Lake Como is stunning. It rained for a few days, and was STILL beautiful---but at least one could work and not feel guilty for not being outdoors. When the sun is shining, I walk. My calf muscles are screaming from the steep hills, but I walk.
We are staying in this amazing palace built in the mid 1500s, but the steep promontory we are on was important both for military purposes and "holiday" purposes for at least a thousand years before that (and people lived here, in caves above the lake, 30,000-40,000 years ago). Remember how the Goths and Visigoths, etc, came into Italy from the north and destroyed a weak and frivolous Roman civilization? Well, it turns out that this lake was one of the "super-highways" they used, coming down from Germany and the rest of central Europe, through the mountains, across what is now Switzerland, and then right through here, using the lake as a direct and fast path onto the very fertile plains south of here (where Milan is). So this place, from the arrival of the Celts in about 500 BC, and Roman invaders (legions of soldiers began attacking the area around 200 BC), through Teutons, Vandals, Visigoths, Goths, Lombards, and, much later, the Spaniards and French and Austrians, saw many many land and water battles. It became a "last-ditch effort" kind of place to try to hold back the "barbarian hordes" streaming down into Italy, as well as a rich, fertile area that various feudal families and ruling houses fought over. As peaceful as it is now, it was a battleground, off and on, for 2000 years. Fortunately, it often had very intelligent and forward-thinking leaders, who, for instance, saved this town from plague multiple times by simply quarantining it: no one was allowed in, and this was enforced with guns and cannons. The Capuchin friars nursed the sick from around the lake in their hospital in the 1600s, but no one, even the seemingly not-ill, was allowed into the town. The local lord of this palace, during this particular plague, followed the practice of earlier Bellagio lords: he fed his people--so no one would have any reason to leave the village for food-- by placing sacks of grain on a rock out in the water, and if they could leave coins in payment, they did so by placing the coins in a jar filled with vinegar, to kill germs. Remember, this is before the germ theory of illness, and before anyone understood how illness was spread. But a similar practice had worked a couple of hundred years before, so once again the town of Bellagio was saved, with not a single person being infected.
Lots of famous and historically important people actually stayed here, on this estate, back when it was a Roman villa, then a medieval villa and stronghold, and then a Renaissance palace (including, no kidding, Pliny the Younger, a couple of Holy Roman Emperors, and Leonardo Da Vinci).
Our co-guests right now include a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist (her first book was "Carry Me Home," about Alabama and local Klan activity during the Civil rights movement, a mixture of investigative journalism and family memoir, which I am very much looking forward to reading); a famous Mexican environmental activist (the kind who has gotten death threats for years) and poet/novelist, who has personally known Alan Ginsberg, Carlos Castaneda, etc, and who was Mexico's ambassador to UNESCO; his wife, who translates his writings into English; an important Arab-language poet from Lebanon, who for what will likely be his final project (he is quite old) is translating 20th century American poems by people of color, especially women, into Arabic, and whose poetry reading two nights ago brought me to tears (clearly the best way to appreciate poetry is to have someone who truly understands the poem read it aloud); a housing activist who works on Capitol Hill; a woman who runs a NY City non-profit organization that borrows money from banks and then loans it to out to non-profits; a German physicist who is working with anti-proton beams and anti-matter and their feasibility in treating cancer; a Polish artist, who spent a year in prison under the Communists, and whose work is difficult (some quite jarring, some upsetting, some entertaining) but important. One of his most famous works is in the Jewish Museum in NY City.
And then, most of them brought a partner with them, each of whom is interesting in their own right (e.g. the Polish artist's Polish artist wife is a very good, and important-in-Eastern-Europe artist, and the Lebanese poet's wife is an artist, ...
At first I thought we would not be able to "gel" as a group, and would find nothing to talk about, but then we went out drinking together....and that did the trick.
Both Don and I are each getting a LOT of work done, despite the distraction of the scenery. The group is served breakfast early, we work all morning, eat lunch with the group, take a long walk (some days I walk alone, some days with Don, and we often meet other members of the group while out walking), and then usually either have a cappuccino as we work in the afternoon, or take late afternoon "tea" with whoever is around, or have a cappuccino in town before coming back for a couple more hours of work before obligatory cocktails at 7:00. If it rains, we work all day. So it IS in fact conducive to getting work done, while at the same time being so relaxing that even the caffeine doesn't make me jittery! This is the first time in my life I have been able to drink caffeine coffee and tea every day and still be relaxed. Some of us have talked about hiding in the closets when they close the place down for the winter months after we leave.
One of the main "streets" in Varenna, via XX Settembre. It lies parallel to the lake, high above it, with very steep stairway "streets" going up and down. They are even steeper than those in Bellagio.
Looking at a house that lies on one of those steep stairways going down towards the water. This was just lovely, another one of those moments that make me stop and marvel at the beauty. Every time I see something like this, I can't believe how lucky I am to be here.
