Stage 10: Umbria - Foligno and Montefalco

Now we arrive in Umbria, the only region of Italy both landlocked and sharing a border with no other nation, full of medieval castles and monasteries, home to several saints.

Easily the most famous historical son of Umbria is Saint Francis of Assisi. He was the son of a wealthy merchant who got fed up with the status quo, stripped naked in front of his famous father in the town square, and wandered off to be a benevolent hippie and freelance diplomat. His humanism extended to other species, and his affection and gentleness toward animals became one of his most legendary traits - his sermons to itinerant flocks of birds were especially well received.

The city of Foligno was founded in the Roman period and flourished until being sacked by the Saracens, and then sacked again by the Magyars, whereupon its inhabitants decided to give up and move, relocating the town nearby with the help of the refugees of a neighboring city who had just been sacked by the Lombards.

Foligno became a prosperous and refined city in the Renaissance after all the sacking calmed down, and is notable as the place of publication of the first printed edition of Dante's Divina Commedia in 1472.

The turbulent medieval history of the city is reflected in its grand summer tradition: the Giostra della Quintana. This is a Renaissance faire in a country that actually had a Renaissance, a jousting tournament on horseback that pits ten of the city's twenty historic districts against each other. Riders must best three challenges in the fastest time possible. The target is a wooden dummy representing Mars, the god of war, who holds a brass ring that the riders must capture with their lances while avoiding collisions with the flags that line the field of play.

The night before the joust is full of festivities, from a citywide procession in period costume, to a feast, to the ceremonial recitation of a poem that declares the joust begun, written in florid and evocative high-Renaissance style but composed in 1946. 

Italy is full of such jousts and medieval-Renaissance pageantry - one day the Giro will ride through Arezzo and I'll get to write about my two weird nights at the Giostra del Saracino and my feud with the local gelato guy as we discovered that my apartment and his shop were on opposite sides of a district border - but the events in Foligno may be among the most spectacular. 

The arrival of the tour of Umbria is the hilltop town of Montefalco, a small place full of the usual Romanesque churches and frescoes by famous artists from Florence and Perugia. Like Umbria itself, Montefalco could easily be overlooked and forgotten in the shadow of its flashier and more popular neighbors - but for one thing. 

Booze!

The Sagrantino grape native to the area has one of the highest tannin levels of any varietal in the world, difficult to tame and producing wine so dark it's almost black. The name of the grape comes from sacro, holy, because the earliest method of getting wine out of these bitter grapes was to semi-dry them, concentrating what sugars they contain, before fermenting the thick syrupy juice into a sweet wine that the monks of the region used for Communion. In recent decades, however, Montefalco's winemakers have figured out how to make a dry red from the Sagrantino grapes, still intensely dark and acidic, but complex and intriguing. According to Consorzio Tutela Vini Montefalco, production of the Sagrantino DOCG red wine quadrupled between 2000 and 2008, and the boom continues. 

Finally, and this has nothing to do with the itinerary of the Giro, but as long as we're in Umbria I just have to make passing mention of the Republic of Cospaia. 

This was a tiny town, a suburb of the also small town of San Giustino, that by sheer bureaucratic accident was left unmentioned in a sale of land between the Papal States and Republic of Florence in 1440. Seizing the opportunity, the inhabitants of the hamlet unilaterally declared themselves independent and proclaimed the Republic of Cospaia. 

Governing themselves through a council of elders who met in the local church, the republic quickly took advantage of no longer being subject to the laws of the Papal States and cornered the market in tobacco farming, an enterprise then banned by the Vatican. So Cospaia prospered for nearly four hundred years, until 1826 when its fourteen surviving citizens signed an agreement ceding their territory to Tuscany and the Papal States again, in exchange for one silver coin and the right to continue farming tobacco. 

Long live the memory of the bold Republic of Cospaia, one of the best examples I've ever seen of the Italian talent for flying through life by the seat of their pants. 

Stage 9: Blockhaus and the Appenine mountains

Another mountain stage this time. The Giro d'Italia can be decided on its mountain-climbing runs, not only for the maglia azzurra that the best finisher of these particular stages is awarded, but also for the maglia rosa of the general classification. This year, the Etna stage saw no particular surprises - Fate saved them for Blockhaus.

This year, some moronic police officer parked his motorcycle right by the side of the road at a tight turn on an uphill climb. Someone clipped the motorcycle and went flying. The predictable domino effect ensued, and four strong contenders for the race were brought down in the crash. As of this writing, two have withdrawn.

Blockhaus peak is part of the Majella massif in the central Apennine mountains in Abruzzo. The whole Majella geologic structure includes several prominent peaks and is protected as a national park, one of the best-preserved and unspoiled examples of Apennine ecology in existence.

An Apennine Wolf, Canis lupus italicus, near Majella

But why does an Italian mountain in the center of the peninsula have a German name? 

In 1861, the Kingdom of Sardinia conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and, under King Vittorio Emanuele II, declared the unified Kingdom of Italy. For the House of Savoy and the rich territories of the north it was a victory - for the Mezzogiorno, the lands south of Rome, it was an occupation. 

Bands of outlaws called briganti sprang up in the mountains, fighting guerrilla war against the new overlords. They were displaced nobles, exploited peasants, opportunists, adventurers, criminals and political agitators. The enemy was the political authority, the landowning class, and the police. The briganti were vicious and desperate and the retribution on the part of the Piedmontese authorities was equally if not more so - an argument can be made that the period of brigantaggio was in fact a civil war. 

A "blockhaus" is a German name for a bunker or fortress, often built of stone in mountainous strategic locations. The Kingdom of Italy's soldiers sent to Abruzzo to "deal with" the outlaws were of Austrian origin, and they set up shop on the mountain in Majella that they named: Blockhaus. 

After the uprisings in the south were finally suppressed, no coherent political movement opposing the Savoy rule emerged. Italy was unified, and so it remains. But so too remain the inscriptions carved into rocks high up in the peaks of Majella, on the Tavola dei Briganti. 

"In 1820 Vittorio Emanuele King of Italy was born. Until 1860 it was the kingdom of flowers, now it's the reign of misery."

Stage 7-8: Puglia

The next stage takes us to Puglia, on the heel of the boot. 
Puglia (also sometimes called Apulia in English) is a large region, stretched out long from north to south, with several distinct cultural identities. 

The southernmost is the Salento, where a language related to Sicilian is spoken, and the region also includes several areas which speak a variety of Greek. This is the land of endless olive groves and white cliffs at the edge of a brilliant blue ocean, where Magna Graecia still seems close to living memory. The Salentini proudly consider themselves inhabitants of a semi-autonomous region separate from the rest of Puglia, the descendants of the Messapians and Byzantines. 

The Giro touches on the Salento region in Alberobello, famous for its peculiar conical houses called trulli, indigenous to the region but often believed to be a remnant of Messapian or Illyrian architectural styles. They are constructed using "dry stone" technique (muro a secco), an ancient method of stonemasonry that does not use any type of mortar or cement to lock the stones in place - they are simply fitted carefully together and balanced under their own weight. The presumably Messapian innovation was building pseudo-domes out of drystone, and the resulting trulli are a unique structure seen only in the Salento. 

The trulli are decorated with symbols painted in chalk on the conical stone domes. Some are of esoteric medieval Christian origin, others are connected to paganism and shamanic traditions of the region. Like Calabria, Puglia never fully turned away from its Hellenic pagan roots, and many a grandmother still knows old folk magic to protect her family from the evil eye. This is la terra del rimorso, where the cathartic pizzica tarantella dance was born out of Dionysian rites as a folk cure for the crippling catatonic depression - tarantismo - that can afflict any living human being but in Salento manifests as the delirium of the poisonous bite of a spider. The cure is the arrival of the band, the insistent rhythm of the tamburrieddhu drums, and the trance-like dancing and uninhibited motion that gets the "poison" - be it literal or psychological - out of the system. 

Traveling north, the next stop in the Giro is the town of Molfetta, part of the Metropolitan City of Bari. 

Puglia is divided in two - the south is Hellenic and Baroque (please, all two of you reading this, go to Lecce someday and just wander around the old town looking at buildings) and the north is Norman. The Normans arrived in southern Italy in the early 11th century and enjoyed a period of prosperity, power and trade before all being sacked by the French four hundred years later. 

Norman architecture is solid and stoic. The cathedral in Molfetta is plain stone walls and pristine lines, geometric proportions and a minimalist aesthetic. A Norman town looks like a fortress and a monument. The critic Mario Sansone once described Bari as a city senza ironia e senza malinconia, with neither irony nor melancholy. (Arguably the two cornerstones of the Salentino mentality.) Bari and the Baresi are straightforward, plain-spoken, steadfast. 

North still, the last stop of the Giro in Puglia is Peschici, in the forests of Gargano near Foggia. 

If Italy is a boot, Gargano is its spur. This small promontory is heavily forested and home to the Gargano National Park, among the largest national parks in Italy, rich in caves and a natural preserve for what remains of the ancient Foresta Umbra that once covered a vast territory across the peninsula. 

An archeological mystery from the zone around Peschici: the triplice cinta sacra, a sort of "magic square" (literally "sacred triple belt") carved into stone walls of churches and earlier religious locations. The symbol appears across Europe in ancient Druidic or pagan sites, and is often believed to represent the position of man relative to the divine or the centrality of God, depending on who you ask. Serious archaeologists will admit that they have no idea what it means but that no symbol is drawn by accident, and its frequency in sacred locations across the centuries suggests a certain esoteric significance. 

Stage 6: Calabria

Across the Strait of Messina, the Giro starts the long climb northwards up the peninsula, beginning in Calabria.

Calabria is an ancient land. Traces of primordial Homo Erectus presence from 700,000 years ago have been found along the coast. In the Homeric Age, a tribe of Greek wine-makers who called themselves the italoi settled in the region. By the eighth century BC, Magna Graecia had been founded and what is now Calabria flourished in Classical antiquity. The first lyric poet in Western civilization, Stesichorus, was born in the town of Metauros, now Gioia Tauro.

The province of Reggio Calabria is one of the only places in the world where the bergamot citrus is grown - famous the world over for flavoring Earl Grey tea. Calabria's other culinary claim to fame is the fantastic hot red cherry peppers grown there. They go in everything and are a strong part of regional identity - Calabrians joke about adding hot pepper to their babies' first bottles of milk.

Calabrian red peppers and two typical products which use them: 'nduja, a spreadable spicy sausage, and sardella, a "caviar" spread made from newly hatched fish, fennel seeds and red pepper.

Calabria is an ancient land where old folk traditions are still alive. Catholic religious festivals are full of remnants of Greek and Roman pagan traditions - the overwhelming presence of the Virgin Mary in the popular religious imagination owes much to Aphrodite, Demeter and Cybele - and old ladies still know the best incantations and spells to ward off the malocchio or evil eye. 

One example of the particular Calabrian mix of the Christian and pagan: In the town of Seminara, during the feast day of the Madonna dei Poveri, or Our Lady of the Poor, one of the highlights of the evening religious procession is a solo dance done by a man with a large blue banner. Riding the flagpole like a hobby horse, the dancer spins in a tight circle so the banner flies low over the ground, just barely caressing the earth. The official explanation is that the flag represents the benevolence of the Virgin blessing the land, but many folklorists have pointed out that the rather blatantly phallic positioning of the flagpole and the frenetic speed of the dance owe much more to pagan fertility ceremonies than any purely Catholic theology. 




And Calabria is a land held hostage. 

The calabrese word 'ndrangheta is believed to derive from the Greek andragathía, which means a sort of upstanding gentlemanly honor. Uomini d'onore has long been a euphemism for members of the mafia, who have no respect for the laws and ethics of the rest of human society but pride themselves on their rigid adherence to the rules and structures of their clans. 

The port city of Gioia Tauro, birthplace of the poet Stesichorus, is today the single largest point of entry for illegal shipments of cocaine in Europe. The bosses of the port ship their wares - including not only drugs, but weapons and human beings - to New York City into the hands of the remaining several of the five families, who have given up on the Cosa Nostra of Sicily and taken up with the ascendent Calabrese 'Ndrangheta. The city council of the town has twice had to be dissolved, in 1991 and 2008, because of infiltration by organized crime. And it's far from the only one: since 1991 fully 58 town and city councils have been disbanded due to infiltration. In 2012, it happened to the region's capital, Reggio Calabria, a city of 150,000 inhabitants. And over the past year, the antimafia commission of the region has been repeatedly investigated for corruption. 

Calabria is an ancient land. It has been invaded by Greeks, Saracens, Turks, Lombards and criminals. It is still standing. 

Stage 5: Messina

In the modern (particularly American) imagination Sicily is a backwards place, rural and underdeveloped, and infested by Mafia. In recent generations the stereotype is not without basis in reality - but in the past, Sicily was the crossroads of Western civilization, and Messina in particular was among the greatest cities of Europe.

The city has been an important port since Ancient Greek times. Messana frequently allied with the city-state of Siracusa in various wars against Carthage, a dynamic that continued into the Roman period. The city then passed into the hands of the Byzantines and then the Saracens, as part of the Arab conquest of the Mediterranean, then the Norman conquest of everywhere. In the medieval period, ships bound for the Holy Land during the Crusades left from the harbor of Messina, and by the Renaissance, it had become one of the intellectual and cultural centers of Europe.

Sketches by architect Filippo Juvarra, born in Messina in 1678

Architects, astronomers, painters, statesmen and poets filled Messina under the rule of the Spanish Crown of Aragon, and the city continued to prosper under the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 

The Unification of Italy in 1861, under Giuseppe Garibaldi's revolution, is commonly portrayed as a triumph of Enlightenment-era national self-determination and the throwing off of foreign yokes. In reality, it was the simple annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Papal states, the Tuscan provinces and Lombardy-Venetia by the Kingdom of Sardinia under the House of Savoy. And in the following decades, the rich North imposed its rule on the South largely by force, at times in a manner reminiscent of English domination of Ireland. And like the Irish poor Sicilians, Calabresi and Neapolitans fled their homeland to seek their fortune in the New World, in numbers large enough to forever change the face of - for example - my town, New York City, where the word "mozzarella" is still pronounced alla napoletana without its final syllable, and once-obscure Sicilian Christmas Eve traditions fill supermarkets with seven kinds of fish. 

Messina remained a major city, despite its troubles, and continues to be an important presence economically and culturally. And one of my favorite poets was born there: Salvatore Quasimodo. 

Born in 1901, Quasimodo became one of the leading figures of the primarily Italian poetic movement known as hermeticism, or ermetismo, which rejected the trends of social-political critique and focused on introspective, highly symbolist and often very short forms. The sound and rhythm of the words was extremely important (a fact any translator must take into account) and allusions were often multilayered and frequently Classical. 

Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della Terra

Trafitto da un raggio di sole

Ed è subito sera. 

Each man stands alone on the heart of the Earth

Pierced by a ray of the sun

And it's suddenly evening...

(1942)

Finally, this blog is a Giro d'Italia blog after all, so we can't move on to the next stage without mentioning another illustrious native of Messina, Vincenzo Nibali. Lo Squalo, the Shark of the Strait, he's the defending champion of last year's Giro and known as a strong all-around competitor - good at long distances, sprints and mountains. This year he has not yet won a stage but remains among the favorites - and there's still a long way to go. 

Stage 4: Mount Etna

Italy is a mountainous country. The Alps dominate the north and the Appenines run down the peninsula like a backbone. The regions of open plains, including the Padanian basin and the lowlands of Salento, are few and far between. The Giro d'Italia has a separate classification recognizing the best cyclists in mountain terrain - instead of the famous pink jersey the leader of the overall classification wears, the leader of the mountain-scaling classification wears blue.

Etna is far from the tallest mountain in Italy - most of the Alps tower over it - but it is the second-largest active volcano in the whole of Europe. In near constant activity, it looms over the city of Catania frequently belching smoke and flame.

The volcano has a central place in Greek and Roman mythology, and spreads into the folklore of other European and Mediterranean cultures. The following is a brief list of the gods, goddesses, monsters, heroes and villains living in, on, or under Mount Etna:

- The four winds, imprisoned under Etna by King Aeolus, son of Poseidon.
- The monstrous giant Typhon, son of Gaea (earth) and Tartarus (hell), also imprisoned under the volcano.
- Hephaestus, or Vulcan, the god of the forge, sets up shop in the fiery interior, forging arms and armor for the gods of Olympus.
- The Cyclopses have a blacksmithing workshop next door, presumably making inferior but cheaper products.
- King Arthur and his court of knights, relaxing in a lovely green England-like landscape enclosed in the mountain.
- Queen Elizabeth I of England, as a condition of a pact made with the devil to aid her in her earthly reign.
- And finally, a moment of silence for the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, who was so determined to pursue an empirical course of study on the nature of volcanic activity that he jumped into the crater. He never published again.

Stage 3: Cagliari

Cagliari is the capital of Sardinia and by far its largest city. It is the industrial and commercial center of the island, a cultural and academic hub rivaling any similarly-sized city on the mainland. Previous stops on the journey have seemed far away from Italy - culturally, linguistically and geographically. But in Cagliari most people speak standard Italian, Rome is just a short plane ride away, and Cagliari Calcio is a regular participant in Serie A.

And now you'll have to permit me the indulgence of writing about the one year they won the whole thing. 

"Cagliari have tormented and humiliated Inter at the San Siro in front of 70 thousand spectators. Gigi Riva, who they call Rombo di Tuono, deserved every one of them." - Gianni Brera, 1970

Gigi Riva, the "Roar of Thunder" whose name is forever associated with Cagliari, was born in Lombardy in 1944. After a difficult childhood and adolescence as a young orphan in a strict religious boarding school, the many hours he spent escaping his troubles by playing football in the churchyard paid off as he joined a local amateur club team, then was quickly signed to Serie C professional side Legnano, where Cagliari's scouts found him after only one season. The orphan from Lombardy packed his bags and left the foggy north for an island that was then much poorer, much stranger, and much further away than it is today. 

Riva’s nickname as Rombo di Tuono was well earned. His style of play was physical and imposing, with tremendous speed and a powerful left foot that could fire off cannon-like shots from any range. He was the prototypical winger, combining sublime dribbling skills with a fanatical instinct for goals, a mix of elegance and force, delicacy and strength. He announced his presence boldly from the moment he stepped on the pitch until the final whistle blew.



Riva was widely acknowledged as the finest striker in Italy of his generation, and as such all the big clubs ended up clamoring for his signature. Juventus, Milan and Inter all offered hefty transfers and large wages to tempt Riva away from his Cagliari, but he would have none of it.
Even for the time, Riva’s refusal to leave his “provincial” team raised eyebrows. Today, when we are accustomed to seeing the world’s top players either float around as journeymen or remain for long periods at the richest and most famous clubs they can find, it is almost inconceivable. But Cagliari and Sardinia had adopted Gigi Riva, the lonely orphaned boy from Lombardy, and he had no intention of betraying his new home.

In the 1969-1970 season, everything came together for Cagliari. Riva was the spearhead of the attack, and in goal was the sensational Ricky Albertosi. The defensive line was held together by Comunardo Niccolai, son of outspoken leftist activists, who would in the future become just as infamous for a series of spectacular own-goals as for his peculiar name, but at the time was a tough and solid stopper at the height of his powers. On the manager’s bench was Manlio Scopigno, nicknamed “The Philosopher.” A strong team well coached, but the central figure was undoubtedly Riva. His charisma on the pitch could drag the entire team by the scruff of their necks towards the scrappiest and unlikeliest of victories, then as time went on they began to look less and less unlikely. Cagliari found themselves winter champions just after the turn of the year 1970, and from there it was only a matter of willpower to keep up the momentum and then, improbably but also somehow inevitably, capture the Scudetto.



Cagliari were the first “meridionale” team to win the title, defined as coming from the South of Italy and the two islands, in opposition to the usual domination of Northern Italian teams like Milan, Juve and Inter. For the population of Sardinia, it was a moment of galvanizing pride. For at least a little while, the poor, rural, distant island had made the rest of the country sit up and take notice, and in the end even salute in respect. For a team like Cagliari, one Scudetto can mean as much as five titles all together for the likes of Milan or Juve - and for Riva, it was a simple and elegant validation of his even then surprising choice to spend his entire career in Cagliari.

 

(Full disclosure: parts of this article originally appeared in a piece I wrote for ItalianFootballDaily.com in 2015.)