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Berlusconi denies summit chaos

July 7th, 2009 | No Comments

Italian PM says Guardian’s report of pressure over chaotic summit preparations ‘a colossal blunder by a small newspaper’

Silvio Berlusconi has attempted to fend off allegations that preparations for the G8 summit have been so chaotic that Italy’s membership of the group was being called into question.

The Italian prime minister said a report in the Guardian, citing senior western officials as saying the US had taken the lead in managing the agenda for the summit, was “a colossal blunder by a small newspaper”.

Officials from G8 countries, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian that in the absence of Italian initiatives for the summit, Washington had arranged conference calls among the “sherpas” – the diplomats preparing the summit. There was also fierce criticism of Italy’s failure to deliver on promises of overseas aid.

The Guardian today issued a statement saying it wholeheartedly rejected any suggestion that the news story was unfounded.

“I hope that the Guardian is expelled from the great newspapers of the world,” said the foreign minister, Franco Frattini. “What the Guardian says is a joke – nonsense.”

The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, suggested a boycott of the paper because of the report.

An Italian foreign ministry spokesman said there had been a misunderstanding about the “sherpa” phone calls. He said one had been organised by the US, but it had been aimed at organising a G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September.

The spokesman said a food security initiative, reported in the Guardian to have been led by the US, had in fact been authored by Italy.

Italy circulated a paper on food security last year, but the Guardian understands that the initiative in its current form, aimed at supporting farmers in developing countries, was put together under US leadership. The “sherpa” calls led by the US were principally concerned with tomorrow’s G8 meeting in L’Aquila, the Guardian’s sources confirmed.

There is increasing pressure from the US and rising powers such as China, India and Brazil for the G8 “rich countries club” to be expanded and for European membership to be consolidated.

Bruce Jones, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, said in the next three years European states would come under pressure to decide among themselves who should represent the EU in the G8 or any larger successor group, as well as in the UN security council and the International Monetary Fund.

All three institutions are due to be reformed to make them more representative of the 21st-century balance of power, and that is likely to bring a dilution of European influence, with some countries having to drop out. “There is already frustration with the Europeans that they have not sorted these things out,” Jones said.

Britain also came under fire for its organisation of the G20 meeting in London in April, to which the Spaniards, the Dutch, the Thais and the Ethiopians were invited at the last moment. American officials complained that the expanded guest list made the forum more unwieldy and the G20 format less attractive.

Jones added that said the leading role played by the US, even though it was not hosting tomorrow’s summit, was a sign of things to come. “The criticism of the Italians is more than warranted, but there is a broader point here. It is inevitable that the US will play a more central role in the management of an expanded G8. If there are going to be many more players at the table, not all of them western democracies, there’s ever more need for a strong central core. That can only be provided by the US.”

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Calls grow within G8 to expel Italy

July 7th, 2009 | No Comments

While US tries to inject purpose into meeting, Italy is lambasted for poor planning and reneging on overseas aid commitments

Preparations for Wednesday’s G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.

In the last few weeks before the summit, and in the absence of any substantive initiatives on the agenda, the US has taken control. Washington has organised “sherpa calls” (conference calls among senior officials) in a last-ditch bid to inject purpose into the meeting.

“For another country to organise the sherpa calls is just unprecedented. It’s a nuclear option,” said one senior G8 member state official. “The Italians have been just awful. There have been no processes and no planning.”

“The G8 is a club, and clubs have membership dues. Italy has not been paying them,” said a European official involved in the summit preparations.

The behind-the-scenes grumbling has gone as far as suggestions that Italy could be pushed out of the G8 or any successor group. One possibility being floated in European capitals is that Spain, which has higher per capita national income and gives a greater percentage of GDP in aid, would take Italy’s place.

The Italian foreign ministry did not reply yesterday to a request to comment on the criticisms.

“The Italian preparations for the summit have been chaotic from start to finish,” said Richard Gowan, an analyst at the Centre for International Co-operation at New York University.

“The Italians were saying as long ago as January this year that they did not have a vision of the summit, and if the Obama administration had any ideas they would take instruction from the Americans.”

The US-led talks led to agreement on a food security initiative a few days before the L’Aquila meeting, the overall size of which is still being negotiated. Gordon Brown has said Britain would contribute £1.1bn to the scheme, designed to support farmers in developing countries.

However, officials who have seen the rest of the draft joint statement say there is very little new in it. Critics say Italy’s Berlusconi government has made up for the lack of substance by increasing the size of the guest list. Estimates of the numbers of heads of state coming to L’Aquila range from 39 to 44.

“This is a gigantic fudge,” Gowan said. “The Italians have no ideas and have decided that best thing to do is to spread the agenda extremely thinly to obscure the fact that didn’t really have an agenda.”

Silvio Berlusconi has come in for harsh criticism for delivering only 3% of development aid promises made four years ago, and for planning cuts of more than 50% in Italy’s overseas aid budget.

Meanwhile, media coverage in the run-up to the meeting has been dominated by Berlusconi’s parties with young women, and then the wisdom of holding a summit in a region experiencing seismic aftershocks three months after a devastating earthquake as a gesture of solidarity with the local population.

The heavy criticism of Italy comes at a time when the future of the G8 as a forum for addressing the world’s problems is very much in question. At the beginning of the year the G20 group, which included emerging economies, was seen as a possible replacement, but the G20 London summit in April convinced US officials it was too unwieldy a vehicle.

The most likely replacement for the G8 is likely to be between 13- and 16-strong, including rising powers such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, which currently attend meetings as the “outreach five” But any transition would be painful as countries jostle for a seat. Italy’s removal is seen in a possibility but Spanish membership in its place is unlikely. The US and the emerging economies believe the existing group is too Euro-centric already, and would prefer consolidated EU representation. That is seen as unlikely. No European state wants to give up their place at the table.

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Now you’re talking …

July 4th, 2009 | No Comments

Want to speak like a native but don’t fancy spending your entire trip in a classroom? These holidays combine lessons with activities and the chance to hang out with locals

French

Surfing: Biarritz

If only school could have been this relaxed. At a solar-powered surf camp in a 300-year-old farmhouse close to Les Casernes beach, near Biarritz, language lessons take the form of informal two-hour chats over beers in the afternoons. Mornings are spent riding the waves, and five days of surf lessons (for 1½ hours per day) are included. The camp has plenty of places for practising tenses in your free time – in the garden, hydro-pool, hammam, tree hut, canoe or hammock. Suitable for beginners and improvers.

• A week costs £606pp, including surfboard and wetsuit hire. 08445 020 445, golearnto.com.

Outdoor adventure: Verdon

Perhaps you’re more likely to remember new words if you learn them while scared out of your wits. A French immersion course in Moustiers, in the Parc Naturel Regional du Verdon, includes morning lessons (beginner to advanced available) in a converted hilltop monastery, plus afternoon exploration of the river Verdon by canoe, treks into the Garrigue with a forest guard, games of pétanque in the village square, dances at a bal populaire or viewings of French films, all accompanied by teachers to ensure French is spoken throughout. At the weekend, the adventuring ratchets up a gear with canyoning, rafting, kayaking and abseiling where no doubt you will learn the French for “Help!” and perfect your pronunciation of merde

• Course €1,670pp for 14 days, accommodation €458 per week, 0121 430 7660, experiencelanguage.co.uk.

Wine: Bordeaux

Many people’s language priority is being able to order food and drink. But imagine how impressive you’ll sound when you can not only stammer out “Un verre de vin, s’il vous plaît”, but are also capable of ordering a fine Bordeaux, commenting on its complexity of flavour and describing the time you visited the very vineyard where it was created. This seven-day French and Bordeaux wine course will set you well on the way to talking about terroir like a native, with four 45-minute sessions of French a day (there’s a test on day one to establish your level), three afternoon sessions on Bordeaux wines, including tastings at l’Ecole du Bordeaux, and excursions to Saint-Emilion and Médoc vineyards.

• Courses start 20 July, 17 August, 14 September, 12 October, £705pp. Homestay accommodation from £170 per week, flight from £115pp return. 0871 230 8512, statravel.co.uk.

Spanish

Walk the talk: Pyrenees

“When we visit my neighbour Hilaria’s vegetable garden, if you pick tomatoes, you’ll learn how to talk about them,” says Georgina Howard, who runs the Pyrenean Experience, a language course in the Baztan valley that teaches Spanish by living Spanish. Language tutors are always on hand to help guests in conversation practise while they ramble through the Pyrenean mountains, meet local farmers, visit bars and hamlets, have lunch with the neighbours or host parties at the seven-bedroom farmhouse, and generally live the Basque life. There are more formal morning lessons on a terrace, and weeks for beginners, intermediate and advanced speakers are run separately.

• Full board £850pp per week, 0121 711 3428, pyreneanexperience.com.

Surfing: Tenerife

Insted runs language courses in Austria, Spain and France that are combined with skiing or surfing. Its Tenerife course runs year-round from a central base in Puerto de la Cruz, a thriving town with busy bars and restaurants serving Latin American and African-influenced dishes. Minutes away from the classroom are the beaches, where the breaks have earned the Canaries the title “Hawaii of the Atlantic”. Accommodation is with a local family, or in an apartment sharing with other students from the course.

• Homestay with family from €165pp per week B&B in private room, €200 half board. Apartment from €165pp for private room. Two week minimum, €220 per week for the course. 00 33 450 530 366, insted.com.

Tango: Buenos Aires

“Bailamos?” is Spanish for “Shall we dance?” – as those returning from this trip will know. In the historic centre of Argentina’s capital, near the bohemian San Telmo district, pupils take a daily four-hour classroom lesson of Spanish, and Argentinian and Spanish culture, politics and history in groups of up to seven. Afterwards they don their dancing shoes to learn one of the world’s sexiest dances at a nearby milonga, or tango hall.

• Six nights including homestay with from £467pp, tango classes £4 per hour. Hotel accommodation available. Journey Latin America (020 8747 8315, journeylatinamerica.co.uk).

Portuguese

Capoeira: Brazil

Practise whirling your limbs to the moves of capoeira while learning to twirl your tongue around the Portuguese language on a two-week course combining the two in Salvador. Classes of eight study beginners’ Portuguese for 20 hours a week, then concentrate on the acrobatic Brazilian dance/martial art twice a week; both take place in a language centre. A samba lesson and cookery class are also included, and homestay accommodation is available so that you can practise over dinner (the language, not capoeira).

• Course £285 pp for 14 days, homestay accommodation from £89 per room per week. 08445 020 445, golearnto.com.

Italian

Food and cookery: Tuscany

For an indulgent foodie break with a side serving of language lessons, Sanctuary Villas puts up large groups of friends or two families in a luxurious converted farmhouse villa with an outdoor pool, sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi, near the medieval village of San Gimignano. The company can arrange extras including cookery classes with local chef Giuseppina and language lessons, taken in your villa, the garden which overlooks rolling, cypress-lined Chianti hills or wherever you prefer. Villa La Terme consists of two large houses, together sleeping 10 plus two children.

• From £5,824 per week (£69 pp per night) accommodation only, language lessons from £41 pp per hour with Sanctuary Villas (01242 547 902, sanctuary-villas.com).

Photography and cycling: Umbria

Northern Umbria is a very untouristy part of Italy, a bonus for language learners as locals are unlikely to revert to English when you chat, and because they have more time to do so. Guests at the Labbazia school in the Upper Tiber Valley will meet plenty of them on trips to local markets and bars in the nearby medieval villages, where they’ll put into practise all they learned that day in class (three levels available). There’s usually some sort of local pageant, dance or festival to attend, and many other activities are arranged on demand, from photography classes to tai chi, cycling or horse-riding.

• From €1,050pp per week, full-board at the agriturismo where lessons are held, including 20 x 45min lessons, transfers from Perugia and guided trips. 00 39 075 857 3004, labbaziaschool.com.

Greek

Beach and culture: Syros

On this two-week course at the OMILO centre on the Cycladic island of Syros, there are classes at the Pension Echo in Azolimnos (which is also one of the self-catering accommodation options) from 9.30am to 1.30pm each day. Then it’s time to hit the beaches right by the centre for swimming and sunbathing, before moving a short distance to the village’s lively tavernas. Excursions such as Greek dance lessons, museum visits, guided walks and local concerts are included and everyone goes along to a sociable first night meal. The island’s capital, Ermoupolis, an affluent harbour of neo-classical buildings, mansions, marble-paved streets and white houses, is 4km away.

• Catch a ferry from Athens. Next dates September, €590 for two weeks. Rooms from €35 per night. 00 30 210 612 2896, omilo.com.

German

Watersports: Bavaria

Lindau is a beautiful town on its own island in the eastern side of Lake Constance, with a historic medieval centre and pretty harbour. It’s a great base for learning German – after classes, pupils cool off by sailing and waterskiing on the lake, cycle around it or go on excursions to Meersburg, Salem Castle and Liechtenstein.

The Dialoge language school provides 20-25 lessons per week, and has a sports hall for basketball, volleyball and football games. Social evenings with barbecues, wine tastings and the cinema are arranged too.

• From €490 per week including accommodation with a host family or the school’s apartments, €330 without. 0808 234 8578, studytravel.com.

Arabic

Interaction: Cairo

Pupils of the Bridge Abroad programme will learn the Egyptian dialect (one of the easiest to pick up) as well as classical Arabic on a week’s beginners’ course in Cairo. The focus is on learning through interaction with some of the city’s 14.5million residents, after daily lessons in a school 15 minutes from the centre. Afternoons are spent among the throng, picking up more vocabulary in the souks, cafes and squares, and at lectures, concerts, cinemas and the famous sites.

• Three weeks (minimum) including accommodation costs from $878pp, $399 without accommodation, or from $711 per week private tuition, from $855 with accommodation. 0808 120 7613, bridgeabroad.com.

Japanese

Cooking and karaoke: Tokyo

Nowhere gives a culture shock like Japan, so throwing yourself into the local way of life is as important as learning the lingo if you are to have a hope of ever fitting in. Alongside a beginners’ course that also covers Japanese culture in a centrally-located school, pupils can take workshops on calligraphy, tea ceremonies, noodle cooking, judo and karate, and interact with native Japanese speakers on nights out bowling, to quizzes and, of course, singing karaoke.

• From $2900 for two weeks including accommodation with a host family, in student dorms or apartments with World Link Education (0046 5580 3720, wle-japan.com).

Mandarin

Live-in learning: Beijing

Moving in with your teacher would have been an abhorrent notion when you were a teenager, but now it could be the best way to develop your language skills. Instead of trawling through a textbook twice a day, you can chat to your tutors from breakfast to bedtime while staying in their home on Go Learn To’s “home language courses”. These suit all levels and give the option of staying with your teachers, couples and families around Beijing as well as informal tuition. Guests get a set of keys and are free to come and go as they please, but are usually invited to join in with their teacher’s life, to meet relatives and friends, go shopping and explore the nightlife.

• Seven days from £864pp per week full board, 08445 020 445, golearnto.com.

Russian

Culture: St Petersburg

Russia is one place where you’re unlikely to pick up much of the language without some serious tuition. A course that includes 20 lessons per week in St Petersburg is a good place to start. After class, it’s time to absorb the city’s rich culture at its many sites.

Bi-weekly group activities include visits to the theatre and ballet and to other places such as the riverside city of Novgorod. Go in the summer and you can join in many vercherinkas – small parties with caviar, vodka and Russian folk songs. Beginners’ and advanced courses are available, but everyone is asked to learn the Cyrillic alphabet before arriving.

• Two weeks from $2,170pp all inclusive, but excluding flights, languagesabroad.com.

• Don’t miss our free phrasebooks every day next week, plus Italian the week after

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12 dead as train with liquid gas explodes in Italy

June 30th, 2009 | No Comments

At least 50 injured as freight train derails in Viareggio and hits homes of sleeping families

A freight train has derailed and ploughed into houses in the small Italian town of Viareggio, causing an explosion and a fire that killed at least 12 people and injured at least 50, officials said today.

The 14-car train was travelling from La Spezia to Pisa when a rear car crashed into a residential neighbourhood beside the train station just before midnight yesterday.

A train car filled with liquefied natural gas exploded, collapsing five buildings and setting fire to the surrounding area. Homes crumbled or burned, killing residents as they slept.

The exact death toll was unclear as hundreds of rescuers searched through the rubble for survivors.

Guido Bertolaso, chief of the civil protection department, said 12 people had been killed and four were missing. Other reports put the death toll at 15 or 16.

Many of the injured suffered severe burns.

“We saw a ball of fire rising up to the sky,” said Gianfranco Bini, who lives in a building overlooking the station. “We heard three big rumbles, like bombs. It looked like war had broken out.”

His son, Gianni Bini, said he had seen a truck driver running away on fire. “This truck was passing by … when it was hit by the heat wave, and I saw the driver ablaze, getting off and walking away,” he said.

Videos uploaded on to YouTube showed a huge plume of fire and smoke towering above Viareggio’s low houses. The blaze continued through the night, consuming buildings and cars. TV images showed residents, their bodies blackened by the smoke, being carried away on stretchers.

Bertolaso called the accident one of Italy’s worst railway tragedies. The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who was in Naples, said he would go to Viareggio later today.

The train accident was the deadliest since January 2005, when 17 people were killed in a head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train. That collision, which occurred in thick fog on a single-track line near Bologna, in northern Italy, led to calls for improved train safety.

Ten buildings and dozens of cars had been at least partially burned in the latest derailment, firefighters said.

Officials said the death toll could increase as 300 firefighters and other rescue teams searched through the rubble.

Prefect Carmelo Aronica, the top government official for the nearby city of Lucca, into whose administrative area the smaller town of Viareggio falls, told Italy’s RAI state TV that at least 50 people were injured, with 35 in hospital with severe burns. Three children had been pulled alive from the rubble of their collapsed home shortly before daybreak today, he said.

About 1,000 people had been evacuated from their homes as a precaution, said the mayor of Viareggio, Luca Lunardini. Tents were set up around the town hall for about 200 people.

As the firefighters worked to contain the blaze, teams trained to deal with nuclear, biological and chemical threats were being brought in to prevent the other gas tanks from exploding. Officials said the fire had been contained after several hours, but a smell of burning hung in the air.

“There are dozens and dozens of cars hit by the shockwave, and collapsed houses,” said Luca Cari, a spokesman for firefighters.

Some of the victims, including one child, had been killed in their homes, said Raffaele Gargiulo, a Lucca police spokesman. Two drivers who were on the road alongside the tracks when the train derailed were also killed. Others suffered severe burns and died at the hospital.

“The condition of the bodies is such that it will be very difficult to identify them,” Gargiulo said.

Italy’s state-run railway company said the first rail car was registered with the Polish company PKP, while the other 13 cars were registered with the German rail company Deutsche Bahn. The cars were driven by a locomotive from the Italian rail operator Trenitalia.

In a statement, the company said the first car had appeared to derail and explode, pulling another four cars with it. The cause was unclear.

The train’s two engineers were only lightly injured. While being questioned in the hospital, they said they had felt an impact some 200 metres outside the station, shortly before the rear of the train flew off the tracks, Gargiulo said.

He said the derailment may have been caused by damage to the tracks or by a problem with the train’s braking system.

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Freight train explosion kills ten in Italy

June 30th, 2009 | No Comments

An explosion in northern Italy has killed at least ten people and injured up to 50 after a freight train carrying gas tanks derailed and the blast hit surrounding houses.

The 14-car train carrying liquefied gas was traveling from the northern city of La Spezia to Pisa. It derailed shortly before midnight local time, just outside a station in the seaside town of Viareggio in northern Tuscany, and two cars filled with gas exploded, officials said.

The blast and resulting fire engulfed several homes collapsing two buildings, according to the ANSA news agency.

Seven people, including a child, were killed at home by the collapses or the fire, said Raffaele Gargiulo, a police spokesman in the nearby city of Lucca, which is in charge of the smaller town of Viareggio.

Two drivers who were on the road alongside the tracks when the train derailed were killed. Another victim, a young man, died in the hospital, Gargiulo said.

“The condition of the bodies is such that it will be very difficult to identify them,” he said.

Lucca’s top government official, Prefect Carmelo Aronica, told Italy’s RAI state TV that at least 50 people were injured, 35 of whom were hospitalised with severe burns.

Firefighters chief Antonio Gambardell said that the blaze was being contained but there was still the risk that the other gas tanks would explode.

Hazardous materials teams specialised in dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats were being brought in to help.

Some 300 firefighters were battling flames while digging through the rubble of collapsed or burnt homes looking for casualties, Gambardella said, adding that there could be more victims.

Mobile phone footage posted on the internet shortly afterwards showed tall flames and large smoke clouds billowing out from what appeared to be a densely populated area.

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‘Don’t embarrass Italy before g8′ – president

June 30th, 2009 | No Comments

• Berlusconi backs truce on ‘controversial’ issues
• PM claims government is ‘most stable in the west’

Italy’s head of state today begged his country’s politicians and journalists to safeguard its international reputation by suspending discussion of controversial issues in the run-up to next week’s summit of the G8 rich nations, which Silvio Berlusconi will chair against a background of sensational allegations about his sex life. “Given the sensitivity of this international event, it would be quite right to call a truce in the controversies between now and the G8,” President Giorgio Napolitano said.

He did not identify which controversies he had in mind, but Berlusconi’s alleged involvement with callgirls and friendship with a teenage would-be actress and model have been at the centre of public attention for more than a month. The prime minister last night endorsed Napolitano’s suggestion.

“We hope the head of state’s invitation is taken up,” he added. Berlusconi swept aside speculation that his government might fall, saying it was “the most stable and secure in the entire west”.

He was speaking at a press conference in Naples aboard the Fantasia, a cruise liner that was to have hosted the summit delegations before the prime minister switched the venue from Sardinia to the earthquake-struck inland city of L’Aquila.

Deploying a welter of statistics, diagrams and artists’ impressions, the prime minister assured the media that his illustrious guests would nevertheless be received in style at a large revenue guard barracks hastily converted for the occasion. He said the site would soon have 121,000 square metres of gardens with 6,850 bushes and extensive lawns.

Picking up on the theme of the danger to Italy’s international standing, the prime minister said: “We shall certainly not make a bad impression.”

Napolitano said he had had a “wide-ranging” conversation with Berlusconi about the G8 summit. But it was unclear if it had taken place before or after he launched his highly unusual appeal for what in effect would be a suspension of normal democratic life in Italy.

Magistrates in the southern city of Bari are questioning about 30 women, some of whom are alleged to have been paid by a local businessman to attend five parties held by Berlusconi. One has said that a paid escort slept with Italy’s married prime minister last November.

The controversy surrounding the alleged callgirls has temporarily obscured an earlier scandal over Berlusconi’s mysterious relationship with an 18-year-old Neapolitan girl who applied for a job on one of his television channels. The prime minister said he would make a statement to parliament about his friendship with the girl, but has never done so.

There was no immediate reaction to Napolitano’s initiative from the leader of Italy’s biggest opposition group, the Democratic party (PD), which appeared to be split on the issue.

The head of the party in the lower house of parliament, Antonello Soro, said the president was “absolutely right”, but added that Berlusconi, with his “statements and continuous accusations”, had been responsible for much of the controversy. A PD backbencher, Marco Beltrandi, said however that he was shocked by the president’s appeal, which would be “unacceptable anywhere”. Antonio Di Pietro, leader of the smaller Italy of Principles party, dismissed the idea that the country’s image could be damaged by further controversy. “The whole world laughs at us,” he said. “We should resolve this cancer that is called the Berlusconi government as soon as possible, even before the G8 [summit].”

G8 summits are a delicate issue for Berlusconi. The last one he hosted, in Genoa in 2001, was the scene of violent clashes between police and protesters in which a demonstrator was shot dead. Several dozen police officers were later put on trial in connection with a bloody attack on unarmed protesters.

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Ferrara as fabulous as Florence

June 28th, 2009 | No Comments

Author Sarah Dunant set her latest novel in Ferrara, a town that captivated her with its rich history – especially that of its grand medieval convents

The first problem I had when I started writing a novel set in a 16th-century convent in Ferrara was that my spellchecker kept trying to turn the city into a car. It was one of many realisations that this history-rich place on the banks of the River Po is one of Italy’s hidden treasures.

We’ll get inside the convent later – first, Ferrara itself. I arrived there early one summer morning on a train from Florence. My walk to Florence station had been an obstacle course of cars and crocodile files of sweating tourists so busy adjusting their commentary earphones that they barely managed to lift their eyes to see what particular Renaissance wonder the guide was instructing them to appreciate.

An hour and a half later, hopping on a bus from Ferrara station, which is situated outside the massive, crumbling medieval walls, I found myself in a well-nigh perfectly preserved medieval and Renaissance city, with barely a car or a tourist to be seen and with a prevailing soundtrack of bells – the bass ones coming from the churches and the upper register from the hundreds of bicycles that are the lifeline of transport for the modern Ferrarese.

For those with the time and energy to travel outside the accepted tourist trail of Florence, Venice and Rome, north-east Italy is a goldmine. Padua, Verona and Mantua are each treasures in their way, but for my money Ferrara is the best of them all. An energetic, aggressive city state until the Papal States gobbled it up in 1597, it was run for centuries by the d’Este clan, who started out as barely concealed thugs but morphed into sophisticated Renaissance patrons, with an eye for town planning and an ear for fabulous music. The buildings you can still see; the music takes a bit more imagining.

A great boulevard divides the medieval quarter from the Renaissance side, conceived and built in the early 16th century by Duke Ercole d’Este. In the Renaissance city all is space and dignity: parks, palazzi and grand houses. In the medieval quarter the humble Ferrarese brick (one of the many wonders of this city is that much of it is built from warm brick rather than the colder glory of marble or stone) lights up a criss-cross of tiny jumbled roads, packed with churches, cloisters, old palaces and ordinary houses. The variety and ingenuity of their arches, windows and grilles are worth a small slideshow of photos in their own right.

In the middle of the divide stands the outrageous d’Este castle: half palace, half fortress, even down to its surrounding moat. Inside, under baroque sweetness lies a history of naked power. It was here, in 1425, in the marital bedchamber and the dungeons, that Niccolò d’Este had his second wife and her lover – his own son, Ugo – murdered for an alleged affair. This venting of medieval righteous anger is perhaps understandable until you learn that he himself boasted of sleeping with 800 women and that the chroniclers of the time talked of how, “left and right of the river Po, everywhere there are children by Niccolò”.

Luckily, visitors to Ferrara can now find safer places to rest their heads. Writers, of course, travel on pathetic budgets, but one can still nose out a little style. Suite Duomo on Corso Porta Reno is slap-bang in the middle of town: if you ask nicely they will give you a room with a view of the cathedral facade and you can breakfast on a terrace that overlooks the grand piazza in front. On my second day I woke to find the market in full swing, as it would have been for centuries. Amazingly, the grand cathedral had shops built into its side, and while the majority of the cheap clothes on sale now may come from China, the vegetables, meats and cheeses still roll in from the surrounding countryside.

How you spend the rest of your days (and I would recommend at least a long weekend) will depend on whether your taste leans towards ostentatious art or more humble secret architecture. By my third visit, the writer in me was already in a convent in my head, so I no longer had any time for the splendid decadence of the Palazzo Schifanoia – its name roughly translates as “avoiding boredom” – with its salon of frescoes by 15th-century Ferrarese masters depicting peasants and gods at work and at play (I leave you to guess which are doing what).

Instead, I was sticking my nose inside churches and cloisters. Casa Romeo is a beautifully restored 14th-century merchant’s house that once abutted an old convent, its central courtyard silent and serene. An equally perfect and even sweeter example of medieval cloister architecture is to be found at the entrance to the cathedral museum, right in the middle of the city’s most thriving modern thoroughfare. Opposite is a popular local wine bar where the quality of the wine is as high as the prices are low. Somewhere off that same street I found a great secondhand clothes shop (had I had one or two fewer glasses of wine I might have remembered the exact address, but at least it gives the visitor something to aim for), where I bought a leather jacket so fine I am considering being buried in it.

Which brings me to the churches. And the convents. Five hundred years ago, Ferrara, like all other Italian cities, was so nervous about female sexuality that as soon as respectable women reached the age of menstruation they were either married off or – more likely, given how expensive dowries were by this time – incarcerated in convents. “Christ is the only son-in-law who doesn’t cause me any trouble,” wrote the great Ferrarese Renaissance patron Isabella d’Este, after walling up two of her own daughters for safety.

But while no one can deny the appalling unfairness of the practice, it was not all terrible. Sisters, nieces, aunts and cousins within a family would all have been nuns – and, bearing in mind the forced marriages, abusive husbands, lack of birth control and death toll from childbirth outside the walls, convents could be sanctuaries as well as prisons. Those nuns with fine voices could use them daily (convent choirs were a source of great glory to a city like Ferrara); others played instruments and even in some cases composed music or wrote plays. The more you dig, the more a portrait emerges of small republics of women with their own dramatic ebb and flow of power.

Most Italian convents were disbanded after Napoleon invaded but among the glories of Ferrara two working ones still exist, both of them rich in history. Corpus Domini is famous both for its visionary 15th-century nun and for the tomb of the infamous Lucrezia Borgia, who married into the Ferrarese royal family in 1502 and produced a crop of heirs.

The other, Sant’Antonio in Polesine, on which I based my novel Sacred Hearts, is even more special. Originally a thriving Benedictine convent for noblewomen, it now sits serene and secluded at the edge of the city wall, home to just 17 elderly nuns.

Like the nuns of Corpus Domini they are enclosed, but if you visit between certain hours and ring the bell, a sister will talk to you through the grille, then crack open the door and guide you to the inner chapel, the walls of which are filled with wonderful, delicate frescoes from the time of Giotto.

Later you can sit in the outer church and listen while those 17 nuns sing public vespers on the other side of the altar grille. Their ageing voices are cracked and desperately sad compared with the great choir that would have enthralled the city’s dignitaries 500 years ago, but like so much in Ferrara, the experience is a reminder of the unexpected delights that this jewel of a city has to offer the more intrepid tourist.

Essentials

Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Edinburgh, Birmingham and Stansted to Bologna, 35 miles from Ferrara. Suite Duomo (00 39 0532 793888; suiteduomo.it) has doubles from €80. The Monastero di San Antonio in Polesine (leabbazie.it/emilia_romagna/ferrara) is open from 3.15pm-5pm on weekdays. The Monastero di Corpus Domini is currently closed for restoration but check the website above for opening hours. Further tourist information from ferraraterraeacqua.it.

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Italy In A State Of Shock

November 12th, 2007 | No Comments

ROME – The Italian government held an emergency meeting yesterday after
the police killing of a football fan sparked riots by supporters across
the country which left at least 40 police injured.

Gabriele Sandri was hit in the neck by a shot fired by a policeman at a
motorway rest area where rival fans were fighting on Sunday. The police
described the shooting as a “tragic error”.

In a furious reaction to the shooting, militant fans across Italy turned
on police targets forcing three of Sunday’s matches to be called off. -
AFP

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