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| Wandering around Sorano | |
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Arriving in this town for the first time, visitors often begin their tour by passing by the fortress, where you have the impression of entering another dimension where time stopped back in the middle ages. After visiting the museum and crossing through the fortress with its dark underground passageways, full of the devious traps and hidden doors, characteristic of military architecture, a lovely road of paving stones leads you to the heart of the historic center.
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Breathe in the atmosphere as you visit the old center, explore the streets, alleys, and stairways - and don't be discouraged by the many steep stairways leading up and down. You will discover it is worthwhile to make the effort.
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Thanks to the wisdom of the builders who created these marvelous old buildings in the centuries past, all the houses of Sorano are fascinating. There are no two houses, no two doors alike. Each one has its own distinct personality, its own history, centuries long. Observe the walls, studded with archways and openings of various forms, created in different eras, and then later closed up or readapted.
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Stepping into a house here is always surprising: you find archways, niches, fireplaces of every size, beams made from century old trees, old floors, sometimes antique frescoes, rooms "loaned" to neighbors, connected with ladders or stairways, rooms carved from the tufaceous rock or in grottoes, sometimes connected to each other by a labyrinth of passageways never completely explored.
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Tufo - the tufaceous rock on which this town is built, is an easy stone to carve and sculpt. The bedrock beneath Sorano is riddled with ancient tombs later transformed into wine cellars and narrow passageways. The longer ones lead down to the river, others lead to the fortress, or who knows where.
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Every house has its cellar which reaches down as far as 50 meters into the bedrock. The doors to these cellars remain open from before the harvest starts, when the wine casks are emptied and cleaned, until the wine is bottled, when rivulets of blood red wine trickle through the streets.
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"Have a glass!" It's not unusual to receive this invitation while passing by a cellar. Accept it by all means! Cellars are not only a place where wine is made. Aromatic herbs are dried here. Olive oil, firewood, and vegetables are stored here. Once, broken dishes and shards were dumped here ( for the joy of those who discovered them centuries later). The cellar is a place where the men gather when the day's labor is done, where they make business deals and consolidate friendships.
If you are invited to someone's cellar, accept with thanks. It will be the first step in getting to know the heart of the Soranese.
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| [63428 .visits] [0067 .today] [1 .online] |
| gio, 24 lug 2008
- 03:47:37
- @116
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