Plan
B
We had a travel plan
in mind and were just about to leave when our friends in Rome called and as
the saying goes, “everything went to hell
in a hand-basket”, but then it really didn’t. Let me explain. We hadn’t bought our bus tickets for our planned
trip from Calitri to Rome yet but were just about to when my cellphone
rang. Had it rung a few hours later, we
would have at least been out the cost of the tickets, or worse, been on our way
up the A1 Autostrada toward Roma! Our
friends, Dan and Roberta, had been staying with us in Calitri. At the end of their stay, they headed off to
enjoy a week in Rome. The apartment they
had rented reportedly had two bedrooms and if we’d like, why not come up later
in the week and join them. There
materialized at least three glitches with this wonderful offer relayed to us
during that auspicious cellphone call.
First, there was a bus and rail strike planned in Rome for the days we would
be there; secondly, their apartment was 40 minutes outside of town with only
expensive taxi service available during the strike, but worst of all, they’d
discovered that their apartment had only one bedroom! Maria Elena had taken the call and after hearing
just the first impediment to an otherwise ideal opportunity to get away, had already
nixed the idea of taking this vacation within a vacation even with Rome in the
offing. Though set to go, we found
ourselves with no place to go. We needed
a Plan B!
Only a few weeks
earlier we had visited Ischia, itself a wonderful place. It was in the town of San Angelo, at the end
of the line by way of an overfilled bus from our hotel, that we first heard of Sperlonga. Over beers, we were taking a leisure break
from the heat outside the Conte Hotel, when we met Pierre Luigi who worked
there. He was serving us cooling Nastro
Azzurro’s when he mentioned what he described as a beautiful “white Saracen village”,
bringing to mind the village upholstery of the Middle East. For future reference I jotted it down not
realizing just how near that future would be.
Referring to a map, we found Sperlonga clinging to the coast about midway
between Napoli and Roma, just north of the hectic port-town of Gaeta. So with our urge to travel intact, it was early
the next morning that we headed off to Sperlonga, our newfound Plan B. We were in no particular hurry so we went the
slow way, though I doubt there really is a fast way to get there. All told, it took about three hours accounting
for lunch and a few missed turns on my part and some due to our GPS Margaret's insistence.
Oh well, whoever said a plan would ever
go as envisioned?
I had made a
reservation at what to our surprise we discovered was a beautiful four star
hotel. We found it overlooking an enchanting
pure expanse of sea that calmly washed a long crescent shaped beach within
sight of Sperlonga. Two hundred meters
from this inviting beach the Hotel Grotta
di Tiberio sat amidst an ancient olive orchard. It proved to be an idyllic refuge during our
stay. From our balcony looking off across
these ancient trees, heavy with the fruit of their upcoming harvest, the panoramic
silhouette of Sperlonga, a few hundred meters to one side, dominated the near horizon. This countryside south of Rome is referred to
as the Sud Pontino. Sperlonga, also known as La Perla della Costa
Pontina (The Pearl of the Pontine Coast), is one
of its standout seaside resorts. Even
today, the Sud Pontino remains an unspoiled
land of many ancient hidden treasures.
We were about to learn why Sperlonga was indeed that
rare find, that treasured pearl.
A prominent feature of our view toward nearby Sperlonga was the Torre Truglia tower built in 1532 by the
Spanish over the remains of a Roman coastal lookout tower. With piracy so widespread beginning from the
9th century on, this tower served as a lookout against the Saracens and other
marauding pirates who too frequently raided Italian coastal villages. The most famous of these took place on a
summer day in 1534, when even with the tower, it fell victim to a Turkish
sacking by the infamous Barbarossa who unsuccessful attempted to kidnap the
beautiful Countess Giulia Gonzaga for his sultan's harem. The tower's square base rests on an older
circular platform thought to date back to the Romans in addition to remains believed
to be of the 'il Trullo’ lighthouse, which came later, and from which Torre Truglia takes its name. Unlike the many coastal towers we've seen in
the past, this tower had a modern look about it, some of it certainly due to
repairs and rebuilds over time. Jutting
skyward from atop a rocky promontory beside Sperlonga's sheltered marina, smooth
whitewashed sides matching the look of the town coat its unique square shape. Support buttresses, like boosters on a space
launch vehicle, angle up its sides for added support. The pirates are gone, yet the tower's dominate
presence, an iconic symbol of Sperlonga, remains.
As was true for pirates of old, Sperlonga
remains a point of passage to inland villages – an opening to the sunny lands
and seascapes of southern Italy with its distinctive blend of Mediterranean,
even African cultures. We may have been
confused with Pierre Luigi's description of Sperlonga. Though it was indeed awash in white, as white
as an ivory soap, it had a distinct Greek look about it. Add a touch of blue here and there as it sat
there on its promontory shimmering in the heat and it could easily be confused
with Greece's Santorini. Likewise, I'm
now sure the Saracen part of Pierre Luigi's description had to do with the pirates,
not the architecture. Like pirates, we needed
to seek out the distinctive hidden treasures of Sperlonga for ourselves, but
first, we wanted to walk that inviting beach arrayed before us.
Unlike most things in Italy, Italian beaches are well organized and
efficiently run. While free beach access
still exists, by far the private beach clubs, called stabilimenti,
dominate its stretches of sand. Their colorful
umbrella shaded sun-beds, by row and column approaching military precision,
stretch from the water's edge up the beach to dressing cabanas, refreshment
stands, even the occasional beach volleyball court. As I've said, this is commonplace, the
everyday norm. What was different here
was the amazingly clear clean water along with the fine white sand. Though close to big-city overpopulated Rome
and Naples, I believe this is one of the finest beaches to be found anywhere in
Italy. Maria Elena certainly thought
so! While it was hot that day, it had to
have been comic relief to have watched as I tried to dunk myself in the
sea. While I remain an inept
professional amateur, Maria Elena being from seaside Newport was and will forever
remain much more adept at it. Her
goading and an occasional splash in my direction did me in, or in this instance,
got me in, goose bumps notwithstanding! Once
I'd taken the plunge, as is always the case, all was well as I soaked in the
salty brine, which was notably saltier than the Atlantic. It was only the beckoning appeal of the Torre Truglia tower, connected to lofty
Sperlonga by an arched causeway, that eventually got us out of the water and headed
into town by way of this sandy beachfront.
A brief walk along the beach later, we
entered beautiful Sperlonga overlooking the Gulf of Gaeta from the cliff face
of Mount San Magno. Like its tower, it
is a town awash in white. Narrow
alleyways that climb and fall on the steep headland melt shape and color into a fairytale vertical
village. After exploring the tower briefly,
we crossed the connecting bridge onto terraces above the sea into the centro storico, a charming tangle of
houses that cling to each other as if
afraid to slide off the cliff. Without a
map in this tangle of houses, we had no idea where we were or where exactly we
were headed. Many of the streets weren't
much more than stone staircases. Up
seemed to be the best route. As in
Calitri, houses in this vertical village were tightly clustered into a maze of warren-like
streets where a simple turn might bring you to unexpected views or an
occasional piazza. This ancient hive contained
many tempting restaurants, too numerous to sample during our brief visit. A momentary refreshment stop at Bar Nibbio in Piazza
della Libertà got us oriented, though the cool Prosecco may have helped. It was here that our waiter suggested we try
Ristoranti Gli Archi for dinner. On the
move again, we were wondering down Corso San Leone when we came upon a group of
men engrossed in a lively game of Scopa
(Broom), where the ‘Ori’ cards and especially the seven of that suit are
best to have! Their colorful gibes and
rebukes as winning hands are 'swept' from the table make it delightful to stand
by and watch it unfold. It was across
the street from their banter that we came upon the charming Ristorante Corallo,
an elegant restaurant with a fantastic view down below to the very beach we had
just traversed. Everything about the
Corallo was also white … the tablecloths, the walls, the chairs, even the
outside awning. Proud of its heritage, old
pictures of earlier times in Sperlonga adorned the walls. We chatted with the owner. She was an American who had come to Sperlonga
and fallen in love with not only the place but with a 'Sperlongiani' who at the
time owned one of the beach stabilimenti! Together they had moved up off the beach to
this culinary loft all in white (see photo album).
That evening
we returned to the old town for dinner.
With Ristorante Corallo closed we headed for Gli Archi (The
Arches). This traditional family-run
establishment though small in size with only six to eight tables was big on atmosphere.
We discovered it tucked in a small
alley-like courtyard surrounded by certifiably ancient houses. It was both welcoming and romantic, for inside,
apart from a few other couples enjoying an authentic Italian dinner experience,
we were alone. The hewed comfort of aged
stone arches cast their spell over our seafood dinner, for a wine and seafood
evening it would be. For starters, we
began with savory citrus marinated anchovies and an order of zuppa di cozze (mussel soup).
Then, for both of us it was on to risotto seafood entrees. Mare thought the risotto a bit too salty and
suspected that they had treated the rice with an over amount of the seafood
broth. You could almost taste the sea,
which we’d already agreed was especially briny.
We could have remained seated there all evening, and they expect you to,
but we needed to be off to catch the Roma-Napoli Series-A soccer match on a big
screen TV at a nearby bar. Our waiter,
Romano, pointed us in the right direction when I inquired where best to see the
game. We root for the Naples team, but
being in strange territory, midway between Rome and Naples, we had to be
careful about our allegiances. It was a
small Neapolitan pennant over the bar that told us we were in friendly
territory after all! Unfortunately, there
was little cheering that night for Napoli went down to defeat, 2-0.
Close to Rome as
it is, Sperlonga was in ancient times, as today, a Roman getaway spot. Emperor Tiberius (42
BC - 37 AD) created a magnificent summer villa in the area, which was
lost and remained so until uncovered in 1957.
Much like Paestum, it was accidently discovered during road construction. It included a seaside cavern (spelunca in Latin), from which Sperlonga later
derived its name when people moved to a nearby promontory
to escape death from the unhealthy marshes and Saracen attack. We found Tiberius’ getaway just south of town,
a short ride or walk on the beach from our hotel. For the first time the meaning of Hotel Grotta di Tiberio became clear to
us ...
My name is Tiro and
like my father and mother I too am a slave.
Though I have never been there, I recall hearing of a place called Germania,
where my father had been taken from.
Momma says their courtship at first had been little more than an
occasional glance, followed by a few brief trysts in the storage room off the
kitchen before the Master sanctioned their union. There are but the two of us now. Papa died a few years ago when part of the
great Flacca road tunnel he’d been repairing collapsed. I am fortunate, however, that my mother works
in the kitchens of this great villa by the sea.
Like the simple comfort I feel when I roll over to a new position in my bed,
I’m comforted by the thought that I can always count on something to eat,
however meager it might be at times.
This too is my home, though really not a home but a place where I too, the
gods willing, will grow up to someday serve as a house slave to Great Master
Tiberius, just as my parents had served my master’s mother, Domina Livia
Drusilla, before him. Though I am still
young, only 9, I already love to help-out with the men’s chores. Even now, every morning, I help with feeding
the fish in the great sea pens before the huge grotto on the shore. With the
arrival of Agesander, Athenedoros and Polydoros from Rhodes, I also help fetch
the artists their tools and monitor the torches so that the work ordered by
Master Tiberius to decorate the grotto can continue. How strange the one-eyed thing is they call Polyphemus,
the she-monster Scylla devouring the sailors of the stone ship and the other
things these strange speaking men work to free from the stone. I asked momma what manner of thing is this? She says only that papa would know since he
is now with the gods. I shall pray to him. I shall also pray that
no harm comes to my Master from these things of stone. ...
Tiberius is the
same Roman emperor mentioned in the Bible.
Great general that he was on the one hand, he proved a reluctant emperor
without any real zeal to rule. He
eventually abandoned Rome and its politics altogether, never to return. During his early education, Tiberius studied
in Rhodes and while there was taken by the adventurous tales of Odysseus, the
legendary Greek hero who wandered for years after the end of the Trojan
War. Later, he spent the summer months
at his beachfront imperial villa in Sperlonga.
Tiberius’ villa included a dining room that featured a banquet hall in a
natural cave that included mythological
works of art celebrating scenes from Homer's Odyssey. Inside the cave,
colossal statues reminded guests of the adventurous deeds of Odysseus,
including the assault of Scylla on the hero's ship as well as Odysseus and his
companions blinding the drunken giant Cyclops, Polyphemus. This all came to a tragic end when one evening while
dining in the grotto, actually on a small island platform at the mouth of the
grotto out among the fish raised in the surrounding man-made pools, huge rocks
fell from the ceiling and crushed a number of the guests and servants. The Emperor only narrowly escaped death
himself. Bad omen? A foretoken of more to come? Like he’d done in Rome, Tiberius forever abandoned
his Sperlonga villa and moved his dinner table to another island perch, this
one much bigger, Capri, where he remained until his death!
It
is hard to believe but then maybe it’s not … Italy is so old that it is conceivable
that great places, even entire cities like Paestum, can be lost in the
forgotten mists of time. This once
magnificent imperial villa is yet another case in point. But for the relative recent discovery of a
few rooms in addition to a courtyard, accompanying streets, a kiln, a bread
oven, the grotto itself and portions of the great statues that once entertained
an emperor, we’d still be driving along SS213, Via Flacca, built in 187 BC,
through the same tunnel where Tiro’s fictitious papa had perished, totally
unaware of these forgotten fragments of history. Many of the artifacts, some in fact simply
fragments from the Grotta di Tiberio,
are beautifully displayed in the nearby “Archaeological Museum of Sperlonga”. We spent a morning there that slipped into
afternoon. This beautifully designed museum houses the amazing
statuary and other artifacts recovered from this once imperial complex.
It
is comprised of two large display rooms. The first showcases
the reconstruction of the monstrous snakelike Scylla
sea goddess, once a prominent fixture in the grotto. Wheeling a wide blade she assails the crew
while her wolf-like minions with their three rows of teeth chew their flesh. From pieces of the original sculpture
recovered from the fishponds by the entrance to the grotto, the Scylla has been
painstakingly, though
only partially, reconstructed. While still
incomplete, what there is of its life-size form still projects this ferocious death
struggle straight out of mythological antiquity. A few
steps and a scale model of the grotto away in the adjoining room brought us to the
one-eyed Cyclops, Polyphemus.
As was the case with Scylla, not all of
the sculpture’s pieces have been found.
What pieces have been recovered are on display, and as with the giant
himself, they are of mythic proportion (see photo album). A
full scale resin reproduction of the sculpture, once the centerpiece of the
grotto dining room, filled a large portion of the room. Odysseus and four of his men are portrayed
closing in on the reclining colossus with a javelin-like spear, its
fire-hardened tip pointed straight at the “wondrous monster’s” eye, only inches
away …
“… They took the stake of olive-wood, sharp at the point, and thrust it
into his eye, while I, throwing my weight upon it from above, whirled it round,
as when a man bores a ship's timber with a drill, … ”
Homer’s Odyssey
We left images of deities and tales of heroic
deeds along with many other valuable artifacts behind in the museum. It was time to visit the site of this living
history. Down a path alongside the
museum and a short walk through a thicket of olive trees later, we emerged into the ruins of the villa. Beyond the ruins the gaping mouth of the Gratto di Tiberio beckoned. Passing through the trees was like
transitioning a portal in time. From the
twentieth first century we emerged into a suspended moment in the first
century. Not a contrail, telephone pole
or ship on the horizon threatened to snap us back to the present. Spread before us between patches of scruffy
grass, the remnants of buildings, a residue of stones upon stone, pocked the
field all the way to the edge of the sea.
These foundations were for the most part only a few feet tall but
occasionally an entire stone doorway and adjoining walls stood in defiance of both
gravity and time. Walking in this field
of history, I wondered about the men who had built these walls, about their
lives, their stories and of the continuum of life which had occupied these
spaces in service to an Emperor.
Gradually we arrived at the
fish pens before
the mouth of the grotto. We were
surprised at the large numbers of fish in the shallow mix of fresh and seawater. Like pets expecting to be fed by us, or my
imagined Tiro, they followed us as we walked the walled perimeter toward the far
side of the grotto. Reaching the end of the
path, the Grotta di Tiberio, celebrating the deeds of Odysseus,
opened before us. We were alone. Just a step away to the side of the railing and
we could be on the marble crescent shaped wall separating the floor of the
cavern from the water that arched around the interior of the grotto. There was nothing to stop us, not a sign or an
attendant. Moments later we were inside.
Along the wall it was evident the stone
had been shaped into benches. At the far
end we approached a raised secondary domed space approached by stairs, these too
carved in the stone. Long ago, this
space had hosted the colossus Polyphemus.
In the lagoon that dipped into the grotto, submerged bases once used to
support additional works of art, like the multi-headed Scylla, were visible. A rather large now grassy isle positioned at
the very center of the lagoon and thought to be where Tiberius would take his
meals, commanded center stage. While
nothing but the bare cave and what I’ve described remains, our museum visit had
helped provide a perspective into its once grand splendor, a splendor befitting
an Emperor.
When things end,
we tend to think about how they began. As
our spur of the moment trip came to an end had it all been part of a plan, our Plan B?
Not in the least! One thing had
led to another … a phone call began a cascade of surprising discoveries
tempered with the unexpected. Picturesque
Sperlonga, along with our hotel, had been marvelous surprises. Then the unexpected kicked-in, first with the Torre Truglia watchtower by Sperlonga
and extending along a parchment colored beach south to a headland jutting into
the sea at the site of Tiberius’ historic villa, home to Cyclops and Scylla
lore. Faced with an unfortunate
situation, we had sought opportunity nevertheless. I guess it is in step with the proverb … "When
life gives you lemons, make lemonade". Call me ungrateful if you must. What lemons? What unfortunate situation? Just being in Italy, how could I possibly
complain? After all, going anywhere in
Italy has to be a win; even staying home in Calitri is a win! The lemons would have been, with our bags
packed, staying home and souring over opportunities lost, over what we might
have missed. Thank God for Plan B’s and
if need be, Plans C and D! Home in
Calitri once again, we will waken to another day and reminisce on that concert
of sun, incredible blue sea, sky and myth, forever the spell of that pearl, Sperlonga.
From
that Rogue Tourist,
PaoloFor related photos, click here on Eyes Over Italy Look for and click on a photo album entitled “Plan B”.
