The Joy of Preparing for Italy
When I first begin working with our Ultimo service travelers, I give them what I require first when I plan my own trips : wonderful Maps... maps to lose yourself in. I send Touring Club maps, atlases for each North, Center and South, big maps of regions, and ultra detailed city maps that are sturdy and easy to fold or hand to taxi drivers. Every single one of these maps is made of soft paper that be annotated, so as you read our materials you can highlight locations. As you learn independently about something, you can mark that down. I like to send these out immediately, as soon as a trip plan is conceived, because nothing makes a trip as real or as exciting as maps.
Our family adores maps. Even our lagotto romagnolo Teddy. Most of all, maps of Italy.
Even our busiest clients find time for the maps we provide. In this electronic age, maps are comforting and easier to read, offer scale and a sense of wonder that digital maps on mobile devices cannot offer.
I also send you Reading Lists for every location and region you are visiting.
Since discovering Pinocchio when I was seven, I have,all my life, been reading novels and stories about Italy. I love biographies about people who have lived in Italy, poetry written in Italy, and history about this remarkable country. I try to choose books that are readable, complementary to other suggestions on my list, and illuminating. And I tell you about each book and why I like it. I also have an abridged list and one of books on tape, for those with little time for reading or who plan a trip on short notice. Of course I include my father’s charming Roman caper The Crime of Giovanni Venturi, written in 1959.
On your Reading List you will find categories including Background, General History, Ancient and Medieval History, Modern History, archeology, regional literature, contemporary fiction, people, biography, art and architecture, and very importantly, cooking and culinary culture.
Travel is not about acquiring but about understanding, and food in Italy is a window into understanding.
Why are the lentils in north Lazio or in Ustica so superb ? It is because the soil is volcanic. That those areas were within the spread of a major volcano is an exceptionally important geologic and historical and archeological realization. Why has for centuries bread been saltless in Tuscany? There too an answer that illuminates the history of the region.
Common Italian foods like bread or lentils are a window into history – and in Italy a joy of eating is learning.
Central to our reading lists are culinary histories, like Mary Taylor Simeti’s Pomp and Sustenance: 25 Centuries of Sicilian Food, and books like Rachel Roddy’s magical Five Quarters that wins my heart for the author’s photography, her warm, appealing voice, and nuanced understanding of the tradition of Roman eating.
It is a book to read from start to finish before you visit, as valuable as many guidebooks, as the food culture she documents is a mirror of the history and culture of Rome.
And poetry ! I include wonderful Poetry in translation. Italy has not just produced great novelists, but five Italians have won the Nobel Prize for literature. Two of them were Sicilian and three were poets, Salvatore Quasimodo, my favorite, being both.
And I have a special Children’s Reading List, put together by my own kids, now aged 11 and 13, from their own favorites. These are broken down to picture books and read aloud; ages 6 to 8; 9 to 12, and teen, and I often send a favorite children’s book to my clients with children. Among favorites are Rome Antics, where we follow a pigeon on an imaginative and informative journey through this wondrous city, and Thief Lord, translation of an entertaining German novel with a Venetian setting that is ripe for mystery, with the city’s alleys and canals creating great atmosphere.
Movies ! I share my personal, extensive list with you. Italian films are legendary, especially those glorious films produced in the 1940s through the 1960s. You cannot come to Rome without seeing Roberto Rossellini’s “Rome, Open City” (1946), a perfect example of Italian neorealist filming, where, as the Cinecitta’ studios were bombed, filming was on location in Roman squares and streets.
Some films on our list are sentimental, others are revolutionary, others celebrate Italian individuality, and some are poignant or wonderfully funny or controversial. I have seen them all, many of them many times, and have both a general list and one that is specific to the destinations you are visiting. Addictive to me are Commissario Montalbano films, based on the Andrea Camilleri novels, with all episodes set in southeastern Sicily, nearly all in and around Marina di Ragusa, where our guests stay in a lovely small inn. Luca Zingaretti in the lead role of Inspector Montalbano is one of the best detectives you’ll find on the big (or little) screen today.
Finally, I provide a personalized Calendar of Special Events/Exhibitions/Festivals occurring in all locations you will be visiting. This could include a festival of new season olive oil; a significant show on Caravaggio (I will obtain your timed entry tickets); a blessing of the horses in a neighborhood chapel before the Palio in Siena; a special opening of the top floor of a house museum so that you can see the amazing medieval kitchens. This could be a festival of camellias; a one-day chocolate fair (do you know Italy’s sublime artisanal chocolate?); a realistic medieval reenactment of town life in an Umbrian village (below); a blanketing of village streets with flower petals made into elaborate designs for Corpus Domini.
Reading, dreaming over maps, watching movies, opening cookbooks: oh, that all preparations should be so arduous !
Let’s the planning begin !
Cari saluti
Marjorie