Lake Nemi was sacred to the virgin goddess Diana, huntress and protector of childbirth the remains of her shrine have only been partially excavated.  The moon is associated with her and the lake is called Speculum Dianae (Diana’s Mirror) – it particularly captivated the poets and composers who made their homes here.

The Roman emperors recreated naval battles known as  Naumachie on nearby Lake Albano, a form of gladiatorial spectacle involving killing and actual sinkings. When they found submerged boats on Lake Nemi in the 1930s they were presumed to be pleasure boats rather than warships as Lake Nemi was a sacred lake. They were raised and a museum built, but sadly they were destroyed by accident during WW2.

Section of ancient Roman wall in Diana’s shrine, showing ‘opus reticulatum’ and brickwork

Diana’s altar, still in use by modern adherents to her cult, offerings of fruit, prayers and candles.

Nemi is also associated with the myth of Rex Nemorensis, the story of which begins and ends James Frazer’s famous work of anthropology, The Golden Bough (1890). The story goes that the high priest of the shrine at Nemi to Diana, achieved the role through mortal combat with his predecessor; he in turn would be slain by his successor, and so on through the ages. As Macaulay put it:

Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.

The contender had first to prove his metal by plucking a golden bough (most likely mistletoe growing on the sacred oak) from Diana’s Grove, thus the origin of the legend. Recently, archeologists discovered the fossilised remains of an oak within the sanctuary. Cannabis was cultivated on the shores in ancient times and may have been involved in sacred rituals.

statue of Diana in Nemi village

Nemi, the main street

Strawberries both wild and cultivated

Patrick holds up the famous bread, baked in wood-fired ovens, in nearby Genzano (with a wild boar sausage necklace).

Nemi on the distant hill and Lake Nemi in 1831

A fanciful view of Lake Nemi in The Golden Bough by JMW Turner (1834)

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The Val D’Orcia is one of the most famous valleys in the world even though the name itself may not mean much. Tourists have travelled the Roman road called the via Cassia since the 16th century on the Grand Tour, but before them it was trod by pilgrims on their way to Rome and before that the Roman Legions. In fact scenes from The Gladiator were filmed here.

The Grand Tour

The Medici family constructed Post Houses along the road to welcome the Grand Tourists on their travels. We visited the Osteria Grande in Radicofani and photographed its abandoned interior in 2017. Personally I love photographing uninhabited ghostly buildings. Constructed in 1584 , it has welcomed through its doors almost every celebrity to have ever visited Rome before the age of rail. Mozart was here with his father Leopold, Charles Dickens complimented the spacious, carpeted quarters with its open fire. The Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph II, Stendhal, Chateaubriand and many more stopped over.

Medici Post House portico, Radicofani  with rings for tethering horses. Known as Osteria Grossa, the Great Hostelry. The coach house door is at the far end.

The Medici Portico, fountain and horse trough from 1603. The Six Balls are the Medici Arms. This was sketched by William Turner in 1828 when he stayed here.

The Medici Hostelry from the road

The Chilly Interior

Medici Hostelry Entrance Hall scaled by scores of celebrated artists, writers, musicians and dandies.

Kitchen and Dining hall

Radicofani stands at 800m and it was notoriously cold in the travelling season of Spring and Autumn. This was the only fireplace other than the Popes’ quarters so very often  ‘milord’ would sleep in front of this fire with his servants rather than in the door-less, unheated rooms upstairs.  An alternative was to sleep in the basement in his coach warmed by the horses.

The Basement was warmer

stables in basement of Medici Hostelry

The Loggia affords a  fine view up to Radicofani town with its castle above.

stairs leading to sleeping quarters

Popes had it better

The Popes’ apartment had a fireplace with a chariot race fresco above, and even doors. Did the Medici ever let it to lesser mortals?  After all, only two popes ever stayed here, Pius VI  and Pius VII (no relation). Pius VI is one of the real people who features in De Sade‘s  1797 novel ‘Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded‘. His audience with Juliette ends in an orgy involving the pope himself.  The Marquis  also stayed here, could they possibly have met? Napoleon, though notoriously anticlerical himself, imprisoned De Sade for the depravities of the novel for the rest of his life.  Casanova  was also a guest.  And was this the fireplace Dickens described?

Popes had ‘mod cons’,  even a bathtub

Pope Pius VII passed a night 3rd November 1809 suffering from a light fever on his way as a French prisoner to crown Napoleon in Paris.

The art critic Brian Sewell made an entertaining documentary ‘Brian Sewell’s Grand Tour’ in which he reads from entertaining actual accounts of the ‘milords’ who stayed here. We forget how tough travelling was before the railway age,  even for the wealthy. Later he also visits Orvieto where he makes some amusing comments within the cathedral. Highly recommended, unless you find his voice too much – somebody said, ‘He even makes the Queen sound common.’

Read Part One – Grand Tour: Radicofani on the Cassia – here

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A fallen woman flying on a devil’s back, one of the images by Signorelli that so stimulated Freud

Freud, Orvieto and Signorelli

 Freud, Orvieto, Signorelli: the Renaissance frescoes by Luca Signorelli had a profound effect upon Freud. In the entrance hall of Freud’s last home in London, on the right, is a picture of Tivoli, a reminder that Italy was his favourite holiday destination and his spiritual home.

Gardens of Villa Este, Tivoli

50 years after his death in London a collection of black and white Italian postcards was found in a drawer. Purchased during his first of three visits to Orvieto in 1897 they depict frescoes by Luca Signorelli from the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto cathedral. His encounter with the Renaissance artist from Cortona had a profound effect upon him that profoundly influenced his life and work.

When Freud arrived in Orvieto 120 years ago in 1897 he was going through a turbulent period for several reasons: he was mourning his father who had died in December; partly as a result of this he was in the process of jettisoning his conclusion that hysteria was caused by paternal seduction in childhood turning instead towards the idea of infant sexuality; curiously, the man who sought the source of almost everything in sex had recently set out on a life of celibacy after siring six children in nine years.  Furthermore, two years before he had embarked upon self analysis, then an uncharted journey into the unknown, and in 1896 coined the term psychoanalysis.

Orvieto Duomo and Stars of David

The wonders that Freud saw when he walked into the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto Cathedral. The Fra Angelico frescoes on the ceiling, the Signorelli on the walls.

The frescoing of the walls was undertaken by Luca Signorelli in 1499 aged about 54. Signorelli’s vision is apocalyptic.

The Antichrist panel left and the Elect in paradise right. Fra Angelico frescoes above on the vaulted ceiling.

On the left is the preaching of the Antichrist followed by the elect cavorting, largely naked, in paradise.

Antichrist left and the Elect in Paradise right. Bottom left corner are Signorelli himself left with hat and Fra Angelico behind, both in black.

Other walls and lunettes show scenes of angels smiting the ungodly with death rays – in fact there is a lot of smiting going on all over the chapel, a veritable orgy of sex and violence.

the wicked smitten by death rays from on high

On the wall opposite are two tableau, both a riot of eroticism and naked flesh, not perhaps what what one would expect in a church, the damned thrown into inferno by devils followed by the saved hauling themselves up from their graves to eternal life.

The damned thrown into hell.

The resurrection of the dead

The tableau that seems to have exerted the greatest fascination upon Freud is the Antichrist. An unusual subject, it was commissioned by the powerful Monaldeschi, a Guelf family, always close to the papacy and in opposition to the Ghibellines who supported the Emperor; the scene is a polemic against heresy, especially the Cathars who had been particularly bothersome in Orvieto, but also against Jews.

The devil whispers to Antichrist, probably based on Savonarola. On left the usurious Jew bribes a blonde.

Freud had been aware of antisemitism since his childhood in Moravia when his father had told his young son that he had humbly turned the other cheek when accosted by an aggressive antisemite on the street. Ever since, Freud had admired more martial father-figures like Cromwell, Hannibal and significantly, Moses.

A spectator watches the mayhem above. He is surrounded by ‘grotesques’, painted just after the recent discovery of the grottoes of Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome.

The Catholic Church at the time saw Jews not merely as infidels, but Jesus-killing heretics. Freud, who was suffering emotional and intellectual turmoil after his father’s death, stood surrounded by Signorelli’s apocalyptic maelstrom and saw the son, Christ, effectively slaying the father, Judaism.

A smitten Dante figure

Self-portrait of Luca Signorelli surrounded by mayhem looks out of the frame. Behind him stands Fra Angelico or perhaps not – it could be the Archdeacon.

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In April 2015 we went on a photo tour to the ruined city of Castro.

Castro before destruction painted around 1567

415 years ago a city in Central Italy the capital of the Duchy of Castro was totally destroyed, not by earthquake or flood, but by the Pope himself egged on by his sister in law who had a pernicious influence over him. The malevolent female appears to have been motivated solely by personal spite against her erstwhile neighbours, the Farnese family.

Castro as it is now, just a wooded hill. From here cannon bombarded the city in 1649

Nowadays it seems as though the world is going from bad to worse, but perhaps we just have to admit it is just the usual cycle of civilisation being assaulted from without and within by barbarism; after all 25 years ago we still had the Berlin Wall and the constant threat of nuclear war; 70 years ago the Second World War was drawing to a close, but hundreds of thousands were still to die in the last months; a hundred years ago the Armenian genocide began in the Ottoman Empire, and Italy despite observing the blood letting in France, Belgium, Gallipoli and Russia stood poised to enter the war against its erstwhile ally Austria in May 1915.

Castro, the remains of St Savino church, patron saint of Castro. The bells now hang in St Agnes church, Piazza Navona Rome.

However, things in the mid 17th century were almost as bad with unusually cold winters, caused by decreased sunspot activity and meteor showers resulting in famine all over the world, and widespread wars. Bellicosity is usually attributed to men, but in 1649 a fearsome Italian female was to cause grievous harm purely out of spite. Donna Olimpia Maidalchini was the sister in law of Pope Doria Pamphilj, Innocent X . Venal, mean, unscrupulous, felonious and avaricious as it was conceivable to be, yet she somehow insinuated herself into the Pope’s confidence and possibly his bed as well.

San Savino church, open charnel chambers in the foreground still containing the bones of the forbears of Castro

She was particularly antagonistic towards the powerful Farnese family. She convinced the Pope to initiate a dispute over the placement of a bishop to the Dukedom of Castro, the Farnese seat. The luckless bishop was murdered possibly by Farnese agents and Donna Olimpia now had her excuse.

Patrick Nicholas stands amongst the ruins in 2013 which have now been cleared to beautify the ruined city

The same area now after spending €445,000 of EU funds – a sea of cement.

She convinced Pope Innocent to send his German mercenaries to lay siege to Castro in the summer of 1649. When the city fell the order went out that nothing was to remain more than knee high. Explosives blew up fortifications, cables pulled down principal buildings, carvings and statues were cast down into the ravines. It all sounds horribly familiar, but this was a papal army destroying a Christian city a mere 100km north of Rome.

Restoration at Castro. Faux iron railing beloved of these restoration projects

The surviving population, including its Jewish community, was dispersed amongst local towns, the forest took hold and Castro, a city that had been continuously inhabited since Etruscan times and before, was given the epithet The Carthage of the Maremma.

…but rescue is on the way, public funding, hooray!

However, the destruction has not stopped. The ruins have been plundered of treasures over the last 40 years. Fireplaces from Castro end up in refurbished country houses, 16th century doorways now open onto manicured Tuscan lawns, and frescoes revealed by recent legal excavations of enthusiastic, unpaid volunteers have disappeared onto the international art market, while what remains is being either ‘renovated’ with tons of cement, metres of plastic sheeting, and dozens of pointless mock iron railings, as a way of tapping into Euro-funding, or is disappearing fast through neglect.

Before

……. and half a million €uro after. Note that the paving is no longer there. Probably now in some local councilor’s rockery.

The neglect round the corner is  astonishing – how could so much be spent on a useless ‘restoration’ when round the corner is a scene of utter desolation?

Santa Maria Intus Civitatem, open to the elements and crumbling, is not 25 metres from the ‘restored’ area. The protective plastic sheeting  is all but destroyed.

a modern crucifixion

The frescoes that have not already been stolen are crumbling and fading

shotgun wound

After Castro was completely destroyed the Papal army placed a stele in the middle of what remained of Piazza Maggiore, “QUI FU CASTRO” Here was Castro. Even that has disappeared. Maria has been weeping ever since, but she will not be weeping much longer, she will be gone along with almost everything there was worth weeping for.

fast fading weeping Virgin in St Maria’s church

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Near Orvieto on a ridge looking over a deep valley into Southern Tuscany stands a sinister looking castle in the mock-Gothic style of the late nineteenth century. It once belonged to the immensely rich Cahen family, still remembered in Orvieto where a square is named after them. The castle was intended to be the country home of Conte (later Marquess) Edoardo Cahen and his beautiful Anglo-Greek wife Christine, but neither of them were ever to live there. Édouard Cahen d’Anvers died in Rome in 1894 before the castle was completely refurbished; she separated from him and died in Meran in 1884. Now Castle Cahen in Torre Alfina is uninhabited, used only for private functions.

Creepy Places to photograph in Tuscany: Cahen Castle, Torre Alfina, Orvieto, Italy

Edoardo Cahen, scion of the Cahens d’Anvers, belonged to the cosmopolitan Jewish European aristocracy – akin to royalty but with a lot more cash – that moved effortlessly from one country to another, spoke several languages fluently, had branches of the same family in several capitals, and having made their fortunes in banking, commerce and insurance were happy to devote themselves to cultural pursuits rather than huntin’, shootin and fishin’ which were the most common pastimes amongst the older established aristocracies around Europe. The Cahens d’Anvers became rich through the novel idea of using the pigeon post between Antwerp and Amsterdam to steal a march on their stock market rivals. Edoardo Cahen was granted a concession to build part of the Prati neighbourhood of Rome after the Unification of Italy.

Alice (L) and Elisabeth Cahen (R) by Renoir. Elisabeth was murdered in Auschwitz.

Edoardo’s three nieces were painted by Renoir. However, his brother Louis disliked the painting of Alice and Elisabeth so much it was hung in the servant’s quarters; what is more he quibbled and stalled over paying the bill, 1,500 francs (about 10-15,000 Euros today), arousing a previously un-manifested anti-Semitism in the artist. The Cahens may have been notable patrons of the arts, but this incident perhaps demonstrates that their taste was possibly rather arriviste.

Irène’s daughter Béatrice along with her husband and two young children died in Auschwitz as did her sister Elisabeth and other members of the family. The painting became part of Herman Göring’s illicit collection.

Irène Cahen, Eduardo’s neice by Renoir

Edoardo’s father Joseph Mayer Cahen d’Anvers had lent considerable funds to finance the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy, and a grateful nation bestowed upon him the title of Conte. The influence of capital on the fate of nations is often underestimated. Edoardo Cahen then developed a large area of Rome, even before it became the capital of Italy, near the Vatican an area that was to be known as Prati.

After these exertions, he decided to retire with his wife to a tumbledown castle near Orvieto in the wilds of the Umbria-Latium borders. She was Christine Spartali the younger of two highly educated and beautiful sisters who moved in the artistic beau-monde of 1860s London. Christine’s sister Marie was considered by the Pre-Raphaelites, ‘one of the most beautiful women of her generation’. Indeed the poet Algernon Swinburne was so smitten he exclaimed, ‘She is so beautiful I feel as if I could sit down and cry.’ It has to be said however that he was quite wont to weeping.

La Principesse, now in the Peacock Room, Freer Collection, Washington D.C.

Marie Spartali had been painted by Rossetti and went on to become a notable professional painter for the rest of her long life, whilst Christine modelled for Whistler in 1864 – she was the ‘Principesse du Pays de la Porcellaine’ possibly his most famous painting. She was photographed by the most famous portrait photographer of her day, Julia Margaret Cameron sometime between 1865 and 70 probably in the Isle of White where they were neighbours. Exposures were long in those days so it was hard to manifest unbridled joy, but there is no denying that she has a more than usual Pre-Raphelite mournfulness about her.

The long exposures required by Cameron’s photography were as of naught compared with posing for Whistler: twice a week for 6 months till eventually Christine fell ill and had to be replaced with a stand-in to finish the picture. Besides the Whistler picture (which Spartali père did not like and refused to purchase) many of Marie Spartali’s paintings of typically Pre-Raphaelite subjects seem to portray her younger sister. This obsessive interest in one model was common amongst the Pre-Raphaelites.

Christine Spartali, Julia Margaret Cameron about the time she met Cahen

Both Spartali girls were exceptionally tall (Marie was 190cm) and highly educated, but whereas the elder sister studied painting under Ford Maddox Brown and became a noted painter for the rest of her long life, Christine never pursued a career. Marie fascinated Edward Burne Jones who portrayed her in his Cupid Delivering Psyche – in both male and female roles; he was known for his exotic sexual tastes.

Cupid and Psyche, Burne-Jones

Christine married Cahen in 1869 in Chelsea despite the opposition of her Greek Orthodox father, the Greek consul general in London. How did they meet? Did Cahen move in the arty world of the Pre-Raphaelites and their like? We have no picture of him and I cannot find any account of his time in London. One of his brothers, Albert, was a reasonably well-known composer in France who studied under César Franck.

Path leading to the Cahen mausoleum through The Sasseto wood

At first they had enjoyed the cosmopolitan life in Naples, Rome and Paris where their 2 boys were born, but it seems in Rome the marriage began to go wrong and by 1880 she was attempting – unsuccessfully – to divorce Cahen. Her health deteriorated, possibly owing to the depressing prospect of a chatelaine’s life in darkest Umbria, but at least this illness brought about a partial reconciliation with her father. She took to chloral hydrate and alcohol. According to Rossetti’s brother Michael she died miserable and alone in Tirol of catalepsy in 1884, though it is more likely that the chloral carried her off aged just 37.

Edoardo Cahen, lover of Greco Roman art, took the bizarre decision to build himself a mock gothic mausoleum which would not have looked out of place in Highgate Cemetery.

Cahen bought Torre Alfina in 1881, but it took 20 years to make it truly habitable by which time Cahen and his wife were both dead and there was practically nothing left of the original mediaeval building – what we see today is a mock gothic pile.

Cahen Mausoleum

Cahen Mausoleum in Sasseto Wood

Rather like the fictional Moisè Finzi-Contini who built a monstrous sepulchre looking like a set from Aida that all Ferrara’s Jewish community found absurd, Edoardo Cahen lover of Greco Roman art took the bizarre decision to build himself a mock gothic mausoleum which would not have looked out of place in Highgate Cemetery (where incidentally Rossetti’s wife Elizabeth Sidall is buried).

It lies in the forest a kilometre or so below the mock Gothic castle which he never lived to see completed – he died in 1894 aged 62.

Peeking through the door to the open tomb

The earthly remains of Édouard Cahen d’Anvers, Born 1832 died, Rome, 3 May 1894 in the 62nd year of his life as it says on the coffin.

His body was embalmed by the Vatican’s own undertaker; his coffin placed on the top shelf in a vault designed to host generations of Cahens, it lies alone. The sons never brought their mother’s remains to the sepulcher. She was buried in the Spartali vault in London. The two sons left Italy with the introduction of the racial laws in 1938 when Jews were banned from owning property amongst other restrictions.

Edoardo Cahen’s coffin amongst on the top of otherwise empty shelves in the Mausoleum

photographer Patrick Nicholas is reflected in the water

The Writing on the Wall

The two Cahen sons left Italy following The Racial Manifesto of 1938 when Jews were stripped of their citizenship, barred from the professions, excluded from banking, education and the civil service; they were also liable to have their property confiscated. Italian Jewry had been emancipated during the process of the unification of Italy between 1860 and 1870, but now Mussolini determined to cement the Berlin Rome Axis by bringing Italian racial laws into line with Germany’s. 6,000 Jews emigrated 1938-1943. Of those that stayed something over 6,000  perished out of a pre-1938 population of  46,500.

Racial Laws in cartoon form with evident racialist stereoptypes in a fascist paper.

Rome Berlin Axis, Castiglione del Lago station, Trasimene

In 1943-4 the castle was used by the Germans as a command centre and suffered bomb damage as a result. The contents were auctioned off in 1969. Neither Cahen sons had children.

During wartime the mausoleum sacrificed its iron railings and recently the tomb was broken into, the grave stone smashed, the coffin desecrated.

The castle until recently belonged to an absentee landlord, the uncouth, corpulent, criminal bankrupt, Luciano Gaucci who starting from humble beginnings with a cleaning business in Rome, graduated to money laundering on a grand scale and onto wholesale corruption in the football business. He lists his enthusiasms as sex, horses and football.

The castle is now in the hands of a trust and is visitable.

The Cahen mausoleum

The abandoned swimming pool in the Sasseto grounds near the castle. Neither of the two Cahen sons had children.

Garden sculpture, the grinning faun in the Hermetic garden

The Hermetic garden

For those who have a taste for the sinister, we can include in our tour of places to photograph in Tuscany, the creepy Castle Cahen and its mock Gothic tomb in the woods.

Contact me for more info.

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Castelluccio di Norcia is well known the world over amongst photographers for its picturesque vales of wild flowers at all times of the year – except when it is under snow which at 1500m is for most of the winter.

It is a bit of a trek to get there from Orvieto (around 2.5 hours) but we do pass through some of the most spectacular scenery in Italy not to mention the beautiful Umbrian city of Spoleto, home of the Two Worlds Festival every July.

Castellucio on the hill in the distance

The gentle slopes and olive groves of lower Umbria give way to furious rivers beloved of rafters rushing through deep limestone gorges flanked by mysterious dark forests worthy of Dante. This is the Umbria of Renaissance artists and pious people, saints …….and swine, after all the town of Norcia (Nursia) is famous all over Italy for its pork products known popularly as norcineria.

Spoleto Porta Fuga from which Hannibal’s army was repulsed in 217 BC

Brancaleone da Norcia pork-butcher’s shop

Curiously Norcia was once famous all over Europe since mediaeval times for its itinerant surgeons.  Surgery was prohibited amongst the clergy so the pig farmers of Norcia and nearby Preci who were already experienced castrators of livestock, turned their hands to gall bladder and cataract surgery and after 1588 with Pope Sisto’s ban on female opera singers, castration of boys. In fact the history of castration may go back much further into prehistory when ritual castration was carried out in these Sibilline Mountains as part of the cult of Cibele.

Gall stones were excruciatingly painful and extremely common amongst populations given to eating predominantly vegetables and pulses. Even a highly experienced surgeon was unlikely to achieve a success rate of 30% in gall stone removal.

It was a Norcia surgeon who operated successfully on the cataracts of Elizabeth I of England.

Siculo Coronation of the Virgin 1541

Surgery and butchery, not necessarily combined, brought wealth to the area and one of the delights of Italy is the way Italians even in out of the way places invested that money, not in the equivalent of BMWs and fancy watches, but in magnificent works of art. We opened the door of a church and there above the altar was Siculo’s Coronation of the Virgin. Absent for 25 years after the ruinous 1979 earthquake, it was restored only in 2005 by which time the locals had despaired of ever seeing it again.

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The Val d’Orcia,  famous and  beloved site of modern photographers and artists in Tuscany,  to the traveller of yore it was just a desolate region to be got through.

For nigh on a thousand years Rome had been the goal of pilgrims following the ancient Via Cassia known in the Middle Ages as the Via Francigena, the road of the Franks.

Val d’Orcia from the ancient Via Cassia, road to Rome

From the mid 17thC until the railway age mainly British and Prussian aristocrats followed the same route on the Grand Tour, a heady mix of culture, adventure and sex that could last months if not years.

The abandoned Medici Post House -horse trough on the left

To this end coaching inns or post-houses were built every 20km or so. The only more or less intact surviving example is the Medici Post House atop a hill south of Sienna on what were the borders of the Papal States at Radicofani.

The dilapidated,melancholic but beautiful facade

The Val d’Orcia may be beloved of modern photographers and artists with its windswept clay hills each one apparently topped by a picturesque farmhouse with a row of cypresses, but to the traveller of yore it was just a desolate region to be got through.

Radicofani in the badlands south of Sienna, a staging post on the Grand Tour

“Such is the region before arriving at Monte Radicofani, a terrible black hill on whose peak we had to lodge for the night. The ascent was extremely arduous and difficult…”  Thomas Gray who accompanied  Horace Walpole through Italy in 1740.

Horse trough with Medici arms: 6 balls like those of the pawnbroker represent banking.

Travellers diaries are full of lurid descriptions of the avidity, deviousness,  unscrupulousness and possibly worst of all for men of their station, impertinence of the ostlers and postilions. What is more they were all armed with long knives and more than ready to use them.

Here is a page from William Turner’s sketchbook of Radicofani with the fountain in the foreground, the town and castle in the background. He appears to have been sitting on the first floor loggia. Sadly the town received a battering in World War II seeing as it was atop a hill from which the entire valley could be surveyed.

The Medici fountain by William Turner 1828.

The Tate Gallery has wrongly described the sketch above as a view of Orvieto. He was in fact on his way to Orvieto where he was to paint one of his most celebrated Italian landscapes.

horse hitching ring

The castle topped hill can be seen from far off in every direction and though it may seem romantic to us, in the past it must have had a dark and sinister air. Apart from anything else this was bandit country and at the very least they were likely to be fleeced by the locals.

Entrance to the stables

The ‘milord’ may have had practically unlimited funds, but travel was tough even for him in those days. A night in a place like the Posta Medicea would have been by our standards uncivilised. It stands at a breezy (in summer) 800m  (2500ft), the rest of the year it was windswept and freezing.

cellar and stables

Rooms had no doors, the windows no glass, bedding was infested with parasites, rooms perishingly cold, the food despicable – all so unpleasant in fact that ‘milord ‘ often preferred to spend the night with his own blankets in his carriage with his horse in the cellars. There is no reason to suppose that other post houses were very different, they varied only in their elevation.

When we went there in 2013 on a Camera Etrusca tour round the Val d’Orcia we found the cellars easy enough to get into, but sadly the rest of the building upstairs is securely locked.

Camera Etrusca photo tours and workshop  has always a day dedicated to see the Val d’Orcia and the area around Sienna. We normally start on Fridays. A small group will be guided by Patrick Nicholas to discover hidden treasure to photograph. Read more on Typical one week photo workshop holiday in Tuscany and Umbria – Italy or contact us to book a custom tour or more info.

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The Rome workshop started on the first day with a visit to The Vatican a short walk from our B&B in Prati. We arrived at St Peter’s at 9 to avoid the crowds and only had to queue for the metal detectors for about 10 minutes.

The Bernini columns like embracing arms either side of St Peter’s Basilica

St Peter’s Basilica so impressive, the cost of construction so huge, that the church resorted to selling indulgences, a practice that  was to so upset a young monk, Martin Luther that he nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg church – the first volley of the Reformation.

The Bernini Baldachin reputedly stands over St Peter’s tomb

Some of the most notable architects and artists of the age contributed to its design: Bramante, Sangallo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Bernini to name just a few; while some of the great surviving buildings of Ancient Rome contributed materials: the Colosseum half demolished to provide stone, marble stripped from various thermal baths, and the bronze from the Pantheon portico used to build Bernini’s Baldachin over the altar

under the papal crossed keys a mother suffers the pains of childbirth beneath the Baldachin

One of the curiosities of St Peter’s is this series of sculpted faces of a woman. Each column  has a pedestal with the Barberini coat of arms (Urban VIII) above which is visible a mother undergoing the progressive pains of childbirth; the eighth and last is a cherub. Could this curious and not to mention out of place series be an analogy not to the nine months, but the nine years it took Bernini to realise the monument?

Vatican superstar: Michelangelo’s Pietà

The undeniable superstar is Michelangelo’s Pietà, the only work of art that the modest artist ever signed, and subsequently regretted, in marked contrast to the popes themselves who put their names, and often coats of arms, everywhere. Sadly the vandalisation by a maniac in 1972 means it is impossible to approach the sculpture. Mary’s nose was hammered off and replaced with a marble transplant from her back. The Pietà was designed as a monument for a French cardinal and belongs to a northern European rather than Italian tradition. David’s iconic painting Morte de Marat lying stabbed in his bathtub was modelled upon it.

narrow stairs to the cupola

As we climbed the stairs to the top of the cupola I remembered Anita Ekberg’s call of “Marcello, Marcello!” in La Dolce Vita.

In fact the film shows Marcello Mastroianni descending several spiral staircases, a metaphor one presumes for his Dantesque descent into the moral underworld of 1950s Rome.

Observation platform around the lantern at the cupola’s summit

No chance of throwing yourself off here.

a fallen umbrella lies on the Vatican roof

Outside the cupola’s lantern you can see the serpentine queues winding below to the entrance. Pope’s names adorn every corner of the Vatican, even here on the lead roof, every window has an embossed papal coat of arms.

Saints wave from on high, my lens hood in the foreground

This is where I dropped my lens hood through the bars, only to roll down the roof out of reach – to be retrieved by a kind custodian.

sculptor on the roof with pugilist’s nose

A modest sized bust of a modest man – Michelangelo, sculptor, painter, poet and architect.

All year round we run private tours with photo workshops in Rome. These tours can be customized according to your needs.
You can see an example of a typical weekend photo workshop in the Eternal City, starting first thing Friday morning, finishing Sunday late afternoon, on my Rome Private Tour photo workshop. If you are in Rome for only a short time, our private photo tour will help you to really appreciate having such a fun and interesting encounter. With much to see and a great deal to learn in just three days, the Rome workshop will intensify your experience.

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Orvieto is girded by city walls, fortresses, towers and gatehouses. You can walk the entire circumference below the walls on an easy, well made path in a little over an hour – there are stunning views across the Umbrian countryside towards the Appenines and the golden hills of Tuscany a mere 20km away. There is no country quite like Italy for its processions and street festivals. The townsfolk dress up in gorgeous mediaeval costume for Corpus Domini held every year sometime in June.

Gorgeously costumed knight

Cavalier and………….

Round head

Bolsena on the lake

The festival is part of the celebration of the Miracle of Bolsena. The story goes that a Bohemian monk returning from  pilgrimage to Rome in 1263 had a crisis of faith, he no longer believed in transubstantiation (something similar happened to Luther with quite different results). Stopping to conduct mass in Bolsena on the shores of Lake Bolsena the host bled over the napkin. The bishop was summoned to witness the miracle, followed by the Pope who ordained that Orvieto Cathedral be especially built, starting in 1290, to house the miraculous relic. This is paraded through the city every year  on the nearest Sunday to Corpus Christi  (Corpus Domini), accompanied by knights, dames and damsels ……..and children.

Fresco in Orvieto Cathedral illustrating the legendary events concerning the miracle of Bolsena. The pope, Urban IV then resident in Orvieto, is dressed in starry yellow robes. Kneeling, he meets the bishop who has come from Lake Bolsena (the blue in the background) on the Bridge below Orvieto where he sees the blood stained linen ‘corporale’ for the first time.

Corpus Domini, Orvieto

The Holy Relic of the Bolsena Miracle in procession

Corpus Domini is for all ages

The young dame

The old Dame

Orvieto’s gothic Cathedral from across the valley

Corpus Domini Festival in Orvieto is spread over 2 days. The Dames and Damsels on Saturday afternoon, the knights, notaries and grandees Sunday morning. A wonderful opportunity to photograph costumes, take portraits, revel in folk lore, observe religious devotion and be with people having a wonderful time!  A photography workshop in Italy could not  be based in a more appealing place than Ovieto, and in a better time than June to enjoy the light and the colours. Camera Etrusca Corpus Domini Photo Workshops are held every year but the date varies. In 2019 it will be the weekend of  22/23 June. The workshop starts Friday 20 June.

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St John the Baptist’s Church, San Lorenzo Vecchio, Lake Bolsena, from afar

Until the 1920s malaria was the scourge of the Italy. Often entire communities were decimated because the origins of the disease were unknown. The name Malaria comes from the belief that bad air (lit. mal aria) was the cause. In English it was commonly called the Ague.

Church of San Lorenzo Vecchio

One solution was to move the town away from the pestilential air to higher ground, often to a healthy area called piano sano, the healthy plateau.   In the XVIII century much of the lakeside town of San Lorenzo was demolished, its stones transported to the heights above Lake Bolsena and re-erected as San Lorenzo Nuovo with an octagonal piazza. The church of St John the Baptist, however, was spared, though its roof has fallen in.

A mournful view of the church of St John the Baptist

The old town lay astride the pilgrims’ road to Rome known as the Via Francigena, the Frankish Road, which until the Reformation led all the way from Canterbury.

Surviving fresco

The church designed by Pietro Tartarino, and completed in 1590 is unusual. It is octagonal, and occupies a site once sacred to the Etruscan and  for whom Lake Bolsena was the centre of their cult, the Omphalos, the navel of their world. The XVIII century piazza in San Lorenzo Nuovo is also octagonal.

St John the Baptist’s church

Catholic miracles abound in places where the old religion proved particularly hard to eradicate. Nearby Bolsena has not one , but two miracles associated with the town, a sign that adherence to the old religion was particularly obdurate. This church in Val di Lago, close by the Etruscan city of Tyre, may mark the site of the miracle of Santa Cristina. Though not the case here, a church raised on the site of a miraculous defeat of paganism is often dedicated to St Michael and the pagan power is represented as a dragon. However, the octagonal shape, the preferred form of Templar churches, could be significant.

Chancel of St John’s church with surviving roof

The roof over the chancel has survived, as have some frescoes and even some stucco sculpture. There even seems to be some blast damage, a reminder that the war passed through here in 1944. All in all the church of San Lorenzo Vecchio is a miracle in itself, of survival.

The charm of the place lies in its desolate remoteness among the swamps near Lake Bolsena. However a quite useless fence was erected in 2012, and mock cast-iron lamp-posts were scattered about. A case of European Union largesse being sprinkled  on ostensibly worthy projects perhaps? It would not surprise me if some over enthused local politician were to raise European Union funds to erect a concrete roof, re-stucco the building and spray paint it his mistresses’ favourite colour of tasteful pork pink. It would not be the first time.

St John the Baptist’s has a lugubrious beauty in winter

May Patrick Nicholas’ photographic workshop: Tuscany, Orvieto, Lake Bolsena and Barabbata festival.

May festival at Lake Bolsena, Italy

 Start the summer with Camera Etrusca’s Barabbata Festival Workshop with led by patrick Nicholas. Held every year on May 14 on the shores of Lake Bolsena. This joyous festival with pagan origins has colourful floats drawn by men and animals through the picturesque fishing village (the womenfolk just cast blossom from the balconies) is held to mark the beginning of summer.
As usual we would like to offer a discount to all the people that want to start the summer season with us.

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