31.1.95 Siena
Sitting in "Il Palio" café – probably where I sat some 16 or so years ago. Glorious view – clear blue sky, sun low with shadows long. The harmony of this space: the buildings in all their disproportionateness, flow and rumple together. Sitting by the fountain, children throw coriandoli (confetti). One boy, typically Italian, with hard grey eyes, laughing. Even the shop signs harmonious in their white on ochre.
Back in the Hotel Palazzo Ravizza (near Porta San Marco). Lovely, old 18th-century palazzo – we have fine view south-west. Tall room, narrow staircases, fading frescoes on the ceiling. Outside, a grand piano in the library (hi, Venezia…). Double doors – sporting the oak…
Wandering around the city. Two things I remember: the main square (of course), climbing the tower and seeing its long shadow in the piazza below, and – crazily enough – memories of the square where the buses leave (I think – I also have a slight feeling that this was in Nerja…). The Duomo I remember not at all; San Domenico, I recall better (but hideous). The streets remind me of Bergamo (Alta), Urbino – and San Gimignano. Especially the great high walls of the streets as they follow the roads. And something I realised for the first time today – why these streets are so different: they are clothed entirely in stone, stone walls and stone pavements, and that there are no levels in the street - which means that you walk along stone channels.
As dusk fell, so the Senesi appeared. Few tourists in evidence here – why I love travelling at this time.
1.2.95 Siena
I lied: one other thing I remember from here: the entrance to the Pinacoteca, where we now are. Bigger even than I remembered – nice to find the work of Sofonisba Anguissola. The Domenico Beccafummi cartoons good.
In the piazza again: sun strong, air cool, happy buzz of people just sitting, talking. A plane passes high overhead, a single prop swooping low round the space. The reflected light of the Fonte Gaia shimmers on the marble (copies, but good enough). The huge finger of the tower's shadow passes round the walls. To the Café Victoria (tea room/American bar) for an overpriced cappuccino – but civilised surroundings – a bit like a café I recall in Bergamo (Città Alta). Classic 12-bar blues in the background.
We finally find the Loggia del Papa – covered in scaffolding. To the Campo, where the most delicate violet suffuses the western sky, and a sliver of moon hangs almost horizontally. The ridiculous striped tower of the Duomo peeps over the girdling houses. The sodium lamps look beautiful (or rather what their otherwise prosaic lights illuminate does). Completely clear sky. Magic. One thing I can say: things here look different from what they were 16 years ago. Then, everything was beautiful and strange; now they are beautiful and familiar.
To Osteria Le Logge. Fine interior – one book on Primo Conti in the bookcase. We have just moved – smokers joined us on our (big) table. Wonderful making smokers unhappy…
2.2.95 Siena
To the Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, with Signorelli and Sodoma. Glorious countryside – hilltop houses, lines of trees – art in nature. "Come benedetto riceve li due giovanetti romani mauro e placido" – a riot of colours and faces and forms – the distant landscape. Church rather dull.
Bagno Vignoni – Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (the church at the end is San Galgano). Tiny village (no cars in centre). There is almost nothing here: the baths, a square around them, hills, sun, sky, peace – my god, è bello qui… Down to the hot steam. Greenish, with deposits everywhere. Slight whiff of sulphur. Glorious views – a handful of hilltop towns in the hazy distance. A tower to the south, rolling bumpy hills everywhere.
To Pienza, rising through the perfect Tuscan landscape. Sette Di Vino osteria – eating local pecorino et al. Small, friendly. The sun shining through the window. Amazing, small, perfectly-formed classical town – that never grew. Inside the Duomo – very sober, but very light (jet fighters screech overhead like devils). Not very Italian, but nice – facade especially.
To San Biagio – surely the most perfect church ever created. The stone, living almost, bubbling in its stillness, that off-white/yellow/grey, the flecks and pocks like lived-in flesh. The curves of the vault touch like figures in a geometric image. Outside, in the sun, huge triglyphs, everything writ large and simple. That stone. Viva Sangallo. The tiny rosettes on the external pilasters – that small, allowed vanity. The balustrade – god's balcony over the altar…
In Al Marsili restaurant – couldn't eat – left rapidly – ill...
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10.6.19 Tashkent
Sitting in the airport at Nur-Sultan. Modern, clean, efficient. You buy stuff in euros… Six-hour flight from London Heathrow. Plane half empty, which meant I managed to lie down. Slept quite well. During the flight, the sun behind us, refusing to set. Then suddenly rising in a great bloody ball. What little I could see of Kazakhstan looked flat, flat, flat. Astana/Nur-Sultan shimmering like a crazy mirage, an impossible 21st-century city in the middle of nowhere.
A few Westerners milling around, but most central Asians. The women all look quite similar. Air stewardesses quite pretty. Flying down to Tashkent. I have never seen so much nothing: no towns, no villages, no roads. Just flat steppe, a few rivers, low hills. A tiny track leading to some fields, a house(?). What looks like a rail track – going to Almaty, I presume. It's a moonscape down there: dried-out lakes, weird forms etched into the flat surface. Occasional line of a road, like a last spider's thread. Below, straight roads meeting at a perfect right angle, like some cosmic geometry lesson. This is the most terrifying landscape I have ever beheld.
I've just realised why these roads are so weird: I've not seen a single vehicle on any of them. It's like they are relicts of an extinguished civilisation. A tiny patch of bright green around a river. Everywhere else scorched brown, the colour of no colour. As we move into Uzbekistan, the landscape changes. Below, folded and creased with gentle contours. Tinged with green, but mainly browns. Occasional settlements, still few roads. Now lots of thin rectangular fields – cultivation, surrounding a large-ish town. We begin our descent.
A weird day. Very tired because of travel and time difference. Also the heat – hard like Turkey. Slept at various times, since I have to rise at 5am tomorrow (body time 1am) to get an early train to Bokhara. Decided to eat in the hotel to avoid going out in midday heat. Very limited selection – no plov – but it filled a hole. 86,000 som – and they wouldn't take Visa, euros or dollars. So I had to find somewhere that would give me som using a credit card. Found one, took out a million (about £100).
More sleeping, then out to find milk: I will be too early for hotel breakfast, but I've brought the electric caffettiera we used in Hong Kong (amazing that was less than a year ago). Will brew some Lavazza, eating Pret bars before taxi to central station, which is near, but not near enough to walk. Even finding a supermarket hard. Located a small one, paid 75p for litre (at Nur-Sultan airport, they were selling mare's milk - for 60 euros a can….). Now sitting in Anor, waiting for manti and lagman. Very busy, very good selection. Nicely buzzing. Noticeable lots of all-female groups in the city – and very few headscarves. Islam doesn't seem strong here in Tashkent, at least.
11.6.19 Tashkent
Up early – 5am local time – to go to Tashkent Central railway station, gleaming in the early morning sunlight. I'm the first there, of course, but that meant easy passage through security – not super rigorous, but frequent – to get into station area, then into station, finally onto train. Flash Spanish model, new and sleek.
Lots of passengers, very few Westerners. Pair of Chinese behind me. Mostly locals, loaded with bags. As with the plane, the stewardesses pretty – young and petite. When they greet, they kiss each other three times – right, left, right. So, despite booking early, and asking for a seat on the left-hand side, I get one on the right-hand side. <sigh/> Still, nice and cool, zipping along at 160km/h. Bit bumpy… Outskirts of Tashkent, houses all have metal corrugated roofs. A few cows grazing. Tashkent very spread out, quite green here. Amazing to think I am hurtling on the Road to Samarkand.
Halfway there, going through a narrow valley. Low hills with sparse vegetation. Breakfast rather thin: two buns, packet of coffee. Luckily, I bought peach tea and madeleines in the station shop. Quite a few Ladas on the road. But in Tashkent, top model is Chrysler. Weird. Also, Anor last night only took Mastercard, not Visa…
Just stopped in Samarkand. What a magical name. I wonder where I first heard it...James Elroy Flecker, perhaps? There must have been a reason why I went there in 1982, the year Brezhnev died, and I was stuck in Tashkent, funeral music all day on the radio and TV.
Bokhara busy when I arrived, but happily a pre-booked driver was waiting for me. 20 minute ride to my hotel, Amelia Boutique, down a tiny alleyway. Pretty much lives up to its reputation. Magical rooms, courtyards that take you back in time. Big room (#6), with over-the-top wall paintings. Out to Chayxana Chinar for lunch. Rice soup and Bokharan plov. Nice view onto road. Uploaded 58 pix – first to tablet, then to cloud. Managed to share link. Works well as backup and is a way to let everyone see pix. Now about to take a first stroll out. Hope the heat has dropped a little.
It hasn't. At 4 o'clock, still baking, but not humid, and a nice breeze. Out along to Lyab-i Hauz. Even better than I hoped. The presence of so many old trees makes such a difference. Old Islamic buildings around its edges. Sitting on the bench on the west side, in hard shadow. Breeze lovely. A few Western tourists, but not oppressive. In a few years' time I predict this place will be mobbed. It's too beautiful for people not to come once it's known and easy to get to.
Uzbeks uniformly friendly people. Makes me hate Thubron's Lost heart of central asia even more. It's not at all fair, certainly not now. As well as ducks on the pool, people fishing too. Glorious. Noisy birds in the trees. Around the pool, near me, mulberry trees, the fruits blood-red on the ground. Nearby, a mulberry that dates back 600 years, they say… Well, 1477.
At the station this morning, the old women throwing water to wash down the paths. All wearing headscarves, as they did in Moldova, also by the station. Looking at Uzbek, seems fairly easy if you know Turkish – even the few words I know. Since I won't ever need to speak Uzbek – I can probably use Russian – seems like learning Turkish would be good for all the turkic nations in central Asia. It's hard to know which of the four – Uzbek, Kirghiz, Kazakh and Turkmen – to learn. Must learn one soon (maybe after Georgian…)
20 minutes later, still sitting on my bench, the evening breeze cooling me. This is the luxury of independent travelling: not just doing, but simply being here. A coach has just disgorged a dozen tourists, who are being shown around here. They can see, but they cannot stop. Only fleeting glimpses, tantalising but leaving you hungry for more. Swifts flying surprisingly low: perhaps they do things differently here. In Tashkent, there were some very strange (to me) birds, but common as sparrows.
Sitting in the Minzifa Restaurant, the sun setting in front of me, the hammam domes to my left reminiscent of Tbilisi's baths. Drinking red wine – Uzbek wine. Food limited, but location amazing. The sky a wonderful apricot colour. All Westerners here, but that's to be expected for an upmarket place. I'm lucky I managed to book a table. Uzbek wine quite resiny – very like Greek "μαύρο", strong, nice. One of the great things about Uzbekistan is that Islam occupies the same place as Catholicism in Italy: respected, but not oppressive. I've only seen one young woman with all her body covered, just her face visible. Most dress like Westerners. Long may it continue.
Swifts swooping in the sky, diving low for the flies.
Quite a few (small) groups of Westerners. Two black blokes – unusual to see here. An amazing first day. Almost all spent near Lyab-i Hauz. So much to see and experience there. Mostly old Westerners visiting, I suppose because it's expensive to get here. Certainly cheap to eat – lunch cost 35,000 som – about £3.50. My room is 80 euros a night. Great value. Looks like they are renovating the hammam – surrounding area rubble and ruins. You can see that they are developing/renovating/repairing all the old monuments. Very wise. Already evident in some areas. Quite a few French around, I heard Spanish earlier today.
I'm impressed – and pleased – that I haven't looked at Twitter or Feedly once. And have no intention of doing so.
I remember when I first stepped out from Santa Lucia station in Venice, and thought: I am in Venice. It seemed impossible, but it was true. And, I am thinking: I am in Bokhara. Even more impossible, but still true. What a privilege. Food good, service slow – but a function of its popularity. And then I am sitting with the best view, so who cares? Lining up the Minzifa special – loadsa fruits. Uzbek wine really good, but best to go easy…
12.6.19 Bokhara
Sitting in the old Kalon mosque. In fact, here for the second time – I got here very early, avoiding tour groups. Lovely courtyard with ancient tree in the middle. Blues and turquoises everywhere. Well preserved/restored. Outside, the amazing Kalon minaret, sadly still closed. Must have incredible view. The last thing many saw before being thrown off the top. The Mir-i-Arab Madrasa opposite full of people - especially muftis. Tables set, music playing. A festival, perhaps?
Breakfast this morning amazing in an amazing room. Coffee dubious. Slept moderately well, but at least no problems with food yet. Swifts flying low in the sky again. Clear blue sky matching the tiles. Swifts screeching inside the courtyard, in a small flock. Sitting here in the mosque, I feel close to the Registan in Samarkand, even though it was 37 years ago. How much has happened since then… Lovely to see the swifts swooping in and out of the arches at high speed. A flock of birds wheeling around the main part of the mosque. Most are white, and catch the sun as they turn. Doves/pigeons perhaps?
Back to the pool for coffee, which I need - 10.30am and the sun is already searing… Back to the room to transfer 50 pix from mobile to tablet. Still no Internet. Then out to Budreddin Restaurant, but it looks very hot. So moved on to Lyab-i Hauz restaurant. Lovely setting with the sprays all around the pool. But: when the wind changes, you – and your food – get sprayed. Not sure how healthy this is, but hey. On the plus side, lots of locals here, so food seems to be reckoned. Had hugely greasy lagman which I tried to mop up with non. Now having black tea, as all the locals do…
Back to the hotel, still no Net. Transferred files to tablet. Then out and finally found a SIM – cost £2.90 for 2G… Went to two madrasas that are now full of craft stalls – Ulan Beg and the other, opposite. The latter amazing for its picturesque ruins. This is Uzbekistan in transition – soon will all be tidied up. But great to see. Then back to the hotel, where the Net is back. Started uploading 100s of pix to cloud – slow. Then back to here, by the Kalon masterpieces in the Chashmai Mirab restaurant. Fab views, slight spoilt by a man cutting paving stones, noise and dust everywhere. More signs of change. Meal not spectacular, even though the view is. The stone grinder still at it, at 8pm… Kalon buildings turning rose-coloured. Swifts diving and screeching. For dessert I took a mixed plate of local sweets – like Greek/Turkish ones. But harder and sweeter. As darkness falls, the minaret is illuminated more brightly, and seems preparing for lift-off…
13.6.19 Bokhara
Inside Ismail Samanis mausoleum. Lovely structure. Reminds me of San Biagio, strangely. Walked along road to Ark. Dusty, low dwellings, lots of building, rubble. Ark smaller than I expected. Walls impressive, but not much to see. Lots of maps and pix of emirs. Astonishing to think that Bokhara was independent a century ago. Went up the Soviet water tank structure. Nice re-use – you can see the cut metal. Then to the nearby mosque, still functioning, so shoes off. Thin columns holding up the porch. Reminded me of Egypt, but more delicate. Endless walk through the park to here. In general, distances much further than they seem on the map. Rather bizarrely, I am in the German café, eating apfel strudel. Ismail Samanis mausoleum was lovely because so different.
Forgot to mention, yesterday after lunch I went to Chor Minor. Hard to find in the backstreets, which reminded me of Georgia. Not much to see: the weird little Chor Minor was closed. But opposite, the Russian memorabilia market was pretty interesting, especially the badges and old photos. Who were those people, what were their lives…?
Back to the hotel, where the Net is fast – uploaded all this morning's pix. Back to Lyab-i Hauz restaurant – packed with locals, and they should know. Sun pouring down, but low humidity. After walking in the finally bearable heat, taking pix of Ark, back to room, then out to Minzifa restaurant – the best food I've had here. Drinking white Uzbek wine – dry. Very nice. Mostly Westerners here – clearly group bookings. Good job I've reserved. Out into the glorious night, cooling breezes blowing quite strongly. Everyone out walking, children and babies too.
I sit with my back to Ulan Beg's madrasa, facing the one of Abdulaziz Khan, which I prefer. Eavesdropped on a pair of Chinese young women trying to work out where they were. I expect more Chinese will come soon. Otherwise, French, Germans, Italians, Spanish and Brits. Few Yanks or Russians.
14.6.19 Bokhara
Zindan, by the Bug Pit. Extraordinary to think two Brits suffered this for years. Unimaginable. Earlier, I walked through the maze of the old town. Smell of concrete dust everywhere. Second time I've needed to use GPS in my life (first time was when driving in Tbilisi). To the merchant's house. Very fine. To a photography exhibition, where I bought three postcards. Then to here. Sweating profusely. One thought: Bug Pit full of litter. It's money notes…
Back to the hotel, packed and left. Went along to nearby Chayxana Chinar. Ordered plov, but not ready for 40 minutes. The central part of Bokhara is more or less pedestrians only. What few vehicles allowed there are electric – clever move. Clean, quiet. Adds to general peace of the place. The Uzbeks in general seem very calm and happy. Generally smiling, lots of children around. About to start reading Sikunder Barnes – looks fun.
On the train to Tashkent, full by the looks of it. On the right-hand side, so I can see the mountain spine. Just outside Samarkand, some quite high peaks with snow. But lacking the majesty of Ararat. Land fertile on either side of tracks, but mountains gaunt. Some clouds over the mountains – cumulus here, they were cirrus in Bokhara. A group of Hungarians joined the train at Samarkand. Hungarians now playing lousy trashy music from a mobile, deafening everyone else. I'm fast growing to dislike Hungarian.
Ripped off by the taxi driver, who took the long way around. Still only £3.50… Smaller room at Gloria Hotel this time, but fine. Nightmare on the Tashkent Express… The Hungarians utterly insufferable. Still, the valley pass was fine, very narrow, rather like Georgia. Tashkent feels familiar, which is good.
15.6.19 Tashkent
Sitting with Hotel Uzbekistan behind me. Did I stay here in 1982? Seems likely, but sadly I have no memories of it (if only I'd kept a travel diary…). Took metro here. Had intended to walk but it started raining… Metro as I expected: marble smelling of disinfectant. Not many around. Cost per jeton: 12p (1200 som). Journey here from my station – Oybek – took several minutes, reminding me that Tashkent is big. (I can feel the metro under me as I sit in Amir Timur maydoni). Metro slightly disconcerting because not a word of Russian anywhere. You can see how hard they are – rightly - pushing Uzbek, and that Russian will fade away…
Need to go back to hotel to book plane seats, if I can, on my tablet. Fortunately, metro is cheap and fast, and I am intentionally near an important interchange. Spent ages looking for monument to cosmonauts, after finding the main Art Museum closed for repairs. Was overcast, but sun out now, alas… To Chorsu Bazaar. Incredible. Is it the biggest in the world? Looks it. Hundreds of stalls selling the same goods, all beautifully presented – the fruit piled in pyramids. The stench of meat and blood, thousands of people milling around, looking, tasting, buying…
Afterwards, in the debilitating heat, I staggered to the old part of the city. It was just like the corresponding part of Bokhara – only much bigger, and much more of a labyrinth – in fact, it reminded me of Venice – without the canals. I still have a vague memory of being brought here when I came in 1982. Because of Brezhnev's death, we were trapped in Tashkent, and were given a guide to the place. I remember the metro, and being shown these incredibly poor dwellings. At the time, I couldn't understand why there were taking us there, but now I do: it was the real, old Tashkent. It's taken me 35 years to get it.
Went looking for a new restaurant – doesn't exist, apparently, so back to Anor. Trying an amazing meat doughnut – obviously fried, but rather tasty. The food is generally good, but I am so sick of eating meat… One thing I noticed when looking for the other restaurant is the number of Korean places here. I keep forgetting that Tashkent is probably nearer to Korea than it is to Europe… also a couple of Chinese shops – supermarket and travel bureau. Just the start…
16.6.19 Tashkent
After a night of rather fitful sleep – if I missed my flight to Nur-Sultan, I'd miss my flight home – a decent breakfast – with Uzbek cherries and sweet rice soup – then to the airport. Sun already hot. The security here is insane: they check you at the perimeter. Then they scan luggage and you at the entrance to the terminal building, and then again after check-in – including taking your shoes off, and putting plastic covers on your feet. Well, I suppose it's a pretty good deterrent. I notice in Uzbekistan a number of families with three children, and a fair few pregnant young women. I expect its population is growing quite fast…
It certainly seems a hive of economic activity. Not just tourism, which is obviously bouncing along. In Tashkent and Bokhara I saw thousands of new homes being built – many unfinished shells. I wonder if they will ever sell them all? The roads here are insanely big. The main road near my hotel – Rustaveli St (sic) - had four lanes on each carriageway, more than most motorways in the UK. Since everything is new, it is being built with huge spaces. I found it (literally) exhausting from place to place not just in Tashkent, but Bokhara too. Makes London and Paris seem so cramped...
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30.8.87 San Gimignano
The sort of place you could spend a lifetime in – looking at every stone: The Stones of San Gimignano. Every part of every building seems to have a history: like Venice, where every stone is part of its palimpsest. Everything has been fitted over, on top of, together: you can see windows filled in, old arches, lintel lines, roof hips. And the vertical rules. The towers: they are the essence of rectangularity, verticality. Medieval they may be, but time has not softened their edges. It is said they were built partly because of noble rivalry: that pride endures. They conquer all horizontals; they lift the town.
The faces of the buildings are ancient, timeless and modern. Ancient in that they are old and crumbling, weathered; timeless because they suggest granitic immanence; modern because their rich textured patchwork looks like nothing so much as some modern art – a sort of cross between a happier Soulages, the Boyle family, and Giacometti. You could easily imagine them as cut up and hung on cool impersonal museum walls. This denies their substantiality: they could be all surface, albeit with a rich impasto. The piazzas become like those Western towns built for films: all facade. Except that San Gimignano is, through its massive stony solidity, anything but surface.
Towers mean bells. And bells are perfectly suited to a stone city. It is the perfect hard acoustic, sending off scads of sharp reflections. And against that sharpness there is the sheer unplaceability of the bell's tone. We tend to forget that although bells were for centuries one of the few instrumental sounds, that sound is of an impossible richness. The overtones cause the note to shift and sway dizzyingly. And the physicality. No other musical instrument requires so much effort, total bodily input. And the striking of the bell is brute force: a literal blow. Which makes it easy to attribute something magical to the disembodied sound which ensues. Thor's hammer. Watch the bells in the bell-tower: they loll like huge puppies' tongues, languorous. The sight is as hypnotic as the sound. San Gimignano is built for bells.
You need the blue Tuscan sky to define the towers: it acts as a perfect seamless backdrop. With clouds or any blur in the air you would lose that unique edge. And you need the piazzas. The towers loom from behind buildings. Without open spaces height does not exist.
In its medieval purity, San Gimignano is like Venice. Apart from the postcards outside the shops, there is little to disturb the illusion. There are no roads, just streets. Cars are practically non-existent – making San Gimignano uniquely quiet – like Venice. But San Gimignano has something that Venice can never aspire to: hills. It is built on a hill and its streets wind and wheel away, up and down, taking the buildings with them.
From the tower: roofs, harmonious yellows and ochres – everything very flat. Sounds rising up from the piazzas which form gaping holes in the sea of roofs. The herringbone patterns of the bricks look almost too neat. There is a violinist with accompanying tape: his clear, acidulous tones cut through the hum of the town sounds. Roundabout, a patchwork of rolling hills and fields. And trees – woods, forests almost. This is another Tuscany. From the tower: people's verticality is emphasised: as in Florence, from Giotto's campanile. Towers of San Gimignano answer this. But with very little sensation of height. That comes inside: there you have the fragile metal staircase, which maps out height. It is also possible to see through it – so you are more conscious of being suspended in the air.
This is Benozzo Gozzoli's town.
31.8.87 San Gimignano
In the early morning, the low glancing light catches the rough face of the main tower. The surface boils with rock and its texture.
Most people know the Tuscany of Florence. Some perhaps know the Prato-Pisa-Lucca railway line. A world of neat but midday-dead stations; hot and dusty; airless cities sweltering in the Po valley. There is another Tuscany, a hidden Tuscany. It lies to the south, among the rolling hills and mountains. It is not a flat, arid plain shimmering in the heat; scrubby vegetation on one-street town along the main routes. Fields are hunched shoulders of land, their coarse rich earth ploughed in huge gobbets of mud; from a distance they look like crops of boulders. Gaunt square farmhouses like castles stand in isolation amidst the fields, the land cultivated to the doorstep. The roads are quiet and wind endlessly around hills. Trees abound. And along the way, as you pass ridges, there are hilltop towns hugging the rise of the land, spilling down slopes. Volterra is the king of these, San Gimignano the queen.
There are two main piazzas in San Gimignano: Piazza della Cisterna, and Piazza del Duomo, secular and sacred centres. In both you need to be an artist to capture them, or even part of them. The windows are stacked three or four high; they form a kind of contrapuntal essay, with now one, now another voice dropping out. As the threads of the windows move round the square, so the tonality of the buildings changes: rusticated stone, brickwork, crumbling plaster, dark green creepers; but just as a fugue will modulate and vary its themes, so the essential, organic unity remains. It is squares like these which rudely expose the crass insufficiency and poverty of modern buildings. First, they lack detail, and in particular the human scale; secondly, they arrogantly fail to acknowledge their older neighbours. Such discourtesy always gets its comeuppance.
Towers need piazzas: but piazzas benefit from local towers. As the sun moves round, great slabs of shadow creep across ground and walls, varying the scene constantly. And generally, the old stone facades turn like flowers in the sun, changing their face in response to the shifting angle. Especially when the sun is high: all the joints and scars of the bricks and stones are picked out as if with black ink. The scars of seemingly impossibly high buildings, testimony to the other one hundred or so towers that have been lost. The verticality of the towers is emphasised because their lines descend fully to the ground. Just as the height of Gothic spaciousness in cathedrals was achieved by running pillars from floor to ceiling in one long swoop.
San Agostino has the simplest possible brick exterior. It is in a small hot square which gives back the heat San Agostino radiates. Inside comes as a delicious shock: cool, slightly suffocating air, the smell of old incense, old wood, old religion. Gozzoli rules OK. The frescoes of Augustine are extraordinary. Nearly invisible – especially in the neck-craning upper regions, in the small apse behind the altar are certainly some of his best works, and in expression and humanity rarely matched elsewhere. Above all, it is the faces which linger: so completely personalised and individual. Timeless and thus modern, surely they were all done from life. And Saint Augustine himself: a noble-looking man – not your usual bumptious self-righteous prelate, or wimpy proto-martyr. Thus San Gimignano matches (almost) the great frescoes of Arezzo.
The cloister of San Agostino is delightful – so nice to come across living green in this stony place. Even the park at the Rocca is poor stuff. Here there is a rich privet hedge, four majestic trees, and Mediterranean palm trees. Birds chirrup – no hunters here – and there are even huge dragonflies.
Details: the front-on staring at us; the man with a canker and boil; the small dog. And the men have shaved – real men. And the last San Augustine: I have never seen anyone look so calm and mature – except perhaps in Michelangelo.
Songbirds' cages fixed permanently to the wall – like prisoners exhibited – just food and water, no shelter.
San Agostino's bells – two completely out of sync – like a holy Steve Reich composition – only better. The way they tail off – then the long plangent reverb.
Room with a view. The sun has started sinking westwards: my room faces east, and is now in the shade and delightfully cool. Before me, the wonderful patchwork of irregular fields. A noisy cranking combine harvester finishes off a field – most have already been ploughed up for next year. Others are neatly planted with rows of various bushes. Now the familiar Da Vinci sfumato thickens, casting a deepening haze over the landscape. This morning it was real mist. The sun, rosy-fingered dawn, lifted through it, sending huge horizontal rays between hills. It reminded me of Kashmir…
A musical city – for buskers, anyway. Violinists, flautists – and now a virginalist. This one in the courtyard to Museo Civico. A delightful place: herring-boned bricks, frescoes everywhere. And also a performance artists. With whited face, and to the accompaniment of a rather random recorder, a youngish lady strikes a histrionic pose – and holds it for several minutes. Her main achievement seems to be keeping her eyes open. Ah, all this easy symbolism in a city barely changed for 500 years…
Sala di Dante – a good presence helped by old wooden furniture. Lippo Memmi, a terribly stern Mary in state, with flocks of unbending saints around. Rather Spanish. The sprung floors bounce delightfully: truly a spring in your step. In the pinacoteca, various Byzantinesque numbers: one by the "master of Clarissa" quite fine. Other bits and bobs: two by Filippo Lippi, an unusual separated Annunciation in two tondos; a very Peruginoesque Pinturicchio – with 'orrible disembodied cherubs plus two quite impressive figures, a pope and a saint. A Benozzo Gozzoli – rather dark – but the men's faces are individualised again. Otherwise just anonymous lot vaguely connected with San Gimignano: Sebastiano Mainardi, Memmo di Filippuccio (what a name).
Best of all is Taddeo di Bartolo's polyptych with San Gimignano himself. Confidence is not inspired by the first scene: "during prayers San Gimignano is forced to leave the church for a call of nature; the devil, who is waiting for him outside, is driven away with a sign of the cross". Some saint. His other miracles seem to be driving out the devil from the Greek Emperor's daughter, an apparition of the Bishop of Ravenna, Saint Severus, at San Gimignano's funeral, and a couple of salvations from Attila the Hun. Still, San Gimignano is only a small city…
At the northern corner of La Rocca, an old woman has a tiny, tiny house. Outside, she has a small lemon tree. It is all totally picturesque. When she comes out, she glares at the tourists who presume to peep into her life. As the sun sinks, the furrows in the fields deepen and darken; the chaotic and coarse tiles on the roofs echo; the contours of the land show themselves more fully.
Even down San Matteo, traces of former glory remain: the impressive, monumental remains of a palazzo, scarred by all the siblings it has lost around it. From the tower of the Palazzo del Popolo: Via San Giovanni and its smaller siblings cut through the roofs like clear swathes to the main gate. I'm the last down from the tower. Bells ring, voices command. A warm evening breeze stirs. At the bottom, the virginalist is still there. Typically Italian: an Avanti-PSI festival, held in the entrance hall to the town hall, Piazza del Duomo.
The best rear view of the towers is from La Rocca, at sunset. As the sun sets behind the high hill to the west of San Gimignano, only the flat gaunt towers catch the light. They shine out like slabs. Their grey stone picks up every hue, and gradually turns pink. And with the night, the swifts come out, like something out of Leopardi, swooping elegantly and unoriginally in the air among the towers and palaces.
1.9.87 San Gimignano
A different sunrise. The sun comes up as a cool pink disc, turning paler as it rises through the bands of invisible clouds. Great pools of mist hang in the valleys, making the most distant mountains white. Cocks crow, but unlike yesterday, there is no morning chorus of dogs. Smoke rising from odd fires throughout the landscape produce a white, coarser veil.
The dogs have started, as have the bells. Obviously very religious, these dogs. The sun is now an almost perfectly white, perfectly round disc.
Piazza Luigi Pecori – nestling behind the big tower, alongside the duomo – a tiny haven of pure peace. Yet more buskers – a plangent guitarist, with a shrouded harp in waiting – is there no limit to the varied musicality of this place? It must be the stone: a perfect acoustic. The Museo Etrusco. Signposts on squared notepaper. Handwritten notes of explanation stuck on with sellotape. Italia, a roomful of paintings by "ignoti" – who clearly couldn't paint. Long explanations about the Etruscan collection – mostly to do with who the superintendent was, all in long, flowing, parenthetical Italian prose. Il Duomo – a very Catholic church. Every surface within covered with gaudy frescoes and designs. The arches black and white like La Mezquita. A big Gozzoli – San Sebastian.
Can you know a town?
I have a problem with experience: too easily it feels like a memory.
2.9.87 Volterra
Volterra is as if San Gimignano made the mistake of growing up. It has the same impressive position, the same sense of antiquity – greater, since the Etruscans were here for centuries more. But it is a dump. All the grace has been worn out of it: instead, it is dusty, hot and smelly. It surveys the surrounding landscape wearily. The old Palazzo dei Priori is impressive in its gnarled glory: the square that surrounds it is fairly squalid. The old duomo is gaudy inside and unspectacular outside. The poor old battistero looks woebegone and battered. Even the great Etruscan gate is rather pathetic: four stumps of worn stone. The main pinacoteca is similarly threadbare – but provides a wonderful ambience for the motley collection of paintings. Below a certain level early Italian renaissance stuff looks gawky and lurid. The best things there were two Signorellis; but even these looked ill-proportioned.
As it turned out, the heart of the city lay in its Museo Etrusco. On three floors and filled with an enormous collection of funerary monuments, it is a testament to the scale of Etruscan Volterra – over three times the size of the present-day town. But however wonderful they are, you can only see so many. Questions arise too: why are most of the inscriptions in Latin? And why Latin myths? Perhaps the best thing there was L'Ombra della sera: a curious, very thin statuette – with a face of extraordinary frank and childlike simplicity. The description – as of a shadow before you – is d'Annunzio's.
3.9.87 Montepulciano
If Montepulciano is hell, San Biagio is clearly a vision of a perfectly-ordered heaven. This masterpiece is so unexpected, its clarity such a shock after Montepulciano: it is like a perfect exposition of classicism. Half pillars and pilasters, various cornices to the windows – and all done out in the amazing, pitted, living stone. The campanile fits snugly into one of the Greek cross's gaps; it too is perfectly balanced, standing miraculously as if held by magnetism there. Inside is less spectacular. Things have been spoilt somewhat by the over-ornate decorations over the altar. Like San Giorgio Maggiore, pure cool simplicity is needed for such a building. Externally, everything is on a massive scale: even the triglyphs. Everything is perfectly proportioned: double cubes and a square cross.
Where San Gimignano appears finite and knowable, Montepulciano is like some maze, a monstrous joke on the hillside. Getting in is no problem – but getting out is. There are no roads, just paved streets; few signs; and everything is steep. A crossroad may present you with a choice of five narrow paths. Imagine this place in the rain, at night. During the day it was deathly quiet.
Montepulciano itself seems attractive enough – an imposing situation, a neat main square (Piazza Grande). But it lacks the purity of San Gimignano. The palazzo municipale is of the standard Tuscan design. Its chief point of interest is the tower. You can go up inside – if you dare. No modern appurtenances: it was like climbing back 500 years. Rotten wooden rails, crumbling stairs, little light, old bricks. Wonderful. And the whole things was free. You just walked in – past all the administrative offices, and up the stairs to the top. The duomo had a unornamented west front, a bit like San Lorenzo in Florence. Inside it was cool, bare and simple. The square outside looked very suitable as a scene for the music festival. Opposite the church, a loggia by Sangallo – obviously the patron artist of Montepulciano. Quite a nice building – except that the man put square columns above round ones – which doesn't work.
From Montepulciano to Lago Trasimeno. Unfortunately, by now the weather had turned entirely to heat haze, with thunder in the offing. The lake itself is not particularly impressive. The surrounding hills are more so – though rather obscured. The general effect is of an enormous pond. But pleasant enough to have a cappuccino or two by.
For the drive back, mostly mini-motorways – no crash barrier, which is disconcerting – especially as I passed one car which seemed to have managed to end up on the wrong side. Soon the rain came. Great big splodges of it. This suddenly made all those boring signs about "pericolo in gelo o in pioggia" terribly relevant. My entire route seemed to be filled with them. But worse was the lightning. This was none of your namby-pamby British "one clean bolt and let's call it a day". This stuff forked around the sky – horizontally even. And I was climbing up the landscape in my little tin car.
I obviously made it, but it was interesting. As was the view from my balcony when I got back. The eastern part of the Tuscan hills from San Gimignano were laid out before me. A huge thick pall hung over it. Great nets of lightning – often multiple – flickered over it all like a serpent's tongue. You could see how myths were formed. It looked like El Greco's picture of Toledo.
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