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

The post Radicofani and the Grand Tour – Part 2 appeared first on Camera Etrusca Photography Holidays & Workshops in Italy.

Fading fresco in Diana Temple, Nemi, Rome

Sometimes I come across a place purely by chance, sometimes I have been tipped off by a local, sometimes because I have read about it and have made a search.

I will endeavour to post articles about a wide variety of places, some very humble, others so noteworthy one wonders how they could possible have fallen into virtual oblivion. All have in common that they have fallen out of sight and consequently out of mind.

Temple of Diana, Nemi

Walls of Diana Temple

The Alban Hills national park, although nowadays practically a Roman suburb, is an area of wild natural beauty, deep crater lakes, forests, Renaissance villas and ancient ruins. Ten years ago my daughter was born in Genzano above Lake Nemi, and the evening before her birth I sat amongst the perfumed yellow broom watching the sun set a hundred metres or so above the ruins of the Temple dedicated to Diana, goddess of the hunt, but also child birth.

Turner’s ‘Golden Bough’ showing Lake Nemi

The scene was reminiscent of William Turner’s celebrated painting, The Golden Bough, painted probably from a spot very close to where I sat and contemplated the most life changing event of my life and the beginning of a new one. The event that Turner depicts relates how Aeneas breaks the golden bough in order to guide him into Hades to find his Father. Nemi is a place that almost overpowers one with atavistic emotion.

Sir James Frazer the father of anthropology started the long intellectual and scientific journey that was his magnum opus The Golden Bough from the ruins of Diana’s temple. The first chapter of which opens thus:

Who does not know Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough?  The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi— “Diana’s Mirror,” as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.

Inner sanctum, temple of Vesta , Nemi, Rome

Given the fame of Diana herself and the importance and wide reaching effect that Frazer’s book had on scientists, artists, writers and philosophers in the 20th century you would think that the well excavated ruins of the temple would be something of a shrine and tourist attraction. Sadly this is not the case.

Nemi castle on the hill overlooking the temples ruins.

The site is not indicated, the path overgrown and the entrance gate broken open. The information boards so faded as to be illegible.

crumbling mosaics

From the photographer’s point of view the remains of the temple complex are photogenic, there is an air of Piranesi melancholy about the place and yet if only there was a museum with artefacts found on the site, or copies of the statues, or an explanation of the macabre story that Frazer relates in the opening chapter of his book, or just a local farmer selling confections of locally collected wild strawberries and chilled white wine from under an umbrella pine, how much fuller the experience would be.

Come and explore Diana’s temple in Nemi, search for the Golden Bough with a Camera Etrusca photo trip to the Alban Hills on the outskirts of Rome. 

cripto-portico in Nemi, Rome.

The post Place to photograph around Rome: The Temple of Diana in Nemi appeared first on Camera Etrusca Photography Holidays & Workshops in Italy.

A photography workshop in Italy could not  be based in a more appealing place than Ovieto, the most beautiful hill town in all Italy. It stands on its high rock plateau in Umbria, on the borders of both Tuscany and Latium.

Orvieto is an ancient city going back to pre-Roman Etruscan times, on the top of a volcanic rock surrounded by hills covered with vines and olives, and in the distance the snow topped high Apennines. It is noted for its wines, especially the Orvieto Classico.

Orvieto by Turner

Orvieto which is supremely picturesque, was sketched from many angles by William Turner who spent some time in the area.  The painting itself was done in Rome and is as one would expect somewhat romanticised. Patrick Nicholas has planted an umbrella pine near the spot of Turner’s pine – it should be mature in about 30 years.  His sketchbooks along with the painting are in the Tate, London. You can see them here

Less than an hour from Rome, it is a bustling place full of street cafés, restaurants for most tastes and pockets and smart shops frequented by equally smart, good looking Italians – there are a few scruffy tourists as well. The centre is largely pedestrianised and there is not a single traffic light in the entire city.

Orvieto's Gothic Cathedral

St Patrick's well Orvieto

The well is a perfect place to practise photography under low light conditions with a broad contrast ranging from the bright sunlight pouring down the shaft and the gloom of the stair well.

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. You will also come across Etruscan cemeteries including the unique Cimitero del Crocifisso with its streets of curious tombs built of Tufa stone to resemble the wooden houses of the Etruscans – an eerie place on a foggy morning in April or October.

St Patrick's Well

Orvieto is famous too for its festivals. In winter over New Year’s there is the world renowned Umbria Jazz festival; in August the Umbria Folk Festival and in June the colourful pageant of the Corpus Domini when the townsfolk parade  through the streets for two days in June dressed in Mediaeval costume.

For those who love markets there are two a week on Thursdays and Saturdays in Piazza del Popolo.

You couldn’t find a more attractive town to enjoy yourself in when taking time off from a photography course or to relax in after a day long photo excursion.

The post Orvieto, Umbrian Jewel appeared first on Camera Etrusca Photography Holidays & Workshops in Italy.