Montepulciano, La Porta, Per Non Dimenticare

We are thinking of sister Patricia today.

Pici al ragu

On Saturday we packed up our lives at the Nonna Rana Country House near Cannara in Umbria, filled our rented car for the second time, and drove to Tuscany and the hill town of Montepulciano. The trip was about 60 miles and took about an hour and a half. Our apartment was being prepared for us so we stopped for lunch near Montepulciano at a country inn called Osteria di Nottola, named after the area of the same name near Montepulciano. 

We were looking forward to a special pasta that is found only in southern Tuscany called pici, thick strands of hand-made pasta, slightly uneven in thickness. Pici are made by taking a little ball of fresh pasta dough and rolling it between opposing palms and fingers until the pasta becomes a strand. An uneven strand. We were not disappointed with our pici al argue, that is, pici with meat sauce.

We met our hosts, Elena Bracci and her husband Dominique Ronvaux, unpacked our car, and took a walk around town. Elena’s sister, Margherita and her husband, Giorgio, were in Rome and had not come up for this particular weekend. There is also a French couple staying here this week, a couple from northern France who have a dairy farm. Dominique offered to give the four of us a tour of his olive orchard sometime next week. His olive oil has just been awarded DOP (denominazione di origine protetta) status which for olive oil is similar to DOC status for wine. It’s quite an honor.

Dominique promised to give the tour in both French and English versions.

La Porta, in Monticchiello

Earlier in the week we made reservations for a birthday party of sorts on Sunday at our favorite restaurant, La Porta in Monticchiello, a small town about 7 miles west of Montepulciano. All the towns here with “Mont” at the beginning of their names are a hint that comfortable shoes are a must here; these towns are picturesque but quite vertical. As you approach Montichiello, you see signs that say, “Monticchiello, Borgo Medioevale” (Medieval Village.) Though the buildings have been there for centuries, the town seems perfect; every building is in excellent repair and there are thoughtful touches everywhere, flowers in pots, flags, gardens, a pergola covered with wisteria, and on and on.

We arrived for lunch at 1pm, took a table on the terrace of La Porta overlooking the Orcia Valley, and ordered lunch. Daria Capelli, the host, asked if we were celebrating anything special. We told her that the birthday that we were celebrating had already taken place on Thursday but that Thursday is the *one* day of the week that she is closed. Restaurants and many businesses here are small and the same staff works every day that the business is open. Restaurants normally have a day or two each week when they are closed.

Sformato di verdure at La Porta

At La Porta the spectacular views compete with spectacular food and a most gracious host. We’ve tried not to list all the places that we’ve eaten -- that would be dull for our kind readers -- but we have to make an exception for La Porta. We started with an appetizer that we shared, a sformato of green vegetables. A sformato is chopped or shredded vegetables held in a matrix of potato and/or stiffened egg whites. Daria’s treatment of this traditional dish was to add a sauce of fresh local cheese (pecorino) and then add shavings of white truffle. Deliriously good.

Waiting for the celebration
to begin

The rest of the meal was in that vein and we had Daria’s brother’s delicious Vino Nobile di Montepulciao wine which carries his Lunadoro label.

Poster

While we were in Monticchiello for the afternoon, we lingered after lunch to take in a special celebration in the town called Per Non Dementicare (which translated to “So that we will not forget”.) Monticchiello is a small town, only 300 residents according to the Italian census, but the town and its people have a special place in recent history. 

National Association of
Partisans of Italy

On April 6, 1944, 450 Italian fascist fighters were dispatched to Monticchiello to deal with the Partisan elements there. The Partisans inside the town fought the Fascists outside of the town during the day and the Fascists, despite their greater numbers were forced to retreat. The German Army, unhappy with what had happened, dispatched their own soldiers to round up the inhabitants of Monticchiello and shoot them. Soldiers lined up the people against the town wall but were convinced by the local priest and a German woman who lived locally to drop their murderous plan. The horror of this event is memorialized in a monument that is just below the terrace of La Porta.

Bella Ciao

The threat was not idle. According to Dominique there are towns north of Florence that are empty as a result of the kind of action that had been intended for Monticchiello.

The town’s celebration begins in a small central piazza and was scheduled for 4pm. We arrived at 3:55pm and found only three or four people already there. By 4:30pm the members of the band had collected together, the representatives of patriotic organizations had arranged their banners and standards, and the playing of Bella Ciao, the anthem of the Partisan resistance in World War II, had begun. 

The band played verses standing in place and then began a march around the tiny town followed by members of the community. We know the town well enough to know that the band would soon be back so we stayed in place and listened to their music as they marched up around and back down the other side of the main piazza. It was stirring! Various texts of Bella Ciao in Italian and English can be found here and here. The song has many variant texts and today is identified, proudly, with the left in Italian politics.

Members of the community band

The band and members of the community passed by the main piazza and continued on to a small park near La Porta where there is a monument to the war dead. The band and the community stopped, two little girls lay flowers in front of the plaques, and then the band marched on to where the ceremony had begun in the small main piazza. 

Memorial to the events of
April 6, 1944 located below
the terrace of La Porta

Two people spoke. The first was a local “important person” who thanked everyone. The second speaker was the town mayor. He was full of passion as he challenged people to remember the sacrifices that had been made in the defense of liberty and democracy. The speech was powerful, the audience reacted with enthusiasm, and the connection to the problems of modern Italy (Silvio Berlusconi and his failings, the demonization of immigrants, and so on) were presented as affronts to the memory of the brave Partisans and their sacrifices.

We stayed until the end. It was a beautiful day and the passion of the event subsided but we imagine that a reservoir of memory remains regarding the events of 1944 in this village.