L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES MARIELLA RADAELLI T here is something at the heart of Lerici that w orks on my imagination to create magic as interesting things happened in its world of sand and sea, harbor and castles, alleys and pastel-colored houses. All can be read through the lens of literature. Many great English-speaking literati have been inspired by the town at the southernmost end of the Italian Riviera. They found or lost themselves on the Lerici coas t, on the G ulf of La Spezia, also known as the Gulf of P oets , w here Lord Byron swam the bay and Shelley was later drowned. Other foreign writers also favored this locale, its landscapes and surroundings, for a long time. When arriving, you identify the silhouetted skyline by two castles located at the extreme points of the town. Carved out of the cliff, a massive impregnable medieval castle dominates the ancient Jewish quarter below. Narrow streets that wind down to the piazza are imbued with stories, secrets and sagas. The inviolable fortress also looks down on luxurious vacation vil- las, the pretty harbor and beyond, to the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto. Since its founding in 1152, the castle's defenses have been continually improved. In the late Middle Ages, Admiral Andrea Doria had a house in the village. The Doria family was a powerful force in the Republic of Genoa, which stretched several hundred miles along the coast from Monaco to Lerici. The smaller castle of Lerici sits at the end of San Terenzo hamlet. Originally a fortress built as defense against the Sara- cens, today it is one of the castle beacons on a footpath that stretches 3 km along the beauti- ful seafront promenade between the two fortresses. In 1822, San Terenzo was home to romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The white villa overlooking the sea that the famed couple rented, now called Villa Shelley, is where the leg- endary couple stayed for three months until Shelley's drowning death near Viareggio on a late July afternoon. He met his end as he sailed his boat during a raging storm while on his way home from Livorno, where he had met with essayist and poet Leigh Hunt. He was a month short of his 30th birthday. The villa's interior is sumptu- ous, but very few pieces of furni- ture are original to their home. "A lonely house close by the soft and sublime scenes of the Bay of Lerici," was Shelley's descrip- tion of it. The tragic event cer- tainly informed Mary Shelley's future creation. The author of Frankenstein spent the worst moments of her life there, suffer- ing a miscarriage three weeks before her husband's death. But Mary also wrote about the wild beauty of the place. "It seemed unreal in its excess," she says. "The distance we were from all signs of civilization, the sea at our feet, its murmurs or its roaring forever in our ears – all these things led the mind to brood over strange thoughts, and, lifting it from everyday life, caused it to be familiar to the unreal." On Lerici Bay, Shelley found inspiration. His friend Lord Byron lived close by in Portovenere, where he finished writing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and famous- ly swam the bay of La Spezia to see Shelley at Lerici. Every year at the end of August, the Coppa Byron swim race commemorates Lord Byron's legendary swim across the Gulf of Poets. More than a century later in 1933, Virginia Woolf had a sen- timental journey to San Terenzo in the footsteps of the Shelleys. She spent some days of May in a hotel having visions of Mary who rests, sits and takes coffee on the terrace of her ill-fated home, and Shelley who takes a bath, walks and sits on the shore. But it seems to me that Lerici has transcended its links with Shelley to emerge as a place, today, with genuine, palpable atmosphere. I find that fall is a wonderful time to enjoy this town with a storied past. The beaches are blissfully quiet and you can also have the town's narrow alleys and tranquil squares virtually all to yourself. From the harbor you can take a boat to Portovenere or the island of Palmaria, the Five Lands and Portofino. Hiking among Lerici's ham- lets is pleasurable. The seafront trails follow ancient mule tracks through terraces of olive groves and when you arrive at the next village, there's a row of trattorias, a blue sea, the smell of seafood pasta. The hamlet of Tellaro sits on the east side. In 1913 D.H. Lawrence was so thrilled when he found a home here, near the Fiascherino beaches. "There's a tiny little bay half shut in by the rocks, and smothered by olive woods that slope down swiftly," he wrote in a letter to a friend. "Then there is one pink, flat, fisherman's house. Then there is the villino of Ettore Gambrosier, a four-roomed pink cottage among the gardens just over the water and under the olive woods. There is my next home. It is exquisite." In the 1930s , Cas a G am- brosier was enlarged and trans- formed into the current Villa Bianca now owned by a Russian billionaire with US passport. Lerici, a poetical corner of the western part of the Italian Riviera, used to be home to great writers and artists (Ph. Leonardo Lupi) (2) Lerici: secrets, solace and sorrows on the Gulf of Poets The heart of Lerici, Piazza Garibaldi(Ph. Marco Putti) The San Terenzo Castle is one of the historical symbol of the town. Photo Credit Comune di Lerici

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