Joanne's long walks: Via di San Francesco Day 6: Santuario di La Verna

Se all'uomo in questa vita non ci incontro avventure, non ave niente darraccontare.

If a man in this life doesn't meet with adventure, he has nothing to tell.

- Vincenzo Rabito, Terra Matta

The Sanctuary of La Verna is even more beautiful (though somewhat chilly) in the early hours of the morning. We rose early to attend Lodi (Matins) and receive the pilgrim blessing before our rather meagre breakfast in the pilgrim refectory. Then we sent that pesky cyclist who keeps following me around on his way, and began our day's walk!

The day began with a brief climb to Monte Calvano, 1254 metres. Monte Penna disappeared from view behind us as we crossed a grassy meadow, feeling like we were on top of the world. One more mountain, Monte Modina, and then we began steadily losing altitude in the long descent toward the town of Pieve di Santo Stefano.

Pieve di Santo Stefano was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War, and then reconstructed. The German army relocated all the inhabitants and planted mines in every single building in the town in the hopes of hindering the Allies' advance. The entire town was destroyed, except for the three most important (and evidently most robust) buildings: the two churches and the town hall.

Precisely because the town has lost the memory of its history, it is the ideal location for the Piccolo Museo del Diario: a museum and national archive containing the diaries, memoirs and/or letters of 9000 Italians, a precious heritage recording the experiences of people from all walks of life. One of the outstanding diaries featured in the museum is that of Vincenzo Rabito of Ragusa, who experienced all the turmoil of the twentieth century first-hand, including both world wars, and recorded it in more than one thousand typewritten pages, using random spelling and punctuation as he had never been to school. It is from his diary that the quote appearing above is taken.

But the most visually impressive of all the diaries, on display in a glass case in the museum, is the diary of one Clelia Marchi, a peasant woman who lived in Poggio Rusco, near Mantova, entitled Gnanca una busia: Not a single lie. Clelia and her husband fell in love when she was only 14, and were married as soon as she came of age. Nine children (only four of whom survived to adulthood) and almost fifty years later, her husband was out riding his bicycle one evening when he was hit by a car and killed. Clelia was inconsolable. She kept herself busy all day to prevent her thoughts from turning to her beloved Anteo, but when night fell, she couldn't sleep. She began to pass the time on these sleepless nights writing the story of her life with Anteo.

After consuming ten kilograms of paper, Clelia took her best bedsheet out of her bridal trunk and began to write on that, inspired by the fact that the Etruscans used to wrap their dead in a linen shroud on which the story of their lives was written. When she had finished writing her life story, she wrote a series of poems dedicated to her late husband at the bottom end of the sheet.

Fascinating as it was, we had to cut short our tour of the diary museum to finish today's stage, for we had arranged accommodations not in the town of Pieve Santo Stefano but at the hermitage of Cerbaiolo, set in the rock a couple of hours' walk above the town. It was tough walking up the hill at that point in the day, but well worth it when we reached our destination.

Commissioned in the year 706, Cerbaiolo was originally a Benedictine abbey, abandoned in 1150 and donated to Saint Francis and his community by the town of Pieve Santo Stefano in 1216. Saint Anthony of Padua (who was actually Fernando of Lisbon, but that is a whole other story) stayed here for some time in the year 1230. It later became a nunnery, and then the home of a lady called Chiara (not the saint of the same name), who lived here for 44 years with her herd of goats and sixty cats. The hermitage was abandoned for ten years following her death in 2010, until Padre Claudio came here to live the life of a hermit. But he occasionally takes in pilgrims, providing a monk's cell, dinner and breakfast. It is a very special place, and we were privileged to stay here and discuss episodes in the life of Saint Francis with Padre Claudio, an expert on the Saint who has travelled to all the places he lived in or visited, over dinner and a glass of the hermitage's delicious homemade liquorice liqueur!