When is a square a square?
- Richard Crooks
- Jul 31
- 10 min read
Updated: Aug 4
We don’t know the Italian mainland that well. We had done a few fly-in, city-breaks in the distant past (Rome, Florence, Naples, Verona, Bologna, Lake Maggiore) but never been to the boot-shaped peninsular for a week’s holiday, to soak up the atmosphere and culture. Jonny couldn’t believe we had stayed so few days in Italy on our way out to the boat. So, we decided not to head home via the Balkans and eastern Europe, but to pass again through Italy.
Apart from that, we had no real idea of how to plan our route back. We wanted to avoid the east coast, that we’d travelled down from Venice to Ancona. So, we would head west from the port, cross the Apennines to Tuscany, and then head north.
After that, I simply resorted to Googling ‘the most attractive towns and villages in Italy’, to get a start. Many of these are located in southern Italy or Sicily. However, the first one vaguely on our way was Pienza, a medieval, hilltop-village in Tuscany.
One of the things I most remember about our Tuscan trip to Florence in 2015, was a ‘vertical’ wine-tasking at a wine-bar in the city. We were offered three vintages of the same wine, and from the same small estate, owned by an elderly lady. The wines were so good that the bar had bought her entire vintage for the latest year. There were ten years between each tasting, so perhaps we tasted vintages 2012, 2002, and 1992. I can’t remember the estate. In fact, I had never heard of the wine type – Brunello di Montalcino. It is made solely from the famous, local Sangiovese grape, and we liked it very much indeed.
We often seek Brunello in the UK, but it’s not a wine commonly stocked by local merchants. And the few bottles they do sell are quite expensive; you can’t normally find any bottle for much less than £30 (never mind the really good vintages). I had often wondered if we might ever seek it out at source. All I knew was that it the appellation was from somewhere south of Florence.
So, it was a lucky coincidence, and very pleasant surprise, to discover that Pienza is, in fact, a neighbouring village of Montalcino. And, when we checked into our hotel, the owner told us that they could organise a wine tasting for us. Not in Montalcino itself, but in a nearby estate called ‘Tenuta Fanti’ in neighbouring Castelnuovo dell'Abate (https://www.tenutafanti.it/en/home).
After breakfast (a typically amazing, Italian spread of meats, cheeses and assorted sweet pastries and cakes. And great coffee.), we left Pienza and drove through undulating, often-wooded landscapes. We wound through parched arable fields, punctured by cigar-shaped cypress trees, being constantly overlooked by quaint, pastel villages and small towns perched high above us. We popped up to lofty Montalcino for a quick wander around, and then drove on towards the estate. We were shown around the cellars – along with a couple of young honeymooners from New Zealand - by a girl from Kazakhstan, who as well as Italian, spoke fluent English. She was an excellent guide, and reminded us about the wine-making process.
One step in the rosé wine process, that was unusual, was the method of contact with the red-skinned grapes. Normally, the skins are left with the juice for a short time to impact the colour. But here, they remove the skins completely from the juice and continue as if making a white wine, but then add the red skins back, temporarily later, to create the pink juice. Of course, for the reds, the skins are left in for the duration of primary, yeast-powered, fermentation in the large steel casks.
The style of red is determined by the ageing process, once the fermented juice has been drained out of the vats, and pumped into wooden casks. For a lighter red, the aging is less; say 6 months in the oak barrel, and a further 6 months in the bottle. In the barrel, bacteria break down the malic acid and convert it to lactic acid, which is less-acidic and softer on the palate. A more full-bodied wine, spends longer in the barrel. Here it becomes softer, and possibly paler in colour, and it absorbs the tannins and flavours from the oak. Brunello requires at least four years aging, including two years in the barrel, and it takes on a paler brown hue, which provided its name.
Brunello was traditionally - at this estate at least - aged in large, oval-shaped barrels made in Slovenia. However, the wine-makers realised that modern tastes favour the stronger aromas and vanilla flavours imparted by young French oak. But, rather than ditch tradition - at this winery at least - they blend the same vintage Brunello from the two types of oak.
Surprise to say that, after our subsequent wine tasting on the terrace overlooking the estate, we succumbed to purchasing a half-case of the good stuff – 2019-vintage, I think. There is always room for a half-case tucked away in the back of the surprisingly capacious boot of the Audi!
Pienza has a fabulous aspect. It is perched on the edge of a hill, overlooking the rolling, picture-postcard landscape of the Val d’Orcia, with the extinct volcano of Mount Amiata glowering in the distance. The town is small with one main, east-west street, book-ended by two arched town gates. The western one was destroyed by the allies in their drive northwards during the invasion in 1943.
There is only one real public, urban open-space, which is the small piazza in front of the main church. However, several short side streets dive off at right angles, and if you look south, each offers a framed-view of the open Tuscan countryside beyond. These glimpses draw you, like a magnet, to the outer street, that runs along the top of the town wall. Alix an I spent a while walking along this, and back again, as the sun-lowered and the cypress’s shadows lengthened. We found a bar, ordered a glass of wine and a few small ‘tapas’ plates, and quietly watched the world slowly rotate.
Next morning, we drove north for a couple of hours to beautiful Siena. Again, it is perched on a hill. In-fact it straddles a number of hills, like many Italian cities seem to do. It was a great adversary of Florence during the medieval period, and it feels, architecturally, very much like Florence. There were several statues of Romulus and Remus suckling the wolf mother. Similarities are especially apparent in the acres of buff brickwork, the domed-churches, and particularly the radiant, black-and-white marble used – when coffers were full - to face the cathedrals. There are many piazzas – or urban open spaces – focused on the entrances to these places of worship.
Perhaps due to the terrain, the urban layout feels more organic than planned. Originally there were three hilltop communities, and they each spilled downwards and outwards. The field where they met became an informal place for social gatherings and markets. Eventually, the field was enclosed by impressive buildings and homes of the ruling families. And by the immense town hall with its monumental bell tower, which gave the Piazzo Del Campo its name. The noticeably sloping site was finally paved in the 14th century.
There are 400 steps to the top of the tower, but the panoramic views repaid the racing heart. From here, you can also appreciate the strange, up-turned pudding-basin shape of the piazza. Always a piazza, but literally never a ‘square’. Despite the unique architecture of each of the buildings - probably to reflect the personal taste of the wealthy families - there is a consistency and rhythm to the roofline and fenestration.
At street level, you could still see the previous day’s hoofmarks in the compacted hoggin, from the crazy bi-annual horse-races. And there were still piles of uncollected rose food, in case you didn’t believe it.
We headed north again, this time to Lucca. To be honest, I’d never heard of it before but Alix’s sister Sari said it was worth a visit. It lies at the northern end of this low, undulating landscape, before the Apennines wrap around to its north, towards Genoa and Nice, and thus enclose Tuscany. Whereas Florence and Pisa were built on the relatively flat floodplain of the river Arno, Lucca lies further north, on the flood-plain of the river Serchio, which also bleeds westwards from the Apennines into the Mediterranean - or Ligurian sea to be more accurate.
Lucca is a very charming, town with an intact town wall (its third iteration). Alix and I spent a very pleasant morning cycling entirely around the top of the broad, perimeter wall, on a canopied four-wheeled bike, equipped with not one, but two, squeaky horns!
The town has a geometric grid-pattern layout because it was a Roman town. Once a street pattern has been laid out, the pattern generally survives for hundreds of years, despite later re-development. Unless an act of God, or Napolean, or the Luftwaffe have other ideas. Again, the streetscape feels very intimate and enclosed, until a piazza, in front of a church, provides light and a breathing space. Yet, Lucca’s most famous piazza - Piazza dell' Anfiteatro - was not designed as such. The Roman amphitheatre was located well outside the original town walls (the odour from dead animals and Christians probably upset the townsfolk).
But as the town expanded, it subsumed the amphitheatre. The original edifice was robbed for its stone and little of it remains above ground. Except for its almost ovoid layout. The curved stands of seating (cavea) stood, were re-purposed as town houses probably incorporating some of the original works. These are now mostly bars and restaurants. The arena is now a paved piazza, and a wonderfully-quirky open space.
Why did the townsfolk continue to invest heavily in the city walls? Well, like Venice and Genoa, Lucca was independent. It was not a republic like the other two, but an oligarchy. Nevertheless, it was probably very concerned about its ongoing independence, which it maintained until Napolean’s army arrived, sweeping all that perceived antique privilege aways in one fell swoop.
Lucca is also famed for its local huge ravioli called Tordelli Lucchesi, which I had to try, washed down with a local Sangiovese-based wine. Lucca was also home to Puccini, and although we are not opera fanatics, we enhanced our cultural experience by attending a church concert (tenor, soprano, and piano) that included some of his works. We could have spent longer there, but it was time to continue our journey northwards.
Or rather north-westwards. Two of our Swiss yachting friends – Cordelia and Martin – had advised to avoid heading north, past Milan, but rather to detour westwards and loop through Piedmont, before crossing the Alps into Switzerland. They mentioned that Alba was nice, but also that Cuneo was pleasant, had great food, and was off the main tourist track. So, we chose the latter.
We drove along the mountainous Ligurian shoreline, through and over countless tunnels and bridges, and by-passed Genoa. I had wanted to visit that other famous maritime republic (especially the maritime museum), but that would have to wait for another time. At Savona we headed inland and crossed the mountains at the ‘Colle di Cadibona’, which is generally agreed to be where the Apennines stop and the Alps begin. We disgorged into a flat, agricultural landscape, but we could soon see the towering peaks of the Alps again, as they wrapped around to our north and then north-east. Piedmont, of course, means foot of the mountains. And we had now moved from sangiovese terroir to that of the nebbiolo, which is used to make Barolo.
We were now, remarkably, in the Po valley. The last time we crossed the Po was at its estuary on our way south from Venice to Rimini on the Adriatic coast. But that was well-over 500 km to our east! It truly is a vast water catchment, draining both the Appenines to its south, and Alps to its west and north. Cuneo lies on a ridge high above and between the confluence of two of the Po's tributary rivers. Cuneo, like Turin, gained its importance through trade, as it lies at the end of these fluvial alpine passes that connected this area with France. Silk was the most important commodity traded here.
Unfortunately, these beneficial logisticalical routes made Cuneo vulnerable to the various raids by the French, who marched eastwards into this area, that had been controlled by Savoy since the 14th century. Over centuries, Cuneo resisted all these French attacks, until Napolean arrived. Napoleon’s troops marched north-eastwards along the ridgetop, and demolished the south-western part of the town’s wall as part of their onward conquest. In 1801, rather than rebuild the walls, Napolean ordered them to be demolished, so that the area could be redeveloped as a piazza, thus allowing the crowded medieval town to breathe and expand further along the ridge.
However, it took another 30 years to agree the plans for, what was to be called, ‘Nice Square’. And 50 years to construct the grand, harmonic, neo-classical buildings that now surround it. Of course, in 1860 during the ‘re-unification’ of Italy, it was renamed Vittorio Emanuele II after the first King of Italy.
And it was renamed again in May 1945 after a hero of the anti-Fascist resistance, Duccio Galimberti. It is worth noting, however, that despite Galimberti’s efforts, the Cuneo Police Department reopened an internment camp in 1944 and imprisoned the remaining Jewish residents of Cuneo, most of whom were then deported to Auschwitz. Few survived. After Italian partisans liberated Cuneo, the retreating Italian and German fascist forces murdered the remaining six Jewish prisoners being held at the local prison.
It’s a sorry tale, and one that seems to be repeated in many towns we have visit recently, especially in southern France.
Nevertheless, it is a fine Piazza. Again, it is not square-shaped, but rectangular, yet the most geometric of the piazzas we had encountered so far. That is because it had been designed, unlike the others which had evolved.
One of the best features of Cuneo's largest ‘square’, is that it lies on the axis with the main street of the old town (via Roma) and the main thoroughfare of the new town (Corso Nizza). And if you walk south-west along the via Roma, you have an uninterrupted, framed view of the Alps in the distance, still visually connecting the medieval town with the wildness beyond.
We were now crossing the Po valley - and vast swathes of risotto rice paddies - heading for our Alpine crossing point – the St Gotthard Pass. We would top and tail our crossing with lakeside stops at lakes Orta (Italy) and Lucerne (Switzerland). But, the one thing that we have learned so far, on our return road trip, is that even though a piazza is always a square, a piazza is never square.
p.s. Well, that's not strictly true. Yes, there is at least one square ‘square’ in France: When studying urban design and landscape architecture at university, we had a trip to Paris, where we visited the Place des Vosges. This 'place', or piazza, measures 140m by 140m exactly. It’s worth seeing next time you are there...
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