Passione

In these endless weeks of COVID-19 lockdown, friends in Paris told me that what they missed most was going out in the sun. I have friends elsewhere who most missed half day walks, and others who most missed libraries, or their family.

What I missed most — more than I even realized at the time — was daily contact with Italians who shared with me their passione. The Italians in my life, and those I meet when I travel, reveal their passione so openly that they often do not know it, so deeply ingrained is it within their temperaments and characters.

Passione is no cliché. Passione is a quality of warmth, of pride, of wanting to share with another something that you undertake with integrity and dedication.

Passione is caring deeply about how you make a coffee, every stage undertaken with precision and care. And asking after your client has consumed it, sincerely : “was it good ? Did you enjoy it ?”

Passione is the owner of a wool shop in Lucca spending 40 minutes with a little girl seeking the right shade of wool to mend a tear in her teddy bear’s knee.

Passione is a year of preparation for a volunteer role in your village’s medieval pagaent, with a near maniacal interest in ensuring that your costume, your parish and the trade that you are representing are all presented with historic accuracy.  Passione is a plumber, a kindergarten teacher, a mechanic, a retired seamstress and a barrista (and hundred of others from Bevagna) replicating perfectly the medieval arts of minting, candle making, silk-making, tanning, paper making from rags, pottery, iron working, brick-making, pharmacology.

Passione is, in a Neapolitan underground studio, making three inch creche figures with the attention to detail and the artistry of a celebrated Renaissance sculptor.

Passione is my tailor Fabrizio, who has produced an evening gown modeled on the Duomo of Florence. “I’ll never sell it”, says Fabrizio. “I love it too much.”

Passione is laying out with meticulous care the beautiful vegetables you have grown so that market-goers will find an enticing display when they come to select their daily produce.

Passione is spending weeks gathering flower petals on Monte Subasio, sorting them into colors, drying them.

Passione is then staying up all night long in Spello for the Infiorata, arranging the petals with delicacy and artistry in sublime pattern on city streets.

Passione is the Tuscan basket maker Giotto, who knows there is very little money to be made in making baskets, but it is what he most loves to do. And to teach others how to make baskets. That too is a passione.

Passione is accessibly describing to those first seeing it why a 1st century AD mosaic in the Naples archeological museum is so absolutely extraordinary.

Passione is writing your daily menu on a blackboard, knowing that the very best tagliolini al amatriciana within two kilometers are those made by you.

Passione is Giovanni the talented winemaker, describing his father’s love for his Umbrian vineyards, and how he inherited his father’s passion for making wonderful wines.

Passione is playing music passed down to you by your grandparents, on traditional Abruzzi regional wind instruments, and making those instruments dance and sing with the sheer joy of your heart and your breath.

Passione is meeting an American family in your stationery shop in Orvieto, seeing that there are two small children and inviting them into your back room to teach them how to make marbleized paper. “I do not want this art to die, and I hope that your generation will carry it with you” are the parting words of this stationer, as he sends the family away with sheets of paper made by the children. All at no charge. (“Why would I charge ?” says the stationer.)

Passione is talking for half an hour to your client about the advantages and characteristics of six prosciutto varieties in your family-owned delicatessen, so that your customer can make her own most informed choice.

Passione is the gondoliere Giovanni who teaches four year old Isabel how to use the oar.

Michele calls out “arrotino !” (knife grinder !) to summon customers as he cycles around my neighborhood. Surely he is among the last of the old fashioned Roman knife grinders who ply this skillful trade powered only by the movement of the bicycle wheel and the drip of a water bottle.

His children are all university educated, and very successful, but he says that he is so happy being an “arrottino“, because it has always been his passione.

Passione is how Amalfi won the Regata of the Historic Marittime Republics in 2016.

Passione is a saffron farmer who spends hundred of hours each year harvesting the flower stigmas from the precious bulb, painstaking, exhausting, challenging work. Here he describes in great detail the entire process.

Passione is everyday living in Italy.

As Italy reopens, there is no sweeter time to consider a trip to feel that passione yourself.

I shall be eager to plan your travels as soon as you are ready to come back. Doing so is my passione, and has been for thirty years.