked as far as I could along the northern arc of the bay. Then I turned and looked back. Immediately I knew I had never seen anything as beautiful anywhere. I have seen nothing lovelier since.
The city seemed to have its feet in the water, forming a curve of an extraordinary collection of buildings lining the deep blue of the bay. Ferries were coming and going from Mergellina and Beverello. The Angevin and Aragonese fortress of Castel Nuovo stood menacingly over the waterfront, dominating Stazione Marittima. Vessels were everywhere on the water. As my eye followed the line of the bay, there in the distance twin-cratered Vesuvius, with just a trace of barely visible smoke idly curling into an azure sky, stood as a reminder to Neapolitans that beauty is not always without its darker side. From Vesuvius, the Sorrento peninsula stretched westwards, pointing invitingly to Capri, with its two distinct massifs joined by a gently sloping saddle. So near and yet so far! Soon it was back to the ship, but I had experienced some hours of excited imagination. My determination to set foot upon the island was firmed.
Some day, some day!
Too soon, the hour came for casting off and it was back to work for that seventeen-year-old seaman.
The Bay of Naples receded into the distance and something of Tony Gates was left behind.
I keep returning to Italy. Sometimes I ask myself why. Answers do not come easily. It is, I think, because Italy refuses to be neatly classified. Whenever I think I am getting close to understanding the kind of place it is, I find that it becomes elusive all over again. Is it the beauty of the language? The chaos of the political system? The bustle and noise of Rome? The ancient roots of the land? The country-wide art gallery seen in the churches, the museums, the architecture, the public sculptures? The beauty of the Tuscan hills, rolling, green and inviting? The extraordinary mix of cultures born of Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, Lombards, Spaniards, Frenchmen and a host of others?
Or is it perhaps because every time I go to Italy, I discover something more about myself, my roots as a European?
It just may be that I have never grown up and can’t resist travelling on Italian trains. I still get a thrill from wandering the stations of the great cities, reading the destinations of the trains and travelling on such romantically named services as the Napoli Express or the Cisalpine Express, a title which always brings to mind Cisalpine Gaul and Julius Caesar’s fateful crossing of the Rubicon, that tiny stream which runs into the Adriatic and has the nerve to call itself a river. Having said that, I find that another magnetic field of Italy draws me in—so many world-shaping events have taken place there. Get off almost any train at almost any station and you are not far from the making of history.
In the end, I have to admit that I don’t know why the country lures me back again and again. Its call is as irresistible as that of the sirens to Ulysses—but I have no intention of being tied to the mast. I am very happy to be among the seduced.
This perspective of Italy is through the eyes of an incurable romantic. I make no apology for that. In this world where value is too often measured in compound interest and technological development, the need for romantics is critical. My own romanticism might best be explained by another cameo from boyhood. School was not a source of pleasure to me, and in order to relieve the tedium of sitting in a classroom during the precious hours of the day when better things could be done, I made good use of my bike. Leaving home at the correct time for a boy going off to school and arriving home at just the expected hour, from time to time I pointed the handlebars southwards towards central London.
There a day of sheer delight awaited me as I spent happy moments on London Bridge gazing at the Pool of London, or sometimes heading for the Isle of Dogs and the non-tidal docks. In both places, I would study intently the ships in port, their names, their flags, and wonder where they had been and where they might be going when at last they set their heads downriver towards the Thames estuary and North Foreland. On those days away from school the firm plan to go to sea took shape. There was a world that was bigger than the London I loved and still love, and those vessels were my indications of it. I would see that world and fill my life with experiences Marco Polo never dreamed of!
Most people leave their boyhood or girlhood dreams behind them. I have been fortunate in having mine remain with me. In the ways that really matter, I am still the boy sitting on London Bridge looking at an ocean-going ship, ready to sign on at a moment’s notice to see where it will take me. I make this point because sometimes I feel sorry for those whose romanticism has become lost in the sophistication and cynicism of maturity. Shirley Valentine expressed it well in the film surely designed for all romantics when sh