goethe and spoleto and duomo and monteluco and ponte delle torri

Every guide to Spoleto will tell you that one thing you ought not to miss in this Umbrian town of about 23,000 is the bridge connecting the Rocca (castle) and the hills to the East. It is about 700-800 feet long and crosses a yawning chasm of about 300-400 feet over what must once have been a flowing stream. The bridge was probably designed about 700 years ago by a Gubbian architect named Gattapone; he is memorialized now by the name of a hotel built into the side of the cliff below the castle and near the bridge. The bridge is built in Roman aqueduct style, with 9 or 10 semicircular openings as the bridge plunges down to the ground below. Oh, here is a picture of the castle, looking at it from the East.

I decided to convert my color picture of the castle to a black and white one in order to give the castle an "aged" appearance. It looms over the town, visible for twenty miles. We are looking at it from the East side, across the chasm. The castle used to house prisoners, the most famous of whom was the Turkish man who attempted to assassinate the Pope.

Crossing the Bridge (the Ponte delle Torri)

Since the bridge connects the castle (and a dramatically beautiful walking path around the castle) with Monteluco to the East, you can go either to the East side of town to cross it or climb up to the castle mount to do it. We decided on the former, and parked in a small parking lot (about 5 cars) halfway up Monteluco. Had we had more time in Spoleto, I would have wanted to hike the mountain; I have read that there are all sorts of delightful caves and grottos where saints of more than a millennium ago would retreat from the "hustle and bustle" of medieval Spoleto.

We, like Goethe, walked across this bridge (more on Goethe below). And, I took a picture of my friend and traveling companion Virgina on the bridge. By now you must be dying to know what she looks like. Well, here is the picture, this time in color.

Isn't she delightfully attractive, even if you can't see her completely with this angle and light? She is smart, thoughtful, seems to endure me with minimal complaints, and is a caring and energetic companion (she never once shirked walking up steep hills, which I am prone to attack just because they are "there"). She took four times as many photos of our trip as I with that little camera dangling from her hand, but most came out blurry. She is, however, a far better photographer than I.

The other thing to notice from this picture is the bridge itself. To the left is a towering wall, about 15-20 feet high, which is the bridge support that plunges to the valley floor 300-400 feet below. To the right is the restraining wall, about 4 feet high, which keeps overeager photographers from backing over into the chasm below.

Once you cross the bridge, you are on a paved walkway around the castle. From this walkway, which obviously had not been constructed by Goethe's time, you can get the most arresting views of the town. But just to the left of the bridge, we ran into the following memorial to Goethe. I had to take a picture of it and blow it up for you so you could see what it is.

Yep, you guessed it. It is a plaque, with Goethe's account in his Italian Journey (since the word "journey" in German is "Reise," and the adjective "giant" in German is "riese," and since this was such an important trip for Goethe, I think I will refer to it as his "riese Reise). It is written in German with an Italian translation. Perhaps it would be nice if I put an English translation here....It reads:

"I climbed up to Spoleto and was on the aqueduct which also serves as a bridge between two mountains. The ten arches of brickwork have stood there so calmly during the centuries (Goethe might have been mistaken by thinking that this aqueduct was a Roman, not a medieval, production), and water still gushes forth everywhere in Spoleto (it no longer does). This, now is the third ancient structure I have seen, all of them with the same grandeur of design. A second Nature, one that serves civic goals, that is what their architecture is, and thus arose the amphitheater, the temple (the Duomo), and the aqueduct. Only now do I feel how right I was to loathe all capricious edificies, like the Winterkasten (back in Kassel, Germany) on the Weissenstein for example, a nothing built for nothing, a huge decorative confection, and it is the same with a thousand other things. They all stand there stillborn, for whatever has no inner validity has no life, and can neither be nor become great."

The impression that Goethe gives us is that he finds the Spoleto triad of monuments things that have "inner validity," things that therefore contribute to greatness of a civilization.

Conclusion

I still have to write about how my emotions were kindled at all these (and other) things; I think you can already tell, however, that they were...

1953

Though I enjoyed meeting many people iand touring n Rome, walking the trails in Cinque Terre, and being awed by architechture and art in Florence, it was not until we arrived by train in Spoleto on Thursday afternoon June 29 that I felt I had a chance to relax, drink in my surroundings and let the temper of my emotions catch up with me.