Both the French and the Italian Rivieras were a bit of a struggle. The whole area is peppered with "No dogs" and "No motorhomes" signs. We didn't feel welcome, but to be fair it's meant for people like Richard Burton and Sophia Loren, not for the likes of us.
So we headed south, calling at Genoa and the Cinque Terra towns, then left the coast for the hills of Tuscany. Florence was the first foreign place we visited together when we first met, and Richard had been to the area on a family holiday many years before. We were looking forward to a more leisurely exploration of the area and to revisit some old favourites.
The Cinque Terra towns were a revelation – we'd never heard of them although they are clearly a huge tourist destination, and well visited by Americans and Japanese tourists even at this time of year. They are a UNESCO World Heritage site and consist of five picturesque little fishing villages clinging to the steep, rugged coastline of Liguria and linked by a very scenic coastal path and a train line. We visited Manarola, the last but one of the Cinque Terre towns, as it had a free place for motorhomes to park for the night & get water. Our plan was to walk along the 'Via del Amore' to Riomaggiore, the most southerly of the 5 towns, on one day and then walk in the other direction along the coastal path as far as we could manage the next day. However, the heavy rain had caused landslides and the coastal path was closed, all except the 'Via del Amore' between Manarola and Riomaggiore, so that was all we did in the end.
Manarola is an extremely pretty town with pastel coloured houses tumbling over each other down to the water, a bit reminiscent of some places in Cornwall. The houses run steeply down to a small stone slipway crowded with beached boats and a tiny rocky harbour, all set off by sea cliffs and vine covered hillsides. As it was a beautifully sunny day, the scenery along the 'Via del Amore' walk was at its best, and there weren't too many other tourists to share it with. We walked along a winding pathway with gorgeous views down the cliffs to the little pebbly coves and crashing waves below. The path cut through the cliff, which overhung the path in some places with netting holding the rocks up. One part was a tunnel which was filled with romantic graffiti (we've noticed that a very high proportion of graffitti in Italy is romantic) – some of which was printed on postcards in the local shops. Everywhere there were padlocks with couples' names / initials carved on attached to fences, railings, netting, benches etc. Some people who hadn't brought padlocks (or hadn't bought them from the gift shop!) wrote on bits of cloth, post it notes, bits of plastic bag ….. We just took photos and stopped at the pathside Café Amore for coffee, on a terrace glued to the cliff face looking out over the turquoise Mediterranean.
Life in the Cinque Terra must have been miserably hard in the past. The towns cling to such steep hillsides that the only way in and out must have been by boat (and their harbours aren't great) or a real hands and knees scramble over the mountains. In the late nineteenth century the railway was pushed through the coast just above sea level, then road access followed. Tourism has brought a new prosperity, but the National Park authorities and the local agricultural cooperative are trying hard to keep it alive as a working agricultural area, not just a theme park. They still raise grapes on steep narrow stone terraces as they always did, but now the wine sells to tourists at a premium price, and now the hillsides are scribbled over with nifty mini-monorails that carry workers and goods up and down the terraces.
The beauty of the Cinque Terre is a happy accident, coming from the shape of the land and the efforts of generations of struggling farmers. One house in Manarola had been decorated (in the 1990s) with frescoes, and it looked quite out of place - this wasn't a town that could have afforded such luxuries. Elsewhere we've visited riches, luxury, ostentation and oneupmaship have been very much on display.
As always when we visit Italy, we're stunned by the richness of their architectural and artistic heritage. Where a typical British town might have a Norman church (probably gutted by Cromwell, rebuilt by the Victorians) and maybe a few walls remaining from the castle (probably blown up by Cromwell, quarried by the Georgians), a typical Italian town seems to be crowded with churches from the same period (clad in marble and filled with frescoes, mosaics and paintings), palaces, monasteries and grand public buildings from every period from the Roman Republic to Mussolini.
We walked in pouring rain through the old port city of Genoa, past gloomy streetfronts that at first sight looked badly in need of a lick of paint. Then we noticed carved crests peeking out here and there, and patches of designs on the walls under the eaves. The more we looked the more we saw; Renaissance frescoes of aristocratic crests and imitation architectural detail revealing that these tired old blocks of flats, halal butchers and mobile phone shops were actually the splendid palaces of the merchants of the Genoese Republic, fallen on hard times.
There's no point describing the 'Field of Miracles' in Pisa as it'll all be in your guide book, and anyway you won't believe it until you see it. Suffice to say there's much more to Pisa than the leaning tower (and much more to the leaning tower than its lean).
There was however one thing I noticed that I've not seen anyone else mention. The walls of Pisa cathedral have incorporated chunks of marble taken from ancient Roman buildings, slotted in un-selfconsciously with no attempt to hide what they are. In one place the words 'Caesar Augustus' are visible, upside down, but as clear and crisp as if they were newly carved. If any one of these stones turned up anywhere in Wales it would cause a sensation and probably be the centrepiece of a new museum, but here they're just architectural salvage.
There's also no point describing the Duomo, Baptistry and Campanille in Florence for the same reason. We remembered them fondly from our first visit, but this time they still took our breath away. Even though they were built over a period of centuries, the archtects still manged to create a harmonious ensemble. From a distance, you get an impression of shining green and white marble and, in spite of the bulk (these things are huge), a very cheerful light hearted atmosphere. The emphasis seems to be on celebration rather than on guilt. Close up, you can see that every surface is covered in intricate ornamentation; from knotwork borders to grinning grotesque faces to scenes of daily life in the fourteenth century – you could explore these stones for months.
We're pleased that we happened to visit these towns in the right order; Pisa and San Michele's church in Lucca are especially spectacular if you haven't just arrived from Florence.
While we were walking around Pisa we fell into conversation with an English man who lives there. He made a passing comment that the Italians don't make enough of their monuments, complaining that there were splendid churches in Pisa that were crumbling. It's true that we stumbled across, for example, a church in Lucca with a facade covered in a tenth century romanesque mosaic that hadn't even made it onto the tourist office's map.
But to be fair, my impression is that the Italians have no chance of protecting everything they have. These riches must also be a burden in a place where you can't even paint your kebab shop because it's covered in sixteenth century frescoes and you can't dig a hole to put up a telephone post without hitting a mosaic floor, a temple, a tomb or a palace.
I'm not sure I fully understand all the reasons that Italy is so rich in monuments, but a few historical factors must have contributed. At particular times these towns must have been incredibly rich, building splendid things, and then falling onto hard times that meant they couldn't afford to knock them down to build something new. Towns like Swansea or Cardiff, in contrast, were at their richest during the Industrial Revolution, so most of their relatively meagre collection of mediaeval monuments disappeared to make way for streets of Victorian offices. Italian society seems to have been dominated by competing states and competing families who used art and architecture to show off to each other (when they weren't slaughtering each other). More prosaically, most of Mediaeval and Renaissance Britain's secular buildings were made of oak, hazel laths and plaster, so easily gave way to rot, beetles and fire. For some reason (Wealth? Ostentation?) Italy seems to have built in limestone, brick and marble that doesn't disappear unless someone really wants it to.
So ... yes we are having a good time.
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