Today we are striking out to the East, to the upper Maremma region of Tuscany, to explore yet another hill town – Pitigliano. Pitigliano was once known as the Little Jerusalem, due to the large number of Jews living peacefully in Pitigliano. In the 16th century, the Orsini counts ruled the area, and were quite favorable to the Jews while other areas in Italy imprisoned or exiled the Jews. In Pitigliano, they were accepted and worked as moneylenders, carpenters and tailors. Count Niccolo IV Orsini even gave his personal Jewish doctor a plot of land in the town to create a synagogue.
We start out at what has become our normal time of 9:30, navigating out of the teeny weeny garage (with me again walking next to the Panda giving Ed directions on how far he had for clearance), and out of Orvieto into the countryside. It’s another beautiful day for a drive, and Ed navigates the hill roads like a champ. It takes about an hour and a half to get to the outskirts of town, where we begin to look for the parking lot I found. Where TIM tells us to turn, though, is this little teeny alley way – no way. It might be right – but we’re not taking the chance. So we keep going, ending up at the cusp of the Old Town and the awful intersection leading south to viewpoints and north to Sorano. We take the easier north direction (which basically means going straight – while avoiding pedestrians, racing cars and trucks as well as parked vehicles). Ack. Crazy Italia! There is parking on the side of the road, but nary a spot available. So we go a ways out of town and manage to turn around in a little lot (thank you EuropCar for the tiny Panda), and head back up into the town proper. We’re actually lucky and find a parking space right outside the city on the street – 1 Euro 50 per hour. Works for us!
Sadly – we only have 3 euros in change. Sigh. Normally we have TONS of Euro coins, way more than we need, but not today (and apparently this is a theme – we never have change when we need it to park!). After trying to make the parking ticket machine work with my credit card (in hindsight we bet the debit card would have worked), we end up using our 3 euros to buy 2 hours, figuring we’ll come back in 2, get another parking ticket and continue our touring.
Off we go into town, but first the view! There is a little vertical park alongside our parking area with spectacular views of the town. It’s amazing – and gorgeous.
We spend a few moments here just basking in the sun and the sights. Then head into the old town proper. This is the coolest town. First, its virtually deserted. Undiscovered, perhaps and the exact opposite of Coranan. Second, it is entirely picturesque! Little tiny streets (that yes, you can drive on – as is evidenced by the girl leaving her garage in her SmartCar, about the only thing besides Apes that can fit here!).
Down every alley, every slight turn in the road, there is a picture to be taken. This place is magical!
We meander down one of the two main roads to the Jewish museum – which at 5 Euros entrance is a bargain. Here is the microcosm of Jewish life in the town. Once free to roam the city and work as they pleased, after the fascist years began, they were confined to these few blocks that make the ghetto. The museum preserves 6 different areas of the ghetto, where Jews adapted the already excavated spaced to meet their needs after being resettled into this small area.
The subterranean areas were used for the ritual Bath…
and the Kosher cellar.
Above ground areas were used for the Kosher butcher – a huge room built into the tufa for correctly slaughtering animals and then the unleavened bread (matzoh) bakery – which was totally wild! They made matzoh so differently and my only regret is that I didn’t take a picture of the photo they have of their matzoh. It was oval with all these little slits in it. Very odd – and not the least reminiscent of what we know of matzoh today. Inside the bakery, in addition to the huge ovens (like wood fired pizza ovens of today), there was the kneading station – with a huge long piece of wood that the kneader moved up and down to knead.
There was also the dye works area – a vast semi-buried complex of tuffa rooms and water tanks where dyes and materials were made. All through out these rooms, all the windows had mullions in the shape of a menorah. Although the windows were dirty, it was still a powerful symbol of the dedication to the religion.
Lastly, was the old synagogue (and we’ll admit, we visited this first for some reason!). The synagogue entrance is almost hidden in the back of a conference room (where a video loop in Italian plays on a tv – of course we didn’t even bother to listen as our Italian is fairly pathetic at this point!). We ascend the stairs and end up on this wonderful patio with fabulous (albeit backlit) views of the ravines and hillsides surrounding Pitigliano and then into the synagogue, which was typical 16th century small, plain and only for men.
The women’s area is upstairs behind a hugely ornate balustrade.
The museum has fashioned a little “receiving” room in the stairwell leading up to the women’s area with lots of articles and explanations – all in Italian. But the most striking display was a painting depicting Pitigliano juxtaposed against Birkenau. It was stunning in its simplicity and horror. Incredibly meaningful.
After our tour of the Jewish museum, we continued our wanderings through the town. We basically made a big circle on the 2 main roads, covering all the great scenery…
…and the churches. First we came upon the Chiesa Santa Maria e San Rocco, a simple little church with a narrow nave and beautiful paintings above the altar.
Then we found the Duomo di Pitigliano, which was huge and beautiful and so much more ornate.
In order wanderings, we found the restaurant we had selected for lunch – La Chiave del Paradiso (the key to paradise). The menu looked great, and they opened at 12:30, which gave us enough time to get back to the car to add more time to the parking meter. (Remember the lack of coins…..)
So, we slowly made our way back to the car, passing a great statue of a man with a mule (which in the backlit sunshine, I thought was real!)…
then back to the car to get our new parking ticket so we could have lunch, not realizing – yeah, we need to read better – that parking was free from 1pm to 3pm. We pay our 3 Euros and end up with parking until 4 pm. What? Oh pooh! We could have just put another 20 euro cents in to begin with and been good. Oh well – live and learn. At least now we definitely don’t have to worry about parking fees!
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