Everyday Italy: 10 Things Fun & Fab

Or, a love letter to my adopted ancestral home

Aria’s a fan of the poppy fields in Val d’Orcia. All photos mine.

Cari amici,

I’ve lived in Italy for five years now, and there’s never been a day I regretted my decision to move here. That’s not to say the experience has always been idyllic or stress-free; there’s good and there’s bad anywhere you live, and Italy is no different. (Take, for example, this laughably bad day.) Thankfully, days like that aren’t the norm, but life here comes with its share of frustrations. For one, Perugia is the absolute worst about maintaining streets and sidewalks in a state that minimizes threats to body or car. For another, several water fountains have been shut down recently, a maddening inconvenience, especially on scorching days, especially if you have a dog. Maybe the city is trying to make water as inaccessible as trashcans—I’m getting used to carrying bags of dog poop around for 20 or 30 minutes when I’m anywhere outside the heart of the historic center.

Ma non voglio lamentarmi. I don’t want to complain. Today I’m here to praise, to celebrate, to revel in the things that make life in Italy remarkable or fascinating or fun. Today, ten things—and I could make a completely different list tomorrow. Italy’s riches run deep.

1. Italy is ancient.

I mean, really, really, ancient—people have lived in what is now Italy for at least 850,000 years. Rome was founded in 753 BC (its birthday is April 21—take note, the city always celebrates!), and Etruscan civilization thrived from the eighth to the third century BC. In other words, Italy is old in a way many Americans can’t grasp. (I’ll quietly add here that if the U.S. acknowledged Native Americans—who preceded the English settlers by, oh, roughly 13,000 years—as part of the country’s true history, we wouldn’t marvel quite so much.)

I get a kick out seeing proof of Italy’s antiquity on an everyday basis, and one of my favorites is the third-century BC Etruscan Arch here in Perugia, a survivor of the ravages of earthquakes, weather, and time. And then there are other reminders, like this one, cited in Dianne Hales’ book La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language. In response to someone requesting a book in the Vatican Library, a librarian said, “Missing since 1530.”

2. Gelato, and not just because it’s delicious

Because it can be made from just about anything: ricotta, pecorino, and gorgonzola (often paired with figs), roses and lavender, basil and ginger. Each year, for the Perugia 1416 event, the cioccolateria/gelateria Mastro Cianuri makes a flavor for each of the city’s five rioni (districts), such as saffron, bread and honey, and spinach and green apple. According to one of the guys there, they made a porchetta flavor one year. Ugh.

3. Francesco, Perugia’s dog-about-town

A terrier sort, Francesco is not your ordinary dog. You see, he wears a watch, a red one, on his left front paw. Why? Because he often prowls the streets without his owner, and when the alarm on his watch goes off, it’s time for him to go home. I kid you not. When not on foot he rides a scooter, perched at his owner’s feet.

4. Rope and basket: a clever solution

You may have heard stories about housewives in Napoli leaning out windows, shouting their orders down to street vendors, and then hoisting their purchases up in a basket. It’s not just a napoletano thing, though—yesterday my neighbor hauled his groceries up to the second floor that way, and when I’m entertaining outside I send everything out my kitchen window down to the courtyard via basket and rope. During the Covid lockdowns, people put their small dogs in baskets and sent them down to courtyards to do their business, and a friend of mine delivered treats to Aria the same way when we passed by on our walks. (Dog walking was permitted within a limited range.)

5. Flowering fields

If you’ve traveled by train (or by car on the smaller provincial roads) in June/July in Lazio, Le Marche, Tuscany, or Umbria, you’ve no doubt seen fields of sunflowers—and I’m here to tell you they never get old. Heck, I don’t even like sunflowers all that much as singular flowers, but in quantity, man oh man. I can’t help feeling happy when I come across one of those blazes of yellow. But before the sunflowers blanket the fields, in the spring the poppies arrive, red ones, thousands upon thousands of them. I think they can be found all over Italy, but Tuscany’s Val d’Orcia is a sure bet. If you’re feeling blue, go find some flowering fields. It’ll help, I promise.

The best sunflower fields I’ve seen, in Asciano, Tuscany.

6. A cocktail named Hugo

I tried a Hugo for the first time last summer, in Rome, and now, for me, there is no other spritz. (Okay, a Select spritz, made with a Venetian bitter, comes in second.) A Hugo is light and refreshing, made with elderberry syrup, fresh mint, and (like all spritzes) prosecco and sparkling water and ice. (Hint: rub mint leaves around the inside of the glass, then leave them in there.) I wanted to make Hugos at home but couldn’t find the anise-flavored elderberry syrup, so instead I used Sambuca. Thus was born the High-Octane Hugo.

7. The Italian bar: an oasis

There are plenty of reasons to love bars—they’re neighborhood hangouts, places to have a morning coffee and pastry, a quick lunch, or drinks with friends. And they’re pretty much always open (unless you’re in Caprarola, but that’s another story). But what I love most about bars was brought to my attention during a recent trip to England. There, everywhere I went, buying a bottle of water meant standing in line at a grocery store or a Boots. In Italy, anywhere (mostly), anytime (mostly), you can pop into a bar, grab a bottle of water from a cooler or the barista, toss a coin or two on the counter, and be on your way.

8. Knowing a guy

He might be a shoe-repair guy who can fix just about anything, or a guy with a truck or van, or someone who can’t help you but knows someone who can. People in Italy are creative, knowledgeable, and resourceful. So when I told a neighbor I wanted to buy an antique armadio (wardrobe), he said, “I know a guy.” So now I do too—and that guy has a warehouse full of beautiful antiques, and it’s 20 minutes from my house, and all I have to do is message him and set up a visit. If I tell him what I’m looking for, he’ll send me preview photos of what’s on hand. Plus, he delivers.

9. Unplanned delights

Finding yourself in the middle of something you had no idea was happening is, for me, one of the great pleasures of life in Italy. I’ve stumbled upon costumed processions, both religious and civic, in Tuscany and Sicily and Umbria, and there is just something about seeing those people engaged in a centuries-old tradition, proud of their cultural or religious heritage, walking in time to music trumpeted and drummed, that makes me tear up. Why, I don’t know, but there it is.

10. Mind-blowing beauty

My love for art is no secret, and when it’s packaged in an architectural wonder or tucked away in a wooded valley, all the better. Today I’m thinking of two places I visited recently, Villa Farnese and Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, both less than two hours by car from my house.

Villa Farnese is in Caprarola, in the Tuscia area of Lazio. The place has a fascinating history (including a tie-in to the ruined Baglioni houses I mentioned in my last letter), but let’s talk about beauty, k? The 16th-century “villa” (read: enormous palace with gardens and a so-called hunting lodge—ha!) is spectacular, and for frescoes-per-square-meter, it’s extraordinary. It has a map room that inspired the one in the Vatican Museums, a spiral staircase (frescoed, obvs) that could, and did, accommodate horses, and room after room of spectacular walls and ceilings. What brought me there, though, is in the gardens—a waterfall fountain running down a staircase, which I’d spotted in the series I Medici: Masters of Florence. Turns out the villa and ex-hunting lodge were locations too, which I didn’t know when I went there, so now I have to watch the series again, of course. Anyway, if you can go there, GO!

Some of the splendors of Villa Farnese.

Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore is a Benedictine monastery in Asciano, Tuscany (in the Crete sinesi area, which I adore), founded in 1313. Artistically speaking, it has two claims to fame: one is the intricate, 3-D intarsio (inlaid wood) of the church choir, done in 1503-1505 by Fra Giovanni da Verona; the other is the series of frescoes depicting the life of Saint Benedict, begun by Luca Signorelli in the 1500s and completed by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, aka Il Sodoma. I’m going to tell you more about Il Sodoma another time, so for now I’ll just say that his nickname means what you think it does, and instead of being insulted (as was the intent of the name-giver) Bazzi was, apparently, delighted. Clearly a man worth knowing more about.

Intarsio and frescoes at Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore.

Basta per ora, as I often say. If you’ve been to Italy, or live here, or used to live here, tell me some of your favorite things about life here. There’s always room for more on my list.

Alla prossima,

Cheryl

© 2023 Cheryl A. Ossola

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Book of the week:

• On Persephone’s Island by Mary Taylor Simeti, for its very personal view of daily life in Italy (in this case, in Sicily)

P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites. Another fab option is to ask your local library to stock it.

If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’ll make me over-the-moon happy. Baci!