Linda Lappin

A Visit to San Nicolao
Somewhere we had read a vague description of the “Selva del Malano” - a wild area of ravines, woods, and cliffs lying in between Vitorchiano, Soriano, Bomarzo, and Chia, and had seen a photograph of a Roman tomb carved at the base of a huge cube of peperino, the gray- flecked volcanic rock quarried in the area. What intrigued me most about these reports were the descriptions of mysterious “ altars” scattered through these woods, small step-pyramids covered in moss, built probably by one of the pre-Roman populations, but not thought to be Etruscan. We had already explored the better-known area of Corviano with its ruined fortress and its very ancient cave-dwellings hollowed out of the cliffs facing Vitorchiano with dizzying views of the surrounding gorges and eerie acoustics where paranormal researcher Umberto di Grazia has conducted interesting vibration experiments. These areas are designated as woodland trails in a rather loosely organized park system. Few people visit them, but they aren’t hard to find.

San Nicolao located in the heart of the Selva del Malano was another matter. The only map we had was published in a local trekking guide, with complicated instructions involving unmarked roads, cypress trees, farmhouses and other territorial markers which were easy to confuse. We followed the map to a plateau not far from Vitorchiano and parked near a copse from where the trail was said to begin.

We found ourselves wandering along strange and solitary roads snaking down the cliffs, strewn with gargantuan boulders thickly furred with moss, picking our way through masses of ferns, and sloshing across brooks and torrents. We were surprised to discover well-tended hazelnut groves planted in remote spots where vehicles could not possibly have access. Every other corner along the way invited us to stop and admire the scenery—each little nook amid the boulders a perfect place for a Japanese tea garden. These were fascinating trails to follow, but they did not lead us to the desired spot: San Nicolao, a ruined convent dating from the year 1000 perched atop a huge cubic rock.

After three attempts, we finally met a solitary hiker out one day who pointed out the way. We had been looking for a trail cutting through a field, but instead of a trail, there was only an irrigation ditch to indicate the path. So we picked our way through freshly- turned clods across a field and down the gorge again, where we finally met a bit of road leading to a farmhouse. From here you had to climb down a narrow path through the ravine, which, after a sharp descent, leveled out into a wider trail winding through hazelnut groves. Someone had recently been there before us and had sprayed the trunks of the trees with whitewash. An old bathtub had been placed on the hill to collect rainwater. But how on earth was it dragged here? There must be another road leading to this spot, though we found no sign of it.

The mass of rocks towering on the left looked very unEuropean, more ab-original except for their grey color. The silence was complete, except for an occasional crow. Hawks spiraled overhead.

At last we came upon the ruin, thrusting up in a small clearing, encircled by hazelnut groves : a giant cube of peperino with a crumbling medieval structure with handsome arches built right on the rock. At the base of the cube, a series of tombs had been carved in Etruscan and Roman times. In the outcropping of tufa around us troughs, tombs, sarcophaguses, pigeonholes, and inscriptions of all kinds were carved.


There were fresh footprints in the mud—someone had been here quite recently in this isolated spot. There was a variety of animal tracks: boar tracks, weasel tracks… and even a rather large feline had left the impress of its paws. Too large to be a domestic cat- the whole paw with four toe pads was as large as the palm of my hand. We speculated what it might be. Someone suggested a small lynx, though it seemed unlikely.

We examined the inscriptions, too eroded to read, with letters sometimes filled in with lichen and moss, all testifying that this was once a place of public passage, presuming the presence of readers, and also hallowed ground. I never tire of these discoveries – old ruins old roads in the middle of nowhere. This is the spirit of the Tuscia. Park your car on a country road, follow a trail through the woods, and you find yourself in another world amid the silent legacy of a vanished people.

March 2006

Banishing The Magic

This article first appeared in The American

A while ago, walking through the piazza in the town of Vitorchiano north of Rome I noticed that something — someone, I should say — was missing. The night had made off with Moai, the authentic Easter Island sculpture that for 17 years had kept vigil outside the town’s old gateway.

“What’s become of Moai?” I asked a shopkeeper, whose store stocks postcards of the now-missing monolith. “He’s in Sardinia for an exhibit,” responded the shopkeeper. “He’ll be back next year. But then they’ll be putting him out near the highway. “

I then felt a tug on my arm — a customer with a secret to share. “People didn’t want them to take him away,” he said. “They say he protects the town from misfortune. But they came with a crane and dismantled him.”

Now there was no doubt: Moai was indeed gone.

Moai had been a source of contention since his birth in Vitorchiano, a medieval town in Tuscia, a rugged stretch of Lazio that abuts Tuscany to the north and Umbria to the east. The area is steeped in mystical Etruscan lore. But Moai was no exotic souvenir. Improbably, he was created by visiting Easter Island sculptors and carved from local stone. His story is as intricately entwined in local legends as those of Archangel Michael or Saint Rose.

Situated near a canyon, Vitorchiano boasts one of Italy’s most beautifully preserved medieval centers. Its citizens are fiercely proud of their medieval heritage and religious and artistic traditions, stonework among them. For generations, quarrying and sculpture nurtured the area’s artisans. Their ancestors carved the famous fountains of nearby Villa Lante and the mysterious beasts of Bomarzo, which some theorize were designed by Michelangelo. Even the humblest village homes have exquisite stone decorations, though the art has been in decline for more than a decade.

Toward the end of 1980s, in response to a global appeal from Polynesian sculptors to help save decaying Easter Island statues, Vitorchiano’s carvers volunteered to chip in. To their surprise, they found that the Easter Island statues came from peperino, the same rock quarried in Vitorchiano. It’s a grey volcanic tufa peppered with black grains, a common building material in Italy.

Enter the Catholic Church and Italian television. Catholic missionaries in Rapa Nui (with ties to the town) and a Discovery-style TV program called “In Search of the Ark” sponsored a visit from a group of Easter Island sculptors to help draw attention to the plight of the Pacific statues. They decided to apply their skills locally to raise public awareness. A nearby quarry donated a huge chunk of stone and the Rapa Nui artists went to work on a statue using traditional methods and primitive tools.

The result was the imposing Moai, nearly four meters tall and carved from a single slab of grey peperino. He wore the ritual headdress that distinguishes many of his elegant Rapa Nui counterparts. The island artists then performed a ritual ceremony in which the Moai’s eyes were opened, endowing him with protective powers. With the mayor’s approval, he was raised in the town square. National television filmed the ceremony and the Easter Islanders departed soon thereafter.

Moai remained behind to testify to the solidarity among stone-workers, a link between two profoundly different communities that shared a way a life. The tolerance represented by the statue was remarkable in a community where even residents of neighboring towns are often considered “outsiders.” Under new and strict European Union immigration laws, it’s unlikely the Easter Islanders craftsmen would have been permitted into today’s Italy.

From the outset, some townsfolk saw Moai as an interloper. He usurped a place once occupied by a monument to the town’s war dead, which was moved across the street. Others insisted that a Polynesian sculpture had no business in an Italian civic setting. The resistance concealed deeper doubts, including religious embarrassment. Though his makers were Polynesian Catholics (Rapa Nui is a province of a deeply Catholic Chile) and guests of Vitorchiano’s Dehonian mission, the ritual of “the opening of the eyes” gave skeptics an opportunity to attack what they saw as a pagan monument.

Though the moai are often labeled as “heads,” they actually combine heads with abbreviated torsos. On Easter Island, they are thought to honor dead priests and ancients. Some think they help crops grow. Their influence was always viewed as anything but sinister. No one ever accused a moai of going bump in the night. Given such an exotic history, it’s no wonder Vitorchiano’s Moai fans numbered the superstitious and the wide-eyed, children in particular — in essence, those who relished the quirky and the fanciful. In this landlocked town, the incongruous statue evoked imagined sea voyages and exotic discoveries.

Outsiders who hear the story tend to side with Moai’s critics. What, detractors demanded to know, was an Easter Island statue doing outside the gates of a medieval Italian town with Christian roots? His defenders shot back that the spot he occupied was outside the medieval precinct and used mostly for parking. Nearby, a shopping mall is under construction. There’s a gas station, a bus stop, and a dumpster area. Moai was by far the friendliest of these sights.

Moai also gave his name to two cafés in town — “Bar del Moai” and “Mojito,” the latter combining a local craze for all things Hispanic with a pun on the statue’s name. Inscribed at his feet was a legend saying, “Touch his belly for good luck.” Taking visitors to visit the sculpture and stopping for a drink in the square was lazy Sunday entertainment. Now, puzzled visitors flock to the tobacco shop to buy postcards of a vanished monument.

For the moment Vitochiano’s Moai has been planted outside a museum in Sa Corona Arrùbia in Sardinia, where he is the centerpiece of an exhibit of Polynesian art. Maybe he’s happier overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean — an ideal environment for a statue of island ancestery. Perhaps he broods over his displacement and demotion from honored guest and goodwill ambassador to handsome exile.

In his old home, his absence is felt. “What will happen to the town now?” a troubled local man asked me. “Those people who made it really believed in what they were doing...”

And what about the statue’s protective powers? Townsfolk may have reason to worry. An online encyclopedia entry published by DeAgostini warns that the removal of a moai invites catastrophe.

The controversy even generated a response from the local priest. “As if our own protectors [the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Michael] were unable to shield us and were only good for inspiring festivals and processions,” he admonished unhappily in a parish newsletter. The message was clear. When it came to holy protection, local saints, not foreign icons, would take up the slack.

Once again, symbolism and not location seemed at the center of the debate. Changing views of non-Catholic beliefs as well as racial prejudice spurred by illegal immigration and a growing fear of fanaticism did poor Moai no good.

With Italy’s Asian population burgeoning, the town council faced a thorny question: “Do we really want a symbol of an Asian race and a Polynesian religion in the heart of our medieval town?”

Moai’s transfer suggests the answer was “no.”

There were also bureaucratic concerns. State officials noted that town officials had never registered the statue with the national archive of artworks and monuments. To them, Moai was a nobody, lacking pedigree and status as a work of art.

Go tell that to Sardinia, where local papers have hailed the Moai as “among the most famous of the Easter Island statues” and labeled him a cultural and financial treasure.

Transporting the artifact to Sardinia didn’t come cheaply and many now wonder who’ll pay the return ticket. Vitorchiano officials are hardly rolling out a welcome mat. The town council has ruled that Moai, should he return, will be relegated to a strip of land near a highway in the view of whizzing cars headed south toward Rome.

Will he be happy in a lonely corner far from the flux of town life? Perhaps his protective powers could be extended to shield motorists from the speed traps that notoriously dominate the highway. Meantime, the café in Vitorchiano’s square is closed for remodeling.

So don’t go looking for Moai postcards. The few that remained are sold out.

— Update March 2008 -- after a year's absence, the sculpture returned a whole year earlier than expected, but has been placed across the canyon looking wistfully into the windows of the houses along the western gorge.

Lifestyle: Ignoble Farmhouse

This article first appeared in The American

After years of living in a rental apartment, I grew convinced that the best way to consolidate my life-long romance with Italy was to own a house. But the high costs of property in Rome, Tuscany, and Venice put the idea discouragingly beyond my means. Through my work, I’d become acquainted with Tuscia, a ragged, rustic corner of undiscovered Italy nestled not far from Rome between Tuscany and Umbria. It was mostly unknown to tourists and investors.

Here was an unspoiled countryside set amid rounded mountains covered with chestnut trees. Lower down on the slopes were olive groves, pastureland, and tidy vineyards. An endless array of medieval hill towns dotted the horizon: San Martino al Cimino, Soriano, Vitorchiano, Calcata, Bolsena, Marta. The area was blessed with pristine lakes, hot springs, an abundance of Etruscan ruins, baroque villas and sculpture gardens to explore. And, most amazingly, as I learned while sipping cappuccino and perusing newspapers in a Rome cafe, houses there were still unbelievably cheap.

One particularly intriguing ad read:

“Portion of 18th century noble farmhouse. 3 floors, 2 bedrooms. Spacious kitchen with wood oven. Ready to live in, some repairs necessary. Located in charming borgo, near century-old oak trees.”

The price was a ludicrously low €10,000.

Like any serious house-hunter, I had focused on my essential needs: a bedroom-studio for myself, a kitchen with fireplace, a small bathroom, and guest room. A borgo — a cluster of old houses often near or in the country — sounded perfect. There’d be neighbors, and probably shops nearby. I phoned and was given an appointment for the next day.

Noble farmhouse... Those words conjured up a stately building with high-ceilinged rooms, tall, arched windows overlooking cypress trees. The fact that it was habitable was ideal. Repairs could be done slowly when time and money were available. And a wood oven! I imagined myself pulling loaves from the fire.

The owner, a Rome architect, accompanied me to see the place. She told me the house had been occupied for years by an elderly aunt, now in a nursing home. She also explained that she had drawn up some plans for remodeling it, which the buyer was under no obligation to purchase along with the property.

“You did say that it is ready to live in?” I asked.

“Oh yes, except for a couple of minor details,” came the reply.

We turned off onto a side road, lined with giant cypress trees, leading across parched fields. We passed several dreary houses and came to a halt outside a grey stone building with a narrow flight of stairs that led up to a porch. Above the porch hung a coat-of-arms. It represented the noble Farnese family, once powerful landowners in the area.

But the coat-of-arms was the only aristocratic feature of this shabby little house surrounded by rabbit hutches and chicken coops.There was no vegetation in the vicinity, save an enormous oak tree beside the house, which was completely covered in scaffolding — presumably to keep the tree from crushing the roof if it fell.

“This is it?”

“Wait till you have seen the inside.”

We entered through an arched door to a big, dark, and dank room on the ground floor. In the broad beam of the architect’s flashlight, I saw it was festooned with spider webs suspended from the ceiling beams, which emitted the whirring sound of voracious wood worms.

“This is the kitchen.”

There was a wood oven and wood stove, a long plank table, and a row of dusty, empty demijohns along one wall. A few bottles of tomato sauce were lined upon a shelf. It looked more like a cellar than a kitchen. There were no windows, and no stairs connecting it to the upper floors.

“The oven is original,” she said proudly, pointing out the date 1785 chiseled in the blackened wall over the oven door. “And over here is another original feature hard to find these days.”

She turned the beam of her torch on a trough carved along one wall.

“That’s where they soaked the laundry in ashes.”

“Very interesting,” I murmured politely.

Evidently the house once lodged Prince Farnese’s washer woman.

To reach the upper floors, we had to go back outside and up the stairs. The door opened onto a tiny room, where a bed was crammed along one wall near a fireplace. A kerosene lantern hung from a nail, confirming my suspicion that the house was not wired for electricity. A rickety, ancient-looking ladder led up about eight feet to the next floor.

“The other bedroom is upstairs,” she said, pointing up the stairs. There was no use risking my life on that ladder. This was a house I wasn’t going to buy, no matter how cheap it was, and besides I would have needed a parachute to get back down again. Her auntie must have been a very nimble old lady.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not right for me. But please — “ I said, suddenly looking around me, aware that something was missing, “Where’s the bathroom — I’d like to use it, if I may.”

The architect gave me a quirky smile.

“Well, actually, there isn’t one.”

My puzzled expression prompted her to continue. “The addition of a bathroom is included in our plans,” she said. “The pipes are all there, it’s just the hook up to the city water and sewer lines that is missing.”

“Your aunt lived here without a bathroom?”

“Oh yes, until last spring.”

“How did she manage ?”

“My aunt is an old fashioned woman. She used a chamber pot.”

And as she pointed towards the bed, I now noticed that object discreetly tucked beneath the bed.

“Is it urgent?” She asked warily. “You can use it if you need to.”

Library of the Tuscia: Recent and Rediscovered Readings on Bomarzo, the Monster Park.

Since its creation in the mid 16th century, the “Sacred Wood” or “Monster Park” of Bomarzo near Viterbo has astonished visitors and puzzled scholars who continue to debate such key issues as the precise dating, artistic attribution, and meaning of the bizarre sculptural composites it contains – a hell mouth concealing a secret room which resembles the interior of an Etruscan tomb, sculptures of giants, dragons, elephants, sirens, and a small leaning palace designed to throw you off your balance. No certain evidence remains to document the names of the artists and workmen who designed and sculpted these creatures or, more importantly, to testify to their creator’s intention, and a number of interesting questions remain open to interpretation. Was the garden the brainchild solely of its patron, prince Vicino Orsini, a fanatical hemeticist and alchemist, or was the whole designed by a single artistic genius? Were the individual sculptures executed by rough local workmen, by Turkish prisoners , or by a group of artisans connected to an illustrious school in Rome? Were these strange beasts plucked from Vicino’s imagination, or perhaps, from some of his worst nightmares? Or are they meant to be symbolic? Various scholars have interpreted them as: representations of the seven cardinal sins, illustrations of Italian epic poetry, witty allegories of important political events of the period, pictograms of the milestones in Vicino’s personal life and career, alchemical symbols linked by an esoteric itinerary of initiation.
Another mystery concerns the relationship between the sculptures. How are they to be read? Is there a prescribed order to follow in viewing them? Do they conceal Christian meanings or are they rebelliously anti-Christian and pro-pagan? These are only some of the unresolved issues, but several recent and not so recent publications offer curious angles of interpretation which are worth exploring to anyone who has fallen under the spell of this place of dark enchantment.

Enrico Guidoni’s new book, Il Sacro Bosco nella Cultura Europea, (Vetralla, Davide Ghaleb Editore, 2006: www.Ghaleb.com ) is bound to shatter some conservative views of the Sacred Wood. Guidoni has painstakingly pieced together textual and iconographic evidence which would suggest that the Sacred Wood was by no means an isolated experiment sprung from the maniacal imagination of its princely patron, but a complex sculptural composite conceived and designed by Michelangelo and technically executed by a group of artisans closely linked to the era’s greatest sculptor. The text includes an alphabetical “bestiary” with entries dedicated to each of the sculptures and major decorative elements, explaining their basic symbolism. The book is handsomely illustrated with photographs from diverse periods dating back fifty years,offering a rapid glance at the deterioration to which the garden and its environment have been subject. Given the importance of this study, one hopes that the publisher will bring forth an English edition.

Maurizio Calvesi instead, in Gli Incantesimi di Bomarzo: Il Sacro Bosco tra Arte e Letteratura, (Bonpiani, 2000) reads the sculptures in relationship to the poetry of the era. His research focuses on literary allusions incarnated in the weird figures and explores the significance of the many cryptic inscriptions which appear throughout the park and in nearby palazzo Orsini.

Whereas the focus of Peter Lamborn Wilson’s essay, Oneiriconographia: Entering Poliphilo's Utopian Dreamscape, in issue 5 of the review Alexandria, is Francesco Colonna’s emblematic Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strive of Love in a Dream), he relates his reading of this cryptic text to his explorations of Bomarzo and other sites outlying Viterbo, which had been suggested to him by a Roman alchemist as stations in an initiatory journey. For Lamborn Wilson, the absence of Christian symbols in the garden ( with the exception of the octagonal temple) would confirm Vicino’s rebellious attitude towards the ecclesiastical hierarchy. His garden is written in an alchemical code which makes use of the language of emblems, bypassing linguistic discourse to communicate meaning to the unconscious mind. Francesco Colonna’s emblems invite the reader to interpret their meaning on multiple levels simultaneously, and to read himself/herself into the narrative, to become a performer of the text, reenacting Poliphilio’s dream- quest. This intriguing idea could be applied to the Sacred Wood itself, in which each visitor plays the role of quester, re-enacting the search for the philosopher’s stone amid these giant emblems hewn in stone. I had not read this essay when I began work on my new novel, Signatures in Stone set in Bomarzo, but in a curious way, this is exactly what happens to Daphne Dubois, the heroine, who in order to solve a mystery and save herself from unjust accusation, must "write" herself into the Sacred Wood as a "quester", interpreting its figures and emblems with relation to a few dark episodes of her past.