Standing at the Crossroads

(Finding Dissonance, Seeking Harmony)

When you first drive into the territory of Tuscia, in Northern Lazio about 90 minutes outside of Rome, it doesn’t feel like a place that would be a creative hotbed. More just hot.

To American eyes, it looks a little like the Wild West: untamed expanses of tall, dry grass and brown tufa stone. Spaghetti Western country. There’s even a Bandit’s Trail from the 19th century, once used by outlaws to escape the authorities.  The kind of place where tomb-robbing is still a thing.

But then surprises start to pop up. A colossal 18th century aqueduct  stretches across an empty field,  scrub growing out of the stonework. A bridge to nowhere. Pulling into the outskirts of San Martini al Cimino, you see the Cisterian abbey high on the hill, flanked by towers that could have been dropped in from Lombardia.

These are hints of another Tuscia: a melting pot of human history. Like Rome, with which it’s intrinsically linked, this land is a layer cake of Western civilization. In eight hours of a three day visit, I saw Etruscan tombs in Tarquinia from the 7th century B.C., a Roman theater in Ferento, the Game of Thrones-worthy medieval quarter of Viterbo, and the garden fountains of the Villa Farnese, bubbling with the creative juices of the Renaissance. If time-travel  is your thing, it’s all here, minus the guys in gladiator outfits, ticket lines and stadium crowds. When summer in Rome is too much, run away to Tuscia for a few days.

Fountain at the Villa Farnese

You won’t be the first person to do it. With its proximity to both Rome and the sea, this area  has been a cultural crossroad for centuries. Etruscans, Greeks, Popes, pirates, Irish lords, French princesses and English royalty have all passed through, along with authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne and DH Lawrence. My friend and Substack author Mary Jane Cryan has investigated and documented all of the historical comings and goings from the overflowing library of her palazzo in Vetralla. Her publication The Painted Palazzo provides a full panorama of the present and past of Tuscia.

I went to the town of Tuscania at the suggestion of Mary Jane’s post Exploring the Etruscan Triangle,  with the plan to visit St. Peter’s Basilica and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. From outside the sun-baked walls, the village is marked by fortress towers more imposing than beautiful. Absent any ornamentation, they look like giant brown refrigerator boxes on the skyline. But inside, the place is full of charm, with palazzos, fountains, and an intoxicating scent of jasmine that hits you every time you turn a corner.

So when  a sandwich board sign beckoned me down a silent side street,  I followed like a man under the influence— into a garden courtyard and then up a stairway, until I came upon Dissonanza (Dissonance). Maybe the only example of it to be found in this lovely town.

The title refers to an art exhibition, a collective effort of five contemporary artists from different parts of Europe: Italy, Bulgaria, and France.  The show features a range of figurative paintings and sculpture focused particularly on faces and human expression, curated to allow the artists’ distinctive styles to interact with one another.

“It’s not a monologue. It’s a dialogue,” explained Aleksandar Stamenov, one of the featured artists who was at the gallery that day.  Within the frescoed walls of the 15th century Palazzo Fani, I felt as if I’d wandered into a cosmopolitan, multi-lingual cocktail party in full swing.

Dissonanza at the Palazzo Fani, Tuscania

Aleksandar was born in Bulgaria, but moved to Italy at the age of eight, eventually studying in nearby Viterbo, as well as at academies in Rome and Bulgaria; Flaminia Verdoni, another featured artist, also resides in Rome and Tuscania. They explained that all of the artists had done individual shows throughout Europe, but this was a chance to create something for themselves, to pull together like-minded artists and support one another’s work. The Impressionists did the same, Aleksandar reminded me, harkening back to the rebellious independent art shows organized by Degas and Monet to subvert the rigid confines of the Paris Salon.

That theme of artistic can-do spirit was still hanging in the air when I met with Mary Jane Cryan later that afternoon in nearby Vetralla. She brought me to see the newly reopened Atelier of Opera Extravaganza, a long-neglected 15th century building in Vetralla that has been reincarnated as the costume shop and display space for the local opera company. “This is what artists do!” she exclaimed, watching a town she’s championed for more than 20 years shake off the dust and spread its wings .

The recently rescued Renaissance Angels at the Atelier of Opera Extravaganza.

The Opera Extravaganza is the inspiration of a Dutch lawyer, Ruud Hupperts, his brother Frans, and Finnish singer Susanna Ohtonen, who have created a summer festival in the Teatro Del Giardino Segreto (Theater of the Secret Garden) on their property at the Palazzo Piatti. As Susanna recounted a Christmas Eve spent cleaning the grime from an upstairs room at the Atelier where pigeons had taken squatter’s rights, a cast of characters from around the world who’ve settled in Vetralla ambled in to check out the village’s latest signs of life. There were even two amiable Germans passing through on a religious pilgrimage who stopped to ask for directions. Vetralla is on the home-stretch of the Via Francigena which runs from Canterbury, England all the way to Rome.

“Look how international we are here”, Mary Jane said as we posed for a photo, marveling at yet one more rebirth of a town that has seen centuries of them.

Eric, (unidentified), Susanna, Ruud, Mary Jane, Fulvio

I remembered Mary Jane’s phrase when I was back in the car and on my way to the agriturismo where I was staying,  in what 200 years ago would have been the badlands beyond the safety of the town walls. One week after election day in Italy and the European Union, the radio was raging with political calls to bar the gates and keep the populations safe from those of “foreign origin”— a nativist demand that seems to be resonating throughout Western Europe. Of course, America is circling the wagons as well. Sometimes it seems as if every country in the world has decided to go it alone. No outsiders allowed.

The artists of Tuscania and Vetralla are a reminder of what widening a community can achieve. Ancient towns are being renewed by harnessing the energy of strangers with new ideas and fresh energy. This is what artists do—working together to create something new on top of something old.

As good as he looks in cowboy movies, I’m thinking the rugged individualist might not be our best role model for this moment in history. After all, much of the Old West wound up dotted with ghost towns. The lonely gun-slinger who climbs on his horse,  tips his hat and rides off into the sunset more than likely perishes in the desert. Better that we band together, turn a monologue into a dialogue, and open doors that once were closed.

“My grandparents were migrants”

Wishing you all a happy Fourth of July!