Experience a truly enchanting holiday in one of my Tuscan Villas
Florence all lit up for the celebration of Italy’s 150 years of unification! Here you can see Palazzo Vecchio all lit up in green, white and red!
The tower had the Italian flag down its side, there were flags everywhere, lots of people in the square and music to accompany the festive air. Happy 150 years, Italy!
An entire wall of my dining room is rather pretentiously covered with paintings of religious subjects.
They belong to the XIX century and represent the poor popular art of that time. The figures were first printed and then painted with watercolours and represent male and female devotional saints with symbols referring to their iconography.
These pictures at the time were mainly hung in bedrooms on the wall behind the bed, and I am sure that those readers who may have bought an old house in the hills around Lucca may have found some of them still hanging there.
The subjects were meant to transmit a feeling of wellbeing and peace. Look for example at that of baby St. John Baptist embracing a sheep with a red ribbon. He is folding his arms around it so sweetly as if it were his cuddly toy. “Guardate in alto, quando andate in giro per Lucca” that is “Look up when you are going around Lucca” my teacher kept saying. It’s a fact that if you go around Lucca with your nose in the air, you can spot here and there many of the most authentic popular and religious art-works of the town.
What you have to look for are the “edicole”. If you search for the word in your dictionary you will read that the word “edicola” in modern language means a newsagent.
But in the language of art, edicola, in English aedicule, means a framed space or niche housing a sacred image and positioned relatively high up on a building. Here in Lucca the subject is mainly the Madonna, the religious figure most loved by Christians.
Often however the Madonna is represented even in the aedicules in an unconventional manner. For example have you seen the one in Via S. Nicolao ? The “Madonna del Soccorso” i.e. Madonna to the Rescue, is angrily represented with a cane in her hand threatening the devil, who finally runs away, so she can rescue the little baby who was just about to be kidnapped. In this case she does not transmit a sense of peace and wellbeing, but of fear and dread. This same picture can also be seen behind the altar in the Church at Montecarlo.
On the contrary in Via dell’Anfiteatro, in Piazza della Grotta we can see an aedicule with a beautiful and elegant Madonna. Hold your breath, she has a Gucci handbag! Of course I’m joking – what seems a bag is in fact a number of devotional necklaces of the time. Many of the aedicoles that you will see in streets in Lucca were done in the XVI century and happily some of them have been recently restored.
This is one of them. In Via del Portico, also close to Via dell’Anfiteatro, there is another one that was meant to thank the Madonna for having saved a little girl, who lived nearby and fell from the fourth floor remaining unhurt. As it says on the plaque hanging at the side, 40 days of indulgence are assured (believe it or not) if you say a prayer next to it.
In Via dell’Angelo Custode, named after the Oratorio dell’ Angelo, there is another aedicule at No.6. The Guardian Angel cannot be clearly seen from the street because of the patina left on the painting by years of weather, but still meets the original religious intentions, if you ask the people living there.
The relationship between religion and popular art has always existed, and since ancestral times men have felt the necessity to use art as a bridge for the two entities to communicate, conveying ideas with the minimum of words and the maximum of impact.
Another characteristic of religious popular art was also to amaze people. But times are different now. Today’s permanent party mood in Lucca, attempting to make people crave just good food and material goods, can act like a mantra on our brain, leaving this hidden aspect of Lucca perhaps neglected. But hopefully to be discovered at least at the end of our visit.
Tuscan Herb and Vegetable Gardens
Traditional Tuscan gardens were designed to be just as practical as they were beautiful, providing an assortment of fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables that filled the air with a sweet aroma and were used in the kitchen to prepare the rich Tuscan cuisine. Most contemporary Tuscan garden designs feature these same aromatic plants.
Italian herbs can be grown in a variety of containers and make attractive arrangements with very little effort.
Rosemary, sage, basil, and thymeare all common Tuscan garden plants.
There are a number of other plants that can be incorporated into your landscape design to add to your Tuscan atmosphere, including the distinct smelling lavender plant.
An Italian vegetable garden can be tastefully integrated into your Tuscan garden design and can provide you with a selection of fresh foods for your kitchen. Tomatoes, eggplant, colorful bell peppers, and exotic artichoke plants are perfect additions to your Tuscan backyard. The vineyards that scatter the Tuscany countryside can be recreated in your own outdoor area with delicate grape vines.
Choosing the Right Tuscan Garden Plants
There are a variety of Mediterranean plants that can add the charm of Tuscany to your landscape design. Selecting the right combination of these plants, with the ideal planting layout, is crucial to designing a rustic Tuscan garden that blends with the elegance of your home.
You will want to carefully position lush evergreen shade trees, majestic topiary hedges, and enchanting Tuscan fruit trees in the most ideal places, while leaving room for the fragrant herbs, soft lavender, and colorful vegetables that complete your Tuscan style garden.
Creeping vines and fragile flowers, like wisteria and pastel roses, and the rustic charm of grapevines are just as important.
The Tuscany truffle area around San Miniato in Pisa province
Every autumn hundreds of truffle lovers congregate in the ancient main squares of the towns to sample, judge and evaluate the many varieties of this so desired and costly fungus or tuber about which the great Brillant Savarin once said that it could ‘make a woman more tender and a man more loveable’.
In San Miniato in Pisa province, in woods on low hills armies of expert hunters, aided by their faithful pig or pup, literally dig up first-class specimens of both the white and black varieties. In those autumn days of gourmet festivals the truffle is king of the kitchen and its unforgettable aromas never cease to amaze and spell-bind.
What is the truffle ?
Truffles grow only on or near the roots of trees, mainly limes, poplars and weeping willows and especially oaks, at depths up to thirty centimetres (twelve inches). They are hunted with the aid of keen-nosed pigs or talented dogs, but since porcine predilections for the precious lumps are even more enthusiastic than mankind’s, determined digging sprees for the prize are usually won by the pig. It is therefore prudent to train up a dog, by nature indifferent to truffle charms. Commercial cultivation is impracticable – rare and special soils are needed in addition to the right tree roots, and the creation of fecund conditions requires much costly, expert and laborious care for eight or ten years before, if ever, any useful specimens appear (often none ever do).
Truffles are so rare in North American that few people have ever heard of them, let alone hunted any. Apparently truffles live in symbiosis with the tree, absorbing water and mineral salts from the soil through the tree roots. Colour, texture, aroma and flavour seem to be determined by the symbiosis. Oak-borne truffles have a more penetrating, pungent aroma compared with those growing near lime trees, whose perfume is powerful but gentler, sweeter. It should be remembered that truffles have very little flavour by themselves – their preciousness derives from their unique ability to impart a wonderfully delicious, almost magical flavour to accompanying or ancillary foods on which they are placed or with which they are mixed.
The use
The very best sorts should be cut into paper-thin slices for covering the food they are to garnish – meats, pastasciutta, vegetables. Lesser qualities are excellent for cutting into little pieces and browning them in oil with a little garlic and thyme, this condiment to be applied quickly and directly to the main dish on the plate or they may be ground into sauces for innumerable uses.
Web-site: www.comune.san-miniato.pi.it
Winemaking at Fubbiano
Fubbiano’s 20 hectares of vineyard produce around 100,00 bottles a year, making it one of the largest producers in the Lucchesia.
This will increase to probably around 150,000 bottles over the next few years as newly replanted vineyards begin to reach maturity.
The first wine was bottled at Fubbiano in 1968, the same year that the DOC Colline Lucchesi was introduced.
Labels have come and gone in the meantime, such as the Novello Fubbianello that is no longer produced, but the classics have been a constant since then.
The majority of the grapes produced at Fubbiano are red, divided among four different labels: the Fubbaino red DOC, the San Gennaro DOC reserve, the “Super Tuscan” I Pampini, and the newest label in the family, First Love.
Two white wines complete the family the Fubbiano Bianco DOC and a pure Vermentino as well as two dessert wines a Vin Santo and in 2010 for the first time an Aleatico, both produced in small quantities. An Aqua Vitae as also produced in minimal quanties, a fragrant pure grape spirit derive from the fermentation of grapes rather than grape skins or pomace as is the case with grappa.
Web site: www.fattoriadifubbiano.it