Rambling and the Rocca

Saturday, June 18, 2005

It has been a few days since I wrote here in my blog. It seems longer than that. It has been a very full week. Just staying in Perugia and exploring places we have been before and finding some new ones. The weather earlier in the week turned stormy. I am constantly reminded that cities that are green have their share of rainy days. I do not mind. Earlier in the week we had lightening and thunder and it was wonderful to just stay home safe and sound in our little cocoon here while the rain beat down and thunder clapped around us.

The view from our "pointe" of the coming storm was incredible. I had been out there checking things out, discovering that the santolina had opened completely and noticing the roses in new shades of purples and oranges, the fluffy pink poppies and the white calla lilies. The pink geraniums along the wall are fully blooming now and everything is green and lush. There is even a cherry tree, figs and chestnuts and some other fruit I have yet to determine. It is truly a paradise and I never tire of going there. I have tried to paint it but so far only had minimal success. It so overwhelms me I have a hard time being able to focus on any one area and the whole of it is so vast, I cannot possible capture it. So on Tuesday I was out there lamenting onmy lack of ability and feeling sorry for myself when I just had to stop, sit back and enjoy the beauty with my eyes, with my ears and with my sense of smell. To just let it all wash over me and soak it all in, and stop pressuring myself and just take it as it may or may not come! I happily create little sketches in watercolor in my journal along with little notes about where I was, what I saw, but then when I put a single blank sheet of paper in front of me, I cannot seem to "produce." So, I have decided to just keep doing what makes me happy and feels good and not to worry about progressing to some as yet unattained level of artistic superiority and just do what I do and trust that things will happen as they are meant to and that is all there is to that.

Bob has been having problems with a stiff neck this week and so on Tuesday he laid low and just stayed home. It was the day we woke up to rain, after the stormy evening the night before. I had been wanting to explore the Rocca Paolina more thoroughly after finding a pretty good guide book in the Book Store down there. So I left him lying on the sofa with plans of watching TV, reading and taking a nap and walked over to the Rocca, just on the other side of Corso Vannucci. The Rocca, as I have written before, is an incredible presence in the city. The city of Perugia has a long history of wars with the various popes. I think this is true all over Italy as the popes of history were not only interested in the glory of God but in their own power grab and being in control of the various city states.

In Perugia, they were especially cruel I think. There was something called The Salt War in which the people of Perugia rebelled against a tax the pope put on salt (remember the bread story?). Well, to make a very long and complex history extremely short, the people of Perugia lost and the pope won. This was in the 1500s. To punish the people, and the Baglioni family (Perugia's nobility and ring-leaders of the rebellion), the pope built this enormous fortress, destroying a huge part of the city, including of course, the palaces, towers and churches of the Baglioni family, and other city buildings and incorporated the rest underneath and within this giant fortress, complete with a huge ditch around it. To add insult to injury, he used the bricks and stones that were taken from these buildings and made the people themselves build the damn thing without any compensation! (My affection for the papacy grows ever stronger the more I learn about these things!).

It appears today like a subterranean city, as you descend into it by means of the escalators I told you about earlier. In 1860, Vittore Emmanuelle was victorious, along with Garibaldi and a bunch of other Italian patriots, over the popes armies, defeating them once and for all and were successful in uniting all of Italy under one flag, creating a Republic from what were independent city states. From what I can see, the people of Italy still relate very strongly to their individual neighborhoods, cities, and regions and it is said that the only place Italians are truly united is when their soccer team is playing in the international finals!

But I digress! The Rocca, when it was built, was like a giant fortress looming above the city, impenetrable and imposing. And when the dust of the fight with the pope settled, they began to tear it down. I can only imagine the anger of these people and the fervor with which they approached the dismantling of it. The entire top of it came down, along with the huge corridor that spread down into the lower part of the city like the finger of the pope and connected to bastions near what is now the bus terminal. They threw the debris inside and built on top of it the beautiful Palazzo della Republica, Piazza Italia with its green space and fountains, bordered by other palazzi, hotels and gardens and of course a giant statue of Vittore Emmanuelle, astride his giant steed, dressed in all his battle gear, riding triumphant into the city! And, from what I gather, tried to forget all about the Rocca.

As the years went by, interest in this medieval fortress began to grow. The people considered it of major historical significance but it is only in the last part of the 20th century that it has become a point of pride and one the citizens are greatly interested in preserving and restoring, which is evident in the work that continues inside of it. In fact, from what we have learned, once the escalators went in, within the Rocca, it became open and available to the citizens as they traveled within its cavernous spaces from the lower part of the city to the upper. Tourists of course are fascinated with it. The city of Perugia makes good use of it with various exhibitions like the Dite Cheese, the wine and cheese tasting festival that utilized many of the rooms to display the cheeses and wines of Umbria and where one can wander through these medieval spaces and imagine what life must have been like at one time. We have attended concerts down there and gone to various art exhibitions as well and it serves as a wonderful backdrop for festivals, both antique and modern.

With its extra thick walls, below ground level as it is now, it is also a great place to spend a stormy day. It's incredibly cool down there in the heat of the summer as well and just a fascinating piece of the history of this city we are growing to love more and more every day.

Rosemary