Sandra Yong provides a wonderful account of how she slowly reconstructed the history of their home in Tuscany - La Torre
I found Professor Fatucchi’s house, eventually; I was close to being late even by Italian standards. Like my quest to discover the history of La Torre I had taken more than one wrong turning. My 8pm appointment was the only time this workaholic (octogenarian!) academic could spare. I had briefly explained the reason for my visit and although he insisted that his speciality was pre-1000 A.D. Italian history he generously offered to help me uncover the story of La Torre…
‘La Torre’, a casa signorile, has been our home and holiday destination for many since our ‘Why not?’ move to Tuscany in September 2003. Ever since that first wow! moment as we walked into La Torre, we have not been allowed to ignore the history around us because the original walls of La Torre, a 12th-century military watchtower, are in the centre of the house and part of our everyday life.
The watchtower would originally have been about 20 metres tall and was part of a defensive ring around Arezzo. Some authorities suggest that there were 12, but ours, five kilometres due south of the medieval centre of Arezzo, appears to be the only one that has survived. These towers were built to defend the city during times of extreme turmoil. Life, politically and personally during this time was a constant struggle. Firstly, to retain independence and not get drawn into the age-old rivalry of Siena and Florence. Secondly, to avoid the feuds between the various Guelph and Ghibelline factions within the city walls and, finally, to escape the wrath of a particular pope or emperor who would occasionally remind the aretini of the ‘bigger picture’, often with very bloody results, such as described by Dante in the Inferno.
Within hours of our arrival at La Torre, we started to learn a little about its history from Signore Enrico, the previous owner. A casa signorile – blah! ‘That’s estate-agent speak, it might be a ‘gentleman’s house’ now but this house was a casa colonica when I bought it 35 years ago, one of about 30, on the Albergotti estate. For hundreds of years it was part of the mezzadria or sharecropping system.’
How did the countless generations that have lived and worked here for almost a thousand years live their lives? This was the question I needed to resolve; not only out of personal curiosity but as a way of understanding the complex nature of Tuscany and her people - the people that have welcomed us so warmly.
‘It’s not so easy to find out, Sandra. Italy was not unified until 1861 and we have very few legible records of our early history. Some records were kept by the church; some by the courts, especially if there had been land disputes between the elite of the period and from around 1300 the Comune kept records for tax purposes. Also, during this period influential families kept records which would list all the property owned, the number of households, men at arms, estate activity and tax figures and so on...’
I was with Francesca, the Marchesa Albergotti, being shown around her 13th-century villa which the family has owned continuously. The Albergotti had arrived in Tuscany during the time of the Lombard king Otto 1 in 870 A.D. and are one of the oldest families in Italy.
The Albergotti archives form a large part of documentary history of the area and are now housed in the State archives. Most were inaccessible to me – not only because of their decay but because the handwriting and ancient Latin made them indecipherable. Despite much searching in the Biblioteca I could not find any significant information about La Torre and had to accept that it was just one farm out of thirty on the estate – it specialised in olives, chestnuts, pigs and corn and that was its significance. There was no record of its change of use and the many other changes that have taken place over the centuries. However, its solid square shape and more than one-metre-thick buttress north wall suggests a date between 1450-1550. The only concrete date is the plaque dated 1893 which commemorates the ‘new’ loggia staircase.
But there had to be more – La Torre was such a notable feature on the earliest (1824) Catasto or land registry map.
However, for the generations who have lived and worked here, history was a luxury they simply couldn’t afford. They may have been living in an area that was once Etruscan. In 600 B.C. Arezzo was one of the Dodecapolis– the twelve most important city states. This was an area that during the Roman Empire was third in size and importance only to Rome and Naples and in the part of Italy that gave rise to the renaissance but their way of life had changed little over hundreds of years.
The mezzadria or share-cropping system was in operation here from around 1300 to 1966! It was an ideal system for the landowner. Although the Albergotti were regarded as good landlords, the tenant farmer still had to ‘pay’ half of his income to the landowner whether the harvest was good or not and he was usually dependent on the estate for all his other needs. Poverty here was extreme; large families, malnutrition, disease and low life-expectancy were the norm and famine was a constant threat.
Luigi, one of my first friends here, told me about the soup-kitchen queues that stretched for miles and the poor quality of life which eventually led to the mass exodus from Tuscany to America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their world was also graphically illustrated when I visited a museum dedicated to the contadini (peasants) just to the north of Arezzo. Poverty drove these people to become masters of their environment and the museum was overflowing with examples of their ingenuity and ancestral frugality.
Don Danilo, the local priest directed me to La Torre’s last tenants, who only left in 1966. Their life was not one of history but harsh reality. They shared La Torre with their animals: four white oxen used for all the heavy work on the farm, sheep, numerous pigs, rabbits and chickens - most of which lived on the ground floor! The only flat area, where we now have a swimming pool, was where they threshed the corn by hand. Water was collected from a spring in the next field, bread baked once a week in the outside forno (wood-burning oven), the first floor toilet consisted of a hole in the floor and ten lived where now there are two!
Their lives were controlled by the land and the seasons but without any sense of irony the signora told me about the ‘big room they had for dancing’. They also spoke about the local legends regarding la Torre, something they had never seen because the walls were only exposed in the 1970’s. Firstly, there was the ghost of a cheeping chicken - this appears to be a common fable in Tuscany but they also mentioned a trapdoor and the dire fate of all those introduced to it.
La Torre was also the site of more recent history – in July 1944, during the allied advance through Italy, there were fifteen days of hand-to-hand fighting behind the house before the Germans withdrew or were killed. Marino, 85, told me of his search for food in the woods after this battle but all he found were bodies and helmets!
Despite many months of research, I was no further in my quest for the story of the tower. Visits to numerous other sites of a similar construction confirmed the date but offered no further information.
Then a breakthrough - the result of a tortuous trail through many of Arezzo’s museums. The superintendent of the medieval museum directed me to a professor at the Accademia Petrarch who is a leading authority on Italian medieval history.
…Signora Fatucchi led me to the orderly, book-lined study where the Professor was waiting. Again, protesting his limited knowledge, he started to meticulously examine the various maps, photographs and other documents that I had brought.
I stood before him, student-like, for what seemed hours before he looked up and with controlled excitement he said ‘Signora, your tower is beautiful.’
He confirmed that the tower was medieval but went on to say that it had been built using reclaimed Roman dressed stone and bricks which could have been brought up from Bagnoro, now our local village but in Roman times a thriving spa town with thousands of inhabitants! He then explained that our ancient driveway was on the line of an early Etruscan road from Arezzo to Cortona and suggested that because of its strategic position the site would also have been used in Roman times. Not only to watch for invaders but to protect official messengers from bandits.
My second, spine-tingling ‘Wow’ moment!
‘Signora, Complimenti. E’ molto fortunata
But, this is recent! We have discovered human remains and artefacts near La Torre that date back more than 50,000 years…..’
Sandra Yong, La Torre, Arezzo.
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Acknowledgement: Mille grazie to Jenny de Michele, my new-found friend and interpreter, without whose help still I would still be searching.
