First Glimpses of Italy - Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native - page 8

Our first evening in Rome, we were guests of Peter's sister who had left New York to live
in the Eternal City as an ex-pat with her Italian lover. The next day we were invited to join
her and some “intimate friends” for a sort of afternoon salon. There was an Italian count-
ess, an American photographer, and an American artist among the distinguished guests.
We had tea and sat on stiff-backed chairs that were ornate and rather uncomfortable as we
made chitchat. Having read accounts of salons in innumerable 19 th century Russian novels,
I was amazed to discover that such gatherings still existed in my own time. Peter's sister,
our hostess, peppered her English with Italian words and occasionally lapsed into complete
Italian sentences before catching herself and rolling her eyes as if to say “Oh my gosh. It's
become such a part of me that sometimes I don't even realize I'm speaking in Italian!” She
had even learned to speak English with an Italian accent during her stay in Rome.
The next day I wandered around the Roman forum for a couple of hours, bemused by the
unintelligible ruins of unidentifiable structures from a long, long time ago. Then, we piled
back into the VW and drove onward. Next stop, a few hours down the road, was the town
of Siena.
“Why are we stopping there?”
“To see some paintings by a medieval artist named Duccio that are really famous.”
Indeed, up a long staircase in a little museum wedged alongside the Cathedral was a
climate-controlled room with a series of panel paintings depicting the last days of the life
of Jesus. Beginning with the entry into Jerusalem, the story led inexorably to the Crucifix-
ion, but it continued with stories of Jesus and Mary that were then wholly unfamiliar to me.
The panels were quite small, but even where they showed crowds ofpeople, every face was
meticulously drawn with astonishing detail of expression.
That much stayed with me through the 20-some years that elapsed before I would return to
Siena. The other memory that lingered was the sight of the town spread out below us after
we climbed to the top of the bell tower next to the old City Hall. A winding staircase that
seemed to go on forever ultimately led us to a perch at the top of this slender, brick needle.
Below us was a circular sea of red-tiled roofs surrounded by mottled greenery in every dir-
ection. I had never seen anything like it. When I look at this same scene these many years
later, I often still gaze in rapture and amazement, and sometimes can even experience that
quiver of first love.
Florence was our next and final destination in Italy before driving almost non-stop back to
England. We had just enough time for a whirlwind visit to Florence's famous art museum,