Independence Day in Italy

The streets were full of happy Italians last night, young people, old people, children, families. Our apartment is on a fairly busy street and the atmosphere was festive (errr, noisy) well past the wee hours. In fact, the announcement that the party was over was the street cleaner that came by under our window at about 6am or 7am. After that the street fell into silence.

Sundays are very, very quiet here. Once you get out of the touristy area in the center of Florence, most the stores and many of the cafes and restaurants close down on Sunday. The streets are quiet until afternoon and then people come in from the outskirts to walk around the town. 

Today, Thursday, March 17, the first Independence Day ever celebrated in Italy, seemed like a Sunday. Red, white, and green flags were flying everywhere but lots of places were closed. Others had limited hours. And the streets were very, very quiet in the morning.

We were out in the morning and found a special way to celebrate Italian independence at our favorite coffee bar and pastry shop, Pasticceria Nencione on Via Pietrapiana, a few blocks from our apartment. We stopped for cappucino but as you can see we asked for something that seemed especially appropriate to the holiday.

Independence Day, a little later

Even though it’s a rainy, cool evening the birthday party for Italy is going full tilt at 8pm. We’ve just come in from our first walk through the festivities and we’d like have a glass of wine and share a little of what we’ve seen with you.

There are three venues for the celebration in Florence. The Piazza del Duomo, the religious center, is the site of some artisans showing off their craftwork. There were crowds of people milling around but it was pretty quiet there.

The Piazza della Signoria, the civic center, had a show with a singer and a small orchestra that was being televised. Bright lights, cameras on a huge boom, trucks with satellite uplinks. Most impressive was the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio lit up in green, white, and red and Michelangelo’s David (a copy, of course) standing guard next to tricolored banners. Very impressive.

Piazza Santa Croce, the great Franciscan church with a large rectangular piazza, was just setting up for some kind of show. Part of the show, however, was already underway; a huge hot air balloon in the center of the piazza.

We’ll have some baccelli (raw, young fava beans), some soft creamy pecorino cheese, and some red wine and go out again to check on the progress of the birthday party.






Still later


At 11:30pm the streets are full of people, all having a good time. The museums are open and free. The restaurants are open. The bars are full of young people.


Almost all the people we've seen are Italians, including in the places normally haunted by tourists. With a few exceptions, we only heard Italian, no English, no German, no other languages. The Italians were out with their families, including young children. Tomorrow is a holiday so the cranky, tired children will be at home. 


Hope tomorrow goes well for the parents; tonight looked like a good experience for all.

Independence Day History

Source of map

Tomorrow, Thursday, March 17, is Independence Day in Italy and the country will celebrate the 150th anniversary since the unification of Italy in 1861 under King Victor Emanuel I. The unification was late, of course, England and France had had national identities for centuries. Further the unification of Italy in 1861 was also partial in that the Pope held political control of Rome and the nearby Papal States in the central Italy. There was a “hole” in the middle of the newly independent country.

The Veneto (in yellow, including Venice) and Rome and the Papal States were added by 1870. In 1871 the capital of the country was moved to Rome from ... well, from Florence. The movement toward independence had been spearheaded by northern Italians who wanted to establish the new capital in Rome but in 1861 Rome was not part of unified Italy. For 10 years Florence served as the seat of the new Italian government.

In the 1850s the northern Italian leaders were concerned about a charismatic leader named Garibaldi and the trouble he might cause for them with France. They convinced him to leave Genoa in the north and sail south with 1,000 men to see what kind of trouble he could cause in the south. Garibaldi first conquered Sicily and then moved up the peninsula to the outskirts of Rome and handed over the territories he had conquered to the new King. Though he didn’t have such a mission, he doubled the size of the Italy. As a result of his heroic efforts there is a Piazza Garibaldi in every Italian city, town, and hamlet.

Via Lambertesca, near
the Uffizi museum

Tomorrow’s celebration is odd, however. This will be the first time in 150 years that Italy has celebrated its day of independence. Florence is decorated in red, white, and green, the colors of the Italian flag, for the first time in our experience.

This brings something to mind regarding loyalties. In Italy, one’s first loyalty is to the family. Shops and restaurants are operated by families and there are no chains, no Wal-Marts, no Denny’s, no Olive Gardens, no national businesses. The next layer of loyalty is to the city; Italians refer to this kind of loyalty as campanilismo. A campanile is a bell tower and campanilismo is “bell towerism” or loyalty to those who recognize, see, and hear the town’s bell tower. Past that everything else is an abstraction, including loyalty to the country.

A very old giglio

The problems of the current Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, have pressed Italians to think about enlarging their loyalties. In the demonstrations last week people were asked to carry the Italian tricolor and, for the most part, they did. It was a different kind of protest with only one large protest instead many unrelated protests all happening simultaneously in the same place.

A new giglio

Even this year’s initial Independence Day celebration is seen, however, through a Florentine lens. The photo shows the Florentine civic symbol, the giglio or the Florentine lily, which is built into the city walls in the 1300s. The civic symbol is everywhere in Florence (and in our kitchen in Syracuse, too.) The poster for the Florentine celebration of the national holiday on the night before March 17 speaks with an unmistakeable local accent. A gentle form of campanilismo.

There may be nothing more fundamental than family and food in this country. The final evidence of national awareness and national feeling is shown in the cake we saw in a bakery. 

Buon Compleanno a te, ...

Viva Italia! Buon Compleanno, Italia!

And Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to those outside Italy.

Meditation on Toilets

Travel is relaxing and can drain stress if the pace of travel is reasonable. Travel can also be stimulating, exciting to our senses and to our sensibilities. If we’re lucky, travel can be both at the same time. We’ve been stimulated and we've noticed two interesting things about bathrooms here, things that ought to be interesting to our senators and representatives in Washington.

A US senator recently went on a rant to a representative of the EPA regarding the high efficiency toilets in his home. "Frankly, my toilets don't work in my house, and I blame you, and people like you," said the senator. Of course, the senator is not well informed. If his toilets don’t work, he has a problem with his plumber. The high efficiency toilets in our home work very well, much better than the toilets they replaced. (Note to Rand Paul. Call the people at Inland Plumbing Supply in Syracuse. If you’re polite, they’ll be able to help you out.)

Note to senator; large button on left,
small button on right, the rest is easy.

If the senator has a fixed, ideological view regarding toilets then I suggest foreign travel, perhaps to Italy. One of the interesting things about toilets here is they often have two buttons on the wall. One button is large, the other button is small. The large button produces a large flush, the small button produces a small flush. The choice is yours, no government official is involved. This level of simplicity might be attractive the the senator; it seems like a good idea to us. Why don’t we have this at home?

Another thing strikes us about public restrooms. At home a few places have water faucets that come on automatically when you break a light beam. This is good. Most places do not, however. The same is true here; only a few public rest rooms have automatic faucets. But many public restrooms here have sinks with foot pedals. Sometimes two foot pedals. One blue, one red. Low tech. Simple. Easy. And you have one less thing that you have to touch.

Travel opens the mind to new possibilities.

Street Art revisited and a Weather Report from Piazza Beccaria

On Sunday, March 6, we described some interesting urban art that we had seen around Florence. Today a friend showed us an article from The Florentine, a bi-weekly newspaper in English for the English-speaking and English-reading community in Florence. The Florentine is a very good newspaper that we enjoy reading while we’re here and at least as much from time to time when we are at home.

The article in The Florentine describes an artist named Chet Abraham who is responsible for the altered traffic signs we described. He has some other projects, a workshop that we will visit soon, and a 400 Euro fine from the local authorities.

As we set these words down, we are thinking about you, the people who may be reading this. Some of you may not admire Chet’s work but some of you may enjoy his artistic sensibility. We know who you are ... or at least we think we know who you are.

Weather report   The first week of March was cool and damp and we were jet lagged so the combination was tolerable. The second week of March brought in weather from a place that a local person called “RUU see yah” (that is, Russia.) The nights were cold, into the 30s, and the days were cool, dry, and sometimes windy but the skies were blue, blue, blue. It was a pleasant change from the weather at home.

The photo summarizes the weather here; it shows a magnolia in a piazza near our apartment. Every year we’ve arrived and this magnolia has greeted us with the beautiful display that these trees put on in the spring.

We think that the weather here is about 6 or 7 weeks ahead of the weather at home. This gives us the opportunity to enjoy the coming of spring here and then go home and watch spring arrive again.

Big East Quarter Final from the House of Sizzle

Last evening we spent a few hours at a college-age watering hole called the House of Sizzle. We arrived at about 8pm, in time for the SU-St. Johns game which began at 8:25pm local time. We enjoyed a couple of Heinekens while watched the Big East quarter final game with a number of students, mostly SU fans but a few fans of other Big East teams, too. We joked that we were sent by their parents to keep an eye on things. For some reason that didn’t seem to amuse them.

We first met the owner of the House of Sizzle, Francesco, in 2003 when we were searching for a place to watch the NCAA Final Four games. He showed the championship weekend games that year on two old TVs, grainy and small, but at least we could see Hakim Warrick block that last, open three-point shot by Kansas that sealed the win and the national championship for SU.

Francesco has hailed us every year since. We’ve never dropped to try his hamburgers and french fries but we have said “Hello” at least once each trip. Now he has a number of flat screen TVs in a number of spots around his place and continues to attract students and a few adults who are interested in sports at home.

The students were friendly including a lone St. Johns fan who was, of course, disappointed in the result. Francesco, who has an Italian father and an English mother and who speaks perfectly accented Italian and interestingly accented English, was a gracious host.

What will we do Friday night? And Saturday night? The Friday game will be late, at 1am local time, and the Saturday game, if SU wins Friday will begin after 3am. We can’t do both so we will probably hope for an SU win Friday and, perhaps, take in the Saturday (Sunday morning) game.

Lunch at Il Teatro del Sale

Happy birthday, David.

The Teatro del Sale is another interesting Florentine place to sit down for lunch or for dinner. The Teatro del Sale is one the four Cibreo spots a few blocks from our apartment and is operated by the well-known restauranteur, Fabio Picchi. The Cibreo restaurant is famous and expensive, over 100 Euro per diner. The Cibreo trattoria adjoins the restaurant and serves the same food from the same kitchen at a fraction of the price. The trattoria, however, does not take reservations, has communal seating, offers no table cloths, and is quite austere. The Cibreo café is across the street and serves coffee, teas, pastries, and light snacks.

Maria Cassi, the Italian comic actress, is married to Fabio Picchi. Together they purchased an old theater across the street from the three Cibreo places and established a club of sorts that serves lunch and dinner and offers evening shows. Maria Cassi performs frequently. The auditorium of the old theater has a flat floor, a stage, balconies, and is set with small tables and chairs. A kitchen is off to one side with a glass wall so diners can watch food being prepared.

Here are a few of the ways in which the Teatro del Sale is unusual. 

You must join the Circo-lo, a social circle, to enter. A one year membership is 5 Euro. Lunch is a flat 20 Euro, dinner is a flat 30 Euro and includes a show of some kind.

Cool and room temperature dishes are served at a table at the back of the small auditorium on small plates. Sample what you like, pass by the things that don’t interest you. Throughout the meal the dishes are replenished and new dishes appear. These dishes include salads, polentas of various types, small pieces of veal served in a tomato sauce, an interesting combination of cubed beets and potatoes served with thin sliced red onion and dressed with oil and wine vinegar. (Does it sound strange? It was really good. If we can figure out how to prepare it, we may inflict it on you after we get back.)

During the meal a cook in the kitchen will open a glass Dutch door from time to time and announce in a booming voice that a hot dish is being served at that moment. At the beginning of the meal the cook will offer hot schiacciata, thin crusty Florentine bread, brushed with oil, salted, with a  touch of rosemary. Later a pasta course will be offered. Finally a meat course will be announced, chicken, sausages, marinated pork which has been turning on a spit in the kitchen. With each announcement a line forms at the kitchen and diners take little plates back to their tables. 

The atmosphere is very festive. The little plates pile up and are taken away. This is the most fun of the meal.

The meal winds down and staff members offer coffee and dessert. When we were there last the dessert was, among other choices, small pieces of a soft, chewy intensely-chocolate cake. 

Diners may serve themselves with red or white wine and still or sparkling water. Coffee and dessert are included. There is no need to tip.