••
••
ITALY AND THE ITALIANS
From the Alps down to the southern tip of Sicily, Italy
provides the most tangible proof that the world is indeed a wonderous
stage. Architects and sculptors treat the myriad parks and gardens as
set designs, and nature turns the landscapes, replete with statuesque
cypresses, tortuous olive and fig trees, and rows of vineyards, into so
many artful backdrops for the daily brio and histrionics of la vita
italiana.
In the cities, the cathedrals, palazzos, monumental public
buildings, and open-air piazzas are planned as if harmonious elements
in unrivalled stagesets. Venice’s dazzling basilica, the Doges’ Palace
(Palazzo Ducale), and the 500-year-old Clock Tower (Torre
dell’Orologio), all within the sprawling Piazza San Marco and adjacent
Piazzetta, are the very focus of the city’s life. The same is true of
Rome’s grand piazzas — Navona, del Popolo, and di Spagna; Siena’s
unique Campo; and Florence’s elegant Piazza della Signoria. Conceived
as a theater and emphasizing the decorative space as much as the
buildings surrounding it, the piazza satisfies the need of
Mediterranean peoples to conduct their lives in the open air.
And we mustn’t overlook the players. In each town, at that
magic moment of the passeggiata at the end of each afternoon, they
stroll across the piazza, find themselves a well-placed seat at their
favorite café or stand in groups to argue business, politics, or
soccer — the latter tends to be the most popular subject. Their
celebrated gift for gesticulation aids the inherent air of drama that
reassures them of the appreciation of their audience. No people more
joyfully live up to their legendary image than the Italians. As Orson
Welles put it, all 58-odd million of them are actors, with only a few
bad ones, and those, he added most unfairly, are found on the stage and
in films.
Watch them at the wheel of a car: Long ago, driving became a
major opportunity for the Italians to display their dramatic talents.
An Italian designer observed that a nation’s cars are like its people:
Scandinavian and German models are solid, strong, and reliable, built
to resist an accident; Italian cars tend to be more fragile, but slick
and spirited, built to avoid an accident. They are designed, above all,
to indulge the national sense of style. The imaginative flair of a
Neapolitan taxi driver zig-zagging out of a traffic jam forces the
admiration of any nerve-shattered back-seat passenger.
In the purely visual sphere, style has been a national
preoccupation from the Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo and
Leonardo da Vinci to the grandiose cinematographic fantasies of
Fellini and Visconti in the modern era. It is evident not only in the
splendor of the frescoes and monumental fountains but also in the
dazzling design of a scarlet Lamborghini, a coffee pot, or a fountain
pen. The sartorially savvy man-about-town knows that good “English”
tailoring, and the textiles used, are not only to be found on Saville
Row but in the meticulous workshops of Milan, Florence, and Rome. The
fashion followers of the world have long been worshipping at the altar
of Italy’s high priests and priestesses — unrivalled fashion houses and
the generations-old textile factories that supply them.
The world also stands in awe of Italian cuisine. In the
simplest trattoria or most elegant of restaurants, the experience of
your meal often begins before you sit down. Not with the menu, but with
the magnificent display sprawled across a long table as you enter:
seafood antipasti, stuffed eggplant and zucchini, grilled peppers in
red, yellow, and green, and whatever bounty this morning’s market
yielded.
If you take a plane or train the length of the peninsula,
Italy offers yet another cornacopia of delights. In the north, the
snowcapped Alps and jagged pink pinnacles of the Dolomites; the
gleaming Alpine-backed lakes of Como, Garda, and Maggiore; the fertile
and industrial plain of the Po, stretching from Turin and Milan across
to ancient Verona; the Palladian-villa studded hills of Vicenza; and
the romantic canals of Venice.
On the west coast, the Italian Riviera curves from San Remo
to Viareggio on either side of the venerable port city of Genoa. Behind
the alternating rocky and sandy coastline, from the marble quarries of
Carrara, the mountain chain of the Apennines reaches south into
Tuscany — where lie the ageless beauties of Pisa, Lucca, Florence, and
Siena, not to mention the smaller, and arguably more magical, hillside
towns of Montepulciano, Volterra, and San Gimignano.
Landlocked Umbria’s rich green countryside surrounds a
golden triangle of historic cities, the Assisi of St. Francis, the
noble university hillside town of Perugia, and the medieval mountain
post of Gubbio. To the east, the grand Byzantine citadel of Ravenna
dominates the seaside resorts lining the Adriatic.
The Eternal City, Rome, lies halfway down the west coast.
For more than 26 centuries it has witnessed countless declines, falls,
and rebirths, and today continues to resist the assaults of brutal
modernity in its time-locked, color-rich historical center.
Another world unto itself, the exhilarating chaos of Naples
commands its magnificent bay, the visible isles of Ischia and Capri,
and the ruins of Pompeii in the shadow of Vesuvius, its still active
volcano. To the south, the former fishing villages of Sorrento and
Positano spill down the craggy cliffs of the serpentine Amalfi coast,
justifiably tauted as one of the world’s most beautiful drives. On the
other side of the peninsula, off the tourist track in the peninsula’s
“heel,” are the curiously romantic landscapes of Puglia, from its
centuries-old trulli constructions to the medieval fortresses of the
German emperors.
Italy’s western approaches are guarded by two of the
Mediterranean’s largest islands, Sardinia and Sicily, both rugged,
mysterious, and steeped in history. Smaller islands with fabled names
such as Elba, Stromboli, and Lipari fill in the necklace of floating
gems, many reached only by boat, where the lifestyle is that of the
Mediterranean one hundred years ago.
The Italian people, with Latins and Etruscans mixing over
themillennia with Greeks, Lombards, Normans, French, and Spaniards, are
as fascinatingly diverse as this panoply of landscapes. Each region
sustains a solid and pugnacious local pride from historic division into
the city-states, duchies, kingdoms, and republics of Florence, Naples,
Venice, Lombardy, Piedmont, and Sicily. Nurtured within the
geographical separations of the Alps, the Po valley, and the coasts on
either side of the Apennines, it was this very diversity that created
the richness of Italian art and its competing regional schools of
painting and architecture. Significantly, the move toward national
unity in the 19th century coincided with a dramatic artistic decline
from which the country is only now recovering.
Given its short history as a unified nation, much of
Italy’s patriotic sense seems to be most visible in the national
football (soccer) team. After the devastating experience of Mussolini’s
fascism, national government is rarely regarded as an obvious solution
to the people’s daily problems. If some form of government proves
necessary, they prefer the local town hall to the parliament in
Rome.
Most Italians are naturally cheerful and friendly towards
foreigners. In recent years there have been unprecedented numbers of
immigrants from the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Africa. The Italians
reserve their scorn for each other — Venetians and Romans or Milanese
and Neapolitans comically bemoan the new EU-imposed automobile license
plates that no longer designate the driver’s origin. It is not so easy
to recognize the home town of a fellow driver.
Beyond the regional identifications, the country remains
divided culturally, economically, and psychologically between the
prosperous, industrial North and less developed South, or Mezzogiorno
(“Midday”). This division was perpetuated by centuries of feudal rule
in Naples and Sicily, while the North developed more progressive forms
of economy and government. The division has come almost to the point of
regarding the South as Italy’s own Third World, as it offers a supply
of cheap migrant labor.
But the warm-hearted, high-spirited Neapolitans in no way
feel themselves inferior to the cool, pragmatic “managerial” types of
the vibrant northern cities. Italy’s two halves come face to face in
Turin, where Fiat’s automobile factories have for generations attracted
thousands of workers from the Mezzogiorno. Sociologists have noted that
the transplanted southerners tend to support the populist Juventus
football team, owned by Fiat’s Agnelli family, while the other, more
bourgeois local team, Torino, is favored by the longer-established
Turin citizenry.
Foreign visitors are not obliged to take sides. We are free
to fall in love with the entire country and invariably do: it’s a
glorious lifelong love affair.
•FACTS AND FIGURES
•Geography: The Italian landmass covers 301,245 sq km
(116,228 sq miles). The familiar boot-like silhouette stretches 1,200
km (850 miles) from the northwest Alpine frontier, with France to the
southeast “heel” of Puglia. Below the three great lakes, Maggiore,
Como, and Garda, the fertile plain of the Po river separates the Alps
from the rugged chain of the Apennines, running like a wall down the
middle of the peninsula to the arid south. Other major rivers are the
Tiber in Rome, the Arno in Tuscany, and the Adige in the Tyrolean
Dolomites. Across the Adriatic to the east lies the rocky coastline of
the former Yugoslavia. Off the Tyrrhenian (west) coast are the islands
of Sardinia (south of France’s Corsica) and Sicily (off the boot’s
“toe”), largest of the Mediterranean islands. Three major volcanoes in
the south, Naples’ Vesuvius, and Sicily’s Stromboli and Etna, are still
active. The highest point is on Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco), at 4,760 m
(15,616 ft).
•Population: 58 million
•Capital: Rome (pop. 2,830,000)
•Major cities: Milan (1,500,000), Naples (1,200,000), Turin
(1,000,000), Genoa (700,000), Palermo (700,000), Bologna (400,000),
Florence (400,000), Catania (380,000), Bari (370,000), Venice proper
(340,000).
•Government: By its constitution of 1948, Italy is a
republic of provinces grouped into 20 regions. A President with
honorary (rather than political) powers is chosen by an Electoral
Assembly of parliamentary and regional representatives. Government is
truly in the hands of a Prime Minister and his cabinet selected from
among the parliament’s Senate of 322 members and more powerful
630-strong Chamber of Deputies. A parliamentary mandate is five
years.
•Religion: 99% Catholic, 1% Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and
Jewish.
