The horses are skittish, almost wild, as their trainers walk them in front of the old church before the race. In the starting gate, they're even jumpier, pawing at the ground, raising dust, pressing their chests against the fat braided rope that five strong men have drawn taut with a pulley.
We’re on Via Garibaldi, a main street in the Italian town of Ronciglione, on a late-summer Sunday afternoon. It’s the day of the palio, a traditional contest in which horses race riderless through the streets; a more famous version is contested not far away in Siena. But Ronciglione boasts more of a small-town informality. In the crowd, everyone seems to know one another – it’s all “Ciao, piacere” (“Hi, nice to see you”) and kisses on the cheeks.
A century-and-a-half ago, the great British writer Walter Bagehot instructed his charges at The Economist to reduce, then magnify: narrow your range of vision, but look more deeply. The advice can be as sound in Italy: rather than doing a grand tour, why not pick a patch of countryside and reap its furrows? Move less, see more.
Ronciglione is one of the principal towns of the compact region of Tuscia, a historical rather than political entity that lies north of Rome and south of Tuscany. Though overshadowed by the glory of its neighbours, it has much to recommend it. Rent a car and roam here, amid the towns that drape the hills, visiting Etruscan tombs, touring an art-stuffed palazzo without the annoyances of the crowds of Rome, ascending into the “dying city” of Civita di Bagnoregio on its decaying hilltop – and eating incredibly well.
Start by taking the ring road north from Rome, and city quickly gives way to country. The greenery moves closer and closer to the motorway, until finally, once you are on a local road lifting you slowly into the Apennines, the hazelnut trees form an arch overhead. Later on, at about 600 metres above sea level, come chestnut trees.
My first stop is in Fabrica di Roma, to indulge in espressos and morning pastries at the popular Marco Cafe. Here, five people can cover their table with coffees and sweet things that taste as good as they sound – bombolone con la crema, cornetto con Nutella and, my favourite, maritozzi con la panna. The bill amounts to a paltry €11 (Dh45).
To savour the countryside, and maybe burn off a few calories – an ongoing challenge for visitors to Italy – you can take a swim at Lago di Vico, with its soft base of black volcanic mud. After that, you can head upland for a hike on Monte Cimino, amid the operatic sweep of windswept trees. The climate is a welcome change from the UAE in summertime; the Italian sun warms yet doesn’t punish.
After passing through Soriano nel Cimino – its centre is so pretty that it almost appears fake – you come to Bagnoregio. Civita di Bagnoregio – also known as La Citta Che Muore (The Dying City) – is the region’s most famous site. Approaching Civita along a footbridge in late afternoon, it looks like a golden city in the clouds. It stands atop a plateau of volcanic rock and clay that has been eroded for centuries, hence its claim to imminent mortality. But if this is a dying city, then it’s a slow demise – a diva’s never-ending death scene being milked for all it is worth. Yet while Civita rests on a shaky pretence, it executes it well. There are no cars here, just the occasional Vespa. No litter, no billboards – just alleyways, cobblestones, cute shops and beautiful views. “Che bello. Mamma mia. Bellissimo,” one woman marvels as she stops to gaze through an archway that frames a garden and, farther out, the green hills and Tiber Valley. And who can complain when the entry ticket costs a mere €1.50 (Dh6)?
It’s now early evening and time to rest. I head to I Giardini di Ararat, an “agriturismo” spot up a gravel road near the town of Bagnaia. The inn’s one room is a bargain at €100 (Dh411), including taxes and breakfast. The room has rustic charm: wooden floors, antique furniture, a big balcony, a washbasin with foot pedals for hot and cold, and a sloped ceiling. At night, I lie on that big balcony, beneath the Milky Way, with the countryside quiet all around.
Breakfast in the morning is fresh and largely local. Alongside a cappuccino are figs, strawberries, hazelnut biscotti, fresh bread and jams made in Bagnaia.
While visiting a friend’s parents in the town of Canepina, I’m also spoilt. Her mother cooks all day; her father nurtures fruit and nut trees (Want a fig? Climb up and grab a bunch). Her brother picks wild porcini mushrooms and her nephew makes the best pasta con vongole I have ever tasted. In Viterbo one night, we stop for some takeaway at local institution Il Ghiottone, which translates as The Glutton. The thin-crust pizza, with simple toppings, is far from gluttonous.
For a change of pace, try something closer to the heart of Tuscia; something less-visited, but more interesting. Forty-five kilometres away on the Mediterranean coast is the city of Tarquinia, where you can tour the tombs of long-dead Etruscans. You can go from burial mound to mound, down the stairs, turn on a light and see into the crypt through a windowpane.
The Etruscans carry an aura of mystery – their provenance isn't fully resolved, their alphabet was obscure and their writings are few. They covered much of central Italy for a handful of centuries, but then the Romans subsumed them (one of the Roman names for the Etruscans was Tusci, hence Tuscia). Yet academics continue to dig deeper; in 2012, the University of Oxford began a lectureship in Etruscan art history. The American academic Sinclair Bell, co-editor of this year's A Companion to the Etruscans, emphasised via email that scholars have learnt much about the Etruscans in recent years, "from their origins to lifeways to belief systems".
Still, it’s a sense of mystery that prevails when one descends the wooden steps amid the coolness of the grave and the quietness beneath the mounds. The murals on the tombs’ walls don’t provide casual observers with a clear sense of what these people were like. They seemed to like dinner parties a lot. They could render simple but beautiful images of birds in flight. A handful of murals, meanwhile, cannot possibly be anatomically accurate.
It’s only later that I feel some sense of the Etruscan identity, during a visit to the National Archaeological Museum of Tarquinia. The museum is housed in an old palazzo, and the highlight of its collection of Etruscan antiquities is undoubtedly the Cavalli Alati, a breathtaking pair of winged horses. I gasp as I cross the threshold of the room where they are displayed. The horses are mounted high on a wall, as if in flight, and their terracotta flesh is set off by a black backdrop. In display cases, there are smaller pieces of the Etruscans’ craftwork, with gold necklaces and rings, timeless in design and execution.
There’s so much more that one can see in Tuscia: an ancient amphitheatre in Sutri, and near it a small temple built into the rocks. Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, full of magnificent artworks, yet nearly void of tourists. And festivals: the palio in Ronciglione, then a week later, Viterbo’s festival of Santa Rosa, in which 100 stout-backed men carry a 28-metre-high, five-tonne icon through streets so narrow that the angels along the icon’s middle levels sometimes seem about to shake hands with spectators in their third-storey balconies.
Magnification suits Tuscia well; the image holds up. But in the end, the food is the memory that lingers most. One meal in particular provides the most typically Italian moment of my two-week stay. While eating lunch, suddenly everything halts on the realisation that nobody has prepared the dog’s pasta. This is quickly remedied and the dog’s bowl is filled. The dog, more patient than I, looks at his food and decides to save it for later. A veteran of these parts, he’s familiar with its abundance.
rmckenzie@thenational.ae
