Up until Feb 11, 1929 the Vatican essentially controlled Europe. Mussolini changed all that. He gave them 1 square mile of the city in Rome to call their own. Now about 1000 people live in Vatican City. There are three main gardens in the Vatican – Italian, French and English gardens maintained by 35 gardeners. There are also 100 fountains in Vatican City. Official VIPs can fly into the helipad and stay at the St John the Baptist tower.
The tour of the Vatican Museum was overwhelming. The statues, paintings, mosaics were just amazing. There was a hall of tapestries from Belgium – each one depicting a different region in Italy. One fascinating tapestry was tricky – if you looked at it from one direction it appeared that the table depicted went from front to back (left to right), but if you walked a bit further to the right of it and looked back, the table appeared to point back to front (left to right). Each tapestry took 5-7 years to make. There were a number of statues that had been found buried under a hill in a field in 1508. There were statues from the Egyptian Valley of the Kings (3500 years old). Greek artists tend to make people look beautiful, perfect. Roman artists tend to make them true to life. Bees were the symbol of the Barbarini family. The frescos (meaning “wet”) in the Sistine Chapel are just amazing. It took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the ceiling. It is rumored that he wouldn’t let the Pope even have a peep at it until it was completed.
After this amazing tour of so many beautiful statues, paintings, tapestries, and mosaics we had to leave the romantic city of Rome behind. Romeo arrived to take us on our next journey. We piled our luggage in a large bus and rolled down the highway to the Grosseto region. This was Tuscany! Groves of olive trees, Cyprus trees, beautiful pink- blossomed peach trees, (trained to grow vineyard style for ease of picking) and, of course, vineyards surrounded us. Off in the distance you could see on every hill top a town, oozing down the mountain in beautiful old stone, the roofs all gorgeous red terra cotta tile. These were built ages ago on the tops of mountains for safety. The newer towns were on flat lands. We took highway most of the way to our next location. Then we were on a long, straight dirt and gravel road between the peach orchard and an olive grove.
Villa il Poggiarello
As we pulled up to the end of the ¼ mile long driveway to our Italian villa home for the rest of the week our world traveler, Maryann, advised us that the Cyprus- lined driveway looked “just like England” – or there ‘bouts. I think it was the majestic view that just over took her! It was just like in the movies – the scenery took your breath away.
We unloaded the bus and met the Villa owner, Chiara (her husband, Stephano, was out of town) and Romeo’s wife, Federica. We took a few moments to settle into our rooms (the villa was a gorgeous restored stone structure – indescribable.) Then we had a “light lunch” of antipasto, bread, wine, and more delicious food. Afterwards, Chiara took us out to the vineyard and explained to us their theory of good wine-making. Every winemaker has their own plans on what makes a good wine. The vines here had been cut WAY back – this led to less grapes, but better grapes. They make Muralia wine – 15% alcohol. Vines take about 4 years to mature enough to grow the grapes needed. We also toured the cool winery and storage area for wines maturing in casks and stainless steel tanks. Well, by this time it was time to leave for dinner! I know we just finished lunch, but we had a short drive ahead of us up a steep hill to the town of Montepesche. Here there was a restaurant willing to open just for us on a Monday night. It pays to have friends – or to have Romeo who has friends willing to do this for us. Again we were fed some fabulous food. If I write about it I may have to go get more food to eat, and I just finished dinner. Dessert was tiramisu – who couldn’t like that! Our driver managed to get us safely back home, winding down the narrow, dark, twisty roads – back to our villa.
