speak the culture italy be fluent in italian life and culture

www.thorogoodpublishing.co.uk www.speaktheculture.net Speak the Culture Italy “NO PUBLISHER HAS ATTEMPTED ANYTHING QUITE LIKE THIS, AND THE PUBLISHERS BE FLUENT IN ITALIAN LIFE AND CULT

www.thorogoodpublishing.co.uk www.speaktheculture.net

Speak the Culture Italy

“NO PUBLISHER HAS ATTEMPTED ANYTHING QUITE LIKE THIS, AND THE PUBLISHERS

BE FLUENT IN ITALIAN LIFE AND CULTURE

Speak the Culture: Italy reveals the cultural forces

and figures that have shaped Italy and the Italians

The Italian character is complex, contradictory, alluring and infinitely

variable: the heirs to the greatest empire of the Ancient world but

supposedly ungovernable; the guardians of the Catholic Church

and exemplars of la dolce vita; the

maestros of modern design, so immersed in tradition.

And then there are the idols of Italian culture: Dante, Michelangelo,

Verdi, Fellini – who were they and what made them so special, so

Italian? Easily read and beautifully

illustrated, Speak the Culture: Italy

makes sense of it all.

7 Food and drink

8 Living culture: the state

of modern Italy

Culture made so real you can read it, see

it, taste it, hear it, eat it, drink it, feel it, touch it, speak it, wear it, download it

BE FLUENT IN SPANISH LIFE AND CULTURE

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ART AND ARCHITECTURE • CINEMA AND FASHION

MUSIC AND DRAMA • FOOD AND DRINK • MEDIA AND SPORT

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HISTORY, SOCIETY AND LIFESTYLE s LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

ART AND ARCHITECTURE s CINEMA, PHOTOGRAPHY AND FASHION

MUSIC AND DRAMA s FOOD AND DRINK s MEDIA AND SPORT

Speak the Culture France

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The Italian Cultural Institute, London, supports and encourages understanding between people and cultures worldwide

and endorses this book’s aim of contributing towards a greater cultural awareness of Italy www.icilondon.esteri.it

Speak the Culture Italy

BE FLUENT IN ITALIAN LIFE AND CULTURE

HISTORY, SOCIETY AND LIFESTYLE • LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

ART AND ARCHITECTURE • CINEMA AND FASHION

MUSIC AND DRAMA • FOOD AND DRINK • MEDIA AND SPORT

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ISBN: 1 85418 628 0 / 185418628-7

978-Thorogood Publishing Ltd 10-12 Rivington Street London EC2A 3DU Telephone: 020 7749 4748 Fax: 020 7729 6110 info@thorogoodpublishing.co.uk www.thorogoodpublishing.co.uk www.speaktheculture.net

© 2010 Thorogood Publishing Ltd

Special thanks to: Denise Bianchini John and Pauline Davis Matt Rendell, Mariella Scarlett Carlo Presenti at the Italian Cultural Institute

Lisa Kramer Taruschio David Banks Johnny Bull Amy Wilson Thomas Patrick Carpenter Jonathan Schofield

Design & illustration

Phylip Harries Richard Grosse falconburydesign.co.uk Johnny Bull plumpState plumpstate.com iStockphoto Printed in the UK by Ashford Colour Press

Rome, as seen from Castel Sant’ Angelo

1.2.1 Did you know we

used to rule the world?

Ancient Italy p20

1.2.2 From the Dark

Ages into the light p26

authors p58

2.1.3 The Three Crowns of the early

Renaissance p61

2.1.4 The anti-climax of the High Renaissance

p65

2.1.5 Telling it like it is:

literature in the modern

avant-Italian art p110

3.1.6 Style and substance: modern

builds p121

3.2.3 Designing harmony: Renaissance

music p140

4.1.2 Life in opera’s shadow: classical music

5.1.2 Epic tastes: from

silent classics to noisy

5.1.5 The era of false

dawns: modern Italian

cinema p195

5.2 Fashion p201

5.2.1 Made in Italy p202

6 Media and communications

p209

6.1 Media p211

6.1.1 Best of the press: newspapers and

magazines p212

6.1.2 Thinking inside the box: Italian television

6.2.2 Italy on the move:

transport types and habits

the flavours of Italy p238

7.1.3 Food rituals: eating

politics, the Italian state

and green issues p282

8.4 Money matters: the

economy, wealth and

social security p288

8.5 Law and order: the

police, the Mafia and the

legal system p292

8.6 Class struggles: the

education system p297

8.7 Time out: holidays,

festivals and free time

p300

8.8 Passion plays:

Italian sport p303

First, a word from

the publisher…

This series of books and this book are designed to look at

a country’s culture – to give readers a real grasp of it and

to help them develop and explore that culture

The world is shrinking – made smaller by commerce, tourism and migration – and yet the importance of national culture, of national identity, seems to grow

By increasing your cultural knowledge and appreciation

of a country, be it your own or a foreign land, you reach a genuine understanding of the people and how they live We’re talking about culture in all its guises: the creative arts that give a country its spirit as well as the culture of everyday life

Speak the Culture books sit alongside guidebooks and language courses, serving not only as a companionable good read but also as an invaluable tool for understanding

a country’s current culture and its heritage

1.2.1 Did you know

we used to rule the

world? Ancient Italy

p20

1.2.2 From the Dark

Ages into the light p26

The Italian landscape can be as varied and stirring as any; it has peaks, plains and more volcanoes than the rest of

mainland Europe combined However, it’s the breadth and diversity of culture – the traditions and the sense of

campanilismo – that shape the real

identity of each region

If the boot fits

The Italians sometimes call their prong of southern

Europe lo Stivale, the Boot, for obvious reasons It’s

an iconic physique, from the muscular Alpine thigh right down to the bony Calabrian toe that punts Sicily eternally towards Africa (Sicilian capital Palermo is closer

to Tunis than Rome) Running clockwise from Trieste in the north-east, the country is bordered by the Adriatic, Ionian, Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Seas, all of them a part

of the Mediterranean Sea Land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia in the north are dominated by the Alps Italy has a number of islands out

in the Med, of which Sardinia (120 miles adrift from Rome

in the Tyrrhenian Sea) and Sicily are by far the largest

Lie of the land: the hills are alive

The hills and mountains that cover two thirds of Italy comprise two chains: the Alps and the Apennines

The Alps formed when the African tectonic plate slid north millions of years ago, collided with the Eurasian plate and pushed up the peaks These shifting plates still affect Italy more than any other European country, initiating earthquakes and giving vent to three active volcanoes, Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli The same tectonic clash also shaped the Apennines, the peninsula’s spine, curving all the way from the Ligurian Alps to the toe tip of Calabria The northern Pianura Padana forms Italy’s largest lowland plain, the Po River (Italy’s longest) draining its fertile soils The other large Italian plain is the Tavoliere delle Puglie (Chessboard of Puglia) down in the boot heel Lakes Garda, Maggiore and Como sit in steep-sided northern valleys (when people talk about the ‘Italian Lakes’ they mean these), while smaller lakes to the north

of Rome inhabit old volcanic craters

As sea levels rise, the

prognosis looks bleak

Shrinkage is already

causing friction: in 2008

Lecce and Brindisi, both

in Puglia (where 65 per

cent of beaches are

losing their sand), fell

out when Lecce tried

to dredge for new sand

offshore from its near

neighbour and longtime

rival.

1.1.1 Italy: where is it and

what does it look like?

What is the weather like?

The coastal lowlands of southern Italy enjoy a

Mediterranean climate of hot summers and mild winters,

and the warm weather stretches north up the western

coast bringing uncomfortable heat in summer Elsewhere,

the norm is cooler, particularly in the north-east where

the cold winds can blow in from central Europe By

consolation, east tends to be drier than west The Po

Valley experiences harsh winters and warm, humid

summers, and is known for prodigious winter fogs

The Alps have their own climate of bitter winters and

mild summers When the Sirocco wind comes up from

North Africa the whole country bakes Italy’s undulating

topography creates some intriguing microclimates (and

correspondingly fine wines) Despite Lake Garda’s

northerly position, for instance, the surrounding

mountains provide enough shelter to grow palms and

lemons Climate change is already having a serious effect

on Italy – summers in southern Italy are 0.7 degrees

warmer than they were 20 years ago

Forces of nature

Earthquake: Italy’s worst quake (indeed, modern Europe’s worst) and the attendant

tsunami killed as many as 200,000 people when it hit Messina in 1908 The most

devastating recent event came in April 2009, when a quake in Abruzzo killed nearly

300

Flood: When the Arno River flooded Florence in 1966, it killed over a hundred

people and destroyed or damaged thousands of works of art, Donatello’s Magdalene

sculpture included The so-called ‘Mud Angels’ helped clean the city up.

Volcano: Vesuvius’ most famous outburst came in 79AD when it buried Pompeii

and killed as many as 25,000 locals A more recent eruption in 1906 claimed more

than a hundred lives.

Boughing out, Tuscan style

Few sights evoke the Italian landscape, Tuscany in particular, like the tall, slim

cypress tree Cupressus

sempervirens (if you’ve

got dining companions

to impress) probably came to Italy from the eastern Med with the Etruscans Despite being darkly green, long- lived (they can grow for a thousand years) and sweetly pungent, the tree has strong associations with death

In Metamorphoses,

Roman poet Ovid described the tree being born from the body of Cyparissus, the grief-stricken youth who accidentally speared Apollo’s pet deer Convinced of

a connection to the underworld, the Romans would lay their dead

on a bed of cypress branches and place a tree at the front of the house during periods of mourning.

Where do the Italians live?

Almost three quarters of Italians now live in towns and cities, a preference for urban life that only developed

in the post-war economic boom (see section 8.4 for more) The population density is relatively high (almost

200 people per sq km – the fifth most densely peopled country in the EU) although the distribution of people is unbalanced Over a third of Italians live in the Pianura Padana, while the lands south of Rome can be quite empty It’s a north/south split connected to prosperity, to the divide between industry and agriculture and to a clash

in attitudes and culture Rome may be the biggest city by population (2.7 million), but the metropolitan areas around Milan (up to 7.4 million by some estimates) and Naples (4.4 million) embrace more inhabitants

Life expectancy: 77 for

men, 83 for women.

Average age: Early to

mid 40s (and rising every

The 20 regions of modern Italy may have been formally

created in 1960, but each has much older origins, a

pre-Unification identity usually based on subservience to a

duke, king, city or pope Each has a distinct culture, a

mode of life with its dialect, customs and rivalries, to

which the inhabitants subscribe and which, typically,

eclipses any loyalty to the Italian nation In fact, pride

in the locale often only extends to the immediate

community They call it campanilismo, that connection

to your birthplace, your hometown or village; the word

derives from campanile, or bell tower, recognising a

loyalty to your own corner of civilisation with the church

in its midst Five of the 20 regions (Valle d’Aosta,

Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Sicily and

Sardinia), the regioni autonome, are more ‘separate’ than

others, enjoying a degree of autonomy that brings the

power to levy and spend taxes

i Northern Italy

Italy abuts its northern neighbours at the Alps The

mountain chain has given the country a natural frontier,

and yet, in places, languages and customs still lap over

from other cultures Northern Italy is richer in industry and

agriculture than the regions to the south; its resorts are

slicker, its cloth better cut and the people, perhaps, more

taciturn

Valle d’Aosta

The Romans, Hannibal and his ensemble, St Bernard

and Napoleon – they’ve all passed through Italy’s high

north-eastern limits, a small region of prodigious peaks

(including Monte Bianco, Monte Rosa and Cervino (also

known as the Matterhorn) Today, some here speak

Italian, others French or Walser German; many still use

a Valdôtain patois Under Mussolini the region was

‘Italianised’ with encouraged migration and language

curbs, but today it’s allowed a measure of autonomy

Skiing, cows, hydro electricity and metalworking pay the

bills

1.1.2 Local colour: the Italian regioni

Sit up straight; Italy’s second largest region is a place

of business and industry, the dynamic doer of French

century Turin is the hub, an undemonstrative (by Italian standards) city of cars (it’s home to Fiat), Baroque

porticoes and breadsticks (grissini) Piedmont’s alpine

landscape softens south and east of Turin, flattening to paddy fields alongside the widening Po River

Liguria

Liguria, with its forested, scented hills, crowns the warm Gulf of Genoa like a luxuriant head of green hair Most are drawn here by the stretch of Riviera, a less uptight affair than its French counterpart Genoa, the sole sizeable city, is a hard modern port with a soft medieval centre A once powerful republic, it bore confident characters like Columbus and Garibaldi Cliffside villages like Portofino have inspired artists and writers for centuries – just ask Guy de Maupassant, Lord Byron and Truman Capote (if you can rouse them)

Lombardy

Italy’s most self-assured region envelops the Alps, the flat Pianura Padana and the country’s finest lakes (Como, Maggiore and Garda are all here) Milan has fashion houses and fiscal clout (location for Italy’s stock exchange, the Borsa), while the environs sprawl with industry, closing in on architecturally blessed old towns Southerners talk of a superiority complex; the Lombards don’t care Their name derives from ‘long beards’, recalling Germanic occupants of old

Trentino-Alto Adige

No really, we are Italian It’s just that we speak German, eat schnitzel and some of us want to be independent from Italy Trentino (the more Italian half to the south)-Alto Adige (the fundamentally Austrian bit to the north, also called Süd Tirol) is a two-faced tease Tour guides describe a harmonious meeting of cultures, but it can

Something in the water

The Ligurian resort of

Sestri Levante exerts

quite a pull on romantic

creative types Danish

author Hans Christian

Andersen enjoyed a

long stay in 1835, and

the town now holds

a children’s literature

competition in his

name Similarly, Richard

Wagner took refuge in

the town one night after

being harried off the

sea by a storm Local

hotels now claim, rather

hopefully, that the event

inspired parts of Der

Ring des Nibelungen.

German troop lorries in

retreat in April 1945 The

and Nazi helmet The

resistance fighter who

spotted him, Urbano

Lazzaro, subsequently

became something of a

celebrity as Partisan Bill,

writing about his role in

the demise of Il Duce.

feel more like a skirmish When Mussolini compelled

Süd Tiroleans to chose one camp or the other in the late

1930s, most chose the other, and moved north to Austria,

under Nazi rule at the time Scenically, the western end

of the Dolomites distract from the identity crisis

Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Italy and Central Europe meet in Friuli-Venezia Giulia,

an autonomous, ethnically mixed north-east region of

mountains, plains and coastline It got the worst parts of

the 20th century; blood-soaked in the First World War

then bled dry by the Fascists, Nazis and Communists The

main city, Trieste, a large port, encapsulates the different

flavours: built by Austrian Habsburg overlords in the 18th

century, today it’s an Italian city hemmed in by Slovenia

All parties unite in moaning about the region’s freezing

north-easterly wind, the Bora

Veneto

The wealthy Veneto lands reach from the Austrian border

in the Dolomites to the Adriatic coast Venice, once the

hub of a republic that dominated Mediterranean trade for

centuries, merits its reputation as a breathtaking city of

canals, medieval palazzos and artistic treasures Inland,

across the rice fields, vineyards and patches of industry,

lie Padua, where Giotto redirected European art 700 years

ago with naturalistic, reverent frescos, and Verona, with

its Roman amphitheatre, so well suited for staging

full-blooded opera

Respecting the old landlord North-east Italy is sometimes referred to

as Venetia, a region that includes much of modern day Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, bits of Lombardy and Trentino, and harks back to the territories

of the once robust and

‘Most Serene’ Venetian Republic.

“VENICE IS LIKE EATING

AN ENTIRE BOX

OF CHOCOLATE LIQUEURS IN ONE GO.”

Truman Capote

Emilia-Romagna

Straddling northern Italy, the old, frequently foggy provinces of Emilia and Romagna used to form bits of the

away from the Church to the left (Communists held power here in the 1970s and 80s) Under-appreciated Bologna, the big city, has delicate arcades and some of the finest food in Italy Modena has a leaning tower (up yours Pisa) and its balsamic vinegar, while Parma enjoys

its prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese All three

cities are on the Via Aemilia, a Roman road named for consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in 187BC

ii Central Italy

Central Italy is the prime guardian of Italy’s cultural heritage (whatever northerners might tell you) In Florence and Rome it has the finest Renaissance cities in Europe, each with its trove of art and architecture And with its hills, cypress trees and medieval villages, the landscape is more powerfully ‘Italian’ than anywhere else on the peninsula

Tuscany

Tuscany’s legion foreign (and Italian) fans will attest to its beauty, to the rolling vineyards, hilltop towns and marbled cathedrals Artists, architects and writers made this the

Five cultural icons

from the north

The playwright helped

his father smuggle

Allied soldiers through

Lombardy to Switzerland

during the war

Pier Paolo Pasolini

(Liguria) Took up the

mandolin, aged five, in

Genoa under his father’s

tuition, and conquered

the violin two years

later.

Italo Svevo

(Friuli-Venezia Giulia) When

the writer was born in

Trieste, it was still in

Austro-Hungarian hands.

centre of the Renaissance world: Dante and Boccaccio

ensured the national tongue had Tuscan roots; and

Michelangelo, da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Botticelli et al did

the decorating When the crowds in Florence, Pisa, Siena

and San Gimignano get too much, seek out Apennine

tranquillity or untroubled medieval villages

Umbria

Or ‘Tuscany in waiting’ if the hype is believed Umbria

has the Renaissance art, the architecture and the

medieval hilltop towns, but, as yet, not the hubbub of

its neighbour A certain humility, born perhaps of aged

piety (it was another Papal State), has settled over the

green landscape: St Francis (Assisi, his home patch, is the

region’s prime tourist town), St Benedict and St Valentine

were all Umbrian All this and mountains, the River Tiber

and the largest lake south of Garda, Lago Trasimeno

Marche

With Adriatic to one side and Apennines on the other,

Marche feels sequestered All the ingredients of central

Italy are here – sleepy hilltop towns, snow-capped

mountains (the Monti Sibillini range), monasteries,

Etruscan remains, Renaissance cities (Urbino, Raphael’s

hometown is the finest; Ascoli Piceno, the quietest) –

but there is little of the potential for mania, perhaps a

reflection of the region’s former role collecting taxes for

the pope

Campanilismo on

horseback Siena’s famous Palio, the biannual breakneck horserace around the city’s broad Piazza del Campo, is among the most celebrated expressions of Italian

campanilismo, of civic

pride It’s all about supporting the horse

from your own contrade

(city ward), of which there are 17 (at one time there were over 50) In Siena the riders began

on buffalo, later moved

to donkeys and finally settled on horseback in

1656 Today only ten horses run, with the

contradas represented

on a rotating basis The

‘palio’ originally referred

to the piece of silk cloth given as a prize to the race winner The Palio d’Asti, a similar, even older race dating to the

13 th century, rides round

a town in Piedmont each September.

This is central Italy at its most feral; a wild region of mountains (the Apennines reach their height in the Gran Sasso massif) and silent valleys that still shelter bears, chamois and wolves Ski and beach resorts bring a share

of visitors, but most come for the large national parks A tradition of folklore and mysticism (and a reputation for witchcraft) add to the Middle Earth ambience L’Aquila is the earthquake prone capital, but the medieval hill villages

century, are more interesting

Molise

In 1963 Molise parted company with Abruzzo (or the Abruzzi

as Molise and three provinces in Abruzzo are collectively known) and went solo Scenically it’s in the untamed Abruzzo mould, albeit with lower hills, but culturally it’s distinct: many here descend from medieval Balkan settlers

It has its Roman remains, notably at Saepinum, a little visited walled town, but also boasts Europe’s oldest human settlement at Isernia (700,000 years old) Such delights haven’t stopped the region’s population dwindling: fewer people live here now than 150 years ago

empty feel has much to

do with the landscape,

but the fact that locals

migrated in droves

in the 20 th century

didn’t help Many

went to America In

particular, the ‘musical’

gene pool upped and

left: Madonna, Dean

Martin, Perry Como and

Henry Mancini all had

Abruzzan parents.

Five cultural icons from the centre

Alberto Moravia (Lazio) The author from Rome began writing during a five-year

childhood stint confined to bed with TB of the bone

Monica Bellucci (Umbria) The multilingual model and actress was born in Città di

Castello, once home to Pliny the Younger

Gabriele d’Annunzio (Abruzzo) Son to the mayor in Pescara, young Gabriele was

already publishing poetry at the age of 16

Gioachino Rossini (Marche) Spent his childhood years in theatres, where his

father scraped a living playing the trumpet

Sandro Botticelli (Tuscany) Like his fellow Florentine master, Donatello, the young

Botticelli was apparently apprenticed to a goldsmith.

iii Southern Italy

Southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno as it’s frequently

labelled, is still regularly written off Too often, the tales

of unemployment, poverty, corruption and neglect are

true; almost everything south of Rome, the islands of

Sicily and Sardinia included, has suffered centuries of

hardship But this ignores the south’s charm, its inherent

lust for life (insouciance was always a luxury too far down

here), unparalleled cuisine, multi-ethnic culture and largely

unspoilt scenery, all of which, finally, is starting to get the

attention it deserves

Campania

Campania gathers around Naples and its sweeping bay

The city is dense and lively; its art treasures, Renaissance

buildings, fine food and atmosphere of disobedience

creating a real cultural buzz Nearby lies Mount Vesuvius,

and Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Roman towns it

buried The Campi Flegrei (Fiery Fields), a steamy patch of

craters west of Naples, include Lago d’Averno, pinpointed

by Virgil as the entrance to Hades South of Naples, the

Amalfi Coast is renowned for dramatic towns and large,

knobbly lemons Venture inland and Campania becomes

quieter, poorer and rockier

The oldest and the smallest: nations within

a nation

San Marino A tiny

throwback to Italy’s pre-Unification days, the republic shouts loud about being ‘Europe’s oldest state’ (apparently established by Marinus,

a stonemason, 1,700 years ago) It’s a collection of small settlements on top of

a big rock sandwiched between Emilia- Romagna and Marche

Vatican The smallest

independent state in the world (now, that

is something to shout

about), ensconced in Rome, is the HQ of the Roman Catholic Church The Vatican wrestles to reconcile its dazzling cultural heritage with the demands of modern life: not so long ago archaeologists stumbled across a Roman necropolis while excavating an underground car park Among the remains, they found terracotta tubes once used by mourning families to feed honey to the dead.

Italy’s hot heel stretches 400km (250 miles), from the Tavoliere plain (a former sea bed) of the north, a sea of corn in summer, to the Salento peninsula in the south, its reddy-brown dust broken by olive groves and vineyards arranged in family plots A centuries-long cycle of invasion deposited Germanic castles, Romanesque cathedrals and Spanish Baroque frippery (at its best in Lecce) Pointy

trulli houses and whitewashed hill towns on the Salento

peninsula recall Greek connections

Basilicata

Inaccessible and rocky, Basilicata has been held in check

by grinding poverty for centuries Finally, the shackles

are loosening The hilltop town of Matera, with its sassi

(dugout caves), has gone from malarial slum to UNESCO World Heritage site in 30 years, while Maratea, on the Tyrrhenian coast, now draws tourists Basilicata’s isolation was such that ‘agitators’ were exiled here under the Fascists One such figure, Carlo Levi, famously described

the region’s daily struggle for survival in Cristo si è

fermato a Eboli (1945).

Calabria

Like Basilicata, Calabria is Mezzogiorno proper, a world

away from slick Turin or Milan Poverty has been virtually endemic since Magna Graecia declined under the Romans Elements of the Greek heritage survive, although earthquakes have reshaped the once great classical cities (often in dull concrete), regional capital Reggio di Calabria included Calabria is mountainous (there’s even a ski resort in the toe tip Aspromonte highlands), bordered on three sides by long, unspoilt beaches The slow pace of progress is hampered by the pervasive Calabrian Mafia, the internationally powerful

trulli of Puglia are

often daubed with

symbols Some are

ancient, paying homage

to Jupiter, Saturn or

Mercury; others are

Christian or Jewish.

Strange to think that Italian unity launched from Sicily

(with Garibaldi’s Red Shirts (see section 1.2.3 for more)),

a region so close to Africa A succession of foreign

overlords – Greek, Arab, Norman, Spanish, Bourbon – left

their mark on the ethnic mix, the food and the language

Palermo, the capital, is intense, a city that’s monetarily

poor but culturally rich The Mafia still has an impact on

life, although few will mention it (the culture of omertà

also runs deep) Etna, the volcanic giant, is the high point

of mountains that stretch across the sparsely populated

interior

Sardinia

Like Sicily, Sardinia has a multicultural past featuring a

similar cast of invaders and traders Carthage, Rome, Pisa,

Genoa, Madrid: all set up camp here and left elements

of their culture behind, although the most distinctive

buildings, the basalt-built fortresses of the native Nuraghic

culture, predate them all Modern Sardinia mixes glossy,

expensive resorts with fine empty beaches and an interior

of restful, wooded hills The Sardinians have a reputation

as a hardworking, dogged (somewhat un-Italian) bunch

Five cultural icons from the south

Salvatore Quasimodo (Sicily) The Modica-born poet moved to Messina, aged

eight, where the aftermath of a devastating earthquake informed his early verse.

Sophia Loren (Campania) Sired by cats (not really, mum was a piano teacher) in

Pozzuoli, near Naples, the young Loren was hit by shrapnel when the local munitions

factory was bombed in the war

Gianni Versace (Calabria) Reggio di Calabria’s famous fashion designer began

helping out his mother, a dressmaker, at an early age

Rudolph Valentino (Puglia) Born to a vet who died of malaria soon after, the

actor Valentino himself died young, from peritonitis contracted after surgery on a

perforated ulcer.

Pier Angeli (Sardinia) The starlet from Cagliari dated James Dean and Kirk

Douglas in the 50s, and was lined up for a part in The Godfather when she

overdosed on barbiturates in 1971

Draw me ten Hail Marys When restorers began chipping whitewash off the walls of a university building in Palermo, Sicily, in 2006, they found graffiti left

by prisoners awaiting interrogation by the Spanish Inquisition in the early 17 th century

A life-size St Andrew and a crying Mary Magdalene were among the drawings, sketched

by inmates either in

a bid to prove their Christian credentials or under duress from their captors.

Italy is spoiled for history of the kind

you can walk amongst, the sort relived through architecture, paintings or even old sewerage systems More recent

history, from the years of Fascism to the Years of Lead, can be harder to unearth yet equally relevant to Italian culture

The iceman cometh,

eventually

Europe’s oldest human

mummy was found

in the Italian Alps

Ötzi (because he was

discovered in the

Ötztal region) poked his

leathery physique out

from a glacier in 1991

after 53 centuries of

hibernation Analysis

of the body showed

that Ötzi died, aged 45,

from an arrow strike

to the shoulder about

eight hours after he

finished a last meal of

red deer It also revealed

59 small tattoos on his

back, knees and ankle,

possibly related to some

form of acupunctural

treatment Perhaps in

tribute, actor Brad Pitt

appears to have a tattoo

of Ötzi on his own arm.

Key dates Tenth to fifth century BC The Etruscans and Magna Graecia dominate the Italian

peninsula.

753BC Romulus (allegedly) founds Rome, becoming its first king.

510BC to 27BC The Roman Republic rises to dominate Italy and the Mediterranean.

44BC Gaius Julius Caesar, ‘dictator for life’, is killed.

27BC Augustus (né Octavian) becomes the first de facto Emperor of Rome

Early second century The territory and powers of the Roman Empire reach their

apogee.

324 Constantine adopts Christianity as the official state religion.

476 German general Odoacer declares himself king of Italy as the Empire falls apart.

568 The Lombards swarm into Italy Some refugees find safety across a lagoon,

where they establish Venice

It began, as these things usually do, with rocks

Palaeolithic and Neolithic settlers in Italy left behind the usual array of Stone Age graffiti when the last ice age retreated In the Valle Camonica, Lombardy, they excelled themselves; the Camunni etched over 140,000 petroglyphs into the rock 8,000 years ago Alongside the staple hunter-gatherer scenes, they also left cosmological and ritual images, and scenes of bestiality Bronze Age tribes arrived on the peninsula from all directions 4,000 years later and deposited more than artwork and piles of

stone (at their best in the nuraghe buildings of Sardinia):

the Ligures (Liguria), Veneti (Veneto), Latins (Lazio), Sards (Sardinia), Umbrii (Umbria) and their like also began shaping the Italian regions

1.2.1 Did you know we used to rule the world?

Ancient Italy

Temples and tombs: the heady days of Etruria and

Magna Graecia

By the seventh century BC, two cultures had pushed their

way to the top Greek trading posts and colonies gathered

in the south forming Magna Graecia, or ‘Greater Greece’

To the north, from a powerbase between the Arno

and Tiber rivers, the enigmatic, iron-mining Etruscans

controlled trade and tribes as far north as the Alps

Both cultures were governed by powerful city states

Magna Graecia had Taras (now Taranto) on the mainland and

Syracuse on Sicily, the rich trading centres whose profits

built the chunky, stately temples that survive in southern

Italy 2,500 years on Cities in Etruria (as Etruscan territory

was named), such as Tarquinii (now Tarquinia in Lazio),

with their kings and ruling noble magistrates, were relatively

self-contained, although they did trade (and sometimes war)

with each other and with foreign states Very little of the

Etruscan cities survives today What does remain suggests

they threw a good wake – murals depict dancing, feasting

and games at funerals The arrangement of Etruscan tombs

and the primacy they gave to the female ancestral line also

suggest a pioneering equality between the sexes Alas, for

Greeks and Etruscans alike, the good times couldn’t last

War with northern tribes and mainland Greeks weakened

the Etruscans while Magna Graecia was damaged by

infighting By the fourth century BC, both were being

shoved around by Italy’s rising city star, Rome

Republican Rome: let the good times roll… for some

So, wrote historian Livy, the twins Romulus and

Remus were sired by Mars, abandoned next to

the Tiber and then suckled by a she wolf And one,

Romulus, grew up to found Rome in 753BC, killing

his brother along the way A good story, and perhaps only

fanciful in parts: the lineage of Rome’s Etruscan kings

may have descended from a certain Romulus That

lineage came to an abrupt end in 509BC when power

was handed to two elected Latin consuls, advised by

the old senate, and the Roman Republic was born

Tuscans from Turks Recent DNA testing confirmed the assertion

by fifth century BC Greek historian Herodotus that the Etruscan civilisation found its way to Italy across the sea from Turkey The scientists made the connection

by testing the DNA of modern Tuscans from old Etruscan towns.

I saw it in a goat’s kidneys…your Sharon’s having a boy

It seems the Etruscans had a fairly formalised code of religion based

on divination Lightning, flying birds, the entrails

of freshly killed animals – all were studied for clues on what the future might hold.

Roman birthday

Rome still celebrates

the purported date

of its founding, 21

April Museums and

archaeological sites let

people in free of charge,

mock gladiatorial battles

are held and locals throw

on a tunic or maybe even

a toga to process through

the streets.

Courtship, Roman style

One event in Rome’s

early history has proved

particularly emotive for

artists ever since In

the eighth century BC,

women of the Sabine

tribe were snatched by

Roman men after being

invited to Rome for a

festival in Neptune’s

honour Apparently

there was a shortage

of childbearing women

in the city As Livy tells

it, after the initial grab,

the women were won

over by the romantic

entreaties of the men

The ‘Rape of the Sabine

Women’ (with rape

usually interpreted

as kidnap rather than

sexual assault) has been

depicted by countless

artists, from Renaissance

sculptor Giambologna

to the French Classical

painter Nicolas Poussin

and Cubist maestro Pablo

up their land (which was recycled into those country estates), unable to compete with cheap foreign grain imports, and, with nowhere else to go, flooded from

the land into Rome and its insulae (apartment blocks),

expanding the plebeian ranks and creating the biggest city

in Europe

Life in the Roman Empire

While Rome’s far-flung territories grew, trouble brewed

at home The aristocracy entered moral meltdown and the growing, poor multitude took umbrage at the nobility’s excesses A string of political figures tried to assuage their annoyance and were assassinated, before

a military general, Sulla, established himself as dictator and crushed any popular resistance to the oligarchy in 83BC The ‘people’ were avenged, mildly, by the arrival

of Gaius Julius Caesar, a reforming consul who initially shared power in a triumvirate but ultimately, after military successes in Gaul and the defeat of his rival, General Pompey, became sole governor Caesar’s job spec is usually headed ‘dictator for life’, but it’s somewhat misrepresentative: he brought welcome reform to Rome, bolstering the economy and cleaning up the aristocracy

Caesar made enemies with his new broom and was

murdered by Brutus, Cassius and friends on the Ides of

March, 44BC Civil wars followed as various pretenders

vied for control of the Empire The power struggle

ended in 31BC when Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian

(confusingly, adopted as a son by Caesar) defeated consul

Mark Antony, who then famously committed suicide

with his Egyptian queen, Cleopatra Octavian took the

title of Augustus, as offered by the now servile senate,

became effective emperor and established the lineage

of rulers that presided over the Empire, and got through

several imperial dynasties, until its stuttering demise five

centuries later

In the early second century the Empire reached its

height Territories that stretched from northern Britain,

encircled the Mediterranean on all sides and spread

east to Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) fed Rome with

fiscal revenue, food, precious metals, slaves and cultural

diversity While Rome remained imperial master, as

the centuries passed its territories became more like a

rainbow collective than brutalised dominions (unless you

were a slave of course), urged to adopt the mechanics

of the Roman state but allowed to retain an indigenous

cultural identity

The good, the bad and the homicidal:

five Roman emperors

Caligula (ruled 37-41AD) If Suetonius’ (probably biased)

biography is to be believed, Emperor Caligula was wildly

popular for the first six months, giving out tax rebates

and the like, but ruined it all by becoming a rotten tyrant

who murdered family members, slept with his sisters and

watched people being tortured or beheaded whilst he ate

dinner Some now think mental illness pushed him off

the rails Caligula was killed, aged 28, after less than four

years as emperor

The Punic Wars The Punic Wars of Rome’s republican era were pitched against Carthage (Punic means

‘of Carthage’), a North African city that dominated trade in the Mediterranean:

First Punic War

(264-241BC) Rome wins its first foreign territory, Sicily, and becomes established as a maritime power

Second Punic War

(218-201BC) Having lost naval supremacy, Carthage sends General Hannibal up through Spain and over the Alps

to the gates of Rome His defeat transfers control of the western Med from Carthage to Rome.

Third Punic War

(149-146BC) Rome finishes the job with the complete destruction of Carthage.

Good times bard times

Augustus’ relatively

stable, long reign as

Rome’s first emperor

ushered in a ‘Golden

Age’ of culture in the

first century BC Wealthy

patrons funded artists

and writers, with

Maecenas, Augustus’

trusted adviser, doing

most to promote the

new talent that glorified

the achievements of

Rome The poets Virgil,

Horace and Ovid all

wrote heroic stuff,

inspired, like so much

Roman culture, by

lessons learned from

the Greeks The Golden

Age extended beyond

the bounds of culture; it

was a period of financial

stability, of legal and

social reform and the

Pax Romana, a relative

peace throughout the

Empire A Silver Age

followed Augustus’ rule,

a less original affair in

both title and deed than

its Golden forebear (see

section 2.1.2 for more

on the Golden and Silver

Ages).

Nero (54-68) Rome’s fifth emperor stepped into the role

aged 17 Five years in, after a generous, tolerant start,

he murdered his mother He also killed his first wife, may have killed his pregnant mistress, took an interest in religious sects, was laughed at for acting on stage and, contrary to the legend, didn’t fiddle while Rome burned (he actually helped rebuild it) When a coup forced him out he committed suicide; four different emperors ruled

in the subsequent year of chaos

Vespasian (69-79)

An ordinary done-good (his dad was a tax collector), Vespasian won his imperial title through military skill Once in charge, he stabilised chaotic frontiers and public coffers, put Judaea and the German Batavian tribe

boy-in their place and built the Colosseum (then named the Amphitheatrum

of the dynasty he established)

Hadrian (117-138) Hadrian, a respected poet, acquired a

fondness for the arts while serving in the army in Greece, and when the same army proclaimed him emperor he put up some fine buildings (including a rebuilt Pantheon

in Rome and the villa at Tivoli) He reined in the Empire’s undisciplined expansion, secured its borders (with a famous wall in Britain) and displayed tolerance if not affection for his subjects Always keen to try a new look,

he made beards the big thing in second century Rome

Diocletian (284-305) By the time former soldier

Diocletian became emperor, Rome wasn’t the force

it was Battered on all sides by angry tribes, he did,

however, shore it up for a few years, splitting the

Empire into East and West, ruled by emperors in Milan

and Nicomedia (now Izmit, Turkey) Diocletian is also

remembered for being beastly (as in burned, decapitated

and even slowly boiled) to the Christians, and for being

the first emperor to voluntarily ‘retire’

All good things…

After Diocletian, the victimised Christians didn’t have to

wait long for salvation In 324 his successor, Constantine,

ditched traditional Roman polytheism and adopted

Christianity as the state religion He also, briefly, patched

the Empire’s two halves (East and West) back into

a single entity before moving the hub from Rome to

Byzantium on the Bosphorus, or Constantinopolis as he

modestly renamed it However, the formal East/West

division soon returned and the Italian half of the Empire

withered over the next century, eaten away from the

north by Barbarian attacks and from within by infighting, a

bloated bureaucracy and overstretched resources As rival

factions fought for control, civil war became common,

reducing the ability to fend off external attacks

Talent and money ebbed from Rome (often moving

north, contriving the north/south split that remains in Italy

today) and the once grand city became marginalised and

weedy With the army now stocked by foreign recruits,

‘barbarians’ included, their loyalty to Rome wasn’t a

given When Germanic general Odoacer invaded and

declared himself king of Italy in 476, the Western Empire

was effectively over Justinian, ruler of the Eastern

Empire that sustained in one form or another for a

thousand years, briefly reclaimed the Italian peninsula in

536 but the Germanic tribes (weirdly, now more ‘Italian’

than the Roman ‘invaders’) soon regained control, led by

the Lombards

Celebrating Caesar Modern day Romans retain a fondness for Caesar They lay wreaths at the feet of his statue beside the Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome each year on 15 March, and flowers on the site in the Roman Forum where his body was cremated, now just

a muddy pile of rocks.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Perhaps the Roman Empire’s greatest legacy, “apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health” (to

quote Reg in Monty

Python’s Life of Brian),

was the Catholic Church Constantine’s adopted religion ensured the survival of Latin and maintained Rome’s role

as a cultural centre well beyond Italy.

Key dates

754 Frankish king, Pepin

the Short, marches in

and helps to establish

the Papal States.

800 Charlemagne is

crowned Holy Roman

Emperor by Pope Leo III.

877 Saracens begin

the slow process of

conquering and culturing

Sicily.

c.1080 The first comuni,

town or city states,

emerge as a political

force.

1130 Norman ruler

Roger II unites southern

Italy as the Kingdom of

1348 Plague wipes out

as much as half of the

population.

1512 Michelangelo

finishes work on the

Sistine Chapel ceiling.

1542 Pope Paul III

speeds the

Counter-Reformation,

establishing the

Inquisition in Rome.

1714 Habsburgs,

Savoyards and Bourbons

all eye up Italian

possessions in the Peace

of Utrecht

The rise of the popes

An array of small states evolved from Italy’s fractured Western Roman Empire, emerging and receding in a Dark Ages merry-go-round of alliances and disputes Throughout, the papacy grew in strength Pope Gregory and his considerable personal wealth beefed the Church

up with land in the late sixth century, before Europe’s rising superpower, the Franks (yes, of France), started doing deals with the papacy in the eighth century, offering land and conquered pagan souls in return for Catholic sponsorship and a role in government

Officially, Rome was still under the authority of Byzantium, but when Pope Stephen II rummaged around behind the

sofa in the mid eighth century and found the Donatio

Constantini, the situation changed The document,

apparently written 400 years earlier by Constantine (but now assumed a forgery), appeared to transfer power over Rome and the Western Empire to the pope Stephen then asked for Frankish help in clearing Lombard and Byzantine influence from Rome and its surrounds, a mission accomplished by King Charlemagne in 774 It all contributed to the establishment of the Papal States, ruled temporally by popes

with the assistance of the Carolingians (the line of Frankish kings)

On Christmas Day

800, Charlemagne, king of a sizeable Carolingian territory, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III

1.2.2 From the Dark Ages into the light

Halcyon days for the Muslim south

While the papacy and the Franks got their teeth into

northern Italy in the Middle Ages (only Venice escaped

with relative autonomy), the post-Roman south stayed

more loyal to old masters Calabria and Puglia remained

loosely in Byzantine and Greek hands while other regions,

notably Benevento, a mountainside duchy inland from

Naples, were kept by the Lombards Kings, dukes and

lords in the south paid nominal homage to Carolingian

kings but effectively did their own thing Throughout, the

culturally capable Saracens (some Arab, some Berber)

of North Africa and Iberia attacked southern cities, even

looting Rome in 746 On Sicily they put down roots,

capturing all the main towns by 877 and establishing a

cultural milieu that outstripped anything on the mainland

They brought learning, a degree of tolerance (Christianity

was permitted, although its followers were heavily taxed),

irrigation and big bags of oranges

Crusades, Normans and the rise of the comuni

Charlemagne’s empire crumbled rapidly in his

descendants’ hands and, by the late ninth century,

northern and central Italy was a squabbling seigniorial

mess Local lords were at the mercy of the northern

Europeans who fought for control of the peninsula and

the coveted Holy Roman Emperor title In 936 Otto, a

Frank, finally won out, but the bloodline didn’t last long

The papacy was similarly contested and weakened, pulled

this way and that by noble families hoping to gain control

papal power and demanded that he, not the emperors,

had the power to appoint Church personnel – this, the

so-called Investiture Controversy ended with humbling

defeat for the Emperor in the 1122 Concordat of Worms

The first pope

St Peter, the first Bishop

of Rome (which is what the pope is), in the job for 30 years in the first century AD, was actually called Simon before Jesus renamed him

‘Peter’ means stone, apparently emblematic

of the rock on which he established the Church Nero supposedly had Peter crucified upside down, a scene rendered

by Caravaggio in 1601.

It’s a dirty job…but someone’s got to do it Popes used to be allowed to marry The last Vicar of Christ with

a bride was Adrian, who died in 872 Some also, notoriously, fathered children by the dozen Perhaps the most famously scurrilous, Alexander VI, pontiff from 1492, was accused

of incest with his illegitimate daughter, Lucrezia Borgia.

Sicily ahead of the

learning game

The importance attached

to education by the

medieval Muslim world

ensured that Sicily had

a relatively high literacy

rate during its years

under Saracen rule

Some estimates suggest

as many as 45 per cent

of the population could

read in the 11 th century

Shocking to think that

800 years later, in the

19 th century, only 30 per

cent of Sicilians were

literate.

Flush with power, Rome ploughed men and money into the First Crusade, helped by a third emerging Italian

power base, the comuni, the independent town or city

states like Milan, Pisa and Venice that were flourishing

on trade and pushing northern Italy’s feeble feudal lords around (in contrast to the rest of Europe, the rurally based feudal system never gripped Italy, where the Roman fondness for city living survived)

Southern Italy maintained its cultural superiority, this time spurred by Normans who captured land south of Rome and pushed out Lombards and Byzantines before moving over to Sicily in 1060 to oust the Saracens Under Roger

II, the Normans united the whole of southern Italy as the

Saracens had built latticed Moorish palaces, the Normans added Romanesque cathedrals and castles, and nurtured Sicily as one of the wealthiest, most tolerant and cultured societies in Europe

In the red corner, the pope…

Successive Germanic emperors (the Hohenstaufen dynasty, of Swabian origin) continued their efforts to

I came unstuck at Legnano in 1176, defeated by the Lombard League, an angry consortium of northern cities who added to their power and independence Frederick

II had more success, thanks in part to a marriage that added the Normans, and therefore, control of southern Italy, to his stock The rift

between emperor and pope grew and famous political factions emerged behind each:

the progressive(ish) Guelphs cheered for the pope, while the conservative Ghibellines got behind the Holy Roman Emperor

Don’t let the fighting fool you: we’ve never had it so good

and central Italy had grown powerful on trade With

growing autonomy, they paid little attention to the pope

and even less to the Holy Roman Emperor Florence,

Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna and other comuni (in all

there were around 300) flourished, establishing their

boundaries by force when necessary Many evolved a

mildly democratic system of government, forming town

councils led by wealthy families Within each city, the old

factions of Guelph and Ghibelline usually vied for control,

often calling on other city states for support Wars were

frequent and alliances short-lived as the factions jostled

for power and territory As a consequence, the shoots

of democratic rule soon withered Absolute rulers, the

signori, assumed control on the pretext of ending the

constant squabbles and soon the Guelph and Ghibelline

identities became less relevant The cities continued

to prosper, ruled by hereditary and frequently despotic

elites Smaller states were assimilated into larger ones

until, by the late 1300s, Venice and Genoa, both maritime

republics, Milan, a

duchy, and Florence,

with its city council, had

risen to the top

While the city states

grew in the north, the

papacy struggled to

control lands in the

centre Things got so

bad that the pope,

reliant on French help,

relocated to Avignon

century To the south,

the old Kingdom of

Sicily fell to the French

House of Anjou in

Feud for thought The Ghibelline faction adopted black as their colour; the Guelphs chose white For further clarity, the Guelphs shaped the battlements

on their castles to

be square, while the Ghibellines employed a fishtail design Tuscany saw the worst violence between Guelph and Ghibelline factions: in

1260 the triumphant Ghibellines demolished

103 Guelph palaces in Florence, and six years later, when the Guelphs decisively regained power, they created the now famously open Piazza dell Signoria by flattening a block of their rivals’ housing Dante was a politically active Florentine Guelph (although he was eventually exiled

by his own side) and duly portrayed various Ghibellines in the Inferno.

The Windsor connection The Guelph faction of medieval Italy took their name from a princely German clan, aligned, like them, against the Holy Roman Emperors The Swabian Guelphs (or Welf in Middle High German) are antecedents

of the British Royal Family.

Extreme measures in

Milan

When the Black Death

moved through Italy in

1348, Milan suffered

less than elsewhere

Perhaps Giovanni

Visconti, the city’s

archbishop, made the

right decision when he

ordered the first three

houses where plague

struck to be bricked up

with the occupants, sick

or healthy, left inside

to die.

Incoming wounded

If the reports of Gabriele

De’ Mussis, a lawyer

from Piacenza, are to be

believed (and perhaps

they shouldn’t be), the

first Italians to catch

the Black Death were

Genovese merchants

besieged by a Mongol

lord, Janibeg, in the

Crimean town of Caffa

in 1347 When Janibeg’s

troops were struck down

by a virulent plague, he

fired their dead bodies

into the city using

catapults; the disease

spread amongst the

Genoese traders and

was carried back to Italy.

1266 but rose up 16 years later during the ‘Sicilian Vespers’ It began with an angry mob in Palermo (on cue when the bell rang for vespers) slaughtering French overlords, and led to rebellion across the island Pedro III, king of Aragón, stepped in and established the Kingdom

of Naples, under Spanish control For all the power shifts, fights (which usually took place, by clever convention, beyond city walls) and factions, Italy’s mercantile society, the most urbanised in the world, flourished between the

its wealth and civilisation

Yes, ‘Brainfest’ is good, but what about ‘Renaissance’?

In 1348, just when things were going so well, the Black Death arrived on the peninsula, coming ashore at Genoa

in the north and Messina in the south For a century the disease swept back and forth: Siena lost half its population, Florence and Venice more than half And yet culturally it seemed Italy barely broke stride Indeed, some contend that the plague and its attendant recession put wealth into the hands of figures more likely to patronise the arts

The intellectual vibe initiated by the Moors on Sicily, attaching increasing significance to human reason, fed

a wider appetite for Classical learning in central and northern Italy The trade routes to the Levant, Spain and Africa that brought wealth to northern cities, particularly Florence and its trade guilds, also gave passage to Arabist and Greek scholars, escaping re-Christianised Spain and newly Turkish Constantinople respectively They inspired Italy’s new, politically strong intelligentsia Rich patrons like the Medici, a family of Florentine bankers, funded the corresponding explosion of cultural activity that artist, architect and biographer Giorgio Vasari first labelled