Umbria Untour, The other side of Etruia
by Jo-Anne Rowe, Umbria staff representative
[Jo-Anne Rowe is the local staff rep for the Umbria Untour]When I first came to Umbria I knew very little about the Etruscans. As time went on, I learned more about them and was fascinated. Now that I have lived in Umbria for more than 15 years, I am discovering the Ancient Umbri—the people who have gave this land much of its special culture and had a great influence on Roman culture as well, influences only now being discovered.
That is what Umbria represents for me—an incredible richness that no one has discovered even after so many thousands of years. So, there is a sense of cultural adventure together with a sense of adventure in the untouched nature, set within the lap of refined luxury that is so common in Italy.
I came to Umbria from Australia to study Italian at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, because I had noticed during my travels in Italy that if I tried to speak their language, the Italians were very helpful and always so polite as to never seem to notice how I was butchering it. I remember being so impressed by the trusting nature of the people, “Don’t worry madam, if you haven’t got the extra 20 cents today, you can bring it to me in the next few days.”
From the very beginning, I have always enjoyed discovering little villages and hamlets. Just get anywhere off the main road and I can make believe that I’m an intrepid traveler. One day I drove up a little country road and suddenly found that I was almost in someone’s house. Instead of berating me, the owners asked me in for a glass of their homemade wine while they described to me how to get back on the right road.
The contrast between the lifestyles in the city and the villages is quiet marked. High-fashion clothes and fast cars are seen in the streets of Perugia, Spoleto and Assisi, while farmer’s boots and housewive’s aprons are seen along the streets of villages like Castel Ritaldi, San Giovanni and Castelluccio. Every town and village has its fabulous works of art that are just too numerous to list but make for wonderful discoveries. The big towns have sophisticated festivals of music, opera and gastronomic delights. The villages have “sagra” where the local women cook and the local orchestra plays accordian music for couples to dance to in the tiny piazza.
Of course, I cannot forget the attraction of the food. It seems strange to me that Umbria is famous even within Italy for its genuine food, but globalization has hit here too and big Italian cities are lumbered with tasteless food. And so, city-dwellers come to Umbria to eat lettuce that has been grown in soil tilled by somebody and not something, to eat fruit that came off the tree yesterday, to drink wine made down the road and therefore suitable to go with the local food, this being one of the most important aspects of wine appreciation. Finally, we cannot forget the olive oil. Umbria was the first Region in Italy to have the quality of its oil recognized by the DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) trading mark. 90% of its production is cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.
My daughters, Sophie and Vittoria, love going on picnics. We have discovered Roman ruins that only ardent archeologists know about. We can have painless culture-vulturing because it’s all so much a part of the scene that when we go the bar in some tiny village to get a glass of Coke or an ice-cream, we can stop off to see the frescoes in the church and the children do not feel they are being dragged around doing things that do not interest them. Fortunately, everything is so close that we do not have them sitting in the car complaining “How long before we get there?” as we do when we return to Australia!
When you come to Umbria, I’ll try and communicate some of my love of all this to you too. You will not find everything signposted for you in Umbria—because you will be discovering it just like many Europeans. Umbria is just opening up now!