To many a traveler, Tuscany and art are synonymous. From the architecture to the numerous galleries to those gorgeous, green, and cliché hills, there’s an element of art in every corner of Tuscany. That’s why I am very excited to introduce you to guest poster Alexandra Korey, a Canadian-born Italophile with a love for Tuscan art.

Alexandra is a big score for this particular Five Favorites feature as she writes the arts blog for the Tuscany Tourism Board (isn’t that the most fab job you’ve ever heard of??). Below are her *personal* picks for the best of Tuscan art and where to find them. I love this list because it is a very fresh take on the Tuscan art scene. Please don’t write to me asking why Michelangelo’s “David” isn’t on here…

Five Favorites: Art in Tuscany

One of the primary reasons that people come to Italy – and to Tuscany in particular – is to see great art. A “top five” list of great art in Tuscany is almost impossible, given that I have what Italians would call “l’imbarazzo della scelta” – way too many choices. So I’ve taken this challenge chronologically, and warn you that this is a totally personal list that blends some of my favorites with some must-sees.

Etruscan and Roman Ruins at Roselle
The ruins at Roselle in Maremma, the southern coastal area of Tuscany, consist of an Etruscan city built upon, but not entirely ruined by, the Romans. When I was there we were practically the only people walking around this vast space (best done in spring or fall).

Medieval Art at San Miniato al Monte
San Miniato al Monte is a Romanesque church above Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence, from which you can get a great view of the city. The church itself is one of the few in this part of Italy to have a raised crypt.

Early Modern Art in the Uffizi Gallery
It’s no secret that the Uffizi gallery is one of the world’s best museums, and if you want to overload on art and risk Stendhal’s syndrome, this is the place to do it. I have written about how to approach the Uffizi so that you don’t drop dead of exhaustion, and suggest that you do not attempt to see everything at once.

Renaissance Art: Anything by Donatello
Would it be cheating if I suggested two totally different sculptures by Donatello that you could view and compare? Donatello had a long career and worked in many media and styles; these are two of my favourites.

a. Donatello’s Annunciation tabernacle in the Church of Santa Croce
b. Donatello’s Cantoria in the Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Florence

Contemporary Art in Lucca
Tuscany’s not really known for its contemporary art but recently there has been more movement in this field, especially in the town of Lucca. Year-round, Lucca has a contemporary art space called… Lu.C.C.A! that offers rotating exhibits as well as frequent artists’ round tables and other special events. Every second summer there’s a biennial of contemporary art on the theme of paper, called Cartasia, that turns the whole town into an open air gallery. In 2010 this festival is on from June 19 to July 19.

Alexandra Korey is an art history professor turned professional blogger who resides in Florence Italy. She writes her personal blog www.arttrav.com and the arts blog for the Regione Toscana, http://arts.allthingstuscany.com.

Photos © Tuscany Arts (1, 4, 5), Richardfabi, Wikipedia, Alexandra Korey

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The Torre del Mangia and Palazzo Pubblico on Siena's Piazza del Campo

On the other side of the Chianti countryside, some 35 miles south of Florence, you will find Siena, a Tuscan town rife with tradition and mood.

WHERE: Medieval Siena is best known as the site of the Palio, a twice-yearly, bareback horserace that takes place in the wide, shell-shaped Piazza del Campo. The race, which can be traced as far back as the early 13th century, pits a rotating roster of 10 of the city’s 17 contrade (neighborhoods) against one another. Run on July 2 and August 16, the Palio is Siena’s most famous local event, which today draws scads of spectators from all over Italy and abroad. Indeed, the Palio is a hot ticket: Learn how to book tickets for the Palio.

Post pageantry, Siena is a gloriously Gothic prize for pedestrians; the compact city center is car-free and quiet enough to hear the cobblestones resonate underfoot.

WHAT TO DO: In addition to the Palio, Siena’s cityscape awes, with art and architecture around every bend. The tight warren of shadowy streets empties into Piazza del Campo, one of the finest medieval squares in Europe. Divided into nine sectors–a nod to the Council of Nine who ruled the city during the Middle Ages–the shell-shaped piazza serves as a meeting point, playground, and outdoor dining venue.

At the base of the shell lies the Palazzo Pubblico, a result of Siena’s construction boom in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The Humanist “palace of the people” houses two masterpieces by native son Simone Martini and an amusing fresco series depicting good and bad government practices.

Next door to the Palazzo Pubblico rises the Torre del Mangia, which, at the height of 330 feet, is one of the tallest bell towers in Italy. Climb the 505 steps to the top and enjoy the views of rooftops and the Campagna Senese (Sienese countryside).

Also within view from the tower is Siena’s spectacular Duomo, a massive, black-and-white striped cathedral renowned for its interior pavements. The pavements are usually unveiled in their entirety in September. However, a small portion of the 56 floor panels featuring sybils, angels, saints, and biblical scenes, are visible to viewers on a rotating basis throughout the year.

Finally, if you want to endear yourself to some of the locals, pay a visit to one—or several—of Siena’s 17 contrada museums. On proud display are banners, relics, and costumes from Palio contests of yore. The tourist office in Piazza del Campo can provide you a map to each neighborhood. For a really good explanation of the contrade, their history, and what’s on view in their museums, see this article of Siena’s Contrada Museums from In Italy Online.

LODGING: There are tons of agriturismo (farm stay) inns and self-catering options on the outskirts of Siena, ideal if you’re touring Tuscany by car. Retreat to the well-appointed Hotel Santa Caterina (Via Enea Silvio Piccolomini, 7), which is set just outside the Porta Romana, or stay in Villa Scacciapensieri (Strada di Scacciapensieri, 10), a country hotel north of town where you can “forget your troubles” by enjoying vistas of the rooftops and towers Siena as well as the surrounding valley.  If you want to stay in town, consider Hotel Duomo (Via Stalloreggi, 38) because its upper floors offer rooftop views.

DINING: Siena’s culinary landscape reflects its rustic roots: think roasted meats, lots of herbs, and simple peasant fare. But the city is also home to a university, so cheap eats and wine bars abound. Osteria Le Logge (Via del Porrione, 33), changes its menu daily, and offers more than a dozen options for lunch and dinner. Osteria La Sosta di Violante (Via di Pantaneto, 115) serves up traditional fare in a casual atmosphere a few blocks from Piazza del Campo. Primi piatti, such as ravioli with red chicory, start at around $16. An enoteca (wine bar) option is Trombicche (Via delle Terme, 66), which offers good wine by the glass,  tasting platters of salumi, cheeses, and antipasti (ideal for a snack), and a convivial atmosphere.

GETTING THERE: Fly into Rome’s Fiumicino Airport or Pisa’s Galileo Galilei Airport. If you take the train from either of these destinations to Siena, the trip will last approximately two to three hours, with at least one connection on the way. A better bet is to rent a car from the airport. The A1 autostrada is a direct route from Rome to Florence; Siena is about halfway between the two cities. The SS-222 from Florence to Siena provides a more scenic route past the olive groves and vineyards of Chianti.

INFORMATION: For more ideas about what to do and where to stay and eat in Siena, see the Siena Tourism website.

Photo © delphaber

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This installment of Italy travel articles includes two videos that I thought were worth sharing. Enjoy the round-up!

Skiing in Abruzzo [The Guardian]
Luxury Bargains: Italy in Winter [The Independent]
If You’re Ever in Florence, You Have to Visit This Mediocre Trattoria I Know [The Onion]
CBP to Foodies: No Hiding the Salami [Update: Travel Better]
Is Italy the ‘Citizen Kane’ of Travel? [World Hum video, below]

Venice in Winter [Financial Times]
Alone (or Almost) with Michelangelo in Vatican City [New York Times]
Fresh Powder Meets Fine Dining at Cortina d’Ampezzo [NYT]
The 31 Places to Go in 2010 (includes Gargano, Puglia) [NYT]
Tuscany – Timelapse Impressions [Matador TV video, click on the link]

Photo © madiash

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It has been a while since I posted an article roundup. Here are some of the great Italy travel articles you may have missed in the last month or so.

Roaming Rome, in a Martini Mood [L.A. Times]
Do the Splits on the Swiss and Italian Ski Slopes [The Independent]
Sicily’s Secret South [The Guardian]
Italy in Full (Palermo, Sicily) [Conde Nast Traveler]
Artists Lead the Way in the Oltrarno District of Florence [New York Times]
The Best Way to Travel in Tuscany [CN Traveler's Perrin Post]

Photo © ventofreddo

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Coming up with three of my best travel secrets for Italy is no easy task. Alas, I’ve been tagged by Robin Locker at My Mélange to come up with my list, just as she has over at her blog. In fact, since I had difficulty paring down my favorites, I’ve come up with my non-Italy list over at my personal site Miss Adventures. Have a look at both of them!

Of course, it’s not fair to really call these “secrets,” as there are plenty of other people who have gone before me and recommended the same places. So, just consider these as my current favorites among a bucket-load of tips.

Three Best Travel Secrets for Italy

Aventino Hill, Rome
There are so many wonderful places to stay in Rome, but I really like the Aventine Hill which rises just beyond the Circus Maximus. This is one of the most peaceful corners of the city, mostly because it is slightly removed from the constant buzz of the city. And the views from up here are spectacular and even unique. If you are lucky enough to charm the policemen who guard the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, then you can have a glance through their peephole, through which you can see a perfectly framed St. Peter’s Basilica. Though it’s largely a residential area, there are hotels on the Aventine. I like Hotel Villa San Pio for its garden setting, richly decorated rooms, and the fact that its on Via Santa Melania.

Ravenna
As a former capital of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, Ravenna is hardly unknown. Nevertheless, I rarely see it on must-visit lists for Italy. True, there’s so much to include that Ravenna is easy to bypass. But I think this little city in eastern Emilia-Romagna is one of Italy’s gems. Indeed, it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list for its incredible Byzantine-era mosaics, such as those decorating the walls and apse of Sant’Apollinare in Classe (above). In total, Ravenna has eight sites featuring spectacular mosaics. Ravenna is also a great place to get piadina, a special flatbread typical of Emilia-Romagna and very much like a Turkish gözleme. Grab one filled with cheese, spinach, or nutella (!) at a piadinerie and enjoy…yum!

Argentario Promontory, Tuscany
This is a place you probably won’t get a chance to go to unless you have a friend with a house here. The Promontorio dell’Argentario is a popular summer home spot for Romans and Tuscans. It has stretches of empty sand beaches, ideal currents for windsurfing, idyllic resorts at Porto Santo Stefano and Porto Ercole, and views of some of the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago. If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll know that I’m a sucker for ruins and the Argentario promontory has Roman ruins at Ansedonia, known in the Roman world as Cosa. I’m also quite fond of La Parrina, an agriturismo where you can overnight or simply stop by to pick up the farm’s own olive oil, wine, and super fresh provisions on your way to your beach home.

So, those are my “secrets” and I’m also supposed to tag a few other blog friends to see what they come up with.

South of Rome
Flip Florence
The Espresso Break
Bell’Avventura
Katie of Tripbase, who started this whole shebang

If you’ve come up with a list, by all means tag me so I can have a look at your tips, too!

Photos © Patrick Medved, Gregorio Parvus, Alberto Bizzini

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Statue of Giacomo Puccini

Today I am starting a brand new feature at Italofile called Five Favorites. The segment is a chance for me to invite fellow Italy bloggers and Italophiles to wax poetic about five favorite Italian things, be it characteristics of a town or region or five favorite foods, fashion designers, parks….anything Italy-related. I, too, will be bringing you posts about my five faves from time to time. But Five Favorites is really a chance for guest bloggers to shine.

To kick-start this feature, I have quite a stellar guest blogger. Robin Locker is the creator of My Mélange, a blog devoted to Italy and France, which has recently undergone a gorgeous renovation. Robin has chosen to write about Lucca, one of Tuscany’s most charming little towns.

By the way, if you’d like to be a future contributor to Five Favorites, send an email to melanie at italofile dot com or send me a tweet @italofileblog. Now, enjoy Robin’s post…

Five Favorites: Lucca
Tuscany is one of my most favorite places on Earth. And while it’s comprised of many beautiful hill-towns, the one that really stands out to me is the walled, and rather flat, city of Lucca. A short train ride from Florence drops you just a few blocks from the ramparts, which means you don’t even need a car to visit.

Thought I am quite sure I could come up with a list of about 100 things to love about Lucca, in the interest of time and space, I’ll limit it to my Top Five.

Biking along a canal in Lucca

1. Lucca loves Puccini. The great opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, responsible for Turandot and Madam Butterfly, was born in Lucca in 1858. And the city loves to celebrate its talented son. There is a hotel named after him (where we stayed of course!), a statue of him seated in a relaxed position located in a quiet piazza and even a Puccini Festival held in the summertime.

2. The Walls. Napoleon gave the city of Lucca to his sister Elisa , who can be credited with the landscaping of the outer walls and the trees planted around them. Those very walls help to keep the city small and keep car traffic to a minimum which in turn helps keep Lucca quiet. The walls are where you will find Lucchesi taking their daily passeggiata and riding their bikes along the paved paths atop the ramparts. It’s one of my most favorite ways to spend time.

3. Trattoria DaLeo. I love eating at this gem, where the locals congregate for a great meal at down-right rock-bottom prices. The place is always packed and you’ll find cruets of the freshest, local olive oil on each table- perfect for passing. They serve up Tuscan favorites like Zuppa di Farro (spelt and bean soup), stewed rabbit or Bistecca alla Fiorentina.  And if you’re lucky you can squeeze into the tiny outdoor terrace in the nice weather.

4. Enoteca Vanni. There are many wonderful boutiques, but this unassuming enoteca/liquor store really stands out. It houses an ancient wine cellar with a wide selection and some of the most welcoming and knowledgeable staff around. We had a private tour of the old cellars, help picking out a special bottle to bring home and even a local olive oil tasting. What’s not to love?

5. The Towers. Lucca has not one, but two towers that can be climbed. Torre Guinigi, which is adorned with a lovely roof garden with oak trees on top, and pictures lining the walls detailing the history of Lucca, is my favorite. If you reach the top after the 230 step climb, your reward will be a stunning 360 degree view of Lucca and the Tuscan countryside you soon won’t forget.

About Robin Locker
Robin is a European Travel Consultant, Photographer and Freelance Writer with a passion for France and Italy. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, but her heart is never far from the Bel Paese. You can learn more about her travel services and browse her photo gallery on her website or enjoy recipes, helpful travel tips and ways to infuse the European culture into your lifestyle on her blog.

All photos © Robin Locker.

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Zaha Hadid's MAXXI Museum, Rome

Italy’s modern art museums are often overlooked by the masses, who prefer, not surprisingly, to examine the country’s ancient and Renaissance-era treasures. But with the debut of Rome’s new, Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI Museum, the capital now has a very high profile exhibition space that is itself a work of art.

New York Times’ The Moment magazine describes the museum, which is dedicated to exhibitions on 21st century art, this way:

[It is a] series of sky-lighted concrete canyons that tilt and swell, swerve like a velodrome and twist into what appears from the exterior to be a monumental hard-shelled calla lily, a pliable mausoleum that seems to play the sobriety of a de Chirico off the cooling, warping effects of a work by Anish Kapoor. Otherworldly in some respects, the museum also resonates with the character of Rome. The MAXXI could easily be a composite sketch of Rome’s contradictory but fluid, theatrical, and sweeping architectural personality — which is not unlike its architect’s.

Such excitement over a new building in the Eternal City made me think that others may wish to know more about some other modern art museums in Italy. Here’s a brief list:

Rome and Lazio
Before the MAXXI, Rome had the National Gallery of Modern Art. This museum is housed in a late 19th century building in the Villa Borghese and features art from Pirandello, De Chirico, Kandinsky, and more. There’s also the MACRO, a museum occupying two reclaimed buildings (and a new wing in 2010) in the Porta Pia neighborhood. It features “some of the most significant expressions characterizing the Italian art scene since the 1960s.” Other places in Rome to see modern art include the PalaExpo in the Quirinale district (which has, by the way, a great cafeteria); the Auditorium Parco della Musica, a music hall and occasional exhibition space in Flaminio which was designed by the celebrated architect Renzo Piano and opened in 2002; and the Giorgio de Chirico House-Museum near Piazza di Spagna.

Elsewhere in Rome’s region of Lazio, check out the town of Anticoli Corrado, located about 40 km northeast of the capital and featuring a trove of artist studios and the Civic Gallery of Modern Art. The best write-up about this little town can be found on the Vagabondo-Italy website.

Venice

A work by Picasso at the Guggenheim, Venice

Venice is on this list for one museum only: the Guggenheim. Located in Peggy Guggenheim’s former palazzo on the Grand Canal, the museum “is the most important museum in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century.” What does that include? Some of the famous names in Mrs. Guggenheim’s collection include Braque, Duchamp, Modrian, and Giacometti. Ernst, Pollock, and Magritte. Calder, Brancusi, Klee, and Picasso. Just about anyone you can think of from the world of contemporary art is there. The Guggenheim also attracts numerous big-name exhibits. Currently, it is hosting the Masterpieces of Futurism (through Dec. 31, 2009). See my article on Planning a Visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection for About.com.

Of course, Venice also is the host city for the Biennale. Despite its name, this celebration of contemporary art is happening almost all of the time. This year (2009), saw the Venice Biennale of Art, Cinema, Theatre, and Music. However, in August 2010, the 12th Biennale for Architecture will kick off in the Lion City.

Tuttomondo by Keith Haring

Florence and Tuscany
Finding modern art in Renaissance-heavy Tuscany is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. But modern art is there. In Florence, try the Marino Marini museum, which features the Italian artist’s works, including numerous sculptures of horses. Also, what could be more modern than fashion? Even if you can’t afford to shop until you drop, you can enjoy looking back – and forward – at the styles created by Florentine Salvatore Ferragamo in the Museo Ferragamo. (As of this writing, the Museo Ferragamo is sponsoring a shoe design contest for artists. Deadline Dec. 10, 2009!)

There are several more opportunities in Tuscany to enjoy modern art. Just north of Florence, in the city of Prato, is the Luigi Pecci Contemporary Art Museum. It features mid- to late-20C art, including photography, from Italian and international artists. If you’re in Pisa, you can savor some pop art with Keith Haring’s Tuttomondo mural. It’s one of the last works ever created by the American artist. Two more outdoor modern art spaces in Tuscany are gardens. In Chianti, check out the Chianti Sculpture Park, whose name says it all, and the Tarot Garden (Il Giardino dei Tarocchi), an unusual project of sculptures based on tarot cards that was the vision of artist Niki de Saint Phalle. The Tarot Garden is located in Capalbio in the province of Grosseto.

Torino (Turin)

Torino's Mole Antonelliana

Our final stop on this modern art tour of Italy is in Torino (Turin), whose skyline is a work of contemporary art. The spire of the Mole Antonelliana, gives Torino its distinctive look and today houses Italy’s National Museum of Cinema (Museo Nazionale del Cinema). The moving image is, to some, the ultimate in contemporary art, and the MNC contains a vast collection of archival film footage, books and magazines about film, scripts, costumes, and a cinema. Among the masterpieces in the collection are an 18C movie camera (the first?), Peter O’Toole’s costume from Lawrence of Arabia, an original poster from the Rita Hayworth classic Gilda, storyboards from Star Wars, and a script of the Italian dialogues from the 1933 version of King Kong.

While Venice has the Biennale, Torino has the Torino Triennale Tremusei, a triennial exhibition of emerging artists at three of Torino’s contemporary art spaces: the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, the Castello di Rivoli, and the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, also known as the GAM. The last Triennale in Torino was in 2008 (the 2nd incarnation). So, if my calendar and math serve me right, T3 will take place in 2011. Stay tuned.

I know I’ve missed a ton of other fine contemporary art museums in Italy. So if you have suggestions for what else should be on this list, please add your comments below.

Photos by MAXXI, Guggenheim, Comune di Pisa, Comune di Torino

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New Moon Fever in Volterra

The windswept, medieval Tuscan town of Volterra has been in the news a lot lately, thanks to the hype surrounding New Moon, the second book in the teenage vampire series Twilight. Author Stephenie Meyer set a scene between Bella, the heroine, and Edward, her undead lover, in Volterra. And now this small town in western Tuscany has become a tourist attraction.

Volterra has never really been much of a Tuscan hotspot, being highly overshadowed by Pisa, the capital of its province. Now, according to USA Today, wide-eyed, vampire-loving tourists are coming to Volterra to take the New Moon tour. USA Today has provided a photo slideshow of the tour.

Want to know what else to do in Volterra? Visit the Official Volterra Tourism Website. Here you can learn about Volterra’s museums, including the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum, which showcases the history and artifacts from Volterra’s ancient past. Maybe Edward was Etruscan? I don’t know – you’ll have to read the book!

Or see the movie. The film version of New Moon comes out on November 20.

Photo from USA Today

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Pinocchio Marionettes in Collodi, Tuscany

Last November, the New York Review of Books released Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio under its NYRB Classics imprint. The tale, as reviewed by Tim Parks in the latest issue, is much darker than the Disneyfied version. After the jump is Parks’ full review. As always, I urge you to subscribe to NYRB; they often review books on Italy and even have an Italian version, La Rivista dei Libri.

By the way, if you’re visiting Tuscany with kids, you may be interested in venturing to the Parco di Pinocchio in the author’s hometown of Collodi (Carlo Lorenzini adopted the town’s name for his nom de plume).

Knock on Wood
By Tim Parks
The Adventures of Pinocchio
by Carlo Collodi, translated from the Italian by Geoffrey Brock, with an introduction by Umberto Eco and an afterword by Rebecca West

New York Review Books, 189 pp., $14.00 (paper)

A voice yells from within a pine log, “Don’t hit me too hard!” The carpenter is astonished, his axe stayed. When they come unexpected, life and language are unsettling.

Brought into being by blows, the talking log proceeds to start a fight: the carpenter’s friend Geppetto has arrived to ask for a piece of wood and the voice mocks his yellow wig; Geppetto imagines he is being insulted by his friend and in a moment the two are on the floor, scratching, biting, and thumping. Consigned to Geppetto, the lively log contrives to bang his shins and provoke a second misunderstanding and a second fight before it is taken away.

Old Geppetto is something of an artist. His house is bare, but he has painted bright flames in the fireplace and a merrily boiling pot above them; when reality is hard, illusion may offer consolation. Now Geppetto is about to embark on a much greater act of creation: he will fashion a traveling companion who can “dance and fence, and do flips,” so that together the two can earn a “crust of bread” and a “cup of wine.” He’s thinking of company and economic advantage. But no sooner has Pinocchio been carved from his living log than he is snatching off Geppetto’s wig, revealing the reality of his maker’s baldness. Taught to walk, he runs off. When Geppetto catches up and starts to give the puppet a fierce shaking, he is arrested for assault and jailed. The artist has lost control of his creation. Raw vitality with no inhibitions, Pinocchio is freed into a world of hot tempers, vanity, ignorance, and appetite; a violent tussle is never far off.

Himself a creative spirit in hard times, the satirical journalist, playwright, and novelist Carlo Collodi began writing Pinocchio in 1881. He was fifty-five, disillusioned, pessimistic, combative. A Florentine through and through, in 1848 and 1859 he had volunteered to fight in two unsuccessful revolutionary wars that sought to replace a fragmented Italy dominated by foreign powers with a unified, self-governing state. In the 1860s that goal was chaotically and unexpectedly achieved, albeit under the austere Piedmontese monarchy. Like many who had supported the cause, Collodi was dissatisfied with the consequences. Politically united, Italy remained culturally divided and backward, a country in need, as the poet Leopardi had once said, of some collective “illusion” that might give its people a sense of identity. “Now we have made Italy, we must make the Italians,” the patriot Massimo D’Azeglio famously declared. Unfortunately, government policies based on national pride led to tariff wars and further impoverishment, provoking regional resentment and unrest. Some went hungry. Many predicted the imminent breakup of the country.

In this uncertain environment one crucial instrument of unity and stability was the newly introduced, compulsory education system. In 1868 Collodi was invited by the Ministry of Education to contribute to a national dictionary: Italians must speak and spell in the same way. In 1875 a Florentine publisher specializing in children’s literature gave him the job of translating Perrault’s fables from the French; the best works of foreign literature were to be published in a modern, standardized Italian. After completing this translation, Collodi was encouraged to write for children himself: first the stories of a boy, Giannettino, who travels through Italy from north to south (“to give kids half an idea of their new and glorious country, about which they know absolutely nothing”), then the tale of Minuzzolo, a boy who makes fun of all attempts to teach him to be good. Later, Collodi would go on to write some highly successful math, grammar, and geography textbooks.

In short, the rebel and satirist had been drawn into the huge task of educating modern Italians. He was aware that it was not a project children would rejoice in. Nor was his approach conventional. In 1883 the Ministry of Education would reject the tales of Giannettino and Minuzzolo as standard texts for elementary schools because they were “so humorously frivolous as to detract from the seriousness of teaching.” In general, Collodi’s writing is galvanized by the contradiction that while education is understood to be essential, it is presented as generally dull and often futile, if only because human nature is so intractable. Despite being educated in a seminary, Collodi himself was a drinker, smoker, gambler, and womanizer.

The success of his children’s books was welcome but Collodi’s ambition had been to write adult literature. Here, however, his work was criticized for failing to deliver realistic character and incident, and for its underlying pessimism about both the new Italy and human nature in general. Following Zola’s lead in France, the fashion of the day was verismo, a dour realism justified by its commitment to social progress. Out of step with the times, Collodi had a flair for the surreal and absurd that looked back to Sterne and forward to Pirandello; in the 1880s such an approach was considered appropriate only in children’s literature. Thus Collodi frequently found himself invited to work in a genre he sometimes felt was below him. When his publisher insisted he contribute to a new children’s weekly, Giornale per i bambini, he reluctantly delivered the first installment of “The Story of a Puppet,” with a letter remarking: “Here’s some childish twaddle, do what you want with it; but assuming you print, you’d better pay me well if you want to see any more.”

The story would later be retitled The Adventures of Pinocchio. Collodi did not grow more fond of it. A third of the way into the book we now have, he left Pinocchio hanging by the neck from a tree, having apparently put a gruesome end to both the puppet and his tale. It took the magazine four months to convince him to press on. Later, he was so weary with the project that he took another six-month break. Very likely it was this irritation at writing in a genre he thought secondary that accounts for the story’s extraordinary mood swings and unusually cavalier approach to such matters as narrative consistency. Ironically, these are the very qualities that give Pinocchio its extraordinary vitality, qualities that come across in the new translation by Geoffrey Brock. Like Geppetto, Collodi had casually started something that took on a life of its own.

The celebrated and sugary Disney film adaptation (1940), by which most people outside Italy have come to know Pinocchio’s story, announces itself as an example of how, if sincerely desired, even the greatest of wishes can come true: a reassuring message. Nothing could be further from the acid spirit of Collodi’s “Story of a Puppet.” The question with a puppet is: Who will manipulate him? When the puppet turns out to have a stubborn and stupid will of his own, that question becomes: Whom will he allow himself to be manipulated by?

Having got Geppetto arrested, Pinocchio rushes home, only to experience a shock like the one he earlier gave the carpenter: a voice speaks from nowhere: “Cree, cree, cree.” It is the Talking Cricket (Disney’s Jiminy Cricket) who has “lived in this room for more than a hundred years.” Revealing himself on the wall, the officious insect proceeds to give Pinocchio some hundred-year-old advice: “Woe to any little boy who rebels against his parents and turns his back on his father’s house!” A surprisingly well-informed Pinocchio is having none of it: he’s off, he declares,

because if I hang around the same thing that happens to all the other kids will happen to me, too: I’ll be sent to school, and I’ll be expected to study whether I like it or not….

When the cricket warns that this attitude can only lead to disaster, “Pinocchio jumped up in a rage, grabbed a wooden mallet from the workbench, and flung it at the Talking Cricket.” Far from crooning his way through the puppet’s many adventures with blue top hat, red umbrella, and yellow dancing shoes, the creature dies at once, splattered on the wall. It is typical of Collodi that while the rest of the book will show just how right the cricket was, the author nevertheless seems to take as much delight as any child in having this wearisome pedagogue obliterated with such panache. That said, he then has fun resurrecting the insect on two or three occasions to exchange insults with his killer.

Whether the cricket is dead or alive, traditional wisdom is evidently defunct, a tedious chirp no one has time for. Who then will harness the mad vitality of this improbably artificial, newly created Italian? Rather than the uplifting account of a noble wish come true, Collodi’s tale records the thoughtless exuberance of a character whose only talent lies in trading insults and whose inevitable destiny is to be exploited at every turn. The writer’s achievement here was to tap into the zany spirit of Tuscan humor to deliver a Pinocchio who swings alarmingly between lies and candor, generous sentiment and cruel mockery, good intentions and zero staying power. Geoffrey Brock’s accomplishment in his excellent new translation is to get that spirit across in English, albeit and inevitably without the intense flash of recognition one has on reading the original Italian; for Pinocchio does indeed capture a perplexing waywardness that one experiences every day in Italy.

In this regard it’s worth comparing the opening scenes of Disney’s animated film, in which, bright as a new toy, the cute and evidently harmless Pinocchio dances and sings in an oddly Alpine, cuckoo-clock world—not a sniff of Italy about it—charmingly supported by pussycat and goldfish, to the 2002 acted film adaptation by the Italian (and Tuscan) comic Roberto Benigni. Benigni can irritate with his facile high spirits and boundless self-regard, but they are indispensable qualities for this part. His Pinocchio leaps from the artist’s bench into frenetic action, bouncing off the walls, chasing up and down ladders, tripping, skipping, slipping, and simply terrorizing the bewildered Geppetto in a whirlwind of activity accompanied by manic logorrhea. The film may not have been a box-office success, but Benigni convincingly captures the anarchic energy of the original. Plus…the actor is blessed, or cursed, with a long, pointed nose.

Pinocchio, we are told, had “a prodigiously long nose, one that seemed specially designed to be easily seized by policemen.” Again and again, it is the puppet’s nose, emblematic perhaps of his unschooled vitality, that leads to Pinocchio’s being caught out and mortified. And of course it’s a nose famous for growing longer and shorter. The first time this happens, however, it is not because the puppet has told a lie. Having hammered the Talking Cricket to the wall, Pinocchio suddenly discovers a ravenous hunger. So…

Poor Pinocchio ran quickly toward the pot that was boiling on the fire and reached out to remove the lid, to see what was inside—but the pot was painted on the wall.

Just imagine how he felt. His nose, which was already long, grew at least four inches longer.

Initially, then, Collodi seems to have imagined the nose’s growing and shrinking with Pinocchio’s failure or success in distinguishing illusion from reality.

The theme is recurrent, though Collodi never allows us to settle on a single version of what reality might be. Having got his feet wet begging for food in the rain, Pinocchio returns to Geppetto’s house, falls asleep over a lighted brazier, and burns his feet off. Where the brazier was when he ran to the painted fire and cooking pot, we do not know. Freed from jail, Geppetto first threatens and then takes pity on the puppet, makes him new feet, and gives him three pears, the only food he has. It’s crucial throughout the tale that food is scarce and one must learn to like whatever is available. A finicky Pinocchio demands to have his pears peeled; then, still hungry, eats peels and cores too. This is education of a kind. Collodi, it’s worth recalling, was the first of ten children born to parents of the servant class. Six of his siblings died in childhood. He knew hard times.

A full stomach allows Pinocchio the luxury of feeling moved by Geppetto’s sacrifice and he declares his willingness to go to school. Moved by Pinocchio’s being moved, Geppetto rushes out and sells his coat to buy a school primer. Far from gaining economically from his creation, he now has no food and no coat, and very soon no company either. On his way to school Pinocchio hears a drum gathering a crowd for a puppet show and promptly sells his precious primer to buy a ticket. Geppetto won’t see him again until the last pages of the book.

Onstage in the show, Harlequin and Punchinello “traded insults so realistically that they truly appeared to be two thinking beings, two persons of this world.” The audience loves it: illusion that mimics ugly reality. But when the puppets see Pinocchio and recognize him as one of them, they break off the performance, calling him up on stage, hugging and embracing. Despite this “heartwarming spectacle” the spectators are furious that their entertainment has been interrupted and a ferocious puppet master has to intervene to reimpose the real illusion. It was precisely this satirical use of fantasy and paradox that critics disapproved of in Collodi’s work for adults.

Later, as punishment, the wooden Pinocchio is to be burned to roast the puppet master’s mutton. When the big man takes pity on the weeping Pinocchio and decides to burn another marionette instead, Pinocchio shows that he is as capable of a noble impulse as a selfish one: he would rather die himself, he declares, than have someone die in his place. Moved by this generosity, the puppet master forgoes his roasted mutton (but only this once, he warns) and unexpectedly gives Pinocchio five gold coins to take to his poor daddy, Geppetto.

Is it just “childish twaddle,” this constant back and forth between cruelty and compassion, this world where human interaction invariably follows the pattern: selfish impulse leads to pain which prompts shame and good intentions which are quickly forgotten when the next selfish impulse clicks in? Could such a story have relevance today?

His five coins in his pocket, Pinocchio is on his way home when he runs into the Cat and the Fox, the one pretending to be blind and the other to be lame, one supporting the other, one leading the other, in a grotesque charade of solidarity. Unable to distinguish a painted fire from a real one, Pinocchio is unlikely to see through these two practiced con men. “Want to double your money?” the Fox ominously inquires. “Meaning?” the puppet asks.

“Your five gold coins could become two thousand overnight.”

“Overnight!” repeated the Cat.

“But how could they possibly become so much?” asked Pinocchio, his mouth hanging open in astonishment.

Indeed, how could they? The answer is easy: you go to the Land of Gulls and bury your cash in the Field of Miracles. With the confident air of a financial adviser from the Wall Street of a year ago, the Fox explains his Madoff mathematics:

You can count it out on your fingers. Let’s say that each coin grows into a bunch of five hundred coins—multiply five hundred by five, and the next morning you’d have two thousand five hundred shiny new coins.

Like many a modern investor, Pinocchio falls for it. He spends one of his coins treating the swindlers to dinner, only to find they have disappeared when, at midnight, the threesome was supposed to set out for the Land of Gulls. Accosted in the dark by two murderers draped in sacks, Pinocchio fails to recognize his fellow diners, but does manage to hide his coins in his mouth. Unable to prise it open, the Cat and Fox hang the puppet on a tree, planning to return for the cash the following morning. “Oh, if only you were here, Daddy!” calls Pinocchio, in what sounds suspiciously like an allusion to the Crucifixion. Then:

His eyes closed, his mouth opened, his legs straightened, and then, after a tremendous shudder, he went completely limp.

This is where Collodi wanted to bow out, with the puppet reduced to an inanimate marionette dangling from a string: reality. But it was too brazenly pessimistic; there were too many young readers anxious to hear more, and too many loose ends to tie up. In particular, shortly before the murderers caught up with Pinocchio, a new character had been introduced whose spirit would preside over the remainder of the tale when Collodi resumed.

Running for his life, the puppet had seen a small house gleaming whitely in the dark; his banging on the door brings a girl with “sky-blue hair,” as Brock’s translation has it, to the window, “her face white as a waxen image.” Evidently the place is magical, sacred perhaps; clearly there are allusions to the Madonna, last resort of those in need, and ever associated with the color blue. But the girl dashes Pinocchio’s hopes of salvation. No one will open the door, she says, because everyone in the house is dead, herself included: in fact, she is waiting for her coffin to arrive. This is the figure Disney presents in the adaptation’s opening scene as the entirely reassuring Blue Fairy, embodiment of a world where all endings are happy.

One of the thorniest problems for those intent on constructing an Italian national identity was the fact that the Catholic Church had opposed unification, papal armies had fought against it, and the faithful were instructed not to collaborate with the new state and in particular not to vote in elections. But who were the Italians if not Catholics? One of the many ways in which successive governments sought to bridge the gap was by promoting Alessandro Manzoni’s determinedly Catholic novel The Betrothed ( I Promessi Sposi ; 1834) as the great model of Italian narrative. More intriguingly, in the last decades of the century, artists eager to establish a specifically Italian school of painting would seek to appropriate Catholic iconography to secular culture. In Giovanni Segantini’s Angel of Life ( Angelo della vita; 1894), for example, an idealized mother and child sit airily robed in the crook of a gnarled tree whose gothic branches blacken as they reach into a soft glow of pale blue sky.

Collodi could hardly have been indifferent to the issue. He had been educated for the priesthood before joining the cause of the anticlerical Risorgimento liberals. Rather than the pious and respectful appropriations of painters like Segantini, his own vague allusions to Catholic images—particularly the elusive blue-haired fairy— are deeply ambiguous, as though a nostalgia for some comforting metaphysics was constantly being dissolved in mockery. It is curious that while Italy’s best-known adult novel, The Betrothed, is Catholic and optimistic, its most-loved children’s work dramatizes an irreverent and skeptical pessimism. Children perhaps have a thicker skin than their parents.

The story resumes with three resurrections. The blue-haired fairy is inexplicably alive and magically powerful. Why then did she not help the puppet earlier? She has Pinocchio taken down from his tree and brought to her house where he is attended by three marvelously pompous doctors, one of whom is the Talking Cricket. His denunciation of the puppet is so ferocious that Pinocchio bursts into tears and can thus be pronounced alive. Later, when the puppet lies to the fairy about where he has put his money, she causes his nose to grow as punishment. From this moment on the distinction between reality and illusion focuses more sharply on questions of truth and falsehood, responsibility and denial.

Pinocchio’s vicissitudes are many. Determined to reform, every time he sets out in the world he is tempted and succumbs. Tricked again by the Cat and the Fox, he buries his money in the Field of Miracles, loses it, reports the swindlers to the police, and, in a typically paradoxical twist, is jailed himself for his ingenuousness. Released, he returns to the fairy’s house to find a gravestone announcing that she has died of grief because she had been “abandoned by her little brother Pinocchio.” Soon afterward she is alive again, though strangely relocated in town and much aged, to the point that she now takes on the role of mother, guardian, and guide.

These dreamlike shifts of identity tease the reader to construct some interpretation, but without offering a consistent reading. The mixture of portentously symbolic encounters (Pinocchio finding his path blocked by a huge serpent or being swallowed by a huge fish) with more mundane situations (getting a foot caught in an animal trap or being attacked by schoolmates)simply increases the sense of enigma. In one beautifully surreal scene reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, a repentant Pinocchio returns at night to the fairy’s door, but his knock is answered from a fourth-floor window by a snail who tells him the fairy is sleeping and cannot be disturbed. It then takes the snail nine hours to get downstairs and open up, during which time Pinocchio kicks the door so hard his foot goes through and gets trapped. It’s a charmingly light dramatization of frustration and penance.

Startled to find the blue fairy aged, Pinocchio for the first time expresses a desire to grow up. To do that he must cease to be a puppet, the fairy declares; he must become “real” or, as the Italian has it, vero, true. In short, he must be obedient and go to school.

“Reality,” then, has to do with an assumption of responsibility. But it is so hard to want this! After months of good behavior, on the brink of becoming “real,” Pinocchio falls for the idea of a place where every day is play day, and heads for Toyland, a decision that can only lead to disaster and donkey’s ears. Collodi, we recall, was a man who frequently fell in love and never married, or ever gave up his drinking, smoking, and gambling.

But finally Pinocchio does get there. The turning point comes when, transformed into a donkey, he is performing in a circus and spies the fairy in the audience. His joy at seeing her, then anguish as she witnesses his humiliation, is intense. For all the book’s ambiguities, one thing is clear: the mother figure who hopes and suffers for her son is a far more powerful educator than any creaking pedagogue and a more recognizably unifying Italian archetype.

Recovering his puppet form, Pinocchio rescues Geppetto from the belly of the great fish, accepts humble work to feed him, and when he hears that the fairy is sick in a poorhouse gives all his savings to help her. “Imagine his amazement,” Collodi enthuses, when waking the following morning he has become “a boy like other boys.” The straw hut he and Geppetto live in is transformed into a solid house. There is no painted fire. Rather Geppetto is “designing a beautiful picture frame,” as if to separate illusion and reality once and for all.

Some critics have suggested that the formula “a boy like other boys” (or “like all the others” as the Italian puts it) is double-edged: accepting responsibility, Pinocchio sacrifices freedom and individuality for the dubious benefits of conformity. In her informative afterword to the new edition, Rebecca West, a professor of Italian and cinema at the University of Chicago, appears to assent. Yet Pinocchio, made from a log like other logs (the Italian uses the same formula at the beginning of the book), never displays anything so sophisticated as individuality or enjoys any freedom. He is merely a victim of internal whim and external manipulation. “How funny I was, when I was a puppet!” the newly real, responsible Pinocchio remarks, and the Italian buffo suggests “amusing, ridiculous, endearing.”

How exactly the miraculous transformation of growing up has come about, we can’t quite be sure. An educator who savored enigmas rather than dictating solutions, Collodi in 1886 was probably not unhappy to find himself classified thus in Giuseppe Mantica’s fanciful Zoology of Contemporary Literature:

Taenia solium—commonly known as the solitary worm. He fastens on to the tender intestines of young children but does them neither harm nor good.

Photo by Carl Ottersen

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Tuscany, with its beautiful vistas and thousands of hectares of nature preserves and woodlands, offers numerous opportunities for serious hikers and casual trekkers alike. This is the also the thought of the organizers of the Tuscany Walking Festival, a yearly event that happens goes on roughly between the first days of spring until the end of fall.

The festival highlights six of the great hiking areas in Tuscany, including the Maremma, the Monti Livornesi and the Tuscan Archipelago. In addition to the great walks are other events and promotions, such as photography exhibits, birdwatching courses, and restaurant discounts near the walking regions. What a great way to learn about Tuscany’s natural treasures and take a break from art overload!

Photo from Tuscany Walking Festival

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