Viva Emilia Romagna!
You’ll know it by its food: Parma ham, parmesan cheese, lambrusco wine, balsamic vinegar, and spaghetti bolognese. All of those products have become the staples of British supermarkets — you can even buy salt’n’balsamic vinegar crisps at Waitrose. And they all come from the region of Emilia Romagna, one of Italy’s richest — and also one of its least visited and explored — regions.
The chances are that even if you are a regular visitor to Italy, you have never eaten Parma ham in Parma, or tasted lambrusco in Ferrara. You therefore do not know what you are missing: lambrusco, for instance, a virtually undrinkable plonk when purchased in a British supermarket, becomes a gloriously light and refreshing accompaniment to a meal when served in the region where it is produced. Parma ham in Parma has a smoother texture and a sweeter, fuller taste than any prosciutto di Parma found in London. Fresh pasta is Emilia Romagna’s speciality, and every good restaurant makes its own. I guarantee that you won’t have tasted anything like the pumpkin ravioli that you will be offered here. And as for parmesan cheese....
Still, the best reason for visiting Emilia Romagna isn’t the food, sublime though that can be. It is the art, architecture and general ambience of the place. If you go, you will probably fly into Forli airport, for that is where Ryanair’s planes land (the airline mendaciously bills Forli as ‘Bologna’: it is in fact about as close to Bologna as Stansted is to London). The town of Forli is worth visiting, if only because it shows that, monsters though the Fascists were, they had some good architects and, as patrons, had far better taste than some of their less politically repulsive successors. Mussolini rebuilt the centre of Forli. It has to be admitted that he and his architects did a pretty good job — certainly far better than some of the hideous developments of postwar municipal socialism which first bulldozed and then pockmarked many of Britain’s historic market towns with concrete shopping centres and car parks. The Fascists’ public buildings ought to be unbearably pompous and overbearing, but they have classical proportions, and blend modernism and tradition in a surprisingly attractive way. Fascist concrete and stone blocks certainly fit in well with the rest of the elegant architecture in Forli’s central piazza.
From Forli it is a short hop to Ravenna. Ravenna, like many of the towns of Emilia Romagna, is extremely prosperous, though the inhabitants are careful not to flaunt their wealth. It has a lot of lingerie shops, so if you like underwear, this is the place for you. It also has some of the most magnificent mosaics anywhere in the world, including the eerily evocative portraits, on the walls of the 6th-century church of San Vitale, of the Byzantine emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. Theodora was described by the historian Procopius, who knew her, as ‘given up to unlimited selfindulgence... with such lasciviousness did she misuse her own body that she appeared to have her private parts not like other women in the place intended by nature, but in her face.’ It is not easy to reconcile that description with the portrayal of the grave and dignified aristocratic woman staring down at you from the walls of San Vitale but it is fun to try.
North of Ravenna lies the Po delta, which is flat and teeming with exotic (and now protected) birds. In summer, it is also full of vicious biting mosquitoes. Outside of the summer months — the only time when any sane person would visit it — the marshes and vast expanses of sky edged by sea give the area a lonely tranquillity. The abbey of Pomposa is one of its hidden glories: it is one of the few churches where almost all of the mediaeval decoration inside survives. You are greeted by a riot of colour: the floor is inlaid with coloured marble, while the walls are covered in multicoloured frescoes from the 14th and 15th centuries.
Travelling directly west, the next big town is Ferrara. From the outside, Ferrara looks distinctly unpromising. The outskirts are a mixture of shopping malls and what appear to be oil refineries. But keep on heading for the centre, because once you get inside the walls, you find one of the most beautiful of all Italian cities — a compilation of elegant brick buildings, gracious palaces and exquisite churches. The convent of San Antonio Polesine, where a dwindling number of nuns see out their days in work and prayer, is one of the loveliest of the sacred buildings. The Palazzo Schifanoia is perhaps the most charming of the palaces, though it is far from being the grandest: that honour should probably go to the moated D’Este castle at the epicentre of the city. The Palazzo Schifanoia’s piano nobile has an astonishing (and beautifully restored) fresco cycle of the seasons, which mixes court ritual, astrology and pagan mythology into one bizarre, engrossing and harmonious whole. It is one of the few wholly secular picture cycles to have survived from the 15th cen tury. Its depictions of people flirting, dancing, hunting, eating and drinking certainly make a welcome change from agonised crucifixions and weeping Madonnas.
You can take the train from Ferrara to Bologna, but if you have a car, you are better off avoiding the motorway and following the small roads through the countryside. The fertile land here is full of rows of fruit trees and in spring their blossom is a gorgeous sight. There are also some delightful small towns hiding in the fields of flowers: Cento, for instance, with its eye-popping collection of paintings by Guercino — Caravaggio’s contemporary, if not quite his equal; or Bondeno, worth visiting for its wonderful hotel/restaurant, the Albergo Tassi. Signor Roberto Tassi serves the specialties of Emilia Romagna in the same way his father did — and his fidelity to culinary tradition makes for a meal you will never forget. You may have a dinner to equal the one served at the Albergo Tassi, but I doubt you will ever eat one superior to it.
Once you arrive in Bologna, you quickly realise you are in a very sophisticated place. The city has more than 20 miles of arcaded streets, all with bars that make you feel it would be wrong not to stop and partake of at least one glass of prosecco while admiring the bella figura of each impossibly well-dressed Bolognese. The city’s giant brick cathedral has, on its front, a magnificent series of reliefs by the 15th-century Sienese sculptor Jacopo della Quercia; its art gallery has a huge collection of mannerist masterpieces; there are tall mediaeval towers, hidden squares and some very impressive walls; one of Bologna’s lesser churches even has a sculpture by the young Michelangelo. But in spite of all that, the greatest joy of being in Bologna is simply walking under those arcades and gawping, stopping when you come across something that looks interesting.
Modena, Parma, Fidenza, Piacenza ... the succession of towns strung along the edge of the Po valley beyond Bologna are all wonderful. I can’t itemise their glories here, but I hope my scratching the surface of Emilia Romagna has whetted your appetite for a visit to this extraordinary region. Wherever you go, you will find something beautiful, rewarding — and almost certainly delicious.
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