Sunday 23 March 2014
Wednesday 26 February 2014
A different kind of Italy. Gualdo Macerata
Great news feature on Gualdo and Cancello Est in this months edition of South African publication, Vrouekeur (Woman's Choice). Maryke Roberts really captures the essence of Gualdo and its very special people. (Scroll down for English translation) Italian to follow.
A different kind of Italy.
Most people who visit Italy, tend to travel to the places where everyone else flocks and end up in villages along with too many other tourists. Maryke Roberts explored eastern Italy and found herself gently trapped in Gualdo di Macerata in Le Marche.
Landing in Rome at last, a friend collects us from the airport. We are bone-weary after a day and night of flying and waiting in airports - our brains are a tad foggy.
As we drive along fields of sunflowers, eyes at times sorely pressed by their bright yellow faces, I am
reminded of the jigsaw puzzle I received as a gift one birthday. Greens almost too green, blue skies
appealing loudly to one’s senses and golden yellow sunflowers swaying in the breeze. A little further
on, the onslaught of the heat wave that raked Italy over the last few days left some fields scorched,
with black flowers and hanging heads. “Is there anything more woebegone than a scorched
sunflower?” I wonder out loud. Their gigantic heads, the size of large dinner plates, no longer give
their faces to the sun, heads heavy with seed and oil, and have keeled over.
Farmers on tractors plough through the bleak fields leaving russet sods patterned in thick rows. The
rich soil and the rhythmic drone of the engines remind of days gone by when folk still turned, hoed
and toiled, and had to turn in early in the evening for sleep , solace and rest if they wished to reach
the yield their souls and bodies yearned for.
With the friendly smiles that greet us on our arrival at the guest house, tiredness is soon forgotten.
Cancello Est in Via Borga is built into the city wall of the historical Gualdo and one can almost see
Rapunzel high up on the stone walls. Our shower and bathroom has a fairytale view over the valleys
and ridges of the Sibillini Peaks in the near distance. Our room (The Smerillo Suite) fronts the street where only a narrow cobbled alley separates us from a tiny restaurant nestled a little higher up. Two small tables angle together comfortably on the sidewalk and allow for festive confidentialities to carry on into the slanted hours of the night.
In the morning we take a few leisurely steps to the family restaurant, Carletti’s where we sit and sip
our cappuccinos at the counter, personally served by Maria Carletti. The restaurant has the family
name since it opened its doors in 1959, but is endearingly known by locals as Maria’s after the
inimitable owner who brews your coffee herself. The porch overlooking the piazza is where you will
meet the old gents a-drinking, a-smoking and sharing sophistries in the morning and playing cards
into the soporific hours.
Il Forna gives us our daily bread, and should we venture out for the day to a neighbouring village
some freshly baked seductions too, such as a loaf of foccacia or slices of pizza to gobble up as we go.
One evening, after much exploring in beautiful places such as Belforto del Chienti, Fermo and San
Benedetto del Tronto a saintly rains softly starts falling and we find our hungry, tired selves at the
other restaurant in the village. As I open the door of Da Cicco, owned for yonks by Patrizio and
Teresa Isidori, we are enfolded into the warmth of their hearth. Gigantic framed jigsaw puzzles deck
the walls, huge laughter and tall tales are shared by an array of tourists at the tables. Being foreign
to the country and its fares, our waitress, Michaela Roibu, the soul of the space, repeatedly has to
explain the meaning of each course on the menu.
I overhear, from a table of fourteen English tourists next to us, a husband confiding in his wife: “I
don’t quite understand, but I really do not want pasta with each and every course, but she keeps
saying pasti this and pasti that..” His wife answers him equally sotto voce: “Let’s just hush and follow
the others, I am sure we will find our way through just fine.” I order us their Roman version of a mixed grill, the plate laden with chicken, pork and lamb. At first glance all the cuts look alike but with our very first bite wafts of rosemary, pinches of Maldon salt and pepper, tango with the tangy grilled flavour on our taste buds, and we tuck away like hungry pilgrims.
From our bedroom window, we can gaze at life being lived or laze in the big marble bath and look
out into the distance; tiny blocks of coloured earth quilted together in smaller and smaller pieces
until they merge with the mountains in the distance. We see sheep trail down the verdant hills in neat little rows and I am told they are not farmed for their meat - rather for their milk that makes the wonderful flavour-rich pecorino cheese. In the quiet early morning, the bells around their necks gently jingle and wake the valley, and sometimes when the wind is courteous, it may carry the clear sound of a shepherd singing to his herd as they graze.
One evening, the managers of our guest house, Marc Spendlove and Ivan Kruger invite us to share
supper with them. Over a glass of perfectly chilled white Verdicchio and encouraged by tables
heavily laden with a hearty fare of cold meats and cheeses we get to know our hosts. Laughing
at our inability to pronounce the names of marinated artichokes, olives, tomatoes and capers we
learn how they came to co-own this luxurious guest house. Although they can laugh now, fourteen
months ago the house was a ruin and they were challenged by frustrating building processes,
bureaucratic stumbling blocks all in a language they did not understand. Ivan is a born and bred
South African and Marc of bold British stock.
They used to live further down in the valley, Ivan recounts, where the snow can pile up to a meter
deep and on one occasion were unable to use their motorcar for six weeks. “I told Marc we should
move into the village and initially considered something like an attic or roomy loft space.” One fine
morning when shopping at the local hardware outlet, they spotted the Vendisi – (For Sale) sign in
the window of the ramshackle house next door. Upon telling the agent, Monica Bruni, that they
wished to downsize and that they wanted to view the inside of the house, she jokingly wondered if
they were sure about that, as the house had ten bedrooms!
They went to have a look. Some rooms were in such a bad state of disrepair that it wasn’t safe to
enter. They discussed the options with a partner, Mirella Corsetti, and decided to buy and restore
the house, and to incorporate a guest house and a cooking school. “We are still laughing about
the multiple misunderstandings we had when viewing several other places about the meaning of
the ‘3 Pianos’ that were on sale with the roof units. It took us a good while to find out they were not
pianos, but referred to the Italian word for ‘storeys’,” Marc shares.
Architect Piero Perogio, who specialises in historic buildings, told them that the top floor was
built in 1625 and that the other levels were even older! When they bought the house, the walls,
floors and beams were a real mess of plastering, thick cement and layers of paint. The lower levels
revealed deserted pig pens and chicken coops. As a result of the all added weight over the years the
original wooden beams were either broken or so badly bent that they could no longer be used. Initial
alterations revealed frescoes on the ceiling and the original quarry tiles on the floors - their age
estimated at over five hundred years. These were lifted, restored and deftly laid again.
Ivan relates how the outer wall, dating from the eighteenth century and built on the boundary
wall of the village, was taken down stone by stone and rebuilt, complete with steel columns to
allow for sufficient reinforcement in the possible event of an earthquake. “Three seismic engineers
assisted the decision to anchor the wall with a swimming pool, which now basically keeps the whole
guesthouse standing.”
One evening, we drive to Da Pippo e Gabriella Restaurant in Sant Angelo in Pontano, a stone’s throw
away from Cancello Est. This restaurant has repeatedly made it into the Michelin Guide for their
excellent cuisine. My choice is their spaghetti with Amatriciana sauce, swimming with meaty flavours of pork cheek and bacon together with some piquant pecorino cheese. I find space to treat my taste buds to a scrumptious serving of their homemade tiramisu. As we leave, Pippo bids us farewell with what I sense is the same warm gratitude I am sure he has been showing for the past forty years.
During our stay in Gualdo, we follow the doings of a farmer in the field below our window as he
slowly but surely negotiates the plough through the tawny coloured stubbles, leaving shaven strips
of land for the eyes to stroke. At sunset around seven, the sun still softly kissing the last few hillocks,
the drone of the tractor engine ceases and I imagine a short, plump wife waiting at home with
freshly baked bread, chunks of pecorino and slices of carefully cured cold meats.
Nurtured by the people and the place, I understand how Marc and Ivan found renewed contentment
and purpose here, making time to cook jams, taking long walks in the valley with their dogs, Mayling
and Darling, and gazing at the starry still life of the valley till the wee hours of the night.
Gualdo at a Glance
- Should you wish to, Gualdo is a comfortable distance from ski resorts (of which there are
many in the area) such as Sassotetto. We used Cancello Est as our guest house base in
summer and explored the whole region in short daily excursions. Bookings can be done
online at www.cancelloest.com or send an e-mail to marcs@cancelloest.com
- Sylvia Gould is the friendly source of information in the tourist office (Pro-Loco Gualdo) and speaks pukka English! E-mail her at sylviagould@hotmail.com for more information regarding the village and region.
- When looking for villages in Italy, take care to add the region or province in which it is
situated in your search, as many places across the land takes their name from the very same
persons. Gualdo where we stayed is known as Gualdo MC, referring to the region Macerata.
- Should you hire a vehicle and wish to use GPS, type in the postal code of the relevant village
you wish to travel to. That will ensure accurate directions.
- It is best not to start your journey before doing some thorough research, and wise practise
to keep a travel guide of good repute handy. Some useful words, phrases and correct
pronunciation may prove its weight in perfectly cooked pasta at the very least. Every village
has its own little tourist info bureau for specific local information, but being able to greet
or thank someone when you have asked them for directions, even in broken Italian, may fix
your early morning coffee order just a little more pronto together with a sunflower smile!
Check out reviews on Cancello Est on TripAdvisor
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