Also by Mary Jane Cryan - AWS
ETRURIA
Travel, history & itineraries in central Italy MARY JANE CRYAN
Etruria Editions
Cover Painting Patricia Glee Smith Illustrations Nancy Hart Graphics Francesco Aliperti Editing Mary Jane MacKinnon McCool Photos Justin Bradshaw Agostino Cecchini Mary Jane Cryan Robert D. Mari Andrea Natali Francesco Pignatale Maurizio Pinna Luca Riccardi Italia Vinciguerra Thanks to Dave, Bonne, Christine and Lynda for suggestions Copyright
©
Mary Jane Cryan
First edition 2010 ISBN 978-88-96889-09-1
About the Author Mary Jane Cryan has been living in Italy since 1965 working in the fields of education, journalism and travel. For 30+ years her weekly columns on antiques, lifestyle and travel appeared in Italy’s English language press. During a three year stint in Russia during the perestroika she was a staff member of Moscow Magazine. Some best selling guidebooks she has authored and contributed to are Eyewitness Guide to Rome, Designer Bargains in Italy, Fodors Upclose and Buying a Home in Italy. She has won several awards for cultural promotion, historical research and for her website (www.elegantetruria.com) including Tarquinia Cardarelli Prize in 2001 and Narrare il Lazio Prize in 2010.
Also by Mary Jane Cryan Travels to Tuscany and Northern Lazio - an historical “on the road” based on the 18th century travel diaries of Cardinal Henry Stuart, Duke of York .
Vetralla - The English Connection - tells the forgotten history of the city and its protection by the English crown since 1512 .
Affreschi - Exploring Etruria - travel essays about the Northern Lazio area .
Reviews and information are at www.elegantetruria.com
For Fulvio
CONTENTS
Preface
11 Itineraries Etruscan Places and Faces The Tombs of Tarquinia Miraculous Etruria A Day Ashore at Civitavecchia Mysterious Sites of Northern Lazio Connoisseur’s Guide to Viterbo Searching for the Stuarts
13 17 23 26 31 36 41
Influences Early Americans in Etruria Spanish Tuscany Irish Lords of Northern Lazio Irish Connections in Central Italy Vetralla - An International Town
46 56 61 67 72
Treasures The Treasures of Foro Cassio Castles for Connoisseurs
77 81
Castles of Etruria Historic Gardens of Etruria Modern Gardens A Dozen Nature Reserves Half a Dozen Unusual Museums Safeguarding Minor Monuments
85 88 92 93 95 96
People Women Saints and Sinners Hot Water People That Wild Princess from Viterbo Rediscovered Sketches of Etruria Strange Rites of Spring Escape from Vetralla’s Prison Camp The Boston Connection An Old Palazzo in Etruria - the sequel
99 103 107 110 116 123 127 131
Notes
139
Select Bibliography
140
Index
146
Preface During the 35 years that I lived in Rome a succession of
English language newspapers and magazines existed to provide the international community with information and news. For each of these, in turn, I collaborated as a writer turning out regular articles about art, antiques and lifestyle. In those pre-computer and internet days, I pounded out my articles on a black, upright typewriter with two sheets of carbon paper inserted. Mistakes were corrected with a rubber eraser or whitener before racing into the editorial office by bus or subway to hand in copy before deadline. Moscow, USSR was home during the Perestroika years. There, besides being a “trailing wife”, I scouted out information and cultural news as staff writer for Russia’s first Western-style magazine. Members of the international community often thanked me for the articles that helped make Moscow life easier for them: the location of new restaurants, the best places to purchase paintings, sculptures, detergents and food. Upon return to Italy, the big city was traded for a calmer lifestyle and larger home in the Viterbo province where we knew there was an abundance of thermal baths, Etruscan sites and local traditions. These beckoned temptingly to be explored and enjoyed but finding them was another matter. Directions and information were as difficult to uncover as they had been in Soviet Russia! As I scoured salvage dealers in surrounding towns for fireplaces and tiles to restore the old palazzo, I also gathered information and insight. Thanks to new friends and local historians I discovered fascinating stories about the area. Until recently, the only books that gave attention to this part of central Italy were those specialized in archeology. Most English guidebooks ignored the area completely, leading new residents to believe that “civilization” stops at the northern Roman suburb of Olgiata.
11
12
The fourth in a series about this area, Etruria. Travel, history and itineraries wishes to fill this void by giving new information about this part of Italy still to be discovered by mass tourism. Some of the essays, originally written for local Italian magazines, have been adapted for English language readers. Others were developed from culture lectures presented to university students and cruise ship audiences. A few stories describing local traditions and festivals have been revised and included to show how little the Northern Lazio area has changed over the years. The essays that narrate the area’s little known international connections and history are the fruit of original research and long hours of digging through archives in Italy, England and Ireland to discover information not available in guidebooks. Visitors’ enjoyment will be increased when they have a deeper understanding of the area’s background and the people who lived here before us. Inspiration comes from Georgina Masson’s almost anthropologic interest in documenting local customs and life. It is only fitting to follow Masson’s lead because it was her Companion Guide to Rome and a sturdy folding map that helped me make the city of Rome my own when I first arrived in Italy in 1965.
Etruscan Faces and Places While
visiting Etruscan sites in the early 1920s, English writer D.H. Lawrence noticed the similarities among the people he met daily and those of the carved figures and frescoes admired in Tarquinia’s painted tombs. Since then, archeologists have joined forces with anthropologists, linguists and geneticists to study the connections that still exist between today’s populations in central Italy and the DNA found in Etruscan burials. The genetic map they hope to build would be proof of the non-Italian origins of the civilization that flourished here from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. Drawing connecting lines on the map between the towns of Vetralla, Tarquinia and Tuscania forms the Etruscan Triangle, a naturally beautiful part of Lazio that is little known to day-trippers from Rome and even to citizens of the nearby towns. Until the late 1930’s, perhaps as a result of the malaria present in many parts of central Italy, the idea of a country outing was considered foreign, unsafe, and certainly not interesting to townspeople whose interests revolved around happenings within their town walls. The picturesque, romantic Italy that entranced 19th century travelers, particularly English artists, was not important to the Italians who ignored nature as a destination. The countryside was where peasants toiled, and it was considered a bit odd and even dangerous to venture outside the walls for anything except hard physical work. Admiration of the scenery and landscape were eclipsed by practical problems; travelers on the road were more interested in arriving safely at the next town by day’s end. It was the destination, not the adventure of travel, that mattered. Until the 1890s towns had curfews when the huge wooden town doors were closed and bolted, giving travelers another reason (besides that of avoiding the mal-aria) to hasten to the safety of the nearest town as evening approached.
13
14
The interest and rediscovery of what lay hidden beneath centuries of underbrush and forests outside the safety of town walls began with a Scottish professor at Pisa University, Thomas Dempster, who dedicated his manuscript De Etruria Regali to Cosimo de’ Medici in 1616. Thomas Coke discovered the manuscript during his Grand Tour a century later and had it published, but it was a family of Tuscania, the Campanari, who spread the “Etruscan fever” to a wider audience. The father and his three sons excavated tombs in the area of Vulci and Tuscania (known deprecatorily as Toscanella) under a 50-50 agreement with the Papal government. In 1837 they exhibited the first Etruscan objects at London’s Pall Mall, creating a frenzy of interest in this mysterious population. Lady Elizabeth Hamilton Gray’s book Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, published in 1840 was followed eight years later by George Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. In O. Blewitt’s Traveller’s Handbook published in London by John Murray in 1853, the excursions to Etruscan sites of Castel d’Asso, Norchia and Bieda were described. The author advises visitors to hire horses or donkeys rather than to attempt the trips in a carriage due to the conditions of the roads. An early morning start was necessary in order to visit the sites, writes the author, who also encouraged travelers to bring provisions from Viterbo along with torches “without which it is impossible to examine the tombs”. The best guides available in 1853 were a man named Ruggieri, a coffee house keeper and a barber, and Giuseppe Perugini, both of Viterbo. But these important recommendations were not available to Augustus Hare who in his 1875 Days Near Rome laments that “the so-called guides at Viterbo are utterly ignorant, inefficient and useless.” In 1889 Jules Martha‘s L’Art Etrusque was published in Paris, an elegant volume with color plates protected by tissue paper. These gilded plates depict the magnificent art, jewellery, coins, mirrors and bronze work of the Etruscan civilization. Later generations were fascinated with D.H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places
which appeared in 1929 and the mystery of this buried civilization. In order to recapture the emotions of these pioneer days, the modern traveler should enter the Etruscan Triangle near Vetralla and visit Norchia and Grotta Porcina, two relatively untouched sites. Since they are both far away from inhabited zones, it is advisable to make your visit in a group, leave nothing in the car and have a mobile phone along. High grass and possible snakes in summer suggest the winter as the best time to visit. A hundred years ago these were areas “on the edge,” a no man’s land infested with bandits. Near Tuscania, giant cacti and Etruscan tombs recycled for use as animal shelters can be seen along with the imposing outlines of S. Maria Maggiore, San Pietro and the ruins of Rivellino as one arrives at the town along the Strada Vetrallese. Since 1840, Northern Lazio’s Etruscan sites have been giving up precious artifacts including red and black-figure Attic vases and gold jewellery. These now enrich museums and other collections around the world while the area of provenance remains impoverished, many of its sites without proper signage. The recent unearthing of an important temple complex near Vetralla, 68 kilometres north of Rome, is another reminder that the Etruscans are still very much with us and that their imposing necropolis and monuments are major reasons for visiting the area. The temple dedicated to the goddess Demeter (Vea for the Etruscans) was a local tomb robber’s source of pots (cocci) until he unwisely tried to sell his “wares” in the nearby seaside town of Montalto di Castro. When the finance police trailed him back to Vetralla they were rewarded with the discovery of his unique “warehouse”- a huge mushroom shaped stone structure hidden away in a wooded area known locally as Bagno Sacro (Sacred bathing place). Bathing and rituals to insure fertility for crops and the population were performed here more than 2,500 years ago. Besides the toponym Bagno Sacro, a ruined farmhouse known as Sciabolino has given its name to the area. Tradition says that a local farmer found a golden sword (sciabola) here and
15
16
enjoyed sudden wealth. Could it have been part of the Etruscan treasure trove connected to Demetra’s sanctuary and temple? The track leading down to this site is similar to other vie cave (paths carved in the tufa stone) to be found throughout the area dappled with Etruscan sites such as Norchia, Castel d’Asso and Grotta Porcina. The Bagno Sacro sanctuary site will surely put Vetralla on the map. Its size, decorative columns and the many terracotta ex voto representing male and female reproductive organs are further enriched by another important discovery: a stunningly beautiful terracotta statue of the goddess Demeter found intact inside the sanctuary. Rivalling the terracotta winged horses of Tarquinia, the staute has been taken to Viterbo’s Etruscan Museum for safe keeping and hopefully it will soon become the centerpiece of a local archeological museum.
Travel, history & itineraries in central Italy MARY JANE CRYAN
Etruria Editions
Cover Painting Patricia Glee Smith Illustrations Nancy Hart Graphics Francesco Aliperti Editing Mary Jane MacKinnon McCool Photos Justin Bradshaw Agostino Cecchini Mary Jane Cryan Robert D. Mari Andrea Natali Francesco Pignatale Maurizio Pinna Luca Riccardi Italia Vinciguerra Thanks to Dave, Bonne, Christine and Lynda for suggestions Copyright
©
Mary Jane Cryan
First edition 2010 ISBN 978-88-96889-09-1
About the Author Mary Jane Cryan has been living in Italy since 1965 working in the fields of education, journalism and travel. For 30+ years her weekly columns on antiques, lifestyle and travel appeared in Italy’s English language press. During a three year stint in Russia during the perestroika she was a staff member of Moscow Magazine. Some best selling guidebooks she has authored and contributed to are Eyewitness Guide to Rome, Designer Bargains in Italy, Fodors Upclose and Buying a Home in Italy. She has won several awards for cultural promotion, historical research and for her website (www.elegantetruria.com) including Tarquinia Cardarelli Prize in 2001 and Narrare il Lazio Prize in 2010.
Also by Mary Jane Cryan Travels to Tuscany and Northern Lazio - an historical “on the road” based on the 18th century travel diaries of Cardinal Henry Stuart, Duke of York .
Vetralla - The English Connection - tells the forgotten history of the city and its protection by the English crown since 1512 .
Affreschi - Exploring Etruria - travel essays about the Northern Lazio area .
Reviews and information are at www.elegantetruria.com
For Fulvio
CONTENTS
Preface
11 Itineraries Etruscan Places and Faces The Tombs of Tarquinia Miraculous Etruria A Day Ashore at Civitavecchia Mysterious Sites of Northern Lazio Connoisseur’s Guide to Viterbo Searching for the Stuarts
13 17 23 26 31 36 41
Influences Early Americans in Etruria Spanish Tuscany Irish Lords of Northern Lazio Irish Connections in Central Italy Vetralla - An International Town
46 56 61 67 72
Treasures The Treasures of Foro Cassio Castles for Connoisseurs
77 81
Castles of Etruria Historic Gardens of Etruria Modern Gardens A Dozen Nature Reserves Half a Dozen Unusual Museums Safeguarding Minor Monuments
85 88 92 93 95 96
People Women Saints and Sinners Hot Water People That Wild Princess from Viterbo Rediscovered Sketches of Etruria Strange Rites of Spring Escape from Vetralla’s Prison Camp The Boston Connection An Old Palazzo in Etruria - the sequel
99 103 107 110 116 123 127 131
Notes
139
Select Bibliography
140
Index
146
Preface During the 35 years that I lived in Rome a succession of
English language newspapers and magazines existed to provide the international community with information and news. For each of these, in turn, I collaborated as a writer turning out regular articles about art, antiques and lifestyle. In those pre-computer and internet days, I pounded out my articles on a black, upright typewriter with two sheets of carbon paper inserted. Mistakes were corrected with a rubber eraser or whitener before racing into the editorial office by bus or subway to hand in copy before deadline. Moscow, USSR was home during the Perestroika years. There, besides being a “trailing wife”, I scouted out information and cultural news as staff writer for Russia’s first Western-style magazine. Members of the international community often thanked me for the articles that helped make Moscow life easier for them: the location of new restaurants, the best places to purchase paintings, sculptures, detergents and food. Upon return to Italy, the big city was traded for a calmer lifestyle and larger home in the Viterbo province where we knew there was an abundance of thermal baths, Etruscan sites and local traditions. These beckoned temptingly to be explored and enjoyed but finding them was another matter. Directions and information were as difficult to uncover as they had been in Soviet Russia! As I scoured salvage dealers in surrounding towns for fireplaces and tiles to restore the old palazzo, I also gathered information and insight. Thanks to new friends and local historians I discovered fascinating stories about the area. Until recently, the only books that gave attention to this part of central Italy were those specialized in archeology. Most English guidebooks ignored the area completely, leading new residents to believe that “civilization” stops at the northern Roman suburb of Olgiata.
11
12
The fourth in a series about this area, Etruria. Travel, history and itineraries wishes to fill this void by giving new information about this part of Italy still to be discovered by mass tourism. Some of the essays, originally written for local Italian magazines, have been adapted for English language readers. Others were developed from culture lectures presented to university students and cruise ship audiences. A few stories describing local traditions and festivals have been revised and included to show how little the Northern Lazio area has changed over the years. The essays that narrate the area’s little known international connections and history are the fruit of original research and long hours of digging through archives in Italy, England and Ireland to discover information not available in guidebooks. Visitors’ enjoyment will be increased when they have a deeper understanding of the area’s background and the people who lived here before us. Inspiration comes from Georgina Masson’s almost anthropologic interest in documenting local customs and life. It is only fitting to follow Masson’s lead because it was her Companion Guide to Rome and a sturdy folding map that helped me make the city of Rome my own when I first arrived in Italy in 1965.
Etruscan Faces and Places While
visiting Etruscan sites in the early 1920s, English writer D.H. Lawrence noticed the similarities among the people he met daily and those of the carved figures and frescoes admired in Tarquinia’s painted tombs. Since then, archeologists have joined forces with anthropologists, linguists and geneticists to study the connections that still exist between today’s populations in central Italy and the DNA found in Etruscan burials. The genetic map they hope to build would be proof of the non-Italian origins of the civilization that flourished here from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. Drawing connecting lines on the map between the towns of Vetralla, Tarquinia and Tuscania forms the Etruscan Triangle, a naturally beautiful part of Lazio that is little known to day-trippers from Rome and even to citizens of the nearby towns. Until the late 1930’s, perhaps as a result of the malaria present in many parts of central Italy, the idea of a country outing was considered foreign, unsafe, and certainly not interesting to townspeople whose interests revolved around happenings within their town walls. The picturesque, romantic Italy that entranced 19th century travelers, particularly English artists, was not important to the Italians who ignored nature as a destination. The countryside was where peasants toiled, and it was considered a bit odd and even dangerous to venture outside the walls for anything except hard physical work. Admiration of the scenery and landscape were eclipsed by practical problems; travelers on the road were more interested in arriving safely at the next town by day’s end. It was the destination, not the adventure of travel, that mattered. Until the 1890s towns had curfews when the huge wooden town doors were closed and bolted, giving travelers another reason (besides that of avoiding the mal-aria) to hasten to the safety of the nearest town as evening approached.
13
14
The interest and rediscovery of what lay hidden beneath centuries of underbrush and forests outside the safety of town walls began with a Scottish professor at Pisa University, Thomas Dempster, who dedicated his manuscript De Etruria Regali to Cosimo de’ Medici in 1616. Thomas Coke discovered the manuscript during his Grand Tour a century later and had it published, but it was a family of Tuscania, the Campanari, who spread the “Etruscan fever” to a wider audience. The father and his three sons excavated tombs in the area of Vulci and Tuscania (known deprecatorily as Toscanella) under a 50-50 agreement with the Papal government. In 1837 they exhibited the first Etruscan objects at London’s Pall Mall, creating a frenzy of interest in this mysterious population. Lady Elizabeth Hamilton Gray’s book Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, published in 1840 was followed eight years later by George Dennis’s Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria. In O. Blewitt’s Traveller’s Handbook published in London by John Murray in 1853, the excursions to Etruscan sites of Castel d’Asso, Norchia and Bieda were described. The author advises visitors to hire horses or donkeys rather than to attempt the trips in a carriage due to the conditions of the roads. An early morning start was necessary in order to visit the sites, writes the author, who also encouraged travelers to bring provisions from Viterbo along with torches “without which it is impossible to examine the tombs”. The best guides available in 1853 were a man named Ruggieri, a coffee house keeper and a barber, and Giuseppe Perugini, both of Viterbo. But these important recommendations were not available to Augustus Hare who in his 1875 Days Near Rome laments that “the so-called guides at Viterbo are utterly ignorant, inefficient and useless.” In 1889 Jules Martha‘s L’Art Etrusque was published in Paris, an elegant volume with color plates protected by tissue paper. These gilded plates depict the magnificent art, jewellery, coins, mirrors and bronze work of the Etruscan civilization. Later generations were fascinated with D.H. Lawrence’s Etruscan Places
which appeared in 1929 and the mystery of this buried civilization. In order to recapture the emotions of these pioneer days, the modern traveler should enter the Etruscan Triangle near Vetralla and visit Norchia and Grotta Porcina, two relatively untouched sites. Since they are both far away from inhabited zones, it is advisable to make your visit in a group, leave nothing in the car and have a mobile phone along. High grass and possible snakes in summer suggest the winter as the best time to visit. A hundred years ago these were areas “on the edge,” a no man’s land infested with bandits. Near Tuscania, giant cacti and Etruscan tombs recycled for use as animal shelters can be seen along with the imposing outlines of S. Maria Maggiore, San Pietro and the ruins of Rivellino as one arrives at the town along the Strada Vetrallese. Since 1840, Northern Lazio’s Etruscan sites have been giving up precious artifacts including red and black-figure Attic vases and gold jewellery. These now enrich museums and other collections around the world while the area of provenance remains impoverished, many of its sites without proper signage. The recent unearthing of an important temple complex near Vetralla, 68 kilometres north of Rome, is another reminder that the Etruscans are still very much with us and that their imposing necropolis and monuments are major reasons for visiting the area. The temple dedicated to the goddess Demeter (Vea for the Etruscans) was a local tomb robber’s source of pots (cocci) until he unwisely tried to sell his “wares” in the nearby seaside town of Montalto di Castro. When the finance police trailed him back to Vetralla they were rewarded with the discovery of his unique “warehouse”- a huge mushroom shaped stone structure hidden away in a wooded area known locally as Bagno Sacro (Sacred bathing place). Bathing and rituals to insure fertility for crops and the population were performed here more than 2,500 years ago. Besides the toponym Bagno Sacro, a ruined farmhouse known as Sciabolino has given its name to the area. Tradition says that a local farmer found a golden sword (sciabola) here and
15
16
enjoyed sudden wealth. Could it have been part of the Etruscan treasure trove connected to Demetra’s sanctuary and temple? The track leading down to this site is similar to other vie cave (paths carved in the tufa stone) to be found throughout the area dappled with Etruscan sites such as Norchia, Castel d’Asso and Grotta Porcina. The Bagno Sacro sanctuary site will surely put Vetralla on the map. Its size, decorative columns and the many terracotta ex voto representing male and female reproductive organs are further enriched by another important discovery: a stunningly beautiful terracotta statue of the goddess Demeter found intact inside the sanctuary. Rivalling the terracotta winged horses of Tarquinia, the staute has been taken to Viterbo’s Etruscan Museum for safe keeping and hopefully it will soon become the centerpiece of a local archeological museum.
