Pixiq

The late Sergio Leone, Italian film director, made the genre of the Spaghetti Western into a world phenomenon largely redefining a view of the American West in the eyes of millions. Through the Dollars Trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and finally The Good, the Bad and the Ugly he took the viewer into evocative desert landscapes… ironically, Spanish landscapes.

After a few months living in Italy I discovered the wild west landscapes close to home. My better half had a far better knowledge of Italy than I did having managed numerous walking holidays over the years and she introduced me to one of Italy’s best-kept secrets: Civita di Bagnoregio — The city that dies (La città che muore) set in a landscape of  eroded clays that looks like it came straight out of the badlands… transposed from Montana or North Dakota.

The ‘city’ (more a miniscule town) sits on its tuff plug (a rock made of compressed volcanic ash) in the middle of a dramatic landscape of water-eroded ridges (calanche) that are crumbling and changing shape with each successive season. You can reach it on foot across a causeway that spans the valley where the colours of the rocks are remarkable in the reddening evening light of a low winter sun. Coloured strata showing a record of numerous volcanic interruptions are clearly visible. Some 350 - 500 thousand years ago this area was a powerhouse of volcanic activity and the remnants from conical peaks to caldera lakes, numerous hot springs and occasional earthquakes abound. Alluvial clays originally filled the crater, but several streams eroded the softer materials to leave a central tuff plug.

The first settlement on the ‘plug’ was built in Etruscan times, extended under Roman occupation and then with periodic earthquakes and subsequent rebuilding survived until the 16^th century when a devastating earthquake all but destroyed it… once again it emerged Phoenix-like from the rubble and bits of far-off times are visible in the walls of the buildings… cut stone blocks here, column parts there.

In recent years the atmospheric small town has become a set for several films including a TV version of Pinnocchio but, for those who love Italy there are those tiny events, hard to anticipate, that make things special and define the country and its people. Five years ago we went to see the Living Crib (Presepe Vivente) an annual Christmas event where the whole town becomes a latterday Nazareth with costumed locals, animal stalls… and all.

We approached Civita to find the way to the causeway blocked by a horsebox containing a distinctly reluctant camel, with ‘wise men’ standing by shivering in the bitter wind that howled around the crater and across the causeway. That even wiser animal was just not coming out, so Italian ingenuity was called into play and sweets were thrown further and further forward on the ground… I never knew just how far that neck could extend.

We left the laughing bunch (Italians never take such things seriously) and crossed the causeway. In the main square the costumed players chattered, mingled... circled and stamped their feet to keep warm. For us the crowning delight was the incongruity of the Virgin Mary in her traditional costume... with Gucci boots visible whilst she held her cigarette in her lips as Joseph excitedly gabbled on his mobile phone. There is nothing quite like an Italian event…