Magic of small-town Italy

You can have the universe, but leave Italy for me.
The words from the Roman general in Guiseppe Verdi’s Attila opera flit through my head as I exited the Mont Blanc Tunnel at its southern end.
I pulled off the road and got out of the car. The crisp early-winter air, along with the scenery and the exhilaration, momentarily took my breath away.
I had long hoped to one day get to see Italy. And there before me, cutting deep into the mountain slope and stretching off into the distance, was the picturesque Aosta Valley that would take me into the land of my dreams. Behind me the Alps’ peaks were already heavily capped by the season’s fresh snow.

A historic bridge in the Aosta Valley

As lovers of Italian cuisine my wife and I, on the winding road down the valley, decided we might as well celebrate the start of our journey with a real Italian meal in real Italy. The roadside eatery at which we stopped was not particularly striking, but the Valpelline Soup with rye bread was excellent. We were advised to have it by the lunch-time locals, some wearing overalls.
What I remember above all about that experience is how its simplicity and the spontaneous friendliness of the folk with whom we shared that dining room served as early notice of an aspect of that beguiling country that I came to enjoy more and more as it lured me back time and again over subsequent years. This was the special charm offered by its small towns and their people.
Yes, it remains unforgettable for the first time seeing the Eternal City, walking among the ruins whence the old Roman emperors once ruled their mighty empire, staring around that gladiatorial Super Bowl called the Coliseum, wandering the cobblestoned Via Appia along which chariots once rattled, joining the masses on the Spanish Steps, casting a coin into the Trevi Fountain, and then to gape at the art treasures of the Vatican where on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel a muscular Christ sorts the damned from the good.
Florence, Milan, Naples and the rest all have their exquisite attractions, most of which are well known. Hurried tourists who want to pack as much as possible into the time they have available would certainly not want to miss these. But for the more leisurely traveller there is special joy in being able also to linger in the less frequented spots.
It was a mistake not to on our journey south turn off the highway into Parma city, which I afterwards learnt was beautiful and historic to the point of housing one of the oldest universities in the world.
That’s the thing about Italy. There is hardly anything not worth stopping for. But for me the sight of rows and rows of cured pork legs dangling from the ceiling of one of the region’s roadside supermarkets would have to do as a reminder of why the Parma region was probably even better known for its prosciutto, as for its Parmesan cheese. I watched in fascination as callers leaving the supermarket carried whole hog legs on their shoulders back to their vehicles.
We of course had to stop over in Milan. It turned out to be as magnificent a city as we expected it to be, but it dealt us two disappointments. One was the scary response from its impatient inhabitants when I inadvertently caused a traffic snarl-up in their town centre. The other was on finding on arrival at the Santa Maria delle Grazie church that we needed to have booked in advance to get into the refectory to see Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
But small-town Italy did not disappoint. Looking for a place to overnight south of Bologna we pulled into the parking lot of a roadside hotel in a hamlet called Loiana. We were given to understand by the family who owned the hotel that it was not quite closed yet for winter, but then it wasn’t quite open either. We could not expect room service and we would have to wait a while for the bathroom water to warm as the geyser needed to be switched back on. It was up to us whether to stay.

The view from the family hotel's balcony in Loiana

It was not a difficult decision. Soon we were helping to get the fire going in the dining room’s fireplace and then shared in the hearty Tuscany soup the family had prepared for themselves for dinner.

Helping to get the fire going in the hotel's fireplace.

At breakfast the next morning we were joined by some men in military attire who came in for an espresso. We overcame the language barrier with the help of elaborate hand gestures. They turned out to be citizen-force members who were headed for a military parade that day in the neighbouring town of Monghidoro.
Within less than an hour of meeting we got invited to join them at the parade as their guests of honour. Unfortunately we had to get back on the road heading south. But first we had to take photos of our new friends in their military outfits with their plumed headgear. We said our goodbyes with warm handshakes and hugs. It was as if we had known each other for a lifetime.

Our new friends, headed for their military parade in Monghidoro

Such is the magic of small-town Italy and its people.
It is what I’ll be writing several articles about over the coming weeks.