La costa dei pirati

It is along the west coast of the Gulf of La Spezia, between the capital and Porto Venere, that there are Marola, Cadimare, Fezzano and Le Grazie, delightful villages where the memory of ancient crafts and maritime traditions is preserved. Less known than others of this enchanting gulf once called "of Venus", these villages have given birth to people who have lived with the sea and for the sea, lands of sailors, shipwrights, and divers. It is a strip of land known locally as the Pirate Coast, perhaps because, in the distant centuries, it was subjected to Saracen raids for a long time and several of its inhabitants, despite the Doges of Genoa nominated them privateer, they often and willingly dedicated themselves also to piracy. The pirates and the terror they inspired have now disappeared but the desire to preserve the memory of the objects, crafts, and knowledge that consolidated the tormented pact between men and the sea remains alive. The Cantiere della Memoria, in Le Grazie, is a place of the permanent exhibition of equipment and historical documentation of seafaring traditions. Another valuable testimony is the Baracca Faggioni, in Cadimare, which already existed a century ago. Here are kept the working tools that gave life to even large boats. Still working is an old and rare crank siren. Marola is the first village you come across coming from La Spezia. Of Roman origin, the narrow streets, archivolts, and steps date back to the Middle Ages. In 1800, the construction of the military arsenal took the sea away from Marola. However, he did not take away the pride of tradition. A sign of this is that every year, in a heated rowing challenge, it competes with the other twelve seaside villages of La Spezia for the coveted Palio del Golfo. The high wall of the arsenal has been separating the inhabitants from the sea for 150 years, which is why they define themselves ... "the walled up alive". Franca and her husband Sandro live in the upper part of the village, where the gaze can run to the Apuan Alps and the islands of the Tuscan archipelago. Free for age from work commitments, they have time and way to take care of the house and the courtyard. Franca's care has always gone to the garden and, above all, to small animals found injured or unable to feed themselves. I have always had this passion for animals, my father handed it down to me. He always went out of his way when he saw a pet in distress, so my sister and I both inherited this love for animals. I have a special love for little birds. I frequented the Lipu, I was also at the Cruma in Livorno for three days to learn how to better manage the birds that could arrive, and after I retired I started to dedicate myself full time to save these birds, to make myself useful, to become their mom, their nurse, in short, everything they need. Each of the little creatures that Franca welcomes receives the most loving attention. First I have to remove this veil that was put on for a mosquitoes attack we have had lately and which are extremely harmful to the birds. Here we have a little pigeon that I have raised since it was a chick, and a little parrot that has nothing to do with the native fauna, but it too has attached itself to my window and we had to welcome it. He always calls me… is it true, little one? Huh, what is it? Yes, my love. Come on, little one. In the last two years, we have been experienced many problems as Lipu volunteers, so it has been very difficult for us because to give our best we need a place where we can temporarily keep them and be able to rely on a veterinarian. The cage is temporary accommodation for these small birds, limited to the period in which they need more care. It will be placed in the aviary in the vegetable garden, the largest aviary, from where it will be able to see the population of Marola pigeons that come in the morning to eat the seeds of the hens left over from the night, and thus begins to get used to their presence. Then when I see that it is time, that the bird is ready because the wings are long and the chest is strong, then I open the door and it will decide by itself when it is time to leave. Sandro willingly collaborates in his wife's commitment, taking care to keep the temporary homes of the small creatures of the air in order. His particular task is to clean up and, if necessary, repaint cages, and aviaries. The cage is ready and painted, where do we put it? We put it over there under the canopy, let's go. The interior of the house is as bright and welcoming as the open space that surrounds it. The large library is largely occupied by volumes on naturalistic topics. Even the smallest details testify to the couple's deep attachment to animals, our fellow travelers aboard the fragile and irreplaceable blue planet. The delicacy that guides Franca's gestures is also revealed in knowing how to adorn and make unique each jar of her jam, prepared with the fruits of the garden and the forest. Franca proves to be an excellent cook also in preparing the genuine recipes of the popular tradition, such as farinata. It takes a lot of oil in the farinata, otherwise, it becomes boiled. Sandro, please can you pass me the farinata? - Here it is. - Thanks a lot. Even if the recipe is simple - chickpea flour, oil, salt and water - it requires a careful dosage of ingredients and oven heat. It must also be cooked in a low tin-plated copper baking pan. I think it is ready. - Let me see. - Take a look. Well, it seems to me it is well cooked. There is a little stick, but sometimes it happens. Okay, we will discard it. That's it, yes, it turned out good. Since the distant past, women have been the protagonists of these places. It is almost certain that Simonetta, daughter of the Genoese noble Gaspare Cattaneo, was born in the village of Fezzano in the mid-fifteenth century. She was considered the most beautiful woman of the Renaissance and after her death, which occurred from tuberculosis at the age of only 23, the memory of her face inspired Sandro Botticelli for his greatest masterpieces: "The Birth of Venus" and "The Spring". In the most recent past, when husbands were at sea, or when the wait for their return was in vain, it was task of women to take care of the sustenance of the family, drawing on the infinite and fruitful resources of female creativity. Paola Roberta inherited from those women the temper of the soul and arms, the tenacity and the ability to do everything alone. Autumn has already begun, but in Fezzano the sun seems not to have noticed it and it warms like in the middle of summer. It is time to harvest grapes. It is strenuous work, but I like doing it and I'm not the first to do these things, here there have always been many women who also worked in the garden because they were alone, as can happen to me too, because their husbands were at sea or working and therefore if there was something to do in the garden they did it, even the harvest grapes. When we were children, I really liked seeing women with cassettes on their heads, even two or three together, if there were three they held them with one hand.. it was something I envied a lot. And this is a memory that I always have in my mind, so when I do these jobs I also think of the past, of all those who worked on it, I think that here the vines have been cultivated for centuries, perhaps the Etruscans began. In some ways, doing everything yourself is better, because, in the end, you understand where you went wrong. I make a lot of things wrong, but in the end, I realized that grapes love you. Strip of coast that almost knows no plain, Liguria does not collapse into the sea because year after year, stone by stone, its inhabitants have erected endless series of dry stone walls over the centuries. Along steep stone stairways and overhanging paths, their backs bent under heavy baskets full of soil for cultivation. And finally, they cultivated it, that coast kneaded with salt and sweat. Even today, tenacious people like Paola Roberta walk steep stairs carrying the fruits of that miserly land that they love of biting and jealous love and with difficulty preserve from ruin, aware that otherwise, also their own story would disappear. I come from a family of sea wolves, they were all long-time commanders. My grandfather was a captain who had a Schooner, a boat with two masts and a dozen crew members, they were used to go to America and stay away for months. It is thought that here people worked only at sea, instead, everyone in the village had their own vegetable garden and these vegetable gardens were also cultivated with berries and therefore were autonomous. I remember that when I was a child there were many ladies who cultivated them because here in Liguria women have always done what men did ... obviously... if they were sailing! The women were the mistress of the house, they managed the money. When I was a child, my aunt told us about when they were little and they played in the upper part of the village and everyone was afraid of their mother and around the village, At that time many sailed, it was a tradition, there was fame that they were very good. It is written in history that the captains of Marola, Cadimare, Fezzano were famous. There were also times when you had to know how to go to sea, not like today that there is so much technology helping. Today I don't know if I will make black, white or rosé wine, rosé is even more complicated. The first year I did it, my granddaughter was to be born in Rome and therefore my brother told me that it was impossible for him to come and help me and I would have to do it alone. I could have someone help me to cut grapes, but in the cellar, it was a problem. So I did a very simple thing. I went around the bookstores and bought everything there was about wine. I spent three days studying, reading everything there was about wine. That year had gone well, I had made the rosé winemaking white and red grapes together. The following year my brother took orders from me and from that moment on I also became the cellarman. You should be a man only in these situations. Women do everything, but in these moments I should be more trained. Not all of Fezzano's men left the town to sail. Also from this extreme strip of Liguria, as from other places in Italy, migrants in search of fortune once left. Someone found her, but most of them, like Margherita's father, could only find a thankless job. He was 19 when he went to Belgium to work in the coal mines. He told me that the situation there was not very nice. He told me many stories that have impressed me a lot. He would have liked to return to see those places of suffering again, but it was impossible to take him back there. Returning from Belgium, his father found equally heavy and dangerous employment in a nearby quarry, a job that kept him busy from dark to dark. Until he came back there was anxiety, there was fear. My mom used to say that in winter my father never saw the sunlight because he went to the quarry very early, when it was still dark, and came back late at night when it was dark again. For months he could not see the sunlight. Unfortunately, even the relationship with the children, being away from home all day, was not… you didn't see your father very often. And the women stayed at home, without today's communication systems. They knew when their husband left, but they didn't know when and if he would return, because quarrying is dangerous now and even more so in those days. And his wife had to provide for many things, she also had to be a father, it was her job to pick the olives up, take care of the vegetable garden and look after the children. The initiative of the women of Fezzano was also transmitted to Margherita, an expert and appreciated embroiderer. But his talent is also expressed in something else. I started making puppets of various kinds, not just dolls. For my daughter who teaches I made dolls for school. Children today are no longer used to playing with puppets, they have other more technological toys, and therefore I didn't think they could like them so much. Instead, they really enjoyed playing with these puppets, most likely because they develop the imagination, unlike the technological games that require little fantasy. And so I made a series of puppets also for a book that my daughter wrote and I have to say that they gave me satisfaction. When they broke down, my daughter said she took them to the doctor and brought them back with the patches attached. They played with them a lot, even children from other classes ... it was a positive and beautiful experience. As the season progresses, the southern winds cover the sky in gray. The tourists who flock to Le Grazie in the summer have returned to their crowded cities. The still mild temperature allows Silvia and her husband Giancarlo to take long walks on the pier to admire the boats that are moored there. In the past, many of the most elegant wooden hulls in the world have been built at Le Grazie, from large yachts for international owners, to gozzo boats for the inhabitants of the village. Silvia is an appreciated artist with a multiform talent. She produces embossed works on copper, drawing inspiration from what he loves most: the sea, vintage boats, jobs, and objects that are linked to the sea. - So, I go ahead with the figurehead and you look for ideas for the rest. - All right, ok. The charm that emanates from those boats, the scent of brackish and the essences of ancient woods rich in miles traveled, storms, adventures, inspired Silvia to create a figurehead. The first step is to draw a sketch on paper. It is the warm atmosphere of this place that makes his imagination even more alive. I live in a fantastic place. This village is definitely the source of inspiration for everything I do, I could not have had the ideas I had if I did not live here. Expressing myself through drawing is something that has always been a part of me, the embossing came much later. I started by reproducing details of vintage boats that are my absolute passion, but the pencil reproduction alone did not render what the embossed work allows me to achieve. Looking at vintage boats, where every centimeter is absolutely different, every detail is interesting for me: the grain of the wood, of that type of wood rather than another, which I then go to reproduce in my works, both in the drawing and the embossing. Vintage boats are my great source of inspiration, but I do not only dedicate to ancient subjects but also modern and fantasy ones. Once finished, the drawing is reproduced on the transparency and then, from it, transferred to the copper sheet. It is a mentally very stressful job because I have to work imagining reality from a point of view that is not humanly conceivable. I always give an example to help understand the difficulties that must be faced with this technique. If I make a cast of a face, that is the part of the body that a person recognizes best, the person does not recognize himself in the cast because it is a point of view that our brain does not know it, because it is not possible to see our face from behind... luckily! I have to work imagining all of the reality divided into various layers and on each layer, there are certain points that must be at the same distance. My third dimension is very small because we are talking about one centimeter, two at most, in which I have to represent without perspective errors from a few centimeters to infinite meters. Once the essential lines of the drawing are engraved on copper through the accurate tracing of the transparency, the most demanding task begins. Working on the retro-side of the plate with suitable tools, Silvia has to bring in relief on the obverse the parts of the composition that will give the subject the right three-dimensionality. The more tiny are the details of the composition, the more demanding this phase of the work is. An example of this is the commemorative emboss work of the Palio del Golfo, so complex and rich in detail to require months of daily, patient application. However, time is a light companion if every gesture has birth from the passion for art and is expressed in a valued work. Turned off the direct light to prevent reflections from obstructing the clear view of the smallest details, she begins to refine the obverse of the work with chisels and burins to enrich the relief with clearer contours and to increase the definition of the forms. Once this phase is also completed, the slab must be treated with suitable acids in order to create the shadows necessary to give the greatest emphasis to the chiaroscuro of the figures and the effectiveness of the composition. In the meantime, Giancarlo has created the frame for the finished work. The rope that decorates it encloses the entire work in an embrace that has the scent of the sea. The hamlet of Le Grazie was the birthplace of many divers of the past, men who have left an indelible mark on the world history of scuba diving. Despite the high risks, they accomplished epic feats, often at the cost of their lives. On the tip of the promontory that closes the Grazie’s inlet to the west, stands the fortress of Varignano, the ultra-centennial seat of the Italian Navy's diving school. Since its origins, the men who have to deal mainly with the defusing of bombs and recovery of people trapped on the bottom have been trained in this base. But from 2020 there is something new. For the first time in 170 years of history, a woman is about to receive the license of diver. After months of hard training, at the age of 23 Chiara becomes a diver in the Navy, a corps worldwide appreciated, and that also works at the service of the community. To definitively mark the success achieved, the cadet hat is replaced with the prestigious blue beret and, as usual, a sturdy pat makes the badge well adhere to her arm. Although thirteen years of competitive swimming have given Chiara excellent aquatic skills, on several occasions the severe training has put her body and mind to a severe test. The idea of becoming a diver was born a bit for fun. I joined the Navy in May 2018, after which the opportunity presented me during training in Taranto to participate in this competitive exam. Initially, I thought I would not even arrive at Christmas! There were really many moments in which I told myself "who made me do it", but the thing I really appreciate about my character is the ability to react the next day to start over with the same head, the same desire, or maybe even more. For almost a year, the cadet diver Chiara, as well as her classmates, had to overcome increasingly difficult tests, from simply breathing with the regulator to the neutralization of explosives while diving. And all this both day and night, in absolute darkness, because the hands are often the eyes of a diver. Diving at night here at Varignano is not very different from the daytime, because the seabed is muddy and therefore the visibility is similar. Psychologically you may experience it in a different way, but for me, it is always an extraordinary experience. The difficulties I have had are the same as those of my colleagues. The fact of being a woman has not been a limitation for me. The thing that I suffered most was being in the room alone, perhaps because I didn't have someone to talk to about my day or let off steam, but my colleagues have always helped me. One of the most exciting training phases was the use of the historical diving suit, an opportunity to celebrate the pioneers of the past. Today's diving suits, thanks to technological progress, allow activities that were once unimaginable. Chiara's ambition is to learn how to pilot the atmospheric diving suit for diving up to 300 meters, an objective that willpower and preparation will certainly allow her to achieve. Along the pirate coast, other people also face the dark and the waves to do their job. Francesco lives in Cadimare and is a fisherman by profession. Every night he takes off with his boat to sail the nets dropped the previous afternoon, even in midwinter if the weather conditions allow it, when the Christmas lights of the houses make the view of the coastal villages even more impressive. Until the mid-1800s, there was never a real fishing fleet here. It was only with the construction of the military arsenal, completed in 1869, that families of fishermen also arrived in the Gulf of La Spezia. Francesco descends from one of those. We have been fishermen for two hundred years, from my great-grandparents to grandparents, to my father. Then I found myself involved in it too. Gennarino is the father of Francesco. Despite being over ninety, she still has energy and passion for the sea. Every day he reaches Le Grazie on the first bus to help his son when, after having lifted the fishing nets, he returns to the docking to sell the increasingly scarce catch. There has been a decline, in the last seven to eight years several species of fish have been lacking. The mackerel has disappeared, the hake, which is a winter fish that has been fished since the first days of November, has disappeared. In the last two years even the mullets, of which our sea was full, have disappeared. There are still the sea bream and cuttlefish that we fish discreetly every year. For the rest, fishing has dropped a lot, also in quantity. Here fishing has always been artisanal and the trawl fishing along the coast that caused so much damage has been restrained. Furthermore, the marine protected area of the 5 Terre is an effective repopulation source, but evidently there are even other causes of the depletion of these waters. We have been to some biologist meetings, they even came aboard to go out to sea with us. There is talk of sea warming because even the big anchovies that were fished years ago arrive almost anymore, it seems that they take other routes due to the temperature of the water and the scarcity of plankton ... something has happened. As a boy, Francesco thought of a different future for himself. Initially, I did something entirely different. I went to hotel school because I had other ideas. In the summer we do fishing tourism, we cook the fish caught, we bring something from home, some appetizers… it worthed, it has been useful, everything is useful. Time to come back, but the travel time is not wasted. The most loyal customers call him on the phone to buy fish even before docking. What are you doing with two fish, catch at least four, there are eight of you. Yes... bye... bye. Today is tough, it takes a lot of experience and equipment. I saw some young people who tried but stopped immediately, if you are not born that way you cannot do it, if you have no family traditions it is not … it is difficult. Reached the quay, Gennarino helps Francesco to fix the mooring lines to the bollards. His advanced age does not prevent him from getting on board where, as soon as the engine is turned off and the apron is put on, he can start getting busy to help his son. Good morning. We are tempered men, not speeches! Come on. Wait! He's my baby ... I have to vest him! While Francesco takes care of weighing and selling the fish, the elderly father unravels the nets, freeing them from the last fish and mollusks that are entangled in them. The day is not completely to waste, some fish were caught and there is no shortage of customers today. It is two kilos and two hectograms. And anyway Francesco is a positive person. For him, there is always something good in all things, it is enough to be able to see it. I am satisfied, I have been doing this job for 40 years now and I do it willingly. You live in the open air, you are free ... it is a good thing, it is a good thing. The origins of Cadimare are lost in time. The first settlements were of the Celts, followed by the Apuan Ligurians and later the Roman conquerors. Finally, the Doges of Genoa came, who had to face the raids of the Ottoman pirate Dragut pasha. At the dawn of the 1900s, it was the basis of the first Italian pioneering seaplane flights. Did you bring the anchovies? Are they beautiful? But yes, come on, they are medium-sized. Mom I am going to go and drop the nets, bye. The sea bestows a wealth of fruits, perfumes and freshness on the coastal cuisine. The recipes of the local cuisine require simple ingredients, however ennobled and made delicious by tradition and skilled hands. The anchovy, a tiny blue fish with many healthy virtues, becomes here the casket of a tasty filling. Lidia, Francesco's mother, is a member and animator of the local Pro Loco, an association which every year organizes a festival of such appeal that Cadimare has been officially named the "Stuffed Anchovy Hamlet". The recipe, which has been handed down for generations, requires using only anchovies caught in the upper Tyrrhenian Sea. Open and boned, the small fish are then coupled to accommodate a stuffed which has mortadella, lettuce, garlic, and parsley among the ingredients. A veil of breadcrumbs gives the frying the right crunchiness and the golden color is also a joy for the eyes! Marola, Cadimare, Fezzano, and Le Grazie are precious jewels, simple and true places, rich in an ancient history made of the sea, tenacious work, and daily effort. Proud of their traditions, the inhabitants of the Pirate Coast have been able to preserve these places from the aggression of a misunderstood modernity. They are today and will be in the future their best custodians.