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Stalls in front of the Church of Saint
Agostino |
Probably most of you have never heard of Arezzo. Well, at least I have not, until I was told that some people in my university have decided to put up a theatre performance in Arezzo as part of the annual Arezzo Festival. That certainly piqued my interest and soon, I got myself into the group and before we knew it, we were headed for Italy. We arrived in Rome before the rest of the group and we toured Rome before meeting up with the rest of them a day later to board the train to Arezzo.
Now, Arezzo is situated in Tuscany, not far from Florence, and it's situated on a small hill at the centre of a flat valley, which is encircled by mountains and hills. Its strategic geographical position along the main connection routes of Central Italy favored its development throughout the centuries. While it has become a modern city, it is still very closely linked to its past history, and indeed it is a very pleasant place to visit. In Arezzo, you don't really need to map to explore the place. Most of the attractions are within its old city walls and really, the best way to enjoy the place is just to walk wherever your heart tells you to walk. You can't get lost (unless you really have no sense of direction). In that case, please pick up a map at the tourist information centre next to the train station, or hire me as your tour guide :)
Anyway, the journey to Arezzo started eventfully enough. We actually missed the Arezzo stop and took the train all the way to Florence (Firenze as the Italians call it). Luckily the train conductors were kind enough to let us board the train back to Arezzo at no additional cost. At Arezzo, we met up with the organisers of the festival and were led to our house on Via Bartolommeo di Sergorello. It was a lovely double-storey terrace house and I had a tiny room all to myself.
The next day, we started exploring the town. The historic part of town (within the old city walls) is predominantly medieval, giving Arezzo a quaint air, especially so when we had to navigate narrow cobbled streets. Soon we found ourselves in Piazza Grande, Arezzo's largest square. Some scenes from Roberto Benigni's award-winning Life is Beautiful/ La Vita č Bella was filmed in this Piazza. This picturesque square has a trapezoidal shape with a gentle slope and has been described as one of Italy's most beautiful squares. Indeed, it is very attractive. The west side of the square (as seen in the picture below) is dominated by the apse of the Pieve di Santa Maria, one of the largest and most important Romanesque churches in Tuscany. On the other side of the square, there are typical medieval houses with wooden balconies. Very lovely indeed. Around evening time, the square seems even more lovely basking in the sun's soft glow and you see the birds flying around the square as they come home to roost. Indeed, if you relax and let your imagination run wild, you can just feel yourself living in ancient times. Unfortunately, all it took was one bird to offload its waste materials in mid-flight onto my shirt for me to be brought back to reality. Therefore, daydream all you want, but beware of hazardous material from above.
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Piazza Grande- Arezzo's historical
centre. |
Speaking of the Pieve di Santa Maria, this 12th-century church has a craggy eroded facade of stacked arcades in luminous beige stone. An interesting point to note is that the spaces between the columns of the arcades get narrower at each level, which along with the setting on a narrow street, adds to the illusion of great height. Within the church, you can find the remains of Arezzo's patron saint, St. Donato, a local bishop matryred in the 5th century in the crypt. The church interior has some gothic influences and it's hard to explain why, but the church reminded us of Dracula movies, with bats and all. However, it's still a lovely place to visit. Despite visiting dozens of churches throughout the trip, so much that I've lost count of how many I visited, this church is definitely one of my favorites.
Actually, there are many churches in Arezzo, most of them very lovely I must add. Visit all if you have the time but if you don't have enough time, don't miss the Church of San Francesco. The exterior of the church might look rather plain (it is unfinished after all) but the interior with its unique, great nave is considered one of the most majestic examples of gothic monastic architecture in Tuscany. You'll also see frescoes adorning the walls. They depict the Legend of the Holy Cross drawn from Jacopo de Voragine's "Golden Legend," a 13th century text that recounts the miraculous story of the wood of Christ's Cross. Unfortunately, parts of the frescoes have already peeled off. On the high altar, there is a 13th century crucifix showing S. Francesco kissing Christ's feet.
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Church of San Francesco |
Well, my purpose in Arezzo is not just sightseeing, though I would be very glad to do so. For a couple of days before the performance, we rehearsed in Piccolo Teatro (meaning small theatre), which has a tiny wooden stage. Surprisingly, it's ceiling was also adorned with beautiful frescoes. For the few days leading up to the performance and on performance day itself, we didn't do much sightseeing, though I grabbed every opportunity I had to explore the town. I remember once we had a one hour break and I decided to walk around and explore the town on my own. In that one hour, I visited a couple of churches and also went to the 2nd century Roman Amphitheatre, the ellipse structure of which and some remains of the supporting walls of the steps can be seen. It sure isn't much to look at and you really have to use your imagination to imagine gladiators fighting there once. And so I moved on. Eventually I landed up in front of the gateway of San Lorentino, known as the Florentine gateway, because it faces the Valdarno and Florence. By then I was already near the end of my one hour break and I had no choice but to run back to the house to meet up with the rest. The fact that it took me only around ten minutes to run from one end of Arezzo to the other shows how compact the medieval part of Arezzo is.
Anyway, I shall skip the other days when we had rehearsals and fast forward to performance day. Our performance, Boccaccio 2005, took place on 28th July at the Teatro della Bicchieraia, the third day of the Arezzo Festival. The performance itself went smoothly and it was well received, and most of all, I'm glad because it meant that for the rest of the trip, I did not have to think about the performance again. On the other days of the festival, we had free entry to all the other performances as participants and we managed to catch all but one of the show because we went to Florence on that day. The performers come from all over the world- USA, Ireland, Germany, Poland and of course Italy, but while some performances were very entertaining, others put me to sleep. We were also given the option to attend workshops like voice for actors, mask workshop and movement for actors at the Accademia Dell'arte. Out of the three, I only attended one, the last one, which is conducted by Bryan Burroughs from Trinity College, Dublin. Admittedly, movement is not my cup of tea but this workshop was pretty fun though it lasted for three hours, which would have felt like an eternity if I had hated it.
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The Persephone Project- One of the
performances in the Arezzo Festival |
Anyway, on the day that I skipped the mask workshop, I spent the entire day exploring Arezzo with Prema, while the rest attended the workshop dutifully. From our house, we headed to the modern part of Arezzo, passing the statue of Guido Monaco in Piazza Guido Monaco, a central square not far from the train station. Guido Monaco was the person who introduced a musical system built on the “esacordo” and the use of a whole of four lines, where each dot corresponded to a note. If you need to make any long distance calls, this Piazza's the place to go because the rates are quite cheap. Unfortunately I found this out only as I was leaving Arezzo. Beyond the gateway of San Lorentino, there's really nothing much of interest unless you need your fix of McDonald's. Now that I've mentioned McDonald's, I realized that I haven't mentioned anything about the food in Arezzo. If you're on a shoestring budget, like me, you can easily find pizzas that cost €1.3 per slice. It might not be a big slice, but definitely very yummy. (Borgo San Piero next to Piccolo Teatro sells great food at low prices) In fact, I had pizza everyday I was in Italy and I'm still not sick of it. The typical Italian meal starts with the antipasto, which may consist of a bowl of marinated olives and some fresh fennel for dipping in extra-virgin olive oil, with a wedge of fine Parmigiano-Reggiano and some bread. Then it moves on to the primo, the pasta. Then the secondo, which is the main course which consists of meat. The dolce, or dessert ends the meal. Does that sound like a lot of food to you? Well, as we had a limited budget, we usually end up ordering just one course per meal and I must say that food portions are not huge, so maybe that's why you don't see a lot of overweight Italians walking around as each course of the meal comes in small portions.
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Along Corso Italia, Arezzo's main shopping
street. |
From the San Lorentino gateway, where there's a copy of the chimera, the symbol of Arezzo, we headed back to the medieval part of the city, to Corso Italia, the street which cuts across Arezzo, from the lower part of Arezzo, near the train station, to the upper and oldest part of the city where the Duomo is. This street is also where you'll find your Calvin Kleins and DKNYs. Towards the weekend, you'll also see fashionably dressed young Italians strolling down this street. At the top of the street, the mammoth Duomo overlooks the rest of the city. For some reason, the Duomo didn't make a big impression on me. Beyond the Duomo, there is a pleasant leafy park leading up to the 16th-century Medici Fortress which offers impressive views over Arezzo and its surrounding countryside. Somehow we didn't see the Medici Fortress, but even without going there, we could still enjoy a panoramic view of the countryside with its many grapevines. From the park, there is a winding road that leads down to the cemetery. The cemetery itself is not huge, but it offers an impressive view of the countryside for departed souls. Just beyond the cemetery, you can see an aqueduct though I don't know its origins. Nonetheless, the countryside around it is very pretty and you should take a stroll there. If you walk there at night, you can even see fireflies if you're lucky.
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Grapevines beside the Accademia Dell'arte |
While Arezzo is a very pleasant place to spend your holiday, it also has good transport links to the rest of the region and beyond. Thus, we took day trips to nearby cities like Florence and Cortona. We also visited a small town Civitella Badia al Pino that's just a short hop away from Arezzo by train. However, don't bother going there if you wanna go sightseeing because there's practically nothing there to see. When we arrived, the streets were all deserted and we're wondering where's all the people. It's a very small town and we walked across it in barely ten minutes. Nearby, there's a vineyard and at the top of a hill near the vineyard, there are a few abandoned houses. We spent some time exploring the dilapidated houses. Suddenly I'm reminded of all the horror flicks I've seen. You know those that have the characters poking their noses where they don't belong and they start dying off one by one. Anyway, nothing did happen to us and we strolled back to town. Finally, we saw some signs of life. People were streaming towards the only church in town. We also met a very friendly priest. Amazingly, despite our language barrier, we managed to communicate using a smattering of Italian and Spanish. He told us that he's been to Asia during the Pope's visit to the Philippines. After our short conversation, he invited us to attend a service in his church. However, we had to catch a train back to Arezzo and we had to decline. Somehow, we felt bad turning him down because he was very keen for us to attend the service.
Anyway, we left town and headed back to Arezzo. Traveling by train in Italy is very easy and convenient but it helps if you speak a smattering of Italian. Get your train or bus tickets from the train station and always remember to validate your tickets before you board the train and if you're taking the bus, validate it near the driver's seat.
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Billboard of the festival we're involved
in |
