Monday 26 June 2023
Today was another day exploring, this time on our way from Urbino to meet up with Tim & Nessa in Ravenna. Yes, back to the heat and mosquitoes of the Po plains. So we set off on a twisty route through the mountains of the Marche and back into Emilia-Romagna.
First stop was Urbania, which vexed us. We couldn’t find the way to the riverside by the Ducal Palace, and it looked way too hot for a walk anyway, and then the Church of the Dead – the only really unique thing in town – turned out to be closed today. Urbania was still a nice old town, just not very diverting!
Carpegna was more useful, as we stopped at a butcher to buy some of the local speciality prosciutto (as good as culatello I reckon!) and cave-aged pecorino cheese (best cheese so far?). It’s got a handsome ducal palace (but then it seems every town in these mountains has a ducal palace for someone-or-other) and that’s about it for diversions! Nice hiking mountains behind it, the Sasso-Simone, but we didn’t have time for that. Plus, still 30C out there!
Pennabilli is another mountain town, even more picturesque than the others. We took a wander through the old walled town, past a rather original Saint-Sebastian-as-a-sundial, and then up to the ruins of the castle at the top. Only to find that the Dalai Lama had beaten us here, twice, leaving a bell and some prayer wheels and a stupa behind. We had a pinic on a bench which turned out to be in a local cat meeting place. Our prosciutto attracted five prowling, hissing felines but luckily we looked too tough to be mobbed for our ham.
Final stop on this tour was San Leo. From a distance this fortress perched on a crag over a little village looks absolutely fantasy epic. Inside it’s much more of a purely military fortification than, say, Torrechiara. It also has the cell of Count Cagliostro, a medieval swindler and conman (no, he was not really a count) who did so well at faking supernatural powers that when he was eventually locked up here, it was in a tiny cell accessed only through a hatch in the ceiling. He went mad and died, poor sod.
Marginalia. Every medieval town in Italy has a “Torture Museum” and San Gimignano had three (that we counted). I think it’s possibly a legal requirement? Sienna, Florence, Montepulciano, San Marino, they’ve all got at least one. Of course we’d never be seen dead in such a tacky place (geddit?)… but tricky San Leo turned out to have dedicated a couple of the castle’s chambers to a display of torture devices. So, argh, we were caught in a Torture Museum after all!
Anyway, San Leo was cool. Ravenna is hot, in a more literal way. Our B&B Vila Floris seems to be an old hotel that has stripped back its offering to make ends meet, but it’s a nice enough place with effective aircon (phew). Couldn’t find any shade to park the car, so we lugged all the wine in!
Met up with Tim & Vanessa for dinner at a well-reviewed bistro, although the food was in a category that is getting to be terribly familiar: trying to elevate above traditional cooking, but not being quite skilled enough.
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