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Italian language culture

At first glance, Speak the Culture: Italy doesn’t leap out at you from the bookshelves. It appears rather nondescript and un-inspirational. However, as they rightly say, don’t judge a book by its cover. Speak the Culture: Italy is a gem.
Even if you’ve never been to Italy, you will probably want to read this book. It’s a rich compilation of facts about Italy, a learning experience about the country and makes it tick. Jammed full of information, the book looks at Italian history and living culture, food wine and song, fashion, art and architecture. It differs from the usual books aboout Italy, choosing to be part history book, part modern commentary and part cultural guide. It’s the kind of book you can dip into rather than have to sit down and read it from cover to cover although you may still want to do that as it is captivating reading.

With sharp, crisp writing, it’s easy to read. The sidebars on almost every page provide bite-sized morsels of information about italy that have – I din’t know that appeal. Bet you didn’t know that Da Vinci caried the Monna Lisa around with him for years whenever he travelled to Rome and France. In Italy the painting is known as la Gioconda because the sitter was married to Francesco del Giocondo. Or ever wondered where Italy makes its money?
According to the book, 2% from agriculture, 27% from industry and 71% from services. And 99% of companies in Italy employ fewer than 250 people.
With the contents printed in only two colours green and black the publishers may have erred too much on the side of thriftiness, yes the amount of information and insight into modern Italy more than makes up for the lack of full colour.
Speak the Culture: Italy is part of five book series that drills down into other countries and cultures including France, Spain, Germany and Britain.
The book has also lots of quotes from famous people. Pope John XXIII apparently was overheard to say that “Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways: women, gambing and farming”.
Food for thought. Or Lucca’s own Giacomo Puccini “I am a mighty hunter of wild fowl, operatic librettos and attractive women”. According to the book, when Puccini died, he was worth, by today’s a lot of high notes.

The book spends some ink on how Italians think and why their culture is so desiderable to the rest of the world.
As Reg in Monty Python’s Life of Brian famously said: “apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public, order, irrigation roads, the fresh water system and public health”, the Roman Empire’s arguably most enduring legacy has been the Catholic Church. It ensured the survival of Latin and maintained Rome’s place as a worldwide cultural centre.
If you are only going to read one book on Italy this year (and according to the Italian Publishers’ Association 50% of Italians don’t read even one book a year) Speak the Culture: Italy by Andrew Whittaker is published by London-based Thorogood Publishing, 10-12 Rivington St. London EC2A 3DU, and see www.speaktheculture.net.

The book retails for around euro 20,00. Available also throught Amazon.co.uk

Tuscan products

Formenton Otto File
Somewhere it’s called “the King2s corn” afer the fact that King Vittorio Emanuele II, appreciated a lot this kind of cereal and encorauged the production in Piedmont.
In Tuscany, or better in the Lucca district, it’s called “formenton”. In the smallest sectors of history and culture the small corn of this wild cereal are still cultivated. Long and thin, sorrounded by eight ranges – not one more, not one less -of big grain, golden or red depending on the variety.
Once they’re grinded one obtains a rustic flour to prepare several delicious dishes: a classical “polenta” to serve a side of cured meat ad stewed, some cakes and a special bread enriched in zibibbo raisin, even served to accompany cured meat and cheeses.
The seeding is in may, after the ploughing ant the fertilization of the soil.
After the blossoming the young plants are thinned out and harvested manually.
After some 20-30 days of drying, the grains are picked and at last the griding, mainly in the old stone mills of the Valley.
The “ottofile” corn is a characteristic variety nowadays almost lost. Only 250-30 q. are produced every year and sold mostly in the area and in the rest of Tuscany after the growing success of the natural food.

Web-site: www.ottofile.it (only in Italian)

Salvatore Ferragamo Museum

Ok, we admit it, this is a girly article.
We’re talking shoes gorgeus colourful stunning shoes. A whole museum of them in fact. If you haven’t already visited the Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, add it now to your list of things to see in Florence. It’s a blissful way to spend an hour or two.
First, there’s the building. Palazzo Spini Feroni is a handsome 13 th century palazzo, which lies a few steps from Ponte Santa Trinità, the bridge over the Arno where Dante is said to have first set eyes on Beatrice (the building indeed houses the well named in her hnour, the Pozzo di Beatrice).
For over 70 years now the Palazzo has been the headquarter and flagship store of the shoemakers Salvatore Ferragamo.

The museum is on the lower floor, below street level, a tranquil refuge from the noise of modern Florence. You enter from the Piazza Santa Trinità the column of Giustizia in the centre facing down Via Tornabuoni and its designer shops.
Immediatly there is an aura of effortless style – cool music, carefully modulated ligthting. The first section of the museum introduces us to the man himself, Salvatore Ferragamo. Born in 1898 in the small town of Bonito about 100 kilometres east of Naples, Ferragamo emigrated to United States in 1914.
He seems always to have known where is talents lay saying, “I was born to be a shoemaker”. His arrival in California coincided with the early heady days of the film industry, and it wasn’t long before he had opened the Hollywood Boot Shop (great name).
By the time he returned to Italy in 1927 and settled in Florence, his reputation as shoemaker to the stars was already established and was to continue throughout his life. It was a reputation based on shoes which were beautiful, exquisitely made, and comfortable.
They were also famously light, as shown by photograph of a Ferragamo shoe with a 130 gm weight added to the scales to make it balance with an “ordinary” shoe.
We see photographs of Salvatore Ferragamo at shoe fittings with famous film stars of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, and bringing the link with showbiz up to date, another room is also showing a short documentary on the making of the recent film “Australia” the Ferragamo company made all Nicole Kidman’s shoes for the film. Other displays feature extracts from the Hollywood shop’s order book, a mock workshop showing the shoe-making process, with the lasts made for famous wearers, and orginal sketches and artwork used for advertising campaigns.

But the real stars are the shoes. On display at any time are hundreds of shoes from the museum’s permanent collection of over 10,000, documenting Ferragamo’s career up to his death in 1960, and beyond.
Almost a century of history told by foot wear. And what shoes! Sandals, court, shoes, wedges, ballerina shoes, ankle boots, lacing shoes, shoes with high heels, shoes with low heels, all of exquisite workman ship. And shoes in every material imaginable – not only in calf, suede, snakeskin and kid, but also in cork, satin, straw, glass, and even a pair of high-heeled sandals in 18 ct gold made for a wife of an ( unnamed) Australian tycoon.

Museo Salvatore Ferragamo is open every day except Tuesday.
Disabled access. Entrance euro 5,00.
Proceeds from admission and gift sales support young shoe designers. Book if visiting in group of 10 or more.
www.museoferragamo.it – Telephone: +39 055 3360455/456

Tuscan products

Chestnut flour

Tuscan products: chestnut flour of the Garfagnana
The cultivation of chestnuts in Garfagnana area, has its origins far in the past and has spread across the whole area. Chestnut flour is made from the harvested fruits. This is the sweet flour which comes from stone milling of the previuously dried chestnuts.
Historically, the drying of the chestnuts is done in a specifically designed barn called “metato”. Today those barns are built from stone or brick and are generally distributed throughout the chestnut woods, of varying size and divided halway up by a floor made of sticks of wood laid next to each other (the “canniccio”), over which the chestnuts are laid. A small flameless fire made from chestnut logs is set below, the smoke rising through the chestnuts to dry them slowly for about 40 days, leaving them ready to be shelled and ground.

The most widely used varieteies are Carpinese, Pontecosi, Mazzangaia, Pelosora, Rossola, Verdora, Nerona and Capannaccia all suitable for transformation into flour. The maximum production capacity allowed is 3,500 kg per hectare.
The DOP Chestnut flour of the Garfagnana is very fine to the touch and on the palate, the colour varying from white to dark ivory and a typical chestnut odour.

The area of production includes the municipalities of the province of Lucca – Castelnuovo Garfagnana, Pieve Fosciana, San Romano di Garfagnana, Sillano, Piazza al Serchio, Minucciano, Camporgiano, Careggine, Fosciandora, Giuncugnano, Molazzana, Vergemoli, Vagli, Villa Collemalndina, Gallicano, Borgo a Mozzano, Barga, Coreglia Antelminelli, Fabbriche di Vallico, Bagni di Lucca.
The flour is used to make a particular type of polenta, and sweets or cakes such as “castagnaccio” and “frittelle“.
During the two wars of the 20th century it was the food that allowed the local population to survive.

Italian gardens

teatro-verzura — Teatro di Verzura - Villa Reale - Lucca

The Teatro di Verzura at Villa Reale
What better month than Mayfor a visit to the sumptuous grounds of the Villa Reale at Marlia?
Here will find one of the best preserved historic gardens in Italy. The Villa itself was known to have been in the hands of the Buonvisi family as far back as the early 1500s, but it was only in 1652 when it was acquired by the Orsetti family that the gardens were first laid out and planted with various species designed to create a baroque style landscape.
The so called “Teatro di Verzura” dates from this period, going back to around 1680, from which time it has remained unchanged.
But what is a Teatro di Verzura? It is an open hair theatre, in which natural forms such as artfully placed and trimmed trees, hedges and shrubs make up the backdrop, the wings and the stage, creating the architectural structure with the decorative elements then supplied by statues, seats and columns.
The origins of these natural theatres are not clear; they are thought to have been used for simple or povere performances, poetry readings, songa and open air concerts. By the early 17th century, the art of topiary was already well developed, especially by Roman gardeners, seeking to “sculpt” trees by pruning them in reconisable forms. The box tree, they yew and the laurel lent themselves especially well to being shaped in the form of human figures, hunting scenes and animals. From these origins arose the strange architectural phenomenon of the late 1600s that we know know as the Teatro di Verzura.
The theatre at Marlia, while not unique, is certainly a rare and brilliant example of topiary, preserving the original 17th century greenery. It is more elaborate and better preserved, for example, than the one at Villa Garzoni at Collodi, or those at the Villa Gori and Villa Sergardi at Siena.
It cnsists of a stage, wings and backdrop of evergreen cypress trees, a prompt box in appropriately enough, box wood, a rostrum for the conductor, stalls for the audience with box hedges setting out the rows of seats, and series of bow-fronted opera boxes, entirely constructed from greenery.
A row of little semicircles of boxwood runs along the proscenuim arch to hide the lights used for evening performances.