Abbadia San Salvatore
I had made a list of all the places we still might like to go and Maurice finally said Pitigliano, where some of the group was headed today—P-town, they call it, since no one can pronounce it (and the “g” only makes it worse). I had thought we needed an 8:30 start but that didn’t happen. Maurice had forgotten he agreed to it the night before. Rain was predicted all afternoon. We started off anyway.
“Let’s stop at Abbadia San Salvatore right on the way while the weather’s still nice,” I said. It turned out to be a good plan. No tourists, and we got a parking place at the tiny lot behind the park in front of the abbey. The Romanesque church, important to pilgrims along the Via Francigena, was a light-filled building with ninth century foundations. Steep steps led from the entry up to the main nave.
A large wooden twelfth-century crucifix hung over the altar. A man in the front row was saying his rosary and an organist was practicing at the instrument in the right transept.
Beneath the elevated area a few steps descended into the crypt, an 11th-century forest of white stone columns topped with carved capitals. It was even better when the people who came in behind me knew where the switch was and turned on the lights. While I took my time Maurice went outside to draw.
On a nearby street I saw a sign for the borgo medievale so we headed that way. A gateway led into a stone warren of curving narrow streets glowing in the noonday sun. There was not a soul around but us.
Eventually we ducked through a tunnel to a main street to get a quick lunch at the only place open, a panetteria where we got a slab of something masquerading as pizza, a drink and two fogliate pastries for later. We wended our way back through the borgo medievale, exited where we came in and stopped to take a picture of a quaint shop where a sign outside advertised stamps for the Via Francigena.
Shades of the Camino! We weren’t walking the Francigena but how about a stamp for your drawing of the abbey church, I suggested to Maurice. We wandered inside. It was hard to move past the trinkets, antiques and local products spilling off the shelves and into the narrow aisles; it was hard among the surfeit of vendibles to even know where to look. Out of the profusion appeared a small middle-aged woman, delicate and faded, with a wispy voice.
Yes, certainly, she could give us a stamp, it was under here somewhere—on the drawing?—oh, what a lovely drawing!—how beautiful it is—oh, if only you would sell it to me! Well, it’s not finished, said Maurice, but he could send her a copy of it later. Oh, she would love that, and how much would it cost? No charge, said Maurice, he would be happy to send it. Oh, please, isn’t there something she could give us in exchange from her shop? No need, we said. But we must take something—and she reached into the plenitude and withdrew a bottle of wine from her family’s farm, and, yes, take the spice mix too, she insisted when she saw me eyeing it.
It wasn’t raining yet. Maybe we could still get a couple dry hours in Pitigliano. But right nearby was Monte Amiata, the remaining dome of an ancient volcano. Let’s check that out first, I said. The road twisted through the countryside and soon we were climbing. Higher and higher we went into the cool air of a misty fairytale forest with tree trunks that looked like elephant feet.
I had read in some travel info that Monte Amiata was a special part of Tuscany with art, mining history, natural beauty and hiking. Maybe there would be a visitor center, or an informative sign, or a mapboard showing trails. Silly me—this is Italy! There was no information whatsoever. We passed a ramshackle block building with a homey front porch and smoke curling from a chimney, the Primo Refugio Amiatino, and I poked my head in to see if there might be any local info. It was a restaurant. We drove further. The only point of interest we found was a ski lift. The sky was threatening and we knew we couldn’t outdrive the approaching storm. “Let’s go back to that refugio,” I said to Maurice. “It looked so cozy inside.” We could get a drink while it rained. We went back, parked and got out just as the rain started. It was downright cold out, but a fire in the fireplace made the tiny refugio toasty inside. It looked just like a mountain refuge should look, with glowing hearth, stuffed critters, shelves holding victuals and libations, a cuckoo clock and lace curtains at the windows. The server/chef/manager welcomed us warmly. We sat in a booth by a window; there was one other couple at a table in front of the fireplace. “We’ll just have a drink and maybe some dessert,” we told the chef. His English was better than my Italian. That’s all? he inquired. Didn’t we want lunch? What would we like? He described some of the possibilities he could prepare. In the end we ordered real food: a bowl of homemade pici alla carbonara for Maurice and a plate of escargots with a homemade sauce for me. Plus wine, of course, which our host accompanied with a little plate of antipasti. We’d already had a light lunch and it wasn’t quite three o’clock so I asked for just a half portion of my order. The half portion turned out to be eight fat mollusks. (Maurice doesn’t know how I can eat the things, and I can’t explain it; they don’t have much taste on their own and they usually come with garlic and butter which pretty much makes anything yummy. And they look no more disgusting than steamed crabs.) We dug into our hearty gastronomic delights and sipped our wine while outside thunder rolled and rain poured down in opaque sheets. Maurice was pleased that the white roads of Tuscany were being washed from our black car. As we were scooping up final slurps of sauce with our bread crusts, the California couple at the next table, who had figured out we were American, started a conversation with us. They live near Anzio and had come just to eat at the refugio well-known for its delicious cuisine, where on weekends it is often hard to get a reservation (clueless but lucky us!). They have friends who lived in El Salvador for three years. The husband works for Chevron. The wife had an armored car and a driver who took her all around to do shopping; she was sorry to return to the US. (When I relayed this story to Chris later, he noted that the Navy is unlikely to provide an armored car with driver.) We finished with some rich and creamy desserts (because that’s what we came in for). When we left about 4:00 in our shiny black car the sun was shining again.
Our hosts at Il Primo Refugio Amiatino
So much for P-town. We drove along back roads (that’s all there were) toward our farm and detoured to the abbey of Sant’Antimo, founded in the ninth century, restored in the nineteenth and set serenely in a valley among the green and gold of olive groves and wheat fields not far from Montalcino.
Sant’Antimo returned to monastic use in 1992 and is currently occupied by Benedictine monks who sell various products to support themselves and may or may not sing Gregorian chant. The Romanesque church, high and bright, was lined with columns bearing intricately carved capitals. I had a lovely visit while Maurice slept in the car. Then with Maurice’s blessing I stayed for mass while he went back to sleep. There were only six congregants—a young family, an older couple with backpacks and me—and no chanting monks, yet the body of Christ was still broken for us.
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