Footsteps in Time (I)

 Footsteps in Time (Part I)

Over the years, we’ve grown to call it Garibaldi Station because it is located in Piazza Garibaldi, but to be correct, its official name is Napoli Centrale.  Besides marking it as the principal train station in Naples, its name also hints at its location

The Big Board Inside Napoli Centrale

in downtown Naples.  Over the years, we’ve seen many improvements, including the addition of an underground metro station, a shopping mall, and even a parking garage, to mention a few.  In the midst of these enhancements, a mystery that continues to baffle me concerns the lack of seating in the train station.  It is likely intentional and may reflect contemporary events that compel the homeless to shelter in terminals of all sorts.  Whatever its motive force, consider yourself lucky to find a seat.

There are a few seats off in the wings, but with them, be prepared to find a queue of eager travelers ready to pounce on the narrowest opening, regardless of waist size.  To a traveler, there are a few options: cluster with hundreds of others before the gigantic arrival and departure boards waiting for a track (binario) assignment, find a bar or restaurant with a seat, or when all else fails, sit on the floor, hoping not to be stepped on.  Given the likelihood of traffic mayhem getting to the station, it’s wise to plan for it by departing early.  That extra time pad, however, sometimes means getting there too early with nowhere to sit.  It’s either that or a worrisome last-minute run for it with, unfortunately, few winners.  It may be the subject of creative invention, but if Il Duce got one thing right, they say he got the trains to run on time.

On our last visit to the Centrale, we not only killed time in a restaurant but had time to lounge on

AliBus at the Naples Airport

the floor.  Being Italy, it was marble of course.  As is our usual practice, we prefer to park at the airport and take the Alibus to the train station.  Riding the Alibus is convenient because it allows us to avoid the notorious Naples city traffic bordering on NASCAR hysteria. It also provides a driver who knows the routes and is willing to express himself to other frenetic drivers, all for a mere €5 admission to this cultural phenomenon.  Although others were less fortunate, we at least got to sit for the ride. 

Our destination was Florence.  The weather there was forecast to be sunny, with the skies severely clear.  Our granddaughter and her boyfriend were with us.  It was a great opportunity for them to experience one of the greatest cities in the world.  It was here, in the cultural cradle of Italy, where the Middle Ages transitioned to modernity thanks to a movement that would be known as the Renaissance.

When our binario was posted, we proceeded to our car and assigned seats that included a table between the four of us.  We’d boarded a

It Even Looks Fast

Trenitalia Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) train and would be heading north at a top speed of 185 miles per hour.  We departed exactly on time, of course, interrupted only by a brief stop in Rome before continuing to Florence.  

Disembarking at Florence’s Santa Maria Novella station, we strolled south for all of ten minutes toward the Arno River until we crossed the Ponte Amerigo Vespucci bridge.  We had entered the less crowded side of the Arno, called the Oltrarno, across from the historic center around the Duomo quarter.  Staying on the southern bank of the Arno afforded us views of Florence we’d not seen before.  Beyond affording a new riverside view of the city, we found the Oltrarno teaming with expansive gardens, craft shops, restaurants, and peaceful piazzas ideal for wandering its narrow back streets and alleyways.  From the bridge, it was a brief walk to our B&B that we’d call home for the next four days.  

A highlight of our visit was a walking tour of the city designed especially for first-time visitors like our guests.  Our guide, Christina Mifsud, is the owner of “Christina's Florence Tours” (click to open).  She has made her home in Italy for over twenty-five years, and as an adjunct professor in Art History at Loyola University of Chicago's John Felice Rome Center, she is well-equipped to add insight into the history of Italian art and the Renaissance.  

Our rendezvous point with Christina was the Piazza della Repubblica.  There are many Piazzi

View Across Piazza della Repubblica

della Repubblica throughout Italy.  Towns and cities, large and small, have one.  In Calitri, for instance, Corso Matteotti ends at Piazza della Repubblica, the cul-de-sac home of the municipio (town hall) and entrance to the medieval borgo.  Approaching this Florence piazza, we could make out something that looked like a huge cake.  Getting closer, however, it turned out to be a carousel.  

It was a beautiful day to make our own ‘rounds’ of the city, beginning from where we sat near the carousel awaiting Christina’s arrival.  Although I’d never met Christina, somehow I knew it was her as she approached.  We soon realized that she had an amazing breadth of knowledge about Florence, including a lifetime accumulation of names, dates, events, and interesting anecdotes.  How she can remember all the details spanning centuries of Florentine history is remarkable.  Her evident excitement relating the story of the city is contagious.  Her narrative brings ancient Florence alive from its founding in Piazza Repubblica on through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  

She explained that the nearby Piazza della Signoria,

The Arcone Arch and Plaque

with its replica of the David, was the city's political and civil affairs center.  The magnificent Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, affectionally called the Duomo, is its spiritual landmark.  Where we stood in the Piazza della Repubblica benchmarked the historic former seat of the Roman Forum and represented the city’s cultural birthplace.^[1]  What better place to begin than where the city began.  Listening to Christina those first few minutes, a cake like the one I thought I'd seen earlier would have been more fitting in celebrating this area being the city's birthplace.

Across the piazza to the west, she pointed out the Arcone Arch topped with a plaque, which with a bit of help from Christina, announced:

The Ancient Center of the City
Restored from age-old Squalor
To New Life

We would learn that these few words provided an inkling into Florence’s formative yet, at times, chaotic past. 

Florence was founded in 59 B.C. as a retirement colony for veteran Roman soldiers by the imperious Consul at the time, Julius Caesar.  He’d chosen this site beside a pre-existing village on the bank of the Arno, for here, the river was narrowest.^[1]  Its center was where the main Roman avenues, the Cardo and the Decumanus, crossed.  Following the fall of Rome, the area retained its function as a

The Ever Watchful
Column of Abundance

meeting place and market.  The stench and filth in the square, however, were reported to have been overwhelming.  The only remaining vestige of the old square and Mercato Vecchio, once a messy and unhealthy place, is the Colonna dell'Abbondanza (Column of Abundance), positioned over the intersection of the two former Roman streets.  The Statue of Abundance, sculpted by Donatello, rose before us atop a column erected in 1431.^[2]  The column once held a small bell that rang to indicate the opening and closing of the market.  A hoop at the bottom served as a "pillory" where dishonest traders or debtors were chained.^[2]  This neighborhood was densely inhabited during the early medieval period and complemented by a tightly packed maze of streets and rising tenement buildings.  In 1570, Cosimo I de’ Medici established a Jewish ghetto in the area.  It extended from the north side of the piazza to house the city's resident Jews.  Refugees from over twenty towns relocated into the Florentine Ghetto not because of some natural process of economic shifts and changes in demographics but because of the Jewish people’s dire need to relocate after the fall of other Medici settlements.^[7]  A sign over the Florentine Ghetto, which read "Segregate but not Expel," was underscored by gates that locked the inhabitants in every night.  This discrimination was soon followed by a Medici decision that required Jews to wear yellow markers that further set them apart from the people living outside of the Ghetto's gates.^[8]

Piazza della Repubblica was renovated during a redevelopment period known as the Risanamento (“make healthy again”), triggered when Florence

Piazza della Repubblica in 1893

served as the capital of Italy (1865-71).  It saw the wretchedness of previous decades eliminated and the filthy hovels of the old ghetto and related squalor, emphasized in the plaque, swept away.  Sanitary conditions improved but at the sacrifice of many historic buildings, including churches, palaces, and shops.  Absent the Roman Forum, visitors like us must rely on an oral tradition from guides like Christina and a few photos of this historic section of Florence.  Vestiges of its past, a plaque, a single column, a model of its former layout, and the space it once occupied are all that remain.

Crossing the Ponte Vecchio later that day, we could see the above-ground private passageway, almost a kilometer in length, named after its creator, Giorgio Vasari.  Florence’s influential Medici

The Vasari Corridor Across the Arno
via the Ponti Vecchio

family used this passageway to safely commute between their Pitti Palace residence and the Uffizi (‘offices’) where the Medici Grand Duke worked.  Assassination was always a possibility, especially when surrounded by crowds.  To ward off this possibility, travelers may note the Vasari Corridor in the attic space to one side of the bridge above today’s exclusive jewelry stores.   It was built in 1564 on a five-month deadline for a family wedding.  So as not to offend a single aristocratic nose, the meat market, which was located on the bridge at the time, was moved elsewhere.^[6] 

 This was the same passage Mussolini proudly took with Adolph Hitler during a tour of Florence in 1938.  In preparation for their tour, three small windows were transformed into three larger windows

Modified Windows of Ponte Vecchio

to create a walking gallery for an unobstructed view over the Arno from the center of the bridge.  Both Mussolini and Hitler made an appearance at this window, greeting the audience crowded below on the bridge. 

Few today will notice a sign on the bridge positioned high above eye level over the side entrance to a Rolex store.  This often-overlooked plaque is dedicated to Dr. Gerhard Wolf – a Nazi.  When the dust settled following the German army retreat in 1944, the Ponte Vecchio was the only bridge that remain standing.  Its presence today is thanks to his “diplomatic” efforts believed to have saved the Ponte Vecchio from destruction.  Amidst the glitz of present-day jewelry shops along the length of the bridge, this innocuous limestone plaque in a corner of the bridge dedicated to an unlikely hero reminds us how one man helped save this bridge.  It reads as follows: 

Gerhard Wolf

(1886–1962)

German consul, born at Dresden—subsequently twinned with the city of Florence— played a decisive role in the salvation of the Ponte Vecchio (1944) from the barbarism of the Second World War and was instrumental in rescuing political prisoners and Jews from persecution at the height of the Nazi occupation. The comune places this plaque on 11 April 2007 in memory of the granting of honorary citizenship.

I sensed that the location of the plaque, with it being written only in Italian, added little to its widespread awareness among the millions who pass it by, oblivious of its significance.  In a city prized for its medieval art, I suspect it just may be too recent an event in the annals of history to take interest in, let alone notice.

Legend, story, or myth has it that Hitler’s passion for the arts and his memory of that mesmerizing view of Florence would, years later, result in the bridge’s preservation.  Yet this plaque, presented by a grateful city, recognizes that the Ponte Vecchio survived due to the efforts of the German consul to Florence during World War II, Dr. Gerhard Wolf.  

Gerhard Wolf studied philosophy, art history, and literature, earning a doctorate in philosophy.  He joined the foreign ministry in 1927 when Germany was still a democratic republic.  Described as ‘reserved,’ ‘gentile,’ with a ‘lackadaisical’ nature, the consul discretely worked to prevent the plunder of the city's art and keep Florence from assault by having it declared an open city, where both sides agreed not to use it militarily.^[5]  

In addition to saving Florence, Wolf also worked to save lives.  As the highest Nazi civilian official in the city, he used his diplomatic position to free political prisoners from the Italian fascist authorities.  He was also instrumental in rescuing many Jews from the Holocaust by standing up to the Gestapo and the local Fascists.  Wolf went so far as to falsify travel papers, appealed to the German ambassador over the heads of the SS and the Gestapo, and collaborated with the Florentines in hiding paintings and sculptures.  Additionally, Wolf worked desperately through the Church and the German ambassador to keep the city from becoming a military objective.^[5]

Nothing posed a greater threat to the Renaissance art of Florence than Operation Magic Fire, the 1944 Nazi plan to destroy Florence using strategically placed mines.  The plan’s very existence raises doubt that Hitler’s visit to Florence played any part in excluding the Ponte Vecchio from destruction.  The following recorded report, however, adds weight to Dr. Wolf’s influence in saving the bridge: 

“Wolf appealed to German Ambassador to Italy, Rudolf Rahn, who brought up the idea to Hitler in a meeting, which reminded him of his visit to the bridge two years prior.  The dictator’s tour of the city had apparently left a mark on him.  Adding weight to the legend that Hitler saved the bridge, Hitler remarked to Rahn in November of 1943. “Florence is too beautiful a city to be destroyed.  Do what you can to protect it. You have my permission and assistance.” ^[4]

Some believe this was an express order, and it was Hitler who saved the bridge.  However, though a valid detail of the meeting, there are multiple truths to this piece of history, including the heroic efforts of Dr. Wolf, who triggered the appeal to the Fuhrer by Germany’s ambassador to Italy in the first place.

On August 3rd 1944, the Germans retreated behind the Arno, and Operation Magic Fire was put into action.

“That night, the whole city shook as bridge by bridge — the Ponte San Niccolo, Ponte Alle Grazie, Ponte Santa Trinita, and Ponte alla Carraia — the Nazis ignited their charges. Ponte Santa Trinita was the last to go — it took three rounds of explosions to go.” ^[4]

Unlike all the other bridges that collapsed into the Arno, the medieval Ponte Vecchio bridge was the only bridge spared destruction during the German retreat the next day.  However, access to the bridge by the Allies was obstructed by mining the streets at both ends of the bridge.  It may have been a trap set by the Germans in the belief that the bridge was too narrow for Allied tanks and would collapse from the weight of the crossing traffic.

Like the city, Wolf survived the city’s brush with destruction and escaped but at the cost of a nervous breakdown.  After he recovered, he was promoted and served in Milan as Consul-General for the rest of the war.  When the war ended, Wolf was interned by the Allies.  Upon hearing of his situation, 29 Italian citizens sent affidavits to the Allied authorities, which secured his release.

In 1955, he was made an honorary citizen of Florence and cited for "acts of incalculable courage, humanity, sense of brotherhood and Christian feeling." ^[3]  Thanks to the artistic soul of this good Nazi, the world still has this celebrated bridge.

I tried to imagine humanity that once crossed this bridge, occupied its squares and markets, and made greater Florence their home.  The likes of greats like Donatello, Botticelli, Raphael, Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante, Brunelleschi, Machiavelli, and da Vinci, each of whom would be indelibly associated with Florence, came to mind along with countless unknowns who built this city.  Together, their footfalls at one time or another trod the very streets we had, here where the river drew narrowest. 

 TO BE CONTINUED

From That Rogue Tourist,

Paolo

[1] Piazza della Repubblica, Florence, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_della_Repubblica,_Florence

[2] Colonna dell’Abbondanza o della Dovizia, https://firenzemia.webnode.it/passeggio/colonna/

[3] Honorary Citizen, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,712113,00.html, 1968

[4] Did a Nazi official save Ponte Vecchio from destruction?, https://www.thelocal.it/20160525/did-a-nazi-official-save-florences-ponte-vecchio-from-destruction-gerhard-wolf-second-world-war-italy

[5] Gerhard Wolf: The Good Nazi, https://uftravelreporting.wixsite.com/mysite/post/gerhard-wolf-the-good-nazi

[6] Vasari Corridor, http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/corridoio_vasariano.html

[7] Florentine Ghetto, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florentine_Ghetto

[8] Jews and the Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis, Goldberg, Edward (2011), University of Toronto Press.