Barga

Barga is a good day trip to take from Lucca, about 40km north (taking a picturesque hour on the local bus), on the edge of the Apuane Alps as you head up into the Garfagnana hills.

Barga is built around the peak of hill, at the top of which is the cathedral with narrow alleys running down the hill between the houses to the old town walls. All in all, exactly what you'd imagine a Tuscan hilltop town to be, with views of the surrounding countryside to match.


The cathedral is quite spare inside, with a large open area at the back, some pews on a raised section, and the normal frescos and decorative fanciness around the altar and the chapels on either side. The stand-out piece is the large 13th century pulpit; you could see how the Pisano pulpits in the Pisa cathedral and baptistry were derived. It was lit very well through swirling yellow stained glass set high on the walls, though I imagine on a less sunny day it could be quite gloomy. In fact, while we visited in blazing November sun, the wind fairly whipped up the narrow streets and across the top of the town, and being as isolated as it is I'd guess it could be miserable in mid-winter. You can well see why Barga is The Most Scottish Town in Italy.

It even has a museum to its Scottish links, plus an annual fish and chips festival, and holds the highest rates of obesity, heart disease and teen pregnancy in Italy in tribute. I may or may not have made the last part up.

Apparently a lot of Bargians emigrated to Scotland in the 19th century and since, so now a disproportionate number of Scots with Italian ancestry trace their roots back to here. Some Scottish Bargians have since moved back to Barga, plus there seems to be a largish additional English-speaking population here (see www.barganews.com). Either way they seem to be proud of their Scot-osity in a way that escapes the English, see the Scottish-Italian high-fliers they trumpet in the museum:


I'm still dipping into Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, and will continue to post bits and pieces here in an effort to pique your collective interest. It's a very bottom-up account of life in France – his concern is to describe the life of the silent majority in pre-20th century France; which translates as everyone not living in Paris or a couple of other major cities.

His chapters on travelling in France in the 18th and 19th centuries are very good; essentially travelling any distance at all was a horrifically jarring experience, for both rich and poor. While improvements were made to the transport network during this time, the benefits that we now suppose to be instantaneous were not necessarily experienced by most people then; in fact the new roads were often not much used at all. Bear this passage in mind next time the BBC show their adaptation, Jane Austen and the Brontës Visit Provence:

...the experience of individuals was not arithmetically linked to increasing road length and diminishing journey times. Historical dramas usually show the most efficient technology of the period – healthy horses pulling shiny carriages on slightly bumpy roads – but not the most ordinary scenes of daily life: a cow munching peacefully on a main road near a city; two carriages stuck facing each other for hours on a road so narrow that the doors could hardly be opened; a horse, with wooden planks placed under its belly, being hoisted out of a mud-hole; a farmer ploughing up the road to plant his buckwheat and potatoes....