Monte Gennaro - "Rome's mountain" and a favorite hike

The view (away from Rome) from Monte Gennaro's decorated peak
(that's the base of the mountain-top cross at left).

Maybe not so much the season, as dreams of the season - one of our favorite hikes - and this is a real one, not a cushy one. Up "Rome's mountain" (though bearing the name of Naples's patron saint), the tallest mountain one can see from the city, Monte Gennaro, in the Lucretili range to the northeast of Rome. Yes, you can see it from the Gianicolo, and many other high spots in Rome.

There are marked trails up to the peak from many different directions, and we've tried them all. One of our favorites is one filled with "tornanti" or switchbacks (a switchback is also called "lo zigzag"), 25 in fact - they are even numbered. 

The starting point for parking - roads beyond
this are impassible with our vehicle. The
twin hilltop towns of Palombara Sabina 
(it would be quite a hike if one started from the town)
and Montecelio (far left) are in the background. The scooter
is our latest--a 2019 Honda Forza 300. 

The trail starts under a defunct funicular. Trail guides say its start is the town of Palombara Sabina (don't try to find a place to stay overnight there; we did, with no luck), but the trail's real start is up a rural road (yeah, we ran into farm dogs biting at our scooter heels on these roads) a few miles from the town itself. 

The defunct funicular (and its path up the first shoulder of the mountain.

Left, a close-up of the funicular "basket." 

Can you imagine stepping into 

one of these (they don't stop) 

and riding up that way? 

We have been on one like it,

in Gubbio, Umbria.

Shortly after the beginning of the trail one encounters a diorama set-up in the woods (photo below). We had seen it before, though it changes from time to time, and we took a closer look this day. 

Below the sign that includes "shame on you," is a turquoise globe,
wrapped like a baby (or patient), hooked up to a heart monitor.

We're not sure what the large underwear on Ken and Barbie mean, but the larger diorama is a critique of inaction over climate change. The lettered signs in the diorama read:

"It was the most beautiful planet of the universe; shame on you" and "Suicide" and, on the far left, with figurines of a creche, "Hope."

From a saddle (yes, the Italians use the word too, "sella"), one can see the path to a tower (right) - we've never bothered to go there, because it's private and the 'path' is a road. The trail marker has estimated hours to the destination, not the distance.

There are some "ruins"  where the funicular ended and a hotel was located. There are also way too many cell towers:

One can take a small loop starting at this point (and get lost, but not very lost, except if it's foggy at the top - believe me, we've done it all). 

Here's AllTrails view of the mostly up-and-back trail, with its great switchbacks:

We often run into a few people at the top. This day it was 2 trail runners (!!). They asked to have their photo taken with us, shocked at finding Americans on the peak, and then ran their merry way down the rocky summit.

The smaller peak with the tower is visible in the distance.
The two trail runners had an intense discussion below us about
their favorite power bars.

And the gorgeous woods the switchbacks wind through, as we finish the journey:

Dianne

Neo-fascism comes to picturesque small-town Italy

 

Men outside Caffè Europa in the Roman hill town of Rocca di Papa.

We've always enjoyed watching the men (it's always men) in local bars, sitting around, playing cards, talking. It seems very communal, a good place for these apparently retired Italians. We were consequently horrified to see the small town where the photo above was taken, our favorite small town in the Alban Hills outside of Rome, identified by the New York Times this past week as a hot bed of neo-Fascism.

We had become inured to the fact that Giorgia Meloni, head of the Fratelli d'Italia party ("Brothers of Italy"), would become prime minister. For months the polls had shown her leading, even if her party received only about one-quarter of the vote. She made a pact with some other devils, including Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, on her way to the top post in Italy. Salvini was rewarded with the position of Deputy Prime Minister and - get this and don't choke - Minister of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility (no wonder Italian Facebook went nuts over this Brave-New-World-speak).

We've also been keenly aware of the posters and graffiti around Rome that even decades ago promoted neo-Fascism. We wrote about some of these in our posts on posters and right-wing "heroes." (See here and here.)

What appalled us (and we can hear all our Roman friends going, "DUH!") was that our charming, special, sweet town voted 38% for Meloni's party, knowing they were reviving Fascism.

Are those men above likely Fascists? The New York Times featured the bar across the way, Bar Centrale. But my guess is, yes, you're looking at the right-wing there playing cards.

We had noted in a 2014 post a building we thought likely had been Fascist headquarters until after World War II. It's got the bulky look of buildings of that era, it's now a municipal building, and the date is obvious:  "A.D. 1935." One of our loyal readers, Marco, questioned that interpretation, saying: 

"I find it unlikely that the building in the photo may have been once the Party's HQ - not only the style is not Fascist in appearance, but the Fascist Era (Anno XIII E.F.) mark is nowhere to be seen on the building's façade, as are any remnants of chipped-away fasces one'd expect to find on such buildings."

He makes some good points, and perhaps we were wrong about the past (if there were some other factors we had taken into account there, I don't recall them), but there's no question about the present for Rocca di Papa.

One reason we favor the town is that it's the starting point for one of our best hikes, up Monte Cavo. In fact the photo we took, right, of Monte Cavo from the town, was taken from the now infamous (to us) Bar Centrale.

It's not hard to find men hanging out outside the bars or in the very large square that dominates the lower part of the town. (See photo below.)

From now on, we will have to listen more carefully to their conversations, though maybe we won't like what we hear.

Caffè Europa  is dear to our hearts because it's not only where we've always started (coffee) our hikes, it's also where we've ended (beer) them, and parked our scooter. The photo below was taken with our 2nd of three scooters (historically, not all at once), the foregrounded Malaguti, while the guys play cards, per usual.

That the town is picturesque is an understatement, and it's beautifully sited below Monte Cavo (see photo at end of this post). Its "shield" features the "rocca" or fortress - on the fountain that graces the top of the large square in the photo below. And the "Papa" is for a 12th century Pope who lived there (Eugenio III).

Another view below is from the cemetery, and in the distance the ruins of ancient Tusculum, a Roman town. Everything in Rocca di Papa, including the cemetery (and that 1935 building above) is on a slant, given its position on the steeply sloping hillside.

More in a later post on Mussolini and the rise of neo-Fascism.

Dianne

The town of Rocca di Papa, seen from the main piazza. The first phase of the hike to Monte
Cavo is getting to the top of Rocca di Papa via picturesque city streets. The mountain itself is straight ahead but is not visible in the photo. 

Castel San Pietro: of War Monuments and Movie Sites

In thinking about places we miss - and that are often missed period - my mind landed on Castel San Pietro, a small town above Palestrina. I planned to write that Palestrina (dating back farther than the 8th century BC) is one of the more important cities within 25 miles of Rome, but Wikipedia gives it short shrift. 

It gives even shorter shrift to Castel San Pietro, calling it "now occupied by a few poor houses and a ruined medieval castle of the Colonna family."  Whoa! Don't think the locals would like that description.  In fact, they worked hard to make Castel San Pietro a much-used movie site, especially in the 1950s, because of its picturesque setting. One can see Rome from its heights. Gina Lollobrigida starred in the 1953 "Bread, Love and Dreams" (Pane, Amore e Fantasia), filmed in the town. There are a dozen or so placards around  explaining the film sites in both Italian and English, though we've never seen a tourist of any nationality - or anyone speaking English.

We've always liked hiking up - and it's waaay up - to the "Rocca" or castle ruins (see photo at top) that form part of this small town above Palestrina. It's sort of (if you count going up and over the hill town when you don't have to) on our way to a hike we like that takes one down to ancient aqueducts - and Horace's tree - if we could ever find the latter.

What we found the last time we were wandering the town, looking for a coffee bar, were two war monuments, neither of which we'd seen in our previous walking around.

One monument was to the Italian combatants and Holocaust victims from the area who died in World War II, with this statue combining the two types of "caduti" - "fallen." Photo left.

The other monument, photo below, is accompanied by an inscription that reads, "In this place, on 6 July 1944, three young boys, playing with a war ordinance left over from the war, were made innocent victims. This monument is a testament to that incident, and stands against every war, past and present, against the shame of landmines and in honor of civilian victims. 8 December 2004." The Germans had left the area by early June, 1944

The two monuments together are a chilling testament to the horrors of war. And they make our casual escapade through the town, and down into the aqueducts, an after-thought. 

More later on the hike, which we do almost every year when we're in Rome, and Palestrina, home to the great 16th-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose statue stands in a central town square, and to the fictional site where the pact with the devil was made in Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus." Mann spent some time in Palestrina in the late 1890s.

Dianne

Things I Miss in Rome (Part III)

 

Things I miss in Rome (3rd installment):

1. Watching Romans enjoy themselves at large social gatherings

2.  Wall Politics 

3.  Iron work as an art form

4.  Roman informality. A table for 2 while you get new tires. 

5.  Hiking with animals

Bill 

City to Mountain Top, Life to Death: Signs of Summer in Rome

If Americans can't get there, at least we can have some dreams of Rome.  Below some photos from an earlier summer, exhibiting some of Rome's uniqueness - and markers of life and death

Here's life  - a bra ad - and death - notices of death pasted over them. In Castel Gandolfo (summer home of the Popes - and featured in the award-winning 2019 film, "The Two Popes"). "In forma smagliante"  is a sort of double entendre  here, trans. "In great shape" "In top form" "Fit as a fiddle" etc.

 Though from 2012, these graffiti faces at left remind us of our 2020 "mask-up" days.

On the "life" side (mostly), right - "Brigata Peroni" or "Peroni [as in the beer] Brigade."  One doesn't normally associate brigades, as in armed forces or the anarchical - and deadly (they killed Aldo Moro)- leftists, the "Red Brigade," with beer.

Left, a fully-stocked outdoor bar/cafe', complete with the requisite photo of iconic actor Alberto Sordi, in the iconic still of him eating spaghetti (from the film "Un Americano a Roma") - we've probably seen a hundred of these in restaurants and cafes and bars - and books!

Okay - we've posted photos of the nonsensical writings on shirts and jackets, but we think not this one, which does have the word "death" in it - seen in a Rome market. I just finished reading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" in which he quotes some of these.  None is better than this one at right.

Eating IN the streets of Trastevere. This could be a good model for restaurants in the US
trying to expand their outside service.  Not exactly social distancing.  And no
worries from those actually standing in the street that they could be run over.

For the death end, here are two photos from the top of a mountain an hour or two outside Rome in the Abruzzi (the Gran Sasso). Yes, the ubiquitous cross was there, but also Mary, complete with rosary, and several plaques to hikers who had gone on to other heights.

In the photo below, the plaque on the right says, "Friendship doesn't need time or space. We know you will always be at our side.  Ciao Nicola."

And in that same photo, the plaque on the left reads, "In memory of Ezio Noce. Your mountain friends affectionately remember you, in this place familiar to you."

Dianne

The Delights of Spoleto - Hiking, St. Francis, Hermitages, the Town

The Spoleto most people see: wonderful churches - here the Duomo and an ad for a De Chirico show (which seemed to fit right in with the piazza here.

Our view from the mountains above Spoleto.

Spoleto is a gorgeous Umbrian town, dating back to the 5th century BC at least and famous for its arts festival.  We, as is our wont, went there to hike - and the hike was as rewarding as the town and its arts festival. Ancient ruins, abandoned churches, the St. Francis way (via Francigena), the path of the hermitages (via degli eremi), the ability to get lost and do it a little on your own, and the final passing across an immense bridge that is basically a 13th-century aqueduct - and all accessible in a day-trip from Rome by train.

These were our directions.

In front of the train station, one is greeted by this improbably
contemporary sculpture ala Calder.

Along with a crude map we
 photographed from the Internet.

We have done this hike twice. The first time we found it on the Internet, clipped and pasted the description of the hike (in Italian), took photos of it for my iPhone and off we went.

The second time we forgot we had directions and did it from memory (!).

First thing off the train, an obligatory
 coffee stop  at the commonly-named
 bar  - L'angolo del caffe
("coffee corner").

And for those of you who want to skip the woods, menacing dogs, getting lost, etc., just scroll down to photos of the hermitages and the town.

Signage helps - until it runs out.
We'll see the rocca (fortress) on top
later on - we'll look down on it.

The hike is partly signed, partly not.

Maps along the way -
even with bullet holes
 in them - are helpful.

It starts in an unassuming place on the side of the town that is decidedly not historic-looking - though we have yet to figure out what this dry waterway is (it was dry 3 years later as well) - it's a large space that seems outside the town walls at right.

Selfie on the Cima.

One is treated to the ruins of a monastery on top of the first hill, then some gorgeous paths and views (the one at the top of this post), some unattractive logged areas, and finally the top of the hill - more than 3,000 feet above sea level.

And from the top, one can see the ruins of a castle not far below.

Castle ruins (apologies, can't recall the century!).

On our self-guided second time, we got confused as to which path to take from the base of the cima, the signage there (and many animal tracks) failing us.  But, we were rescued by a man on a horse - literally! - who guided us to the right path - we were too discombobulated to take his photo.

"Truffle gathering reserve"

After a short wild-ish stretch, the path enters more civilized zones, including farms, complete with menacing dogs, and a park.

Farm houses - the path goes right past them.

Menacing dogs - one walks right
next to them. Fortunately the
Italian description of the hike assures
one they are fenced in.

Improbably situated park - the second time we took this hike,
I think it was a Sunday, and
Italians were grilling on this outdoor grill.

Unfortunately,  logging has destroyed some of these
gorgeous forests.

An adjacent chapel - I believe honoring a St. Francis follower,
 Saint Bernardino.

We reached - not knowing it was there the first time - the revered sanctuary for San Francesco - St. Francis - on a high hill (called "Monteluco") above Spoleto, next to the "sacred wood" ("sacro bosco") he - and his fellow monks - loved.

 The sanctuary was apparently founded in the 5th century by Syrian Christians fleeing their homeland and turned over to St. Francis in the 13th century.

Italians hanging out at the bar below the sanctuary on the edge
of the sacred wood. They do know how to relax.

The monks had this cool walk from their hermitages up to the sanctuary and down to the town.  Via degli eremi. Now, all of the hermitages and churches on the walk are private homes, bed-and-breakfasts, or abandoned. They remain beautiful as they stand in the woods.

Monks' walk.

Abandoned church #1.

Abandoned church #2.

Hermitage now a private home.

Tourists hanging out at pool at hermitage now a B&B.

Perhaps an excess of signage.

These
signs show the "via Francigena" - the
St. Francis way (that goes into France
and England) - it's noted by its yellow
and blue signage. We are often on it,
even very close to Rome (on Monte
Mario, for example).

At left, the yellow-and-blue marker for the via Francigena has had some additions to it:

The view looking to the town of Spoleto, before
crossing the bridge, with the rocca we had
seen when we started at the top.

Several hours later, our path seems to end - in a magnificent bridge. We were somewhat like "the stupids go to Spoleto" - we didn't know the bridge (or the sanctuary or the hermitages) existed. We delighted in it, had some trepidation crossing it, and were disappointed on our second trip that it was closed (apparently it is frequently closed because of safety concerns!). There is another path to the city that is considerably longer, along the cliffs of Monteluco. It too was gorgeous - so not a bad result; tho' we were not expecting the extra miles.

It doesn't look scary from this point
of view, but it's a precipitous and long
drop off the right.

"Bridge of the towers - 13th century,
80 meters high; about 230 meters long"

It's called the "Bridge of  towers." In this view, I'm
looking back at the hill we came down from (Monteluco),
and one of the towers. The cliffs at left are what one skirts on
the path to be taken when the bridge is closed.

Our disappointment on our last hike. The bridge was closed.

And, finally, some of you will be happy to learn, we reached
the town of Spoleto - and these magnificent walls - no doubt
pre-Roman.

The town of Spoleto is full of steep streets, lovely
churches and piazzas.  The Duomo is
richly decorated.

Apse of the Duomo, with a fresco cycle begun by
Fra Lippo Lippi

Here, some street scenes from Spoleto.

A medieval bathroom.

Our second time in Spoleto we were desperately hungry and, of course, hit the town when everything is closed - after 3 p.m. on Sunday.  We found one small bar open, and the one person working there served us a kind of filled focaccia (as I recall she was an immigrant and the bread was that of another country - but my memory can't bring back the country) that was wonderful - it turns out she had made the focaccia herself.

Dianne