See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy - Softcover

Mayes, Frances

 
9780451497703: See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0451497708 ISBN 13: 9780451497703
Verlag: Crown, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

The bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun discovers the hidden pleasures of Italy in a sumptuous travel narrative that crisscrosses the country, with inventive new recipes celebrating Italian cuisine.
 
Don’t miss Frances Mayes in PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special!

“Reading this book is a vacation in itself.”—The New York Times Book Review (Best Travel Books of the Summer)

The Roman Forum, the Leaning Tower, the Piazza San Marco: these are the sights synonymous with Italy. But such landmarks only scratch the surface of this magical country's offerings. In See You in the Piazza, Frances Mayes introduces us to the Italy only the locals know, as she and her husband, Ed, eat and drink their way through thirteen regions—from Friuli to Sicily. Along the way, she seeks out the cultural and historic gems not found in traditional guidebooks.

Frances conjures the enchantment of the backstreets, the hubbub of the markets, the dreamlike wonder of that space between lunch and dinner when a city cracks open to those who would wander or when a mind is drawn into the pages of a delicious book—and discloses to us the secrets that only someone who is on intimate terms with a place could find.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Frances Mayes is the author of the now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun, which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. Other international bestsellers include: Bella Tuscany, Everyday in Tuscany, A Year in the World, and three illustrated books: In Tuscany, Bringing Tuscany Home, and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. She is also the author of two novels, Swan and Women in Sunlight. She has written six books of poetry and The Discovery of Poetry. The most recent books are See You in the Piazza and Always Italy. Her books have been translated into more than fifty languages.

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Chapter 1

Torino

The waiter slides toward me a clear little glass layered with cream, chocolate, and coffee. Sip the layers and you taste Torino. The bicerin—dialect for small glass—has come to be synonymous with the many atmospheric cafés that are the city’s life blood. Torino is flush with regal boulevards and piazzas ringed with these delicious haunts. I’m at the wood-paneled Caffè Al Bicerin, intimate, with candles on tiny marble tables. In this very place, someone in 1763 first concocted the bicerin, a wickedly sumptuous drink. I like a place that remembers a coffee drink invented 256 years ago.

I’ve slipped into other historic cafés to sample their bicerin or lemonade or cappuccino. Bliss. There’s Caffè Torino under the grand arcades, where the great Cesare Pavese, who lived nearby, used to meet other writers; Caffè Mulassano, with marble bar and bentwood chairs, said to have the best espresso in town. Baratti e Milano, more chocolate- and confection-oriented than the others but with an old-world air, and Caffè San Carlo, all gilt and columns and statues.

In late afternoon, the cafés serve aperitivi. No surprise: Campari and vermouths such as Punt e Mes were all invented in Torino. Order a drink and you’re welcome to a lavish buffet of stuzzichini—crostini, olives, chips, focaccia, prosciutto, slices of omelet, and grissini, bread sticks (also invented in Torino). This interlude previews dinner. Which is glorious to anticipate. Torino restaurants are up there with the best in Italy.

Late morning, Ed and William, who’ve been out walking, meet me under the arcades at Caffè Torino. They are impressed by its bodacious chandeliers, smooth waitstaff, and medallion of a rampant bull inlaid in the flagstones outside the door. This is a perfect perch for watching the human parade. We order cappuccino, then tramezzini, the triangular half sandwiches made of trimmed, soft white bread—the kind of air bread we usually scorn. “These were invented in Torino,” I tell them. “At Caffè Mulassano. The weird poet D’Annunzio made up the name . . .” Mine is ham and cheese.

“Tramezzo, a divider. Across the middle,” Ed says. “The -ino or -ini is the diminutive.”

“Across the middle of the morning or across the corners of the bread?” William asks.

“Who knows? It was easier to say than the popular ‘English tea sandwich.’’’

“Everything was invented in Torino?” William concludes.

Unlike panini, the tramezzini usually have mayonnaise. Almost all bars, train stations, and cafés serve a variety. Ed took to them right away, especially the tuna and olive for a mid-morning snack.

Spread out on the table, our books on Piemonte and the poems of Pavese. Never much of a café sitter, I could while away the morning like this. A well-dressed businessman grinds his foot over the balls of the gold bull. Not sure how that brings the good luck it’s reputed to.

We stroll along Via Garibaldi and Via Roma, checking out the designer shops (oh, no! William is attracted to Louis Vuitton belts). Torino has eighteen kilometers of covered walkways, a reminder that inclement weather can pour in from the Alps. The chic shops are punctuated by more appealing cafés in glass-roofed Galleria San Federico, where we happen upon Cinema Lux, an Art Nouveau theater. In smaller streets we find Libreria Internazionale Luxemburg, a vintage British bookstore and a cool contemporary café and art space.

Where are the tourists? we wonder. They’re all in Florence. We came to Torino last summer with William and loved every minute of the four days we spent blessedly free from mobs. We all agreed—we needed more time here. As we begin a trip into Piemonte, we decided to light here again.

What a fantastic place to bring a child or young adult! Highlights from our first visit:

We took a taxi out to the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile. Even if you’re not a car fan, you have to swoon at the design genius on display. The emphasis is on vintage Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo, though there are Bugattis, Ferraris, and others. A long-time Alfista (one who adores Alfas), Ed examined each.

Eataly: the Italian food emporium near the car museum. We walked from the car museum to there for lunch and to look at the amazing range of olive oil, pasta, honey, jam, wine, and other products, all from this country.

Museo Egizio: after Cairo, the largest Egyptian museum in the world. Torino began collecting in 1630, and now displays 6,500 items (with another 26,000 in storage). The museum is located right in the centro.

Museo Nazionale del Cinema in the Mole Antonelliana, where on the ground floor, you can watch movie clips in lounge chairs with headphones. You spiral up to three floors of changing displays; many are interactive, demonstrating the history of photography and film. It’s a lively tour. The glass-walled elevator takes you to the tower for a view over Torino and the Alps in the distance. I didn’t go; it looked claustrophobic and harrowing. Ed and William did, and they reported it was claustrophobic and harrowing.

Via Po: Stroll along this grand boulevard lined with palazzi and arrive at the Po River. The rarefied French influence of the House of Savoy, which ruled Italy from 1861 to 1946, is everywhere in Torino. A gaily lit string of cafés beckons as evening falls. A moment to time-travel to nineteenth-century Paris.

We are staying at the home of Pavese! By chance, I came across a listing for a B & B called La Luna e i Falò (The Moon and the Bonfires is the title of one of Pavese’s novels). I was shocked to see that the B & B had been his home. With awe, I reserved two of its three rooms. His own copies of his paperbacks lie on the hall table. His small writing room (or was it his dining room?) is now the guests’ sitting room. Our bedroom, furnished with antiques, blue toile fabrics, a table in front of a window, looks out at the graceful balconies that festoon the elegant houses across the street.

I open the window and look at what Pavese looked at. Where he smoked and smoked, and wrote and wrote. Where he sipped Campari and left his slippers by the chair. The current dining room, where we’re served afternoon tea and breakfast at round tables with flowers and silver, must have been his living room. There would have been books and paintings. If he appeared today, what would he think? Yes, the young woman who checked us in says, yes, he lived here in 1950 when he committed suicide. “Not at home,” she adds quickly. “He locked this door for the last time and checked into Hotel Roma near the train station. Overdose of sleeping pills. He was two weeks shy of forty-two.”

All that passion and romance and darkness and profundity and work silenced by a handful of pills. There’s an undercurrent of loss running through his poems but a swifter stream of longing and acute love for people. I tried this translation of his poem, “La Casa”:

The House

The man alone listens to the calm voice

with eyes half-closed, almost a breath

blowing on the face, a friendly breath

that rises, incredibly, from a time gone.

The man alone listens to the ancient voice

that his fathers, in their time, have heard, clear

and absorbed, a voice that like the green

of the ponds and the hills darkens at evening.

The man alone knows a shadow voice,

caressing, that rises in the calm tones

of a secret spring: he drinks it attentively,

eyes...

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Verlag
Crown
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0451497708
ISBN 13 
9780451497703
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
464
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchbär
info@buchbaer.de

Weberstr. 67
Osnabrück
49084
Deutschland

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