New sights on a rainy day

Tuesday. All Saint’s Day and a national holiday in Italy

Well our doorbell rang at 8:45 and it was Patti and Roberto at our front door asking if we were ready! They had driven into the city to pick us up and we were in fact just about to leave to walk to the Porta Romana. So we were off into new territories for all four of us.

The weather was overcast and it was foggy in Siena – fairly typical of our recent weather patterns in fact – and by the time we got to our first destination, an organic cheese farmer in the Province of Pisa – it was starting to rain. But getting there was half the fun. We drove for what seemed like forever on the back roads of Siena province, crossing briefly into Florence province before entering to the province of Pisa, twisting and turning with sweeping vistas of Tuscany in the Fall. Most of the ground was covered with grapevines, white grapes by and large and the leaves were a beautiful yellow, golden color set off in nice contrast to the green of the surrounding hilly terrain. Very striking.

As we neared our first stop we had to stop and ask several locals where our Luigi, cheese farmer was located exactly – his directions on the mobile phone continued to remain vague and unclear – we found his place at last.

And what a place it was! His parents had bought this empty 17th century villa about 16 years ago after spending a life collecting art and antiques. The villa was enormous and came with its own chapel (which also served as the church for the little village which had once been located there as well) and he showed us the wooden grate near the top of one wall behind which the noble family sat to hear mass. We eventually saw the same little sitting box from the other side with a bench running along the base of the grate for the nobles to sit on. In the same room where the entry to their box was located was also a rap door, which led down into the sacristy of the church as well.

The villa defines in fact what a real villa was and not as it is generally used today in Italy which almost describes any freestanding house or home. This structure was enormous with five or six levels, although the structure itself is fairly shallow it was in fact quite long.

After our host showed us the cows which produced the milk for his cheeses – no pecorino here this is all cow’s milk based cheese as well as the cheese making facility which is all stainless steel and appeared very up-to-date. I had in fact tasted his cheese the Saturday before in Siena where he was part of an organic farmer’s market organized by Roberto in the La Lizza gardens next to the fortezza.

We viewed the chapel and then went into the house through the main entryway. I should point out that across from the main entryway was a large hillock which served as a park for the noble family and their guests and which was accessed by an elevated walkway from their floor and beneath which was a huge cave cut out of the rock for their wines. The main (ground floor) level of the building is furnished with furniture of a variety of periods but many of the pieces just seemed to fit in the particular space. We then explored upwards of three other levels (and I even went up one level to what appeared to be under the eaves yet the staircase continued up farther and I thought it best not to go any further). We stopped at the level on which the servants would have lived. Interestingly, they probably had the best views of all. Anyway, most of the rooms had little or no electricity or heating. Originally the important rooms would have been heated by wood. One can only wonder what it would be like in deep winter.

We ended in the basement level, which was also the kitchen, and indeed had been the original location for the kitchen as well. It was very warm and cozy particularly since their cook, one of the two Romanians, had been baking bread all morning. Our host surprised us by having a lunch ready for us, locally produced grape juice (not wine), cheeses of course, bread and wheat germ which had kneaded over and over again, mixed with parsley and olive oil, which was in fact quite tasty.

It continued to rain well into the afternoon as we head back south and to the west of Siena, to visit the ancient castle at Spannochia located near San Galgano abbey. The rain was pouring down very hard as we found the entrance to the castello and began the climb up a steep and twisty track of a road to where the castle sits.

At first I assumed we would be visiting another 9th century edifice to get a bit of the historical flavor of the surrounding area, another “sight” as it were. No, oh no, this was in fact much more.

The original castle and the keep, which is all that remains of that structure, were constructed in about the 9th century on an Etruscan site and it eventually became a monastery in the 13th century and by the 20th century a noble’s villa. And in the little chapel attached to the villa one can see the wooden grates in the walls behind which sat the nobles to hear mass, sitting apart from the common folk. They even had their own little window into the priest’s confessional in order to give confession. Today this site now houses a most unusual retreat of sorts. It does provide traditional hotel facilities – the ambience is absolutely charming, the rooms quite nice, and the prices are reasonable. While we didn’t taste the food or wine the menu look very well planned out as well. Indeed, much of the food on their table comes from their own gardens. For one other thing Spannochia does is to provide a place for young people, mostly Americans I think, to come and spend time working in the fields, in the kitchen, as staff to help offset costs and to also help promote the organic way of agriculture and at the same time enjoy a most unique experience. It should be noted that the staff rooms appeared to be in the old monastery rooms so they tended a bit to the more Spartan side of living.

After a wonderful afternoon of touring – leaving Patti and Roberto with new ideas and new adventures for their clients to discover for themselves, they dropped us off back into the city.

Not a bad holiday at all, I’d say. In fact every day we learn something new and fantastic, often about something we have never seen before but occasionally about ourselves and yes something new and different about a thing or place we thought we already new, like Florence.