Ruins, Palaces, Potholes and Porchetta - Ardea, Italy
Ardea, Italy
Our day trips this past week have taken us to ruins, castles, magical gardens, a by-passed palace, a major aqueduct and a couple of shopping outlets. As indicated in our last email, this was the final week with the car, so we needed to maximize the use of "Carla" for our remaining time together. In Rome, we will rely on the Metro and Shank's Pony to get around. While it is a major city, we have found in the past that it is very compact with most of the major sights within walking distance of each other. But that is for another chapter...on to our past week.
Reggia di Caserta
We mentioned the Reggia di Caserta [the Royal Palace] in our last chapter and how we really couldn't stay because of the atrocious weather, high winds and the car full of bags. We can now revise that to "couldn't stay away" because later in the week, we jumped in the car and drove the 250kms back to Caserta to check out this amazing palace. The Palace was built by Dutchman Ludwig Van Wittel [Italianised to Vanvitelli] for the Bourbons in the mid-1700s and was intended to match/better the Palace of Versailles for its grandeur and opulence. Having now seen inside, we can vouch for the opulence factor. The Palace was designed as a huge building with two identical facades, one on the parade ground [front], the other on the garden side [rear]. The building is laid out in a hollow square with cross wings at the midpoints of the outer sides so that they form four identical inner courtyards. There are three levels but the centre corridor from front to rear on the ground level is open so that coaches could arrive in the front, drop off their passengers in the middle near the grand staircase and then exit the rear of the building. This also ensured that one could stand at the front entrance and, looking through the central high arched corridor, could see the water feature falling from the hill about three kms away at the rear of the gardens. All very grand.
Apparently at some point, there was a bit of a financial crisis during the building stage and work had to slow down. However, Vesuvius erupted in 1767 and the Royal of the day decided that things might get too hot in Naples so the money tap was turned back on and building proceeded again with more haste. Regrettably, Vanvitelli would not see the completion of the project, dying in 1773, but it was continued by his son.
There are over 1200 rooms in the building but only the middle floor of the front facade is open to the public. The rest of the building is used for storing the antiquities not on display as well as housing the National School of Public Administration.
What you can see is the throne room, the King’s and Queen’s apartments [one at each end of the building] and some "smaller" [a relative word] drawing rooms and reception rooms in between. The Throne room can only be described as being sumptuous, with white columns and gold inlay throughout. The ceiling is quite a sight and the whole building simply oozes opulence. Sorry to use so many superlatives but the site deserves it. While the Palazzo Reale in Naples was quite a sight, the size and elegance of the Caserta Palace makes it the clear winner. The finished product certainly did Mr Vanvitelli proud.
Vanvitelli Aqueduct
To support his grand plan for the gardens at the Reggia Caserta, Luigi Vanvitelli needed a source of water which entered the grounds from the hill at the rear of the gardens. Given that he had no such source available locally, his wider search led him to the Fizzo springs [almost 40 kms away] and from there to the construction of the Vanvitelli Aqueduct including the long "bridges" segment of that waterway across the Maddaloni valley about 8 kms from Caserta. Beside servicing the Reggia Caserta [the gardens and the palace], the water would also be used to supply the town of Caserta, nearby farmlands and eventually Naples itself. So it was a grand scheme.
The design called for the aqueduct to drop only half a millimetre for each metre length, providing a solid but calm flow. Achieving that, while still challenging, would be a much simpler task today, given laser levels and the much more technologically advanced instruments and equipment available to engineers. Back then, it would have been a real challenge and the over-seeing engineers would have needed excellent quality control to achieve the designer’s objective. Much of the aqueduct is submerged - boring tunnels through mountains - including the last stretch through the hill right above the north end of the grounds of the Royal Palace itself, before the water drops down to feed the series of cascading pools.
Construction started in 1753 and the aqueduct was opened in 1762. The flow of water took four hours from the point of diversion on the Fizzo to when it was flowing down the cascade above the Reggia. Apparently, there were some anxious moments while they waited at the grand opening and there were many skeptics who said it couldn’t be done. But after a slightly longer waiting period than anticipated, the water flowed down the cascade and Vanvitelli was vindicated [and paid a handsome 1000 ducat bonus].
The bridge over the valley is 529 metres long and at the time it was completed, the longest in Europe; it is supported by three rows of arches and is 60 meters from bottom to top at the deepest point. They certainly love their engineering challenges in this country and it is not hard to understand why it was an Italian team that produced the tunnels for our very own Tongariro Scheme.
The Ostias
One of our day trips closer to home was up the coast to Lido di Ostia and Ostia Antica. Lido today is a bustling recreational harbour for leisure boats. It has a very modern boaties' marina with the necessary logistic support for maintaining and refurbishing sailing boats, pleasure craft and super yachts, as well as very nice boutiques for those who might get bored with greasing winches, scraping hulls and generally doing the necessary housework required on the boats. Lido no longer fills the role that Ostia Antica did back in the day and is now more a site for fishermen, the wealthy and the rich and famous. However, now as then, it is a case of a "River Runs Through It"... it is the point at which the Tiber empties into the Mediterranean. At 406 km [according to Wikipedia], the Tiber, is Italy's third-longest river. It is also just as important to the locals today as it was 2000 years ago.
Four kms away is Ostia Antica which dates as far back as 1400BC and is sometimes known as a "little Pompeii". It is extremely well preserved and gives one a flavour of what life must have been like in a Roman city 2000 years ago. The city was abandoned in the Middle Ages and between the 15th - 18th Century and being only a short distance from Rome it was was regularly looted by builders during the development of the growing "Eternal City". They had easy access to a very handy "Home Depot". What's more the price would have been right; free "as is, where is" but you have to provide the transport. That being said most of the bones of the city still remain and if old ruins are your thing, then you can spend a full day here roaming the paved streets and imagining how it would have been two millennium ago.
In its day, Ostia - its name derived from the Latin word for mouth - was at the mouth of the Tiber and provided Rome with an important gateway for vessels from all over the empire. Over the ages, silting from the river, resulted in the shoreline moving further out to sea and today Ostia Antica while still bordering the Tiber is now landbound. There is an upside to all that - it created land for the development of Lido di Ostia on the southern bank of its mouth and on the north side space for Fiumicino, Rome's main airport. Who said they aren't making any more coastline?
Formal preservation of the site did not begin until after the re-unification of Italy, with Ostia being no longer part of the Papal States. In his time, Mussolini had a grand plan for the area and wanted to present Ostia as centre piece for a world fair, and ordered a renewed effort to unearth the city but fortunately, WWII got in the way. Notwithstanding the looting in earlier centuries, a considerable amount of the city is yet to be unearthed so maybe, like Ercolano, there will be m ore discoveries of antiquities inside the old city in the future.
We spent an afternoon roaming the ancient streets, peering into dwellings and visiting the forum and the amphitheatre, with its great floor mosaics around the audience zone. The ancient amphitheatre, where entertainments were held back in the day, has been rejuvenated and nowadays is the venue for a summer festival. The wheel has turned full circle.
You can read more on Ostia Antica on http://www.ostia-antica.org/ The website is very detailed and quite interactive and will probably tell you more than you ever needed to know about Ancient Roman times [and those who have excavated the site thus far].
Tivoli
We had planned to visit Tivoli while here at Ardea and when we mentioned that to our landlady she went into raptures over the two villas, Adriana and d'Este. The former very old and the latter considerably less. So armed with a little bit of research and our cameras, we headed off to the east of Rome. Unfortunately we did not head off early enough and got caught up in the Rome rush-hour traffic. Lesson for the future, but probably learned a little late.
Villa Adriana
First stop was Villa Adriana, built for the Hadrian of Hadrian's Wall fame. Actually, amongst other things, the Roman Emperor Hadrian was a builder when he wasn't running an empire and travelling to the corners of his far flung empire. Early in the 2nd Century AD, Hadrian [Adriana], grew tired of his palace on the Palatine Hill [and probably Rome's oppressive summers] and built himself a retreat about 25 kms east of Rome in the hills of Tibur to take advantage of the cool breezes and natural hot springs. He became so fond of the place that he decided to set up permanent shop there while he ruled the empire. Eventually, the complex covered some 250 acres, with 30 buildings, including his court and offices, together with gymnasiums, large pools and lots of statues. Hadrian was very keen on things Greek and things Egyptian so the Villa has many aspects which would be at home in a Greek or Egyptian villa of the time.
With the eventual fall of the Roman Empire, the villa was abandoned, and as was the custom of subsequent "builders", Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este in the 16th Century took the opportunity to use his local "Home Depot" to build and decorate his own villa nearby, Villa d'Este.
Today, one can still see the footprint of the buildings, the statue-lined ponds and fragments of the intricate mosaic floors. Hadrian's Villa is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and rated one of the 100 Most Endangered Sites worldwide because of the rapid deterioration of the ruins. Regrettably, this does not prevent the multitude of visitors [we probably saw over 50 individuals during our visit and that is in the off peak tourist season] from walking on the priceless mosaics and climbing over the relatively fragile ruins. In the summer months [as with Ostia Antica], concerts are held in the ancient amphitheatre and the grounds are apparently lit to add to the ceremony of the occasion.
Villa d'Este
The Villa d'Este complex [yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site] was built in 1550 at the behest of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, son of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso d'Este, and grandson of Pope Alexander VI. As the grandson of a pope, d'Este had a stellar rise through the ranks of the church hierarchy. [He was made a bishop at the age of two – probably a bit young?]. By the time he was 41, he was in line for the papacy, but lost out to Julius III, who effectively exiled him to Tivoli by naming him governor of that district. The Cardinal consoled himself by spending the last 20 years of his life constructing and decorating his villa, covering the interior walls and ceilings with ornate frescoes and creating the water garden, with grottoes, dozens of fountains, statuary, reflecting pools, exotic greenery and fragrant flowering plants.
The Villa building has a central courtyard that was the cloister of the local Benedictine monastery and is now incorporated into the villa itself. The building is quite splendid but the jewel in the crown is the garden behind the Villa. The waters of a nearby river were diverted through a pipeline under the then town to emerge as a waterfall at the top of the garden. The water is then diverted into a number of open spillways and drains to fill the central reflecting pools and a myriad of fountains throughout the garden.
The highly compartment-ed Italian garden reflects the style of the Renaissance period. The compartments of the garden are separated by box hedging, behind which are finely manicured lawns. Each compartment had its own version of a fountain, some of which were quite inventive and often surprised. The whole effect is one of creating a magical tour as you walk through the paths, with each new compartment being revealed as you turn a corner.
As indicated earlier, Cardinal d'Este was not opposed to doing a bit of grave robbing to make his villa look good, so statues from Villa Adriana were recycled into Villa d’Este. Maybe he felt he was saying thank you to Hadrian who, while following the Greek gods himself, had been openly tolerant of the Christians, Indeed, some would argue that the fledgling Christianity profited from Hadrian's tolerance and was able to firmly establish itself as a mainstream religion.
Rocca Pia
Rocca Pia, a 15th Century fortress, was built in 1461 by Pope Pius II to control the rebellious population, and as a symbol of the permanence of papal temporal power here. It has a square structure with four circular towers and is placed on a rise in what is the middle of town of Tivoli today. After 1870, the Rocca Pia was converted into a prison with the addition of a building inside the courtyard. Currently, however, the complex is empty with no precise intended future use. So if you are looking for a medium sized castle for your new home, Tivoli may be worth a look.
Castel Gandolfo and Other Hill Top Towns
We also took a day trip around Lago Albano, a nearby [about 40kms away] dormant volcanic crater lake in the hills about 20 kms south of Rome. Lago Albano is about 3.5km long by 2.3 km wide, with the crater sides rising about 70 metres above the lake surface and was the venue for the 1960 Rome Olympic canoeing and rowing events. Last known seismic disturbance was about 400BC when the waters rose up and spilled over the sides of the crater but no other effects were noticed at that time. This did, however, cause them to bore an escape valve tunnel to deal with any potential future overflows. The crater lake now provides a very pleasant backdrop to some very expensive houses/estates built around its edge. None more so than Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence/vacation retreat for the Pope. The land and complex was obtained by the Catholic Church in 1596 and has been progressively upgraded over the years.
Not sure whether the current chap will use it much given his position on helping the poor and portraying himself as a man of the people. He also certainly doesn’t seem to take many breaks. Nonetheless, a splendid complex [from the outside] and its presence has no doubt made a lot of the local souvenir stores quite wealthy. There were about 200 tourists climbing on/getting off buses when we visited the town and this is almost the middle of winter. Must be bedlam in summer if he actually uses the residence. Some questions to ponder: Does the Vatican pay rates? The summer residence is huge and would be a major user of the town’s services. The other thing we have yet to establish is whether purveyors of goods and services to the Pope use a similar note of recognition on their advertising as happens with the British Royal family, ie does their advertising carry a sign noting “By Papal Permission of Il Pappa”? These are some of the vexing questions that come to mind as one soaks up the atmosphere on a sunny but crisp winter’s day. Maybe we need another glass of wine while we think about the possibilities.
We stopped at Frascati, slightly off to one side of the crater for lunch - a porchetta bun with a plastic cup of ice-cold Frascati wine. Both very tasty. Dominating the hills above Frascati is the Villa Aldobrandini, built in the late 16th Century. Pope Clement VIII gave it to his favourite nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, in 1598. A little bit of nepotism goes a long way because it is still in the hands of the Aldobrandini family today.
We also drove through:
Ariccia - famed for its porchetta. The non-food attraction in Ariccia is the 1600s Baroque Palazzo Chigi, which has remained unchanged, down to the furnishings. It was designed for Pope Alexander VII. Some of the scenes of the film “The Leopard” [starring Burt Lancaster] were filmed here.
Rocca di Papa – The Albalongo was the temporary home of Pope Eugene III (1145-1152) when he was returning to Rome from exile in France. From then on, the town was known as Rocca di Papa, the "Pope's fortress". The town’s other claim to fame is that Guglielmo Marconi, the father of the radio, conducted his experiments here in the 1920s - 1930s.
Nemi - a cliff side town that is the centre of strawberry production. The berries, some of the first to ripen in the spring, are tiny and sweet. During the season, they're sold all over town and made into delicious pastries, liquors and syrups. Nemi's strawberries are grown on the sides of the volcanic crater, which creates a microclimate retaining the warmth of the sun and providing a wind shield.
Road Conditions
One normally associates the term ”road conditions” with the impact of the weather at this time on the road. Perish the thought...here we are meaning the condition of the roads themselves. While the highways are in good condition, here in the south of Rome we have come across roads, which would rate with some of the worst we have seen in Third World countries. In Ardea itself [which is upper middle class with some very large impressive houses behind the secure walls and gates], the roads are atrocious and have potholes within potholes. Little attempt is made by the locals to fix anything themselves and, when we raised it with our landlady as a passing comment, it expanded to a heavy discussion on the failings and corruption of Berlusconi and his cronies.
On one of our day trips, we came across a pothole which would have ripped the wheel off any car which drove into it – long, wheel width across, blunt far end and perfectly aligned in the direction of travel – fortunately, we were able to avoid it so at this stage Mr Peugeot gets his car back with the four road wheels intact. When road repairs are done, they seem to fall apart very quickly – at that point, another long tirade from our landlady – and you can see patching on top of patching on top of patching with none of them addressing the underlying real problem - a poor base. The shock absorber replacement and wheel alignment people must love them.
Street "hawkers"
Surprisingly, we have noticed an upswing in the number of roadside hookers since arriving in the south of Rome area. They are all positioned on country roads and we even saw them in the Castel Gandolfo area, where the Pope has his summer residence. They are very obvious, both in where they position themselves and in their packaging of what is being offered. With temperatures now in the single digit area and with them being very scantily clad, either they already have ice in their veins or they come from colder climes than Italy. We passed a couple on Sunday morning and that is also surprising because this is still a very religious country. Can't imagine there being any interest from the after-church crowd. Maybe they are focussing on the pre-soccer faction.
Foodie action
We were re-introduced this week to some more culinary delights and had some memorable meals. Surprisingly [there's that word again, because even after almost five months here, we are continually being surprised [usually very pleasantly] by the food, the variety,the flavours, the wines, the sights and the people.]...surprisingly, much of the food we have sampled over the past week has been very simple ... Minestrone soup, sautéed mussels in white wine, lasagne [provided by our landlady], not to mention the sweet delights, and Romanesco Broccoli which a really a cauliflower. It is shaped like a Xmas tree and has an intense taste, probably like a combination of cauliflower-broccoli-artichoke flavours. It has a bright lime green holds its colour after cooking. Simply delicious. I think even George Bush ["I don't like broccoli"] would consider this one.
At this point, a quote here from "Sir Fred":
"Porchetta: Roast suckling pig. This is a wonderful dish in central Italy, particularly in Lazio and Umbria. Many Romans leave their city on Sunday afternoon to go to outdoor trattorias in the nearby hills to eat “porchetta alla romana” and rosemary-scented potatoes, all washed down by fresh chilled white wine [possibly a Frascati]. “In Porchetta” refers to a meat that is stuffed and cooked in the style of roast pork."
We sampled porchetta several times, eating it like many of the locals do, sliced pork on a crisp bun with only a little stuffing added. Quite delicious and with a garlicky, rosemary flavour. Of course, the chilled Frascati also helps one wash it down and is a wonderful complement to another great version of fast Roman food.
Outlet Villages
When one thinks outlet villages, one conjures up images of Otaki’s main street. Well, the Italians do this sort of thing in style. Buy a large piece of land near a main centre and close to a main highway, outfit it with lots of high quality shops, develop an even larger piece of land for free car parking and then convince the up market stores to rent some of the space. It’s all a bit like “Field of Dreams”...build it and they will come [the punters, that is, not the ball players]. Before we travelled to Italy, we Google mapped Valmontone Outlet and got a street view of the initial earthworks for the outlet, clearly shot a few years ago. Today, it is a thriving complex, with quality stores selling clothing [women’s, men’s, children’s], cosmetics, shoes, sportswear, jewellery, home products, coffee appliances, luggage...you name, it was probably there somewhere. Valmontone has over 170 different stores and, even if you are only window shopping, would probably take you a couple of hours to see it all. We managed to stop off for about three hours on the way back from Caserta. We had visited the other outlet in this area [Castel Romano], earlier in the week and the Silver Fox and his long haired lady friend were seen departing with shopping bags from Diesel, Samsonite and Camper. Valmontone could only tempt them with a Clark’s bag.
That was our final week with “Carla”. Full on but very enjoyable. Tomorrow we head for Rome to drop off our bags at our last Italian stopover and return Carla to Mr Peugeot. Then full steam ahead on the sights/sites of Rome. Driving in Italy hasn’t been too much of a problem providing you are prepared to be aggressive and know when to give way [mainly because the other driver pressed the “Aggressive “ button first]. We have had our "OMG" moments and some laughs [afterwards]. We have driven in places we didn’t think we would fit and some we probably shouldn’t have driven down. We have ignored Carla on many occasions, some because she gave us the instructions too late, some because they were quite impractical due to the turn being too tight for the car, some because her database did not reflect the reality on the roads and some because we wanted to go to look at something that was not on her planned route. But for all that, we would not have been able to see what we have seen without her - and the driver and co-driver would probably have shot each other well before we got out of the north. She made things much easier [in spite of the momentary lapses on both our parts, human and computer] and, for us, GPS is a must if we do this sort of thing again. In hindsight, we probably could have taken the smaller 208 model car given that we never left our bags in the car when we arrived at a new stopover point and we never went out of sight of the car when we stopped en route to the next bed. That being said we always took the precaution of putting a bicycle cable through all of the bag handles when we were travelling. More difficult for the nasties to remove the bags when they have to carry all of them at the same time. Finally, diesel is the way to go in Europe where the price of petrol is about $NZ3/litre for standard and diesel is only about $NZ2.66 [and goes a lot further].
Well, that’s it for this week. Roma here we come.