Underground fun
Grottos, mines, caves, museums:an outing to land of marble.
Never been caving? In Levignani, just up from the coast, you can and a dive into the Corchia Underground cave system is a spineshivering thrill.
The key attraction is the Antro del Corchia, a spectacular karst complex made up of 70 km of galleries, wells, and conduits: since 2001, expert guides accompany visitors on a 2 km walk through this mysterious secret world.
Some other suggestions: the Miniere dell’Argento Vivo mines, the Arabescato marble quarry, the museum of quarrying tools and equipment.
Tickets Grottos
Via IV Novembre 70, Levignani di Stazzema.
Tel. +39 0584 778405
Italian boutique: wearable sensations and secrets.
Women’s fashion celebrates Tuscan creative excellence and workmanship. SaveTheQueen! has docked in Forte dei Marmi to strains of a stirring fanfare celebrating the style, the inventiveness, and the lush quality of the Tuscan artisan tradition. The SaveTheQueen! ateliers in Florence, Rome and Paris (and coming soon in Cannes) are conceived as stages for the collections, theaters where inspirations are intensified by sound and color in fantastic settings.
The watchworld at SaveThe Queen! is made in Italy. For everything: styling, fabrics, leathers and accessories.The print patterns, developed strictly from hand-drawn original studies, are unique and special brand features, as are the embroideries, stellar examples of skilled hand work and symbols of Tuscan culture and tradition.
The Forte dei Marmi boutique has all the Summer novelties, including beachwear and lounge and nightime wear. But the horizon is already crowded with the heralds of the Fall-Winter collection, inspired by enigmatic Eastern European auras. Fashion items like pages of a diary scraps of poetry and secretes worn in plain sight.
SaveTheQueen!
Piazza Tonini 1, Forte dei Marmi Lucca Tel. +39 0584 786078
Via De’ Tornabuoni 49, Firenze
Via del Babuino 49, Roma
189 Boulevard Saint Germain, Parigi
Arno River
The Arno is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the most important river of central Italy after the Tiber. The river originates on Mount Falterona in the Casentino area of the Apennines, and takes initially a southward curve. The river turns to the west near Arezzo passing through Florence, Empoli and Pisa, flowing into the Tyrrhenian Sea at Marina di Pisa. With a length of 241 kilometers, it is the largest river in the region.
It crosses Florence, where it passes below the Ponte Vecchio and the Santa Trìnita bridge (built by Bartolomeo Ammanati, but inspired by Michelangelo). The river flooded this city regularly in historical times, the last occasion being the famous flood of 1966, with 4,500 m³/s after a rain of 437.2 mm in Badia Agnano and 190 millimetres in Florence, in only 24 hours.
The flow rate of the Arno is irregular. It is sometimes described as having a torrent-like behaviour, because it can easily go from almost dry to near-flood in a few days. At the point where the Arno leaves the Apennines, flow measurements can vary between 0.56 m³/s and 3,540 m³/s. New dams built upstream of Florence have greatly alleviated the problem in recent years.
Olive Oil History
Homer called it “liquid gold.” In ancient Greece, athletes ritually rubbed it all over their body. Its mystical glow illuminated history. Drops of it seeped into the bones of dead saints and martyrs through holes in their tombs. Olive oil has been more than mere food to the peoples of the Mediterranean: it has been medicinal, magical, an endless source of fascination and wonder and the fountain of great wealth and power. The olive tree, symbol of abundance, glory and peace, gave its leafy branches to crown the victorious in friendly games and bloody war, and the oil of its fruit has anointed the noblest of heads throughout history. Olive crowns and olive branches, emblems of benediction and purifiation, were ritually offered to deities and powerful figures: some were even found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.
Cultivating the Sacred
Olive culture has ancient roots. Fossilized remains of the olive tree’s ancestor were found near Livorno, in Italy, dating from twenty million years ago, although actual cultivation probably did not occur in that area until the fifth century B.C. Olives were first cultivated in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean, in the region known as the “fertile crescent,” and moved westwards over the millennia.
Beginning in 5000 B.C. And until 1400 B.C., olive cultivation spread from Crete to Syria, Palestine, and Israel; commercial networking and application of new knowledge then brought it to Southern Turkey, Cyprus, and Egypt. Until 1500 B.C., Greece—particularly Mycenae—was the area most heavily cultivated. with the expansion of the Greek colonies, olive culture reached Southern Italy and Northern Africa in the eighth century B.C., then spread into Southern France. Olive trees were planted in the entire Mediterranean basin under Roman rule. According to the historian Pliny, Italy had “excellent olive oil at reasonable prices” by the first century A.C, “the best in the Mediterranean,” he maintained.
In the land of the Hebrews, King Solomon and King David placed great importance on the cultivation of olive trees; King David even had guards watching over the olive groves and warehouses, ensuring the safety of the trees and their precious oil.
Olive trees dominated the rocky Greek countryside and became pillars of Hellenic society; they were so sacred that those who cut one down were condemned to death or exile. In ancient Greece and Rome, olive oil was the hottest commodity; advanced ships were built for the sole purpose of transporting it from Greece to trading posts around the Mediterranean.
The belief that olive oil conferred strength and youth was widespread. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, it was infused with flowers and with grasses to produce both medicine and cosmetics; a list was excavated in Mycenae enumerating the aromatics (fennel, sesame, celery, watercress, mint, sage, rose, and juniper among others) added to olive oil in the preparation of ointments.
Olive trees have an almost titanic resistance, a vital force which renders them nearly immortal. Despite harsh winters and burning summers, despite truncations, they continue to grow, proud and strong reaching towards the sky, bearing fruit that nourishes and heals inspires and amazes. Temperate climactic conditions, characterized by warm dry summers and rainy winters, favor plentiful harvests; stone, drought, silence, and solitude are the ideal habitat for the majestic olive tree. Italy and Spain are now the most prolific producers of olive oil, although Greece is still very active. There are about thirty varieties of olives growing in Italy today, and each yields a particular oil with its own unique characteristics.
Olive Oil Properties
Sun, stone, drought, silence and solitude: these are the five ingredients that, according to Italian folk traditions, create the ideal habitat for the olive tree.
We treasure extra-virgin olive oil for its nutritional and salutary virtues. La Cucina Italiana reports that extra-virgin olive oil is the most digestible of the edible fats: it helps to assimilate vitamins A, D and K; it contains so-called essential acids that cannot be produced by our own bodies; it slows down the aging process; and it helps bile, liver and intestinal functions. It is also valued for its culinary virtues and organoleptic properties as well: flavor (sapore), bouquet (aroma), and color (colore)
Climate, soil, variety of tree (cultivar) and time of harvest account for the different organoleptic properties of different oils. Certain extra-virgin olive oils are blends of varieties of olives; others are made from one cultivar.
The European Community gives the following parameters:
Extra-virgin olive oil with perfect taste is oil of the highest quality; it has a minimum organoleptic rating of 6.5 out of 10, low acidity (1% or less), and is untreated.
Olive oil has a minimum organoleptic rating of 5.5, a maximum of 2% acidity and is untreated.
The production of all other olive oils involves treatments.
Extra-virgin olive oil is produced in all regions of Italy, except Piedmont and Val D’Aosta. The leading producers are Liguria, Tuscany, Umbria, and Apulia. Tuscany produces such a great assortment of extra virgin oils that many do not resemble each other. In Umbria, it is so widely produced that it would be hard to imagine the landscape without the abundance of olive trees. Apulia is home to an impressive one-third of Italy’s olive trees.
The price of extra-virgin olive oil varies greatly. Two factors are influential: where the olives are grown and which harvesting methods are implemented. Certain locations yield more bountiful harvests; consequently their oil is sold for less. Olive trees planted near the sea can produce up to 20 times more fruit than those planted inland, in hilly areas like Tuscany. It is in these land-locked areas that the olive trees’ habitat is pushed to the extreme; if the conditions were just a little more severe, the trees would not survive. Extra-virgin oils produced from these trees have higher organoleptic scores.
CYPRESS TREES (Cupressus sempervirens)
Few people can imagine an Italian garden, without images of tall, needle-like cypress trees springing to mind, so strong is the image of the cypress tree in Italy. The cypress tree’s name would suggest that it didn’t originate in Italy – even though its image really does symbolise Italy and everything that’s Italian about this wonderful land!
The Cypress tree’s origins are just as mysterious as it’s early uses and the folklore surrounding it! It is thought to be a native of the ancient Mesopotamia region between the Tiber and Euphrates rivers, which covered the area of modern day Iraq and Iran (once known as Persia). This area that was covered with Mediterranean forests was also the original home of the magical cypress tree. The same area, namely Persia, was also home to the ancient and equally mysterious Etruscan civilisation that inhabited Tuscany many years before Christ. The Etruscans regarded the cypress tree to be extremely sacred and it is widely believed that it was indeed the Etruscans that originally brought the cypress tree with them when the they began arriving in Tuscany.
The evergreen cypress tree grows to height of 20 to 25m and can survive for many thousands of years, outliving many generations of humans. The cypress tree’s longevity, the fact that it remained evergreen throughout the harsh winters and it’s heady resinous scent earned the plant a divine and spiritual status in Etruscan society. The Etruscans used the plant to line the entrances to their dwellings and they seem to have planted as many cypress’ as possible near to their settlements as they believed the fresh, resinous scent purified the air. On hot days one can detect the scent of a group of cypress trees from many metres away and it’s easy to understand why the Etruscans believed the tree improved the atmosphere with its fresh scent.
The wood of the cypress tree is very long lasting owing to its thick, resinous sap, which protects the wood from insect attack. In fact, the timber also emits a strong yet pleasant scent for many years and the Etruscans used the wood of the cypress tree to create sarcophagi and also in the cremation ceremonies themselves, so special was this plant to these early people.
In the Italian garden the cypress tree offers garden designers like me a tree that provides a vertical visual statement that really no other tree can provide. The evergreen, symbolic shape of this tree, standing s20m tall, appears to stretch skywards rather like the steeple of church and one could be forgiven for perceiving strong, spiritual connotations regarding the shape of this tree alone. Standing in the middle of a group of fully grown cypress trees and looking at the sky is most definitely a spiritual experience, as a strong link can be felt between the land on which one stands and abyss of the blue sky above.
Garden designers in Italy still use the cypress tree to line entrance driveways and create evergreen structure around the house and their presence clearly evokes strong symbolic sentiments. I find them indispensible for framing the stunning views that can be seen from many Italian gardens or as visual indications to guide the eye around my garden designs. The use of the cypress tree in Italian garden design is fundamental, however, care should be taken to not exaggerate the use of this immensely special, symbolic yet very subtle tree in Italian style gardens.
Leslie Halloran
Please check out my website at: www.lihdesigns.net “A frog in the well does not know the sea.”- Japanese Proverb
