Tuscany – August 3, 2005
The big news in Florence. Last night a local idiot climbed up Ammannati’s fountain of Neptune in the Piazza Signoria and as he stepped into “Il Biancone’s” hand, it broke off and the vandal fell, crashing into the clamshell fountain below. Some reports were that the vandal died; others said he was brought to a nearby hospital in bad shape. The newspapers were calling the tragedy the revenge of Il Biancone. Our friends Paola and Fabrizio explained the vandal was from Scandicci, as if it was normal behavior for people from Scandicci.
The Veneto
The Brenta river is more or less an extension of the canal system from Venice, about as wide as a canal, only longer. It leads out to the countryside where wealthy nobles built fabulous villas to escape the noise and heat in the summer months. We thought we’d see lots of works by Palladio, but Palladio died in 1570 and most of the villas were built in the late 1600’s and early 1700’s. There were a few by the master, but most of them were later copies.
Our friends Paola and Fabrizio wanted us to stay an extra few days in Lastra A Signa, but Monday and Tuesday were the only days we had on the Brenta and off we went. We arrived to the small river town of Mira Porte around 12noon on Monday, August 8th, and sure enough the villas were all closed. Fabrizio was joking when he told us the villas were closed on Monday, but whatdya know, he was right. Not a problem, we drove to the port of Fusina (about 20km away) and hopped the ferry boat to Venice.
We’d known about the problems back in Paris for a few days. The current residents in the large apartment had blocked up the electric toilet, “known as the sani-broyeur”. Brigitte and her repairman Richard knew about the problem and as far as we knew, they went to the apartment and fixed it. While in Venice, we decided to check up on the broyeur and we called Brigitte. She called us back just as we were about to enter an exhibition of Lucien Freud paintings to give us the news. Apparently the situation was worse than first expected. They unblocked the toilet but now black water was seeping into the bowl. Not a very pleasant site I’m sure. Brigitte thought the joint under the toilet was bad and had to be replaced so they’d have to pull the broyeur out. Dollar signs were flying by our eyes. On top of that, the renters for the studio renters showed up a day early, which wasn’t a problem, but when they closed the blackout drapes, instead of sealing off the light, the drapes fell to the floor. More dollars flying past the depressing Lucien Freud portraits. We were pissed, and frustrated. We were in Venice and there was nothing we could do…nothing except get pissed at each other.
After a few bouts of “I hate owning apartments” we finally made it to the boat back to Fusina and back to the car. About ten minutes later we passed the sign noting that we were now leaving “Malcontente”. This made us laugh really hard and sure enough, everything brightened up again. As the story goes, a 17th century noble woman of Venice was so outrageous that she was ostracized from Venetian society and forced to live on the outskirts of town along the Brenta river. She was known as the Malcontente because she wasn’t very happy living in the country. We are still fascinated with what she could have done that would have gotten her booted from the city. 17th century Venitian society was incredibly wild. I’ll keep searching this story and see if I can rake up any new mud.
The following day we made a visit to the grand Villa Pisani, built for the Doge Pisani in the early 1700’s. It’s really big, really really big. You gotta hand it to the Doges. If the villa in the city is big, the country estate should be….well, much bigger. This was such an impressive villa that Napolean stayed there (his furnishings are still present), Vittorio Emanuale II spend a night there and Hitler and Mussolini had a meeting there. This place is so amazing that when you look from the bedrooms in the main house you see an incredible façade that looks like another fabulous villa. We actually thought the view from the window was the Doge’s private residence but when we walked back there we discovered it was only the horse stables. Unbelievable.
The most fun of the Pisani visit was the maze, an authentic 7’ high boxwood hedge maze with a tower in the center. It took us about 20 minutes to find our way to the center; less time to find our way out since everyone in the tower would yell directions to us. We could only imagine what it was like to be totally drunk and costumed trying to find your way through the maze at night, lit only by candles and torches.