Forster's Fiesole

I took a class, freshman year, called something like “Italy in the Anglo-Saxon Imagination” about English and American books that had been set in Italy. We read many books and poems of varying appeal about this country, including E. M. Forster’s “A Room with a View.” When I was packing in September, and trying to pick the few books I would take with me as my teddy bear of sorts, I grabbed it. I had enjoyed the story and it was one of the few books that actually took place in Florence, which I figured would make it more fun, as I could experience and explore Florence just as the characters, British tourists, had. One of the scenes takes place on an outing to the hill of Fiesole, just outside the city, and has stuck in my imagination the past couple years because it is my favorite scene in the book. So when I was making plans with Kelly and Tristan this morning about where to meet to catch the bus to Fiesole, I was remembering this description, written exactly 100 years ago:

“A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full of terraced steps and misty olives, now lay between them and the heights of Fiesole, and the road, still following its curve, was about to sweep on to a promontory which stood out in the plain. It was this promontory, uncultivated, wet, covered with bushes and occasional trees, which had caught the fancy of Alessio Baldovinetti nearly five hundred years before. … Standing there, he had seen that view of the Val d’Arno and distant Florence, which he afterwards had introduced not very effectively into his work. … ... ... Light and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end. This terrace was the well head, the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.”

Idealized and romanticized? Absolutely. But as it turns out, not too far from the truth. As all Florentines can and will tell you, Fiesole is beautiful.

Unfortunately, somehow what always stands out strongest to me are those things that break up the harmony. For example the cute flea market that sold absolute trash to all the tourists. Or, in the Roman amphitheater dating back to at least the first century, the modern art sculptures of gigantic hearts (anatomical, not valentine). Amongst the olive groves and the ruins’ gray stones covered in lichen, curling ferns and grasses with a backdrop of Tuscan hills, a neon yellow man-sized heart, complete with bright crash-dummy symbols, jarringly disrupts the scene.

Who knows what the caretakers were thinking. I certainly have no clue. The giant iron heart, seemingly buried in the center of the amphitheater, reminded me of “It” from Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle In Time” and from the moment that thought occurred to me it was imbued with the huge evil from that story.

However, other than those real oddities, Fiesole was charming. The ruins on this crisp, sunny fall day were totally spellbinding in the lack of attention paid to them. Yes, they were fenced in and preserved, but nature had been allowed to crawl all over them, and we climbed over and around all of the wall fragments, enjoying the miniature scenes tucked into every corner. The birds chirped, the air smelled like mint, and yellow leaves were just starting to scatter the ground.

We followed the walking tour recommended by the guidebook Stanford gave us and continued on to scale the heights of the hill for the panoramic view of Fiesole and Florence and the Franciscan monastery, still in use, crowning the top.

The light in the late afternoon was golden and delicious. We tramped down the road for awhile, half afraid we would be killed by the cars speeding by us on that windy road with a serious lack of sidewalks. Despite our fear for our lives, the views from that road were wonderful. The light honestly looked like it was honey lying across the city below us, and we passed villa after gorgeous villa, trying to choose which one to buy when we become billionaires.

We stopped our walk a bit early, because we were getting tired and a bit chilly. We sat, waiting for the bus, with the most beautiful view I have ever had from a bus stop. All in all, giant yellow hearts aside, Fiesole for me has lived up to Forster’s description.