Tag Archives: tuscany

Scenes from the Palio di Siena

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Liberamente nel Campo di Siena / Ogni vergogna deposta, s’affisse.
(Freely upon the Campo of Siena / All shame being laid aside, he placed himself.)
-Dante, Purgatory, XI 134-135

Having been born in Louisville, home of the celebrated Kentucky Derby, I was pretty keen to hear about another famed horse race in Italy, the Palio di Siena. This race is generally held twice annually, on July 2 and August 16, and takes place in the town’s main square, the Piazza del Campo. A dirt track is laid out on the ground, bleachers are thrown up and the town takes a day off to carouse and carry on a centuries-old tradition.

My WWOOF host family was also curious and intrepid enough to venture into Siena, so we drove out and managed to land a parking spot not too far from the center of town. The city was in a festive mood, buzzing with energy, packed with gawking visitors and locals happy to have the day off. Many people were waving flags or wearing them around their necks to show their support for one of the 17 Siena contrade, or city wards. To delineate the borders between the contrade, colorful flags and lamps lined the streets and buildings. Residents take a lot of pride and identify with their contrada, which functions as a center for baptisms, marriages, deaths, festivals and other celebrations. It is advised that you do not marry out of your contrada!

Inside a tabbachi shop selling flags, I asked the clerk which contrada he thought would win. He pointed to the goose (oca), dolphin (onda) and turtle (tartuca). “The tortoise, I really think this one has the best chance,” he said. Turtles winning the race? I scratched my head but we followed his advice and purchased a tartuca flag, vividly colored in blue and gold, with a turtle emblazoned in the center.
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Turning Back Time in Florence

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The clock inside the Florence Duomo runs counterclockwise and starts its days at sunset (it is 4-6 hours fast). This is because when the clock was designed in the 1400s, sunset was the point at which the city gates were closed and all residents had to be inside the city walls.

It was the worst of times possible to visit Florence.

August 15 is the height of ferragosto, or summer holiday season in Italy. It also marks the Feast of the Assumption, and is a public holiday in most Catholic countries. The word comes from Latin for feriae Augusti (August vacations), and any proper Italian worth their salt jets to a beach (or possibly mountain) resort and spends the month surrounded by sand and surf. The cities are vacated and left for the hordes of tourists who descend upon Rome, Florence and Venice, wondering why the storefronts are dark and empty. To be fair, things are a lot better now than they were a few decades ago, when Italian news channels would televise shots of hapless tourists wandering outside closed museums, and elderly residents struggling to find an open pharmacy or bakery to buy a loaf of bread. These days, local authorities have mandated that a certain number of businesses need to stay open, so that basic needs can be supplied. Still, my 36 hours in Florence were one disappointment after another, as almost all the independent retailers not geared towards tourists displayed the ubiquitous “chiuso per ferie” (closed for holiday) sign. Did I mention that it also rained all day?

No matter, good weather is not required to partake in Florence’s greatest assets: Florentine cuisine and Renaissance art. Florence is famed for being a center of Tuscan cuisine, with a diverse range of vibrant markets, neighborhood watering holes and high-end restaurants. And with over 60% of the world’s most important artwork in Italy, over half of which is in Florence, the city probably has more Renaissance marbles per capita than any other place in the world. You pretty much can’t throw a rock without hitting something bankrolled by the Medici family.
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Soaring Through Centuries: Falcons and Farms in Tuscany

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A falcon catches a lure mid-air.

After a 7 hour battle for seating on a hot, overbooked train, I stepped off the platform in San Miniato and took a good look around. This was Italy’s famed Tuscany, the stuff that Hollywood movies and expat marriage dreams are made of. All was quiet, and I paused uncertainly as I looked at the empty train station waiting room. If I were a WWOOF host, where would I be, I thought to myself. My worries were allayed however, when I spotted a woman waiting around the corner. She approached me with a smile and said, “Hi, are you Crystal? I’m Amy, nice to meet you, I’m glad that you made it!”

Amy quickly introduced herself and told me about the Barbialla Nuova farm, where I am volunteering through WWOOF for the next couple weeks. In no time, we were trading life stories and discussing how the shape of bread across cultures is influenced by the way it is used (flatbreads for curry in India vs round disks used as bowls for stew in England). Amy moved from Australia to Italy with her husband and two young children about 9 months ago, after deciding that they wanted to spend some time living abroad. Ken, her husband, is a very talented bread baker and they both have extensive experience as WWOOFers around the world. After sending out inquiries to the WWOOF network, they stumbled upon Barbialla Nuova and haven’t left since. “It’s really neat to be on the other side now as a host!” commented Amy.

Barbialla Nuova is a 500-hectare farm in central Tuscany, and the project aspires to govern the land as a holistic living organism, with knowledge from the biodynamic, sustainable and Fukuoka schools of natural agriculture. The farm holds a herd of 60+ Chianina cattle, pigs, a lake for fishing, and some of the most valuable natural white truffle beds of the Val d’Elsa. More than half of the property is wooded, and much of the remaining land is set aside for grazing animals. Wild boars, deer, hares and porcupines are some of the animals that are commonly seen on the grounds. At one point, there were about 50 farmhouses on the property, and the 1861 census records state that 382 people lived on the estate at that time, with each family given a house and some land in exchange for half of the profits. Even further back in history, Barbialla was underwater during the Pliocene era, and in some of the layers of rock, you can find marine fossils of gastropods and bivalves.
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