You may have the universe if I may have Italy

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Cover illustration from 'A Rather Curious Engagement'

While reading a book titled, 'A Rather Curious Engagement' by C.A Belmond, I was delighted to see a part of it was set at a Castle on Lake Como. My mind started wandering and I began dreaming about Lake Como yet again.

Thus the inspiration for this post, the purpose of which is to allow me to indulge in my meandering daydreams of Italy and to look at some lovely pictures of the place. Perhaps I can stimulate you to indulge in some delicious day dreams to far off places of your own?

The Pantheon, Rome.

There are many beautiful places around the globe, but for me, and there is some bias on my part, nothing else comes close to Italy.

Como is where my Aunt and Cousins live and where my dad grew up. Lake Como is an oneric place of serenity and elegance.

Despite a very embarrassing incident, walking around for hours with a long piece of toilet paper sticking out of the top of my jeans, I would live there in a heartbeat.

The Roman Senator Pliny the Younger (A.D.61-115) was born in Como. He had two villa's there, one named Comedy, the other Tragedy, what a lucky bugger.

A prolific writer he even produced a ghost story. Interest in the Paranormal seems to be a fairly modern attraction, but Pliny's story shows that even thousands of years ago people were fascinated and frightened by ghosts. What a lot of fun, I can't resist putting the story up here for people who love a good fright, albeit an ancient one, to read.

An Ancient Ghost Story by Pliny the Younger.

There was in Athens a house, spacious and open, but with an infamous reputation, as if filled with pestilence. For in the dead of night, a noise like the clashing of iron could be heard. And if one listened carefully, it sounded like the rattling of chains. At first the noise seemed to be at a distance, but then it would approach, nearer, nearer, nearer. Suddenly a phantom would appear, an old man, pale and emaciated, with a long beard, and hair that appeared driven by the wind. The fetters on his feet and hands rattled as he moved them. Any dwellers in the house passed sleepless nights under the most dismal terrors imaginable. The nights without rest led them to a kind of madness, and as the horrors in their minds increased, onto a path toward death. Even in the daytime--when the phantom did not appear--the memory of the nightmare was so strong that it still passed before their eyes. The terror remained when the cause of it was gone. Damned as uninhabitable, the house was at last deserted, left to the spectral monster. But in hope that some tenant might be found who was unaware of the malevolence within it, the house was posted for rent or sale. It happened that a philosopher named Athenodorus came to Athens at that time. Reading the posted bill, he discovered the dwelling's price. The extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion, yet when he heard the whole story, he was not in the least put off. Indeed, he was eager to take the place. And did so immediately. As evening drew near, Athenodorus had a couch prepared for him in the front section of the house. He asked for a light and his writing materials, then dismissed his retainers. To keep his mind from being distracted by vain terrors of imaginary noises and apparitions, he directed all his energy toward his writing. For a time the night was silent. Then came the rattling of fetters. Athenodorus neither lifted up his eyes, nor laid down his pen. Instead he closed his ears by concentrating on his work. But the noise increased and advanced closer till it seemed to be at the door, and at last in the very chamber. Athenodorus looked round and saw the apparition exactly as it had been described to him. It stood before him, beckoning with one finger. Athenodorus made a sign with his hand that the visitor should wait a little, and bent over his work. The ghost, however, shook the chains over the philosopher's head, beckoning as before. Athenodorus now took up his lamp and followed. The ghost moved slowly, as if held back by his chains. Once it reached the courtyard, it suddenly vanished. Athenodorus, now deserted, carefully marked the spot with a handful of grass and leaves. The next day he asked the magistrate to have the spot dug up. There they found--intertwined with chains--the bones that were all that remained of a body that had long lain in the ground. Carefully, the skeletal relics were collected and given proper burial, at public expense. The tortured ancient was at rest. And the house in Athens was haunted no more.

Venice is another city brimming with a true nimiety of beauty. 'The fairytale city of the heart' (Lord Byron) is truly an exotic dream of wild and effulgent imaginings.

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles." --Lord Byron, Childe Harold (canto IV, st. 1)

Cafe Florian in the very heart of San Marco is my choice for the best coffee house anywhere. Sure it costs around $16.00 AUD for a cup of hot chocolate, but one is paying for so much more than that. The view of St. Marks Square, the place Napoleon called, 'The most beautiful drawing room in Europe', not to mention that sumptuous surroundings of the cafe itself.

Florian opened in 1720. Many people far grander than the Countess, (who only has delusions of grandeur) have visited there. Such an illustrious list of patrons that includes, Goethe, Casanova, Lord Byron, Marcel Proust, Charles Dickens and me!

Now I am not trying to be overly harsh but the likes of these great authors would never have frequented the cafe at Broady plaza, or even Gloria Jean's at Highpoint. Not trying to be overly picky, just saying. ;) Of course at Broady plaza I was able to get coffee and cake for under 6 bucks. The downside was the scenery. No visual feast to indolently gaze on at Broady. More like an endless parade of bogans and assorted ruffians as well as the odd kid getting 'rolled' for their mobile phone.

With architecture inspired by Constantinople, the brightly coloured Venetian palazzo's loom like sugary confections next to the glistening water. Just to walk down the ancient calles is to step back in time and to be overwhelmed by the hundreds of years of history that city is saturated in.

Lion at the Arsenale

In the Tuscan region I loved the small towns that are still surrounded by the medieval walls built to protect them long before Italy was unified. To be in a city like Sienna or San Giminigano, which to a large degree looks just as it would have in Medieval times is such a delight. Not only that, I found a fabulous little cake shop tucked away in a small cobbled street that had the best Rum Baba's in the world. Canoli's and Sicilian Doughnuts, oh my the Italians do desert like no one else.

The hospital in Pisa

Sienna

Duomo and Giotto's bell tower in Florence.

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." --Orson Welles

Title Quote by Giuseppe Verdi

Pictures my own.