L'Aquila: A lesson in Italy's failure to rebuild after the 2009 earthquake.

Post-earthquake reconstruction?  Six years later, this is L'Aquila.

The most recent devastating earthquake in Italy hit in the Marche province on October 26, followed by aftershocks. An August 24 quake not far away killed almost 300 people. 

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is promising complete restoration.  We are - sadly - skeptical.  As a poignant piece of evidence, we give you L'Aquila, where a 2009 earthquake in this large, historic center in the Abruzzo region that neighbors Marche, resulted in 309 deaths.

We had been in L'Aquila many years ago.  This classic medieval city, capital of the Abruzzo province, is less than 75 miles from Rome, but 75 miles that can seem like centuries, and that took several days to cover in Margaret Fuller's time.  The city sits at the foot of the Gran Sasso mountains we intended to (and did) climb; they reach over 10,000 feet, the highest Italian mountains south of the Alps.

Last year, 6 years after the quake, we decided to see what had been accomplished after the earthquake.  We had heard of the slowness of the rebuilding, mafia involvement, scandals, and the like.  But nothing prepared us for the ghost town L'Aquila still was - 6 years later.  The photo above of one street is, unfortunately, typical of most of the streets of L'Aquila. Buildings shored up, at best, but unreconstructed and uninhabitable.

A closer view of the cracking produced by the 2009 earthquake.

Here one can see efforts to protect the older, classic building windows and doors.
Again, this is the best the 'reconstruction' seems to offer.

Businesses stopped in their tracks.  And not re-opened, of course.  This was a
unisex hair salon.

We'll get back to the destruction.  But we must take a couple sentences to describe the highly unusual setting in which - without planning on our part - we found L'Aquila in May 2015: it was the annual national 3-day "raduno" or "adunata" - a gathering of the Italian Army's Alpini units - gatherings that attract several hundred thousand men and a few women.  And this year, in an attempt to bring life and attention to the devastated city, they were meeting in L'Aquila, even though there were only a handful of rooms available to them in the city itself.  Many took 1-2 hour long train rides into L'Aquila daily; others set up tents and slept in vans. 

The Alpini were formed as a northern mountain unit of the Italian army.  One finds Alpini almost everywhere in Italy these days.  They still are a significant branch of the army.  And, since my family is from the north (15 km south of the Swiss border), all the men belonged to the Alpini (see a photo of my great-grandfather below).  The Alpini would recognize L'Aquila, and its location in the Gran Sasso, as part of the mountain regions that Alpini love.

Our first shot of the Alpini, recognizable by a black feather in their caps
(officers get a white feather) was of them being tourists.  Here they are at L'Aquila's
famed 13th century "Fountain of the 99 Spouts" (Fontana delle 99 Cannelle)

The poster for the 2015 Adunata.  Note the emphasis on the mountains and the black feathers.

Here's how the Alpini managed their gathering in L'Aquila - they brought in their own pop-up restaurants and beer tents;
this one set up right next to the scaffolded building.

The Alpini gathered in St. Peter's Square at their 1929 adunata.
One of the empty L'Aquila buildings had a small exhibit of prior Alpini "adunate,"
which is where we found this, among many other photos and artifacts.

The Alpini here were singing a traditional song.  To the left is the hotel in
 which we stayed many years ago.  This is in a newer part of the city, 
where there was less devastation because of better building practices.
  The Gran Sasso can be seen in back.

Back to the destruction.  

The sign scrawled on this wall says "L'Aquila  will be arise (be reborn) from the Mafia."

It's not clear these buildings will be rebuilt.

The blocked-off streets are in the "red zone," where one cannot even walk.

This banner in the main square says:
"One finds a red zone everywhere and the issue is a national one."

Outside an obviously newer but poorly built "Students' House," photos
of some of the more than 100 "angels" who died there in the earthquake.
 Arrests followed the collapse of the building.

Housing built for displaced residents - but not near any work.  From the train,
we saw these on the outskirts of Paganica, about 15 km from L'Aquila.  

A view of L'Aquila from a distance.  The cranes are there, but where are the workers and the work?  Snow-capped (in May)
Gran Sasso in the distance.

Elizabeth Povoledo wrote about L'Aquila in the New York Times a few weeks ago. Remarkably, her photos don't look any different from ours of 2015.

There were a few signs of hope.

A bar on the central square, run by the Fratelli Nuria, was open. It was
 not simply an Alpini pop-up. Signs announced it as the first business
 to reopen after the quake. The family also made its own, excellent torrone  
(which we bought and ate). You can see a couple Alpini among the patrons.

This surprising restored house, with a woman watering her plants, was the lone
exception we saw.

Our hotel receptionist rode with us on the train from L'Aquila to Paganica where many people were housed (photo above).  She told us that 6 years later her house was not habitable but that she had to continue paying her mortgage, and continue living in Paganica, about 15 km away.   We wrote last December about a church, built into rock, in Paganica.

And below is Giovanni Mambretti, my Italian grandmother's father, standing at left, with his Alpini.

We hope to visit L'Aquila again, and that we will see significant progress the next time.  Should you wish to visit L'Aquila, our hotel was ideal.  It was in a newer building, below the city (you do have to walk up and down hills a lot in L'Aquila), and in 2015 it was fully open, including the excellent restaurant serving Abruzzi specialties.  It's the Hotel "99 Cannelle", because it's across the street from that famous fountain.

Dianne

For Christmas: A Paganica Church Built on Rock

To celebrate Christmas in very Christian Rome, RST decided to post about another favorite church. We went a bit afield this time, eschewing our usual modern churches and even travelling outside of Rome, into the Abruzzo province.

The church above is the "Madonna degli Appari" - the sanctuary, or hermitage, of the Madonna of the "appearances."  As you might guess, the church was built on the site where a believer saw the Virgin appear; in this case it was a young shepherdess, who said she was instructed by Mary to build a shrine at the site.

The site is set in the magnificent Gran Sasso - the peaks that reach heights of 10,000' in central Italy, the highest mountains in Italy south of the Alps (and, yes, we've climbed them).  In this case the church is built into, and as part of, the rock ("sasso" means "rock", and Gran Sasso, well, a really big rock).  The original shrine probably dates to the 14th century, and was expanded after that, including into the 18th century.  The frescoes appear to be mainly from the 16th century.  (Information available at the site and also on these Web sites:  https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santuario_della_Madonna_d%27Appari and http://www.regione.abruzzo.it/xcultura/index.asp?modello=eremoAQ&servizio=xList&stileDiv=monoLeft&template=intIndex&b=menuErem2701&tom=701.  There are more tales on the site, such as the one of the priest who didn't believe the shepherdess and fell ill.

Gorgeous, restored 16th-century frescoes.

The church has had its share of threats.  Two bombs of the Allies landed near it in 1944.  And it was damaged by the devastating 2009 earthquake centered in nearby L'Aquila.  The church is fewer than 5 miles from L'Aquila, outside the town of Paganica.  (You may remember President Obama meeting near L'Aquila with the G8 in that year  - a video of him visiting is on YouTube. Seven years later L'Aquila is still a ghost town; more about that in another post.)  The church and the frescoes are recently restored and the church was reopened in 2011.

We came to the sanctuary pretty much by accident.  We were looking for a hike or walk that was substantial but still let us catch the train back to Rome that evening.  On the recommendation of our hotel clerk, we took the train to Paganica, and serendipitously she--the hotel clerk--was on the same train (she was now living in Paganica because almost no one lives in L'Acquila).  Her house there is still boarded up but she must continue to pay her mortgage, she told us.  She drove us the few km from the train station into town.  From there we asked around about the walk she had mentioned, and discovered it was a newly created trek, often on boardwalk, with the Stations of the Cross, and ending at the sanctuary.  We were lucky the sanctuary was open for some other visitors when we showed up. By the time we had crawled through the rock pathway and back, it was closed again.

The full-blown walks to, and celebrations at the church take place around Easter.  Nonetheless, we decided this dramatically sited and painted church was a good way to acknowledge the Christmas holiday.

Looking back towards the door; note earthquake bar.

Dianne

Easier to see here the rock pathway to the left - it goes alongside the church, a creek and the road.

Obamamania Italian style

Russians may be cool about him, but Italians are crazy for Obama, in our experience.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (he of the gaffes and young women scandals) takes every opportunity to be photographed with the U.S. President, as in this picture from April's G20 summit... yeah, that's Berlusconi in the middle with the thumb's up sign behind Obama's head, or as someone said "amateur hour at the G20". (For background on Berlusconi, see Frederika Randall's recent online piece in The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090629/randall) Berlusconi also famously referred to Obama as "abbronzato," which means "tan." Not to be outdone by his own gaffe, Berlusconi later said he would arrive at the White House also "abbronzato."

Right now, of course, Obama is in L'Aquila, the large city devastated by the earthquake this Spring, meeting with the G-8. So photos of the U.S. President are everywhere.

We encounter Obamamania everywhere we go in Rome, and not just among our leftist friends.

The woman who runs the long-established trattoria "Il Vascello" in Monteverde Vecchio has a collection of Obama items, and can't stop talking about him... in the same loud and enthusiastic voice she uses to tell you the daily specials.

The co-owner and barrista at the wine bar, "Il Baccoco" in Trastevere, tested us out first. "Obama?..." he asked, when his voice implying a question. When we indicated yes, we are Obama supporters, he sped up his Italian and waxed well, if not eloquent, at least enthusiastic, about our relatively new President.

And, perhaps more surprising, the men behind the counter at our small, local P.O. in Monteverde Nuovo, are hardly disgruntled postal workers. When they discovered I was sending a letter to the U.S., they started quizzing me about Obama and debating about whether the "speranza" or hope would really turn into action--they hoped it would.

We still have a small roll of Obama campaign stickers ("I voted early for Barack Obama") from our 6 weeks last Fall working on the campaign in the suburbs of Cleveland. We doled them out to some of these Obama fans, who were clearly elated by the souvenirs.

A question we have for these Obamaphiles is whether they also support their right-wing Prime Minister Berlusconi and Rome Mayor Alemanno. Hard to tell.

But for now, we'll enjoy the enthusiasm of the Italians for a U.S. President (for a change).

Dianne