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| Catino courtesy of Alessandra Finiti |
March 26
Oggi? Andiamo a Catino e Poggio Catino per fare un giro, per vedere la torre antica Langobarda, e soppratutto, per incontrare l'ambassadore fotografico della Sabina, il signore Giorgio Clementi.
Today we plan to go visit
Catino and Poggio Catino, two little hilltowns to the south of Roccantica.
Catino has a 1200 year-old pentagonal tower built by the Lombards, a German
tribe that invaded and ruled this part of the country for more than 200 yearse. Most
importantly though, we are going to meet Giorgio Clementi the
intrepid photographic ambassador of the Sabina, as well as other parts of Italy.
Because of Giorgio's photos, we had a much better idea about what this region
has to offer and our stay here is richer because of it. A presto, Giorgio. : )
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| Torre pentagonale di Catino courtesy of Giorgio Clementi |
Abbiamo
toccato la torre!
Our day in Catino and Poggio Catino with Giorgio Clementi.
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| Richard and I touching the base of Catino's Pentagonal Tower courtesy of Giorgio Clementi |
Every day we have spent so far in
Sabina has been a special day, but this one was truly special. I think many of
you who know us in Canada know how Facebook, and the connections we have made
with people in the Sabina and Lazio in general through Facebook, has influenced
just how we are spending and planning to spend our time here. Italy is a
beautiful country, basta e punto, but it takes a skilled photographer with an
artist's eye and a true passion for the country he sees, like Giorgio Clementi,
to truly show it off to its best advantage.
We have been a fan of Giorgio Clementi's photos for some months now. His breathtaking and intimate photos of
the Sabina on Facebook and on the Internet opened up a whole new wonderful
world "just around the corner" or "over the next hill" that
we would never have known it existed.
Perhaps the most powerfully
evocative photos Giorgio posted on Facebook was of a mist-shrouded hill-top
town called Catino. Out of the mist looms a tall stark stone pentagonal tower,
like something out of The Lord of the Rings. I immediately googled the name of
the town, and found it was only about a 20 minute drive south from Casperia.
Well, let's add that one to our list, I thought... And things proceeded from
there.
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| Poppy field near the Tiber and Catino's pentagonal tower in the distance, courtesy of Giorgio Clementi |
The content and focus of our trip this time to the Sabina has been
largely influenced by the photos of Giorgio Clementi and Alessandra Finiti.
Because of the love and passion that these two people have for this region,
because of the amazing photos they have posted on Facebook of the towns and
villages and the breathtaking countryside of this little-known area, we have
decided to focus our month-long stay here in Italy on exploring the hill towns of the Sabina.
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| Catino in all its glory, courtesy of Giorgio Clementi |
On the top of my list of places to
explore during our stay was Catino with its 1200 year-old tower and today we
got to cross this off our list in the company of the photographer who first
drew it to our attention.
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| Giorgio Clementi by Marialives Zoratto |
Giorgio lives and works in Roma, but
for a while has been working on restoring a small house in the town of Catino.
We have been trying to connect for a while since our stay. We just missed him in Roccantica yesterday... he arrived just as we left... but today we were
able to make a firm date and meet in Catino. Take a moment to look at this
video of Giorgio's photos. The first photo you will see in the video is of
Catino and its medieval tower.
We set off early to drive to Catino.
Road work on the road from Casperia to Poggio Catino has cut off our most
direct route. Armed with my trusty map of Sabina and my bright yellow baseball
hat from the Sagra del Fritello at Roccantica, we set out on the more roundabout
route via Poggio Mirteto. In the back of my mind I knew that there still had to
be shorter route, a detour, but not wanting to get too lost, we took a more
roundabout route. I have to say, there could be some better signage along the road
through Poggio Mirteto... But knowing the general direction where we had to go,
we safely arrived in Catino shortly after 11:00. Just as we were pulling around
the last hairpin curve into Catino, Giorgio gave us a call on the cell. Minutes
later we met him and his friend from Poggio Mirteto, Paolo Lelli. Paolo, apparently, was one of the key people involved in the recent restoration work on the 1200 year old tower.
It is always a strange and wonderful
experience to finally meet face to face someone you have gotten to know through
Facebook, especially someone like Giorgio. Finally we were meeting the man
whose passion for the Sabina had been such an amazing influence on the content
of our stay here.
After introductions were made,
Giorgio said, "Facciamo un giro alla torre?" We blurted out the
Italian equivalent of "You betcha!" and off we went. Paolo and
Giorgio took turns explaining the history of the town... How it started out as a
small community built around the tower which was built in the 700s or early 800s.
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| Catino atop the cliff above the collapsed karst formation |
Contrary to my assumption, the tower itself was not a defensive structure, but was an
observation tower for the inhabitants of Catino to let them know what was going on
down on the Tiber. The hill Catino was built on is a natural fortress in and of itself. On one side of Catino is a cliff that falls about 100 feet
down to a mountain river. On the other side is another cliff over a dolina or sinkhole caused by the
collapse of a karst formation. Fu una Rocca inespugnabile! "Catino was an unconquerable fortress." Giorgio showed us
the traces of underground tunnels that were used by Italian partisans during
WWII to hide from the Germans.
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| Italy circa 1050 |
After the fall of the western Roman
Empire, Italy was dominated by various Germanic invaders... the
Ostrogoths and then the Lombards who set up a number of kingdoms and duchys in
the peninsula. The Eastern Romans, the Byzantines, tried and were partially
successful in reconquering Italy, but eventually the peninsula became the patchwork
of duchys, kingdoms, republics, and church-dominated states that in various
forms continued until the Risorgimento of the late 19th century.
What many of you may not know is
that Italy was ravaged by Moorish pirates from Africa and that Sicily for a
time was ruled by the Saracens. Saracen fleets would sale up the Tiber and
pillage the fertile Sabina to the point that the people abandoned their towns
and villages in the valleys and took refuge on the tops of high points of
defendable land which resulted in the hilltop towns we see today. This was the so called period of incastellamento.
But back to our walk... A few
hundred paces outside the village of Catino stands the magnificent pentagonal
tower. We took dozens of photos from a number of viewpoints as we approached.
We then travelled outside the ruins
of the church to where there were the remains of dozens of stone chicken coops
built along the crest of the hill. Giorgio explained that there was very little
space in the old town of Catino for people to keep their livestock and that up
until recently chickens had been kept here.
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| Chicken Coops |
Giorgio quipped that they would be
perfect, if restored, as meditation cells for vacationers.... Just watch,
Giorgio... You never know...
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| The Coop Retreat Centre? |
Paolo then said goodbye and that we
should "Friend" each other on Facebook, and we then went with Giorgio for a tour
of the town of Catino, including the little house he is restoring.
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| A work in progress... |
The house he is working on is small,
but the view on a clear day from his front window is truly spectacular. He
explained than on a clear day you could see the dome of St. Peter's from his
front window. Giorgio is doing all the construction himself. Prior to becoming
a policeman Giorgio worked in construction. The kitchen and bathroom are mostly
finished but the bedroom is still "a work in progress". It will be
beautiful when it is all done. A perfect refuge and base for a man whose
passion is the Sabina countryside.
From his apartment in Catino we
headed north to the newer town of Poggio Catino.
The new settlement was
established a stone's throw away from Catino after the population of the town
grew and a new location had to be found outside the limits of the walled village to
accommodate the expanded population. Enroute, we stopped at he took us down for
gelato and coffee at Il Bar C’è owned by a friend of his who he introduced as
the "big boss of Poggio Catino", Roberto.
According to Giorgio, Bar C’è's gelato is known, even in
Casperia, as the best in the Sabina. I had nutella and chocolate and I think
Richard had stracciatella. What I had was truly delicious... There we're lots of other amazing looking desserts
made in-house by Roberto's wife, often using a wood fired oven in the back of
the house. Roberto presented us with a number of post cards of Catino and a
calendar from the bar, pointing out the photos taken by Giorgio. One of the photos was
the one showing Catino's tower emerging from the mist, and I explained to Roberto
that the only reason we knew about Catino and Poggio Catino was from Giorgio's
photos and this one in particular.
As I was explaining this Giorgio
pointed to Roberto and said "See, see?" and we talked about the idea of
having a set of Giorgio's photos used to make post cards that would promote the
various and unique charms of the hilltowns of Sabina.
I still can't believe why this idea is not being jumped on. To me it
seems to be a "no brainer". Everywhere we have looked in the Sabina,
including its most famous site, the Abbey of Farfa, the post cards being sold
in no way do the beauty of the area justice. They are mediocre at best, which
is a very great pity. Mi dispiace ma è vero.
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| View of Monte Soratte from guest room at Casa Vacanze Belvedere Soratte |
Roberto then took us upstairs to see Casa VacanzeBelvedere Soratte, the guest house he runs above the bar. There are two main
suites: Hibiscus, and Girasole (Sunflower) which we looked at. We loved the Hibiscus suite
in particular. It had amazing views of Soratte and the Sabina hills and a very
beautiful kitchen. Apparently the building, which dates from the early 1900s
was bombed by the Americans during WWII because it was being used as the headquarters of of
the German commander of the area.
We continued our tour of Poggio
Catino, taking pictures as we went. There is a horrific story of La Dama Bianca of
Poggio Catino. Sometime in 1933, workers doing restoration work on the old Palazzo Olgiati in Poggio Catino found a small room behind a wall where a woman had been
buried alive.
No one knows the real story, but it seems her brutal murder took
place sometime between 1484 and 1525 during a time when the area
was being fought over by two powerful families, the Colonna and the Orsini.
Well, as I have said on my website
and blogs over and over again, every house has a history, and it could not be
more true than here in Italy.
The room where the lady's remains were found, and the bones of la Dama Bianca were removed intact and transfered to the Museo Criminologico on
Via Giulia in Rome where they can still be seen today.
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| La Rocca at Poggio Catino |
We spent more than an hour
traversing the picturesque crisscrossing streets and alleys of Poggio Catino
taking pictures and videos at every turn. The recently restored main piazza of
Poggio Catino is particularly beautiful.
While we were there, it was mostly
deserted. Four young kids played soccer in the piazza. The rest of the towns
street's were mostly silent except for the odd cat. It was the hour of the
siesta.
Giorgio had work to do and we had to
get back to Casperia to have lunch, so we bid addio to Giorgio, thanking him for
his precious time and for the wonderful tour, and with instructions from Giorgio to
return by a back road route around the blocked road to Roccantica, we we're
back in Casperia in a quarter of the time it took for us to get from there to
Catino earlier.
We then travelled outside the ruins
of the church to where there were the remains of dozens of stone chicken coops
built along the crest of the hill. Giorgio explained that there was very little
space in the old town of Catino for people to keep their livestock and that up
until recently chickens had been kept here. 
No one knows the real story, but it seems her brutal murder took
place sometime between 1484 and 1525 during a time when the area
was being fought over by two powerful families, the Colonna and the Orsini.
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