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San Gemini, Carsulae, Narni and Nemi

9/21/2017

This is the fifth blog post describing a trip with my son Alex in Germany and Italy this past July. My last post recounted our stay in Gubbio.

After a vastly too-short stay in Gubbio, we regretfully drove back to the Autostrada and once again loosely paralleled the classical Via Flaminia heading south to Rome.

A sign at Carsulae Archeological Park maps the ancient Via Flaminia, the main imperial road from Rome to the north. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

We were looking for Carsulae, a Roman ghost town, and we chose a route through San Gemini. San Gemini is a medieval walled hilltop town built completely over its Roman past. San Gemini is off the tourist track but on the Via Flaminia itself. The businesses were mostly closed for the afternoon heat when we arrived, but the café was open.

Gate of San Gemini. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Alex and I spontaneously decided to shoot each other.

The arches help hold the streets up. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

San Gemini’s walls are in impressive condition.

The Autostrada seen from San Gemini. On the hillside opposite is Cesi, Roman Clusiolum, an Umbrian city with arches and walls dating to the 6th century BCE, reinforced in medieval times.

Roman roads were so well engineered that in some places they can be driven on today. The linear ideal suitable for flat terrain, however, could not be achieved in the craggy terrain of Umbria. The Via Flaminia did not cut through or tunnel under hills, nor did it cross water any more than strictly necessary. It wound along the most convenient local passage, which was likely to be along accessible ridgelines, the shoulders of hills and even the tops of hills. This seems counterintuitive until one reflects that every downhill requires an uphill. Local roads may conveniently follow streams but long-haul roads are well situated at ridgeline elevations and may follow the high ground rather than dipping up and down.

There are some mysteries. Where ancient towns of note already stood, stretches of preexisting superior local road must have existed, suitable for incorporation into the main Roman road. This seemed at first to explain why the Via Flaminia climbed the considerable hill of San Gemini. But upon closer examination, at San Gemini the Via Flaminia apparently bypassed a considerable Umbrian hill town and religious complex at Cesi, from which a fairly direct older road ran north—joining the Via Flaminia at Carsulae in fact. Meanwhile, as best I could learn, San Gemini in Roman times was a post stop on the road, not a major town.

The modern roadway from San Gemini to Carsulae—not too modern—scrambles cross-country from one farm to the next more or less along the old Via Flaminia route until it reaches a switchback a few hundred yards due south of Carsulae. There a modern farm sits athwart the ancient road. On Google Maps the route of the Via Flaminia into Carsulae is clearly visible from the air paralleling SP 22.

Map data: Google, DigitalGlobe.

Carsulae, to me, was the climax of the "Roman ruins" aspect of our trip. Rome, of course, is well furnished with Roman ruins, many of which are massive. But I was hoping for something more weedy, scattered in the Piranesi style, with goats instead of tourists. I knew this would not be the case in Rome’s beautifully manicured ruins. I only dared hope Carsulae would be the real thing. To my delight, it was.

Goats on the Via Flaminia, Carsulae. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

We take a Via Flaminia selfie with goats. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Parking lot at the Carsulae archeological park. We had it to ourselves.

Carsulae has a small but indispensable and pleasantly staffed museum. Ancient Carsulae was an elite town that sprang up for the convenience of the great road in the days of imperial peace. Its main claim to fame was its waters; a number of powerful springs well up there (and at San Gemini, noted today for its mineral waters). Carsulae had a large theater for plays and a large colosseum for gladiator and wild beast shows. There was also a big temple of Jupiter. It was the consummate Roman provincial town, with lots of marble and larger-than-life monuments to Augustus Caesar.

Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter.

Remains of the theater.

Marble-strewn ruins of the coliseum. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

The streets of Carsulae. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Vehicle ruts on the stones of the Via Flaminia, Main Street, Carsulae.

South city gate, Carsulae.

Monumental Tomb at Carsulae.

The fate of Carsulae was most curious. After the fall of Milan and the retreat of the late Emperor Honorius to Ravenna, as mentioned in my Ravenna blog, the road to Rome was open. That road was the Via Flaminia, and Carsulae was literally on the road, in a swale surrounded by higher elevations and completely indefensible. As the Visigothic armies began their marches and countermarches, starting with Alaric, followed by the Ostrogothic armies of Theodoric, Witiges and Totila and the Byzantine armies of Belisarius and Narses, Carsulae became uninhabitable. Every army needed its water. Alaric and his army first marched through in 408 C.E. Abandonment at Carsulae probably did not begin until after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410 C.E. The archeological evidence is that first the buildings along the highway were abandoned, then the middle streets no longer afforded safety, and finally after some passage of time even the back streets became uninhabitable. By 554 C.E. the site was deserted and its villas razed. The surviving population moved into cruder quarters on the less tempting mountainsides.

Razed villas of Carsulae. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Carsulae was a thrill. We then pushed on to Narni, the Roman Narnia.

Narni in the distance: deceptively flat-seeming, much steeper than it looks. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Medieval-Renaissance gate of Narni. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Narnia, or Narni, was directly on the Via Flaminia too, but did not suffer extinction like Carsulae. The site was already inhabited in the Paleolithic. In Umbrian times it was the important fortified town of Nequinum. In the third century B.C. it became known as Narnia.

C.S. Lewis borrowed the name for the fictional kingdom ruled by Aslan the lion in his famous Narnia series.

Early postclassical Narnia on its steep and massively fortified hilltops was not a place that Goths or others could simply charge up and seize. It was not vulnerable. Today, considerable Roman and medieval points of interest coexist peacefully in a living town, one of the larger if not the largest of the Umbrian hilltop towns. And once again the Via Flaminia is seen to climb a considerable small mountain, the best explanation being a well-engineered preexisting road convenient to the accommodations in a thriving city.

The only flat spot in Narnia. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Alex finds thousand-year-old lions guarding the church.

I would love to go back and stay longer. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

The Via Flaminia in Narni.

In Narni, exhausted and dehydrated, we said goodbye to the Via Flaminia, a route trodden by countless historical personages, and many who weren’t, and now by us. Back on the Autostrada, we headed south, bypassing Rome and Lake Albano. Our next destination was Nemi, ancestral home of the Latins, the local tribe that later founded Rome, whose religious magic was the first inspiration for Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

J.M.W. Turner, The Golden Bough (Wikipedia).

“In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary.” –- Sir James George Frazer, Preface to The Golden Bough.

Nemi seemed hard to find, probably because our satellite navigator failed. My recollection of where Nemi should have been also failed us, abjectly. Alex was obliged to dust off his intuition and navigate the same way Cortez is said to have found the Pacific in Keats’ On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer—by “wild surmise.” Wild surmise got us to Nemi easily. Sometimes maps and directions just get in the way.

Fabled Nemi. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Nemi is a popular resort for contemporary Romans, famous for its crazily sweet strawberries, with many fine restaurants. At the end of the day the town on the crater rim is cool and breezy, a perfect relief from the sweltering heat and humidity of Rome in July. There are cats to look at and the ruins of a very early temple of Diana among the strawberry farms if you feel you absolutely must walk down the crater wall to the lake.

Nemi. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

View of the crater lake at Nemi from our restaurant table. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

I easily win the 'Who Looks Like a Satyr?' competition. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

Nemi from our restaurant table. (Photo by Alex Mawyer)

It was late night when we left Nemi for Rome about twenty miles to the north. Our satellite navigator was still confused, sending us on a twisting suburban route through glaring headlights to the Appian Gate and the Via Cilicia. We pantheistically thanked all the gods that the Hotel Cilicia next to the Appian Way was easy to find, replete with parking, brilliantly staffed, and had huge refrigerated American-style rooms with tons of running water. We were ready for an American-style room, as we gingerly unwrapped the moleskin bandages swathed around our feet and surveyed our compound blisters and stone bruises with pilgrim-like gratification, as many a tramp has done before us. The next day we would see the Caput Mundi, the Head of the World, as the ancient Romans used to call their capital.

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Gubbio in Umbria

9/8/2017

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This is my fourth blog post describing my trip with my son Alex in Germany and Italy this past July. My last post recounted our two days in Ravenna. Next stop was Gubbio, in Umbria.

Umbria is quite craggy above its little rivers. The Via Flaminia, the ancient main road from Ariminum to Rome, bypassed the important Umbrian city of Iguvium, located on a defensible slope above a well-enclosed mountain valley. The modern name of this city is Gubbio.

The Via Flaminia in Roman Times. (Wikipedia.)

Under the empire, Iguvium was safe and luxurious, a rather elite spot as evidenced by the remains of the massive classical-era theater.

Gubbio. Roman theater on the left. (Photo by Alex Mawyer.)

Iguvium, before the Roman conquest, was Ikuvium, capital of the Umbrians. After the fall of the Etruscan League and the Roman conquest of Tuscany, the Umbrians were the next to be absorbed militarily by Rome. Like written Etruscan, the Umbrian written language remains undeciphered. The longest known texts of Umbrian writing are the bronze Eugubine tablets from Ikuvium. After the Roman victory, Ikuvium kept its population and its name.

Gubbio and environs seem to have been prosperous in medieval times. It is said that the city sponsored 1,000 knights for the First Crusade, and the knights of Gubbio legendarily recaptured the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. A “knight” as a unit included at the minimum not just an armored warrior on horseback, but also a squire or dogsbody, a stable hand for the horse, and a man-at-arms. Gubbio's 1,000 knights, if an accurate number, would represent a 4,000 man expedition, which is larger than a modern American infantry brigade. That seems a lot for such a little place, but Gubbio was nearly continuously at war throughout the medieval and Renaissance era.

Some centuries after the First Crusade, Gubbio warded off incorporation by Florence, but was ultimately incorporated by the Papal States. Family alliances came and went, but through it all Gubbio remained a tough nut to crack. Medieval/Renaissance Gubbio was a walled fortress city, a stony maze of streets and towers with no weak spots. Considerable sections of the walls remain today.

In Gubbio: inside the walls, a street runs under the medieval ducal palace of the Gabriellis toward the Renaissance ducal palace of the Montefeltros.

The ducal palace and its piazza. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

View from the piazza (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Gubbio — close quarters. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

The modern steed. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Climbing to the top of Gubbio.

Gubbio from above — along the upper wall.

Olives above.

When archery wasn’t a sport. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Essential Gubbio — walled terraces.

Gubbio is a gastronomic capital of food and wine.

A free ad: drink this. Fly as far and as fast as you have to, to drink it.

We were especially smitten with the wild boar sausages.

But the prince of epicurean Gubbio is the truffle. Until Gubbio, I did not know what a truffle (tartufo in Italian) actually was. Real truffles are not a faintly flavorful dried dust, or something hinted at in a tincture of olive oil. The key to truffles is life itself — you have to eat the truffle alive. Their fragrance, the weird alien density of the fragrance, suggests some powerful esters. A single live tartufo will fill a room with wit and humor, like a great raconteur, and leave everyone within nose both amused and delighted. But a whole basket of tartufi will leave you on the outside looking in, as the funghi communicate with each other and ignore you. The effect is like a helpless drunkenness. The truffle caves where masses of tartufi are held seem drug-like in their intensity.

Basket of living truffles. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

Truffles on beef carpacchio — like eating poetry!

When, after an already colorful and adventurous young life, Saint Francis was thrown out of Assisi in exile and disgrace, he fled to Gubbio. At the time, Gubbio was troubled by an abnormally huge wolf, the Wolf of Gubbio, who is said to have eaten well over a hundred persons. The local farmers lived in understandable terror of being next. But Saint Francis called this wolf to Jesus, and the wolf stopped eating people and became a pet. It might have been the first of his many miracles, as a saint.

Saint Francis redeems and pardons the Wolf of Gubbio.

Late in the afternoon we found the Chiesa di San Francesco, completed in 1256, and now refreshingly almost free of the baroque, although the edge of some such is plainly visible at the left in the photo below. There are also the scraped-at remains of some very early remarkable Francis Cult frescos.

Chiesa di San Francesco.

Early Franciscan fresco.

During a 19th century restoration of this church, the bones of a huge wolf were found under the altar. These were reburied in the churchyard, with no marker since the wolf, although a Christian, was also still an animal. This rings true to me. The Wolf of Gubbio may have frightened more people than it ate and Saint Francis was neither the first nor the last person to tame a wolf, so I find it easier to believe this story than to disbelieve it. Some have observed, on a more intellectual plane, that this foundational Franciscan legend is a narrative inversion of the Roman legend of the wolf that parented Romulus and Remus. We may make what we can of it or let it pass. There probably aren’t any wolves left in Umbria anyway.

In my next post I'll discuss Carsulae and Nemi, and some other thoroughly untouristy spots. Here, then, is as good a place as any to say something about the curse of tourism. Yes, tourism is a sort of curse. Of course people would come to Gubbio just for the truffles and wine and boar, both to eat and to carry away and eat later. That is actually commerce, however, and not tourism. The thing spills over when people come specifically to walk around and look at the view. The resulting hotels, restaurants, stores and gift shops quickly come to dominate the local economy. This is a mixed blessing. It preserves local crafts that might not survive otherwise except as fine art, for instance the technically complex and expensive faience ware of Gubbio. It helps pay for preservation. But these visitors are strangers. If the visitors become the point of the place, the the result is commercial dilution. One can hardly describe this as a tension; it is more in the nature of a relaxation, as the polis with its generations-long centered identity succumbs to the cosmopolis and its more diffuse values, and things that are real risk becoming merely quaint.

Of course, as a tourist myself, who am I to pontificate on these matters concerning places far from home. Walking the cobbles of Gubbio, I meditated on the contradictions.

Paradise if we only knew it.

What Gubbio might be without its tourists can still be loosely imagined. The locals have been invaded but not displaced. Maybe this is also what happened when the Romans came. By comparison, Belluno seemed undiscovered in the tourism sense, a Rough Guide sort of locality, while Venice was all but inundated by its tourist tide. Ravenna was a political capital for centuries in the classical Mediterranean world, and a cultural capital ever since, but the reliquarian past does not define Ravenna. In the summer of 2017 Alex and I found only a thin scattering of tourists in the ruins, while the now of Ravenna was crowded with thoroughly modern young shoppers and diners, designers, artists, students, musicians, and more besides — in no particular order, but ganging up rather thickly around the main gelato stands.

Gubbio seemed very different from the other places we had visited — far up on its mountain, still holding on to an age-old interior self. The Great Outside has found it, but not overwhelmed it.

Twilight settles in — The tourists leave and the locals come out. (Photo by Alex Mawyer).

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Gary Dale Mawyer has been writing for over four decades, and to date has published four novels, Rockfish, The Southern Skylark, Exemptions, and The Adventures of Reese Macaque, P.I., as well as a biographical history, Sergeant Wolinski and the Great War, and a short story collection, Dark and Other Stories. Gary's writings draw on a wealth of history, lore and lived experience. He has a B.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia. Gary is a Central Virginia native with over 40 years of publishing and editing experience. His interests include American and Virginia history, military history, geology, hiking, travel, landscaping and gardening. He is the father of four grown children and has four grandchildren. He lives with his wife Karen and two cats in Albemarle County.

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