Friday 23 June 2023
Today we had an even better crop of castles! And another pleasant day of just mooching around the countryside. It’s a bit unfair just how easily the Italians seem to leave eye-catchingly beautiful little towns and villages scattered all across the landscape.
This was meant to be a gentle recovery day, as I was still feeling grotty and Maureen had some indigestion and no appetite. And we really did take it easy (you can’t put too much effort in when the temperature is 32C) but we still managed to see a lot.
Fontanellato is a little town on the flat Po plains and right in the centre is a big ol’ castle with a moat around it. The town square literally surrounds the moat, it’s a bit bizarre. The castle was closed for visits but it’s a nice sleepy town. Have I mentioned the Po valley plains? It’s such a huge, flat landscape. Enormous pale blue sky overhead, sandy green fields below, and occasionally farms and manors just dotted here and there like yarn bobbles on a wool jumper.
We drove south-west and so came to the edge of the plains and the start of the hills. Castell’Arquato is a little hillside town guarding the Val d’Arda, with a grand fortress at the top of the winding cobbled main street. Quite a long, steep main street in the sunny heat, let me tell you! And then the castle itself has a main tower that must be higher than any other castle tower I’ve climbed because the steps went on forever. The view from the top was epic and we had it all completely to ourselves. In fact we had all these places pretty much to ourselves; I think the whole area is pretty much unknown to foreign tourism and I guess Italians are too sensible to go climbing castles in the heat!
At lunch in Fontanellato I’d had a glass of fresh semi-sparkling local red wine called Gutturnio. So after a pause for a drink gazing at Castell’Arquato’s tower from the enoteca on the square I bought a bottle of local Gutturnio to try again at home. Let’s find out if quirky local wines taste as good when taken out of the context of a charming holiday!
Our last castle visit was my favourite today. Vigoleno is a bourg – a small village entirely inside castle walls – in the hills guarding another Appennine valley. Up in the castle we were too inept to work out the sliding door to the tower top, but the lady from the ticket desk very kindly tramped up four flights of stairs to open it for us! The views were worth it. The village itself really is tiny but every corner wants photographing. Back in the car we tried finding a little farm lane that might give a good vantage back to the village, and just at the place where a hare popped up in the grass and then hopped away through the vineyard we found it.
Hmm. With all the castles today I’ve managed to forget the art treasure we visited first thing this morning! Just around the corner from our apartment is the Camera di San Paolo, a pair of painted rooms in a medieval convent. One of them is by Correggio and it is both brilliant fun and very impressive – his style seems to be very ahead of his time, at least to my eyes. Wonderful and entertaining putti. Definitely in my top five works of art I’ve seen this trip.
Parma in the evening really shows itself as a student city, everyone out in the heat. There was a street party that meant our first choice eatery wa completely full, so we ended up at a restaurant called Gatta Matta. It wasn’t great – the third example of a place trying to be more elevated in its cooking but actually just not having the skills.
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