I did not expect such beauty, such a dimension and not even to experience this emotion. To tell the truth, I didn’t even expect this sun, which peeped out overwhelmingly after a morning of clouds.
Roselle Archaeological Park. On a hill that once dominated Lake Prile, a lagoon that reached the sea, where today there is Castiglione della Pescaia. We are in Maremma, land of the Etruscans, those who knew how and where to build, who knew the whims of bad weather and the violence of the conquerors.
I imagined a few stones, thrown there, in the neglect to which we are unfortunately used to many other Italian treasures. I am a Maremma islander from the island of Giglio. I’ve passed the Senese road thousands of times (I can really say thousands), each time looking at that brown “Roselle” sign and promising myself every time that, if I wasn’t in a hurry – always this damned rush to go from one place to another always work, always family duties, always the desire to reach the sea as soon as possible – never enjoying the journey, never enjoying “the life that goes by while you are intent on doing something else”, as John Lennon wrote – , if I wasn’t in a hurry, I said, I had to stop. I have to know this land of mine better.
It finally happened, on a Thursday in early May, as soon as politics kicked off the reopening of similar places (if I may make a criticism, as a non-virologist: a place like this is the least suitable for the spread of any virus).
What a joy. Really. I felt great joy. First of all to be there. Then to discover it and see that Roselle is not a place with four ancient stones thrown there at random. It is a place that becomes mystical, because one realizes the passage of history: the Etruscan foundations of tuff, the Roman walls covered with “malta”, the remains of the most distant Middle Ages, the one immediately after the fall of Rome. And you see everything, clear. You see the differences, you understand how our ancestors lived. We feel descendants and, perhaps – lingering with self-esteem – a bit heirs of such greatness.
Lake Prile is no longer there: time has covered it with earth and man’s hand with crops, olive groves, houses and roads. Now it is, as you see it in the photo above.
It is inevitable to ask: but how did the cubes of matter withstand millennia of bad weather? the drawings are still bright and well defined. And the walls? it seems that the “mortar” is made with a percentage of lime and sand not yet identified, but such as to become even more resistant with the passage of water. Ancient alchemy ..
The love for beauty, the unbridled passion for luxury, the search for comfort – as demonstrated by the pipes under the floor to heat the rooms was typical of the Romans, – such as the taste of banquets, music and everything that was fun and pleasure was proper to the Etruscans. The two peoples fought and completed each other, taking customs and traditions from each other.
An amphitheater could not be missing to underline that art is the useless thing most necessary to man.
A look at the plain, as we descend along the walls.
The walls are made up of huge boulders.
But how did they manage to lift and position them?
Are we sure that we men of 2000 are so much further on?
A walk like this, in the green, in the beauty, in the culture, helps us to understand and also to re-dimension ourselves a little. It frees us from our delusions of omnipotence and perhaps makes us lighter and happier.
Marcella Ansaldo ©