Arezzo

We were in Arezzo from 3 to 10 October. We are now in Rome. The difference is stark. As a gentleman in Arezzo observed, "... ma, Roma è faticosa."  I have to agree, ."..but, Rome is tiresome " certainly by comparison with Arezzo.

This gentleman, here [1] in delightful very short film, then [2] spouting Dante, Pier Ferruccio Rossi who said he was a poet, his grandmother a peasant, a poet, a peasant-poet, made that observation when he struck up a conversation with us in a phone shop as we were leaving Arezzo.

This, we realised, is the family property

I check the train timetable to see if we can duck back to have lunch at Il Saraceno...

...because the food was good, the mood was good, because the atmosphere and attitude of this city of 100,000 was so positive and energetic.

Arezzo is very proud to have been one of the big Etruscan cities, captured by Rome 2200 years ago, but persisting with its independent mindedness and with independent government for much of the time to the 1300s when the good times slipped a bit and they fell under the power of Florence, 80km away. Florence's dominance has persisted. Not least in ensuring that Arezzo is less tramped by tourists. Arezzo had a university not long after Padova and Bologna in the 1200s.

There was a big moment in the 1880s when the first train line from Florence to Rome was built, passing through Arezzo. Later to become a lesser line, with a more direct route adopted. New roads were built in the city, around the station and carving up to the centre, to the church of San Francesco, with famous frescos by Piero della Francesca.

The new main street was called Via Guido Monaco after a town hero,
the inventor of musical notation.

A legacy of enlivenment by the rail coming through was a large railways workshop which before and after World War 2 was the centre of male employment, faltering for decades with government subsidy.

With a measure of strategic location, Arezzo has abundant experience of people coming by, people occupying, walls being pulled down, walls being put up again, etc. In World War 2 German forces established a defensive line, the Trasimeno Line, just south of Arezzo. A collection of photos and movies mainly from British military sources here, also featuring partisan [partigiano/partigiani] forces:

warning - wartime images, not all pleasant

At around 7 minutes into the movie see tanks in Corso Italia, Arezzo. Here is street view now.

After WW2, Italy had some 800,000 refugees, internal and external, as counted by relief agencies, that is, as in receipt of benefits... total numbers surely much higher. Many around Arezzo.

A pattern of life in the postwar period was not only of recovery from destruction, but the move of the contadino (I translated contadino as 'peasant' above but accept it as a loose term for gradations of entrapment in rural servitude) to towns and cities, with little if any education.

Ermanno Olmi's extraordinary film, set further north in Italy, gives a sense of the life of people owned by a rural landlord.

For men, after the war, some employment in the railway works, for women very hard options, in what became the core of Arezzo's subsequent wealth, gold and fine jewellery. There is a good account of this period and issues here.

Now the city is shiny.

Our time in Arezzo included the monthly antiques market with people come from far both to sell and to buy.

Photo: to begin with Helen's.

Cathedral and government offices, top of the hill

This a small part of the Lapidarium exhibition of Gustavo Aceves, in a number of places in the city.
An exhibition about the damaged rather than the victors and about struggles to migrate,
from remote past to now.
The exhibition began in Berlin at the anniversary of the end of WW2 in 2015,
these notes from when it was in Rome.

The following photos are from the part of the Lapidarium exhibition in the 

former church of St Ignatius, now a state museum, retaining historical art on walls.

the huge work filling this church is a collection of items, creatures and composites of life and death in marble
rising from white sand.
The Mexican artist lives in Pietrasanta, a town in northeast Tuscany, near the sea and near Carrara.
Botero has a house there. Michelangelo went there for lessons.

Thought provoking.

To return to Arezzo... 

We had been mainly in level places before this, 

but my legs seem to have benefited from lots of work in Arezzo.

there are aesthetic rewards in quiet paths

encountering on staircase corner work by a graffitist
whose charming work encountered also near us in Rome.
That's a step on right, these are tiny pictures.

at the bottom of the steps the Piazza Grande
as seen in Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, story based in Arezzo

a quiet morning for coffee

view to the right from coffee

view to the left

Then on Sunday the market





On Monday the work of Piero della Francesca in the Basilica di San Francesco



and lunch at Il Saraceno



afterwards to buy Helen a hand made bag



And from this point some photos from my camera

I could not resist this: "Tourist reimagined"... They went into the shop!

our front door, or rather the door to the lane to the garden to our door

In the supermarket... "sausages are over there"

Two pots, no cats. It is so nice to be refined

Ah, before you go, there's something I'd like to say too.

yes, it looks mainly quiet. I did not take photos in the middle of the crowds in the centre, just in this siesta-shut phase of life

At the end of our street, a violet shop, nothing but violet

And another tiny movie, from Maestro Rossi, if you have time...
About a man of a certain age maintaining a cared-playing competition with a friend,
though the friend is now deceased... Slowly slowly he edges towards the lead,
as games are defaulted by his friend not turning up.

Filmed in Lucca, western Tuscany.
Fabled for music and festival.