Anghiari si racconta

I was born about 4 km from Anghiari, in a country house named ‘la Rocchetta’, very close to villa Barbolana. Until I was 9, I had never been to the village of Anghiari, because, naturally, there wasn’t a car, nothing … and so for me the world was only my country house and the houses around it. I couldn’t imagine how big the world was. When I was 9, my family had to move from that country house to another one, close to Anghiari. With a car then, and some furniture, we moved, and that was the first time that I saw Anghiari. And then I said ‘Wow how big is the world’!

When I was 13 and finished primary school, my mother asked me: ‘Giuseppe do you want to be a farmer like us or something else?’ ‘Well’, I said, ‘if it is possible, something else’, because life was really hard at that time. Imagine – the first time I had a new pair of shoes was when I went to work in Florence, when I was 14. I had 4 brothers and 3 sisters, and so all the clothes and shoes that I wore came from my oldest brother or…. Anyway, at the age of 13 I was sent to Florence to try to find a job. I already had a brother living there. Another lived about 20 km from Florence. One sister was down in Naples, and another sister was also in Florence, working as a maid. So, I joined them there, but there was no way we could all live in the same house.

We had all left Anghiari because it was really hard to survive just working the land. It was hard, but it was an easy life compared to that of people living in the village, because, in the country, we could grow corn and so on, and we had animals – chickens, and cows so we could have fresh milk, and that was enough to survive. But, if you needed to buy a new pair of shoes or clothes or something, there was no money, so it was very very hard.

In Florence … and this is around 1960 – 65 … in Florence, I found a job as a bell boy in a hotel in via Tornabuoni, right in the middle of the city, and for the first 3 months they just gave me meals and somewhere to sleep, no salary. After 3 months the owner asked me: ‘Giuseppe, do you like this job?’ ‘Well’, I said, ‘sure, it’s better than being a farmer, much easier’. ‘Ok, look, there is a hotel school in Florence where they teach you languages, and how to manage a hotel, how to manage a travel agency. If you would like, for 3 years, you can go to school in the morning, work here in the hotel in the afternoon, and I’ll continue to give you a meal in the evening and a bedroom.’ I accepted immediately because I didn’t want to come back home. I did this for 3 years, but unfortunately with no salary. And so, for example, in the morning, if I had a tip from the day before from a guest, I could buy my breakfast, otherwise I could only watch my friends having their breakfast.

When I was 16, I finished the school and they found me a job in Switzerland where I could go and practise my languages, with a good salary. I earned twice the amount of a normal worker in Italy at that time. I stayed there for a year as a night porter. I enjoyed myself, especially during winter because I could go out in the morning at 8 and ski all day, and I spent all my money there.

Then at 17, I came back to Florence, and continued to work in hotels till I was 20. Then at 20 I said ‘Ok now is enough, I know things’. I came back to my village, to my Anghiari, and I found a job in Sansepolcro, in a travel agency, and I managed that travel agency for 3 years. And I think that I was the only one in the valley who knew 5 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian.

I came back to Anghiari because I felt … when I was in Florence, when I was in Switzerland … I felt out of place, far from… and I always dreamed of coming back to Anghiari, to my friends, to my… even if I had lost a lot of them because they also had to go away, and, naturally, when I came back only a few of them were still in Anghiari.

All the time I was in Florence, I could only come home every 6 months, and only for a day. The first Christmas that I had with my parents, after the age of 13, was when I was 20. So, I wished I could come back to Anghiari as soon as possible.

I missed my parents, I missed my friends. Also, I missed the way life. Life is different in a town – you have to run a lot; there’s never time to relax, to enjoy, to be out in the country. That was why I decided to come back. And also because, at 20, when I came back to Anghiari for a day, I found one of my good friends here, and I had a special feeling for her. Well, after 3 years she became my wife! She was working in the shoe factory at the bottom of the hill, but naturally it was a tough job. After I married her – I was 23 – I persuaded her to stop working. I wanted us to have a baby. And that’s the whole story.

I feel a strong connection with this place. I think it is the humanity the … the relationship with people. We know each other, we say hello to everybody, we talk to everybody, we know each other’s problems, we try to help each other. It is a little community – we are only about 6000 people here – and it has the feeling of a big family. In Florence, you don’t even know the people next door.

This feeling of community in Anghiari hasn’t changed. Partly because I think that people of my age have been trying to involve young people in the community. For example, we’re getting young people into work here, so they can help themselves, but also help the village to survive. And tourism is important to this… so we can have jobs here, so we can live here, without going far away to work. This is important because I think life is much easier here in a way, even if it is hard to maintain all these relationships with people, because each of us has our problems, and we all want to help each other, give each other strength. I hope we never lose this way of life.

I try to involve young people in the work that I’ve been doing now for more than 30 years. It started out as fun, in 1979, when I was working in the city hall planning office. The city hall was organising events with international writers, musicians, photographers. Every year there was a sort of premio (prize) and the city hall would invite these people to come to Anghiari. Anyway, in 1979 they asked a jazz player from Vancouver, Canada, to come to Anghiari for a concert. And, because I was the only one in the office who could speak English, the mayor asked me to go to Rome, to the airport, to collect this musician called Elmer Gill, and look after him for the 15 days that he was staying in Anghiari. He gave concerts. And he was so happy to discover this part of the world … On the first day I introduced him to all my friends and he felt immediately at home.

And so, every year he wanted to return. A friend of mine, who was a factory owner, and I, we decided to host him for a couple of weeks in exchange for concerts, and every year he came back. He was always asking me: ‘Giuseppe I want to buy a house here, please find me a house’. Well, in 1985, the City Hall decided to sell an old country school. So, I called him in Canada and told him that there was an auction for this house. And he said: ‘Giuseppe, bid in the auction because I am interested in it’. And because I am really crazy, I organised a deposit, and I won the auction. At that point, I called him and said that he had to come to sign the agreement and, naturally, to bring the money. He came and I went to Rome to collect him and he was with a lady friend. They saw the house, and loved it. There was some work that had to be done… part of the roof was in bad shape … and I did that … everything by myself.  And then they started coming for few weeks every year, and they sent friends to stay in the house as well…. And that was how the Canadian connection started.

I started to think that it would be a good idea to encourage visitors to Anghiari to return here. And so I did a sort of brochure with houses for sale. And in 1990 another Canadian family saw the brochure and they asked me to help them buy a house, which I then restored for them, and then they too started to send friends, and so and so and so. I think I’ve produced the largest Canadian community in Italy, thanks to Elmer Gill.

People from abroad buy houses here for holidays, but some have decided to move here permanently. Now, a couple of these have died, unfortunately. They wanted to be buried in the local cemetery. I think that people want to be here when they have seen how friendly the people are … because I think that Tuscan people generally, but particularly in the country… that we have a sort of something inside us … to offer a welcome to people.

Anyway, I think that this is a kind of tourism that can really help the economy, because renovating houses and apartments means work. Now I have 60 -70 people coming regularly to Anghiari, and they go to restaurants, the grocery store; they buy shoes, they buy clothes.

The community are very happy with this because many country houses that had been abandoned, that were in ruins, are being restored. When local people see that somebody is caring for a house that they know very well and has been ruin, it makes them happy – we haven’t lost this little treasure. I think people love to maintain all the memories of these houses because, in the country especially, many years ago, and not so many – I am talking about 20, 30 years ago – the way that people enjoyed themselves was by having parties in houses. One family after another would have a party where everyone could come together, maybe with the fisarmonica (accordion), dancing, playing cards, or just talking about life. It was a sort of religious meeting, something that joined everyone and made them happy.

People are beginning to come here from other parts of Italy now, from large cities like Rome, Milan, because they prefer life here to that in a big city. Some are retired, but mostly it’s middle aged professionals who can work from here, especially with the internet. I have a community of about 12 families from Milan and Novara, living in a small village that I restored. It was completely abandoned – about 12-13 houses – so I am proud that I was able to restore it. They don’t live here the whole time – they still work in Milan – but they come here for say 12-14 weeks a year, for summer holidays, Christmas…

The people of Anghiari are very happy to show their town to visitors. They are very proud of where they live. The Tiber valley has been famous for centuries… and don’t forget we are in the art country. So this place makes your brain creative … and many artists come here and paint… and we organise art exhibitions in the city hall. And, there is a big music tradition – there’s the music school, and the local band, who are very talented. And every year the Southbank Sinfonia comes in July, for 10-15 days, and they do concerts in little squares, in the main square, in churches.

I think that maybe 90 per cent of young people who go away are returning now. For example, they have to go to university in Florence, Milan, Bologna and so on, but they have their roots here and they come back because they have parents, they come back because there is the house to live in, but, mostly, they come back because life in this part of the world, I think, is still … this knowing each other ….

If, as everywhere, some young person goes in the wrong direction, we try to help … we are talking drugs here, we are not immune. For example, especially during summer, in the oldest part of Anghiari, at night there are kids even 10-12 years old, outside, it is midnight, and we think this is not fair. And so we are trying to talk to them first, and also to the parents. Otherwise we’ll lose these young people, and it’s not good for them, because somebody is profiting from drugs and so on. That is why we keep an eye on them. Parents are busy with their work – they work in Sansepolcro, Arezzo, also Florence, and they leave at 5 in the morning, come back at 8, so they don’t spend a lot of time with their kids. It’s not like it was many years ago when most of us were farmers and living together, working all day on the farm.

Look, there are many young people who start a job here, like opening a new little restaurant, or a new store. I have a daughter, my only child, and she runs a jewellery store. She makes jewellery, designing it first, then producing it. She has been a teacher in an art school for 6 years, and now she also works for a local company, doing a project in silver, but she works in gold too. She also had to go away, for 6 years to Vicenza, because there was no work here, but, then, she decided to come back because she likes the area so much.

These days most young people speak other languages, especially English, because they learn languages at school, but also because they like to be in touch with foreigners. Many, many young people, some that I don’t even know, because I am 67, they know my friends, my guests. I see them in the main square outside the bar, particularly during summer … young people in Anghiari talking with my guests, sitting at the table having a coffee, talking with them. I think it is always a good experience to know people from other places, to know their experiences – it helps your brain become more cosmopolitan.

A cosmopolitan sense and a sense of close community go together. When foreigners come to Anghiari, they tell us about their cultures, and we accept them – for example, now we have some immigrants from nord Africa, from east Europe, and a few Muslims, and we accept all these cultures … and they accept our culture. We don’t impose, and they don’t impose, and this is, I think, a good way to live together.