È importantissimo che tu comprenda come ogni volta che incontri la Bellezza percepita come armonia dai tuoi cinque sensi mentre la gusti e l'assapori contemplandola, anche se credi in un Dio Ignoto o sei ateo, questa è la forma più concreta con cui Dio ti coccola, in quell'istante, con il suo Amore Divino
(It is very important that you understand that whenever you come across Beauty, perceived in the form of a harmony of your five senses as you enjoy and savour it while contemplating it, even if you believe in an Unknown God or are an atheist, this is the most concrete way in which God pampers you, at that very moment, with His Divine Love)
- the "Prophet of Valiano", in his treatise for motorbikers
We prepared breakfast in the apartment provided for us by our friend Gianni, who came to pick us up at 8 and take us back to the café where we stopped walking and met him in the evening. We said goodbye and started walking in the direction of Pozzuolo, the official end of the previous stage. We didn't have a stamp on our pilgrim credentials, as the people at the bar in Petrignano had said that theirs was kept in the bakery in Pozzuolo, run by the same management. So we stopped by the bakery in Pozzuolo, where the proprietor was very suspicious - obviously no-one had ever asked her for a stamp on a pilgrim credential before! She wanted to know what it was for, and take a closer look at it. Perhaps reassured by the presence of other stamps from similar places of business, she finally consulted her husband and, with his assent, applied her stamp to the paper, dating and signing it too!
After this episode and a break in the local café, we continued along winding roads through the countryside, passing whole families busy harvesting their olives. - As I should be doing, instead of wandering all over the country!! 😄
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| House in Pozzuolo |
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| House in Pozzuolo |
At Vaiano we turned off the main road to climb the aptly named Via Ripida to the square in front of the church, where there were benches in the shade that looked ideal for a lunch break, and here we met a fellow I nicknamed the "prophet of Vaiano". My walking guru Luca Giannotti, author of L'arte di camminare (The Art of Walking), says that if you want to experience contact with the local people, when you come to a village just sit down on a bench, and eventually someone will come and talk to you; this is exactly what happened. The "prophet" lives right across from the church, in a building that used to be the customs house on the border between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal State. He was just leaving to go somewhere in his car when he spotted us, stopped and asked if we were pilgrims or hikers. A tough question, but we answered, pilgrims. Bingo - the correct answer if you want to talk to the Prophet of Vaiano! He pulled over his car, got out and sat on the bench next to ours. We had a long discussion about the history of pilgrimage routes, many of which he has travelled by motorcycle: he has his own philosophy of "biking for God", about which he has written a treatise. He has been to Medjugore 52 times - and met his wife there. He told us all about the mysteries of the Nerina Valley in Umbria, and filled our water bottles with healing water from a holy fountain near Todi which he goes to regularly to stock up his supply, and which he claimed had healed him from the effects of a serious car accident he had in his youth.
When the conversation took too much of a mystic and prophetic turn, we made a great show of realising that it was getting late, shouldered our packs, said goodbye and went on our way - not without several pages of written "testimony" from the Prophet!
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| View over Lake Chiusi |
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| Illustration of the Via Romea Germanica route in the area, on ceramic |
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| Terracotta church façade in Villastrada |
The Prophet correctly prophesied that the supermarket down the road in the next village would be closed until four thirty p.m. Realising we would not encounter another open supermarket or food shop of any kind for two days, we decided to wait on a bench in a nearby park. When the little supermarket reopened after its afternoon break, we were the first in; knowing that we would have a kitchen at our disposal in the guesthouse of the convent in Città della Pieve, we wanted to arrive with ingredients to cook (the local supermarket being closed on Sundays).
Laden down with groceries, we continued on our way toward Moiano. The stage officially ends in Paciano, a much prettier town (we're told), but we decided to cut corners and walk straight across the valley toward Città della Pieve, stopping at Hotel Ristorante Il Pozzetto in Moiano, a more modern town at the bottom of the valley. The route to get there, which I devised using Mapy.cz, was a pretty one in the soft light and long shadows of early evening.
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| A hedge made of olive trees |
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| Church in Poggio |
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| Coming into Moiano |
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| This part of the route coincides with the Chemin d'Assise |
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| Hotel Ristorante Il Pozzetto |
A bit of (recent) history: Moiano
Moiano has been inhabited since medieval times, but grew rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries. This small, rather characterless town built up along the highway is best known for an incident that occurred on April 23, 1974, when a bomb exploded in the local Casa del Popolo.
The Case del Popolo were originally leisure and cultural centres built with the intention of making art and cultural appreciation available to the working classes. The first establishment of this type appeared in Tomsk, Russia in 1882; "People's Houses" soon became popular in England (1887, "People's Palace"), Scotland, Turkey and various European states.
Italy's first Casa del Popolo opened in 1893; the one in Moiano was the first in the region of Umbria and one of the first in Italy, inaugurated in September 1913. Repeatedly attacked and destroyed during the Fascist period, on April 10, 1921 it was devastated by the camicie nere, the "black shirts", in an incident that provoked an armed clash with a group of socialist workers. The fascists retaliated by burning down the Casa del Popolo one week later, killing a worker. The building was then expropriated by the regime, which replaced the socialist lettering and the red flag with imperial eagles and fascist symbols.
After July 25, 1943, the fascist ornaments were eliminated and the building became the property of the Italian Communist Party, which rebuilt it and restored it to its original purpose, naming it after Palmiro Togliatti, who laid the cornerstone himself in 1964.
On April 23, 1974, during the so-called "years of lead" in Italy, right-wing extremists planted a bomb which heavily damaged the building; on the same day, two more bombs exploded in Milan and Lecco.
Why the choice of Moiano, a tiny village, for the third bomb? Perhaps because of its symbolic value as one of Italy's oldest Case del Popolo, or perhaps due to the political leanings of the local people, suggested by the presence of streets named after Giacomo Matteotti and Salvador Allende.
After years of abandonment, the structure was restored and opened again in 1998.
Petrignano - Moiano 22.5 km
