Bassano del Grappa
I felt like someone hit me in the head with a large mallet... a 3-minute day trip
A short tale from the Travel Archive. I hope you enjoy this day trip in Northern Italy.
I was introduced to my first glass of grappa last night, Nardini grappa made in the town of Bassano. The best grappa your money can buy, they told me. I felt like someone hit me in the head with a large mallet. Fortunately, I was drinking safely in my room at the time, or I might still be stumbling and muttering, lost in the poorly-lit alleys of Venice.
I had taken a day trip to the small medieval town of Bassano del Grappa – the town whose name I bear. It was a sort of pilgrimage, about one hour north of Venice. My name was displayed on the banks there, on the museum, on the shop signs and buses – even on the sewer lids. It felt like the town belonged to me.
I wandered about for hours, nosing around busy little shopping streets and arcades, and had stopped to take advantage of a park bench to rest my feet. Two floors above, in a building across the street, a pleasantly plump older woman was cleaning her windows. Suddenly she turned around and the tiny balcony became her stage. She began singing an aria in a rich, booming contralto to the pedestrians below. She waved her cleaning rag as delicately as a lace handkerchief as she sang, swaying from side to side, clutching the cloth to her more-than-ample breast for dramatic emphasis. When her song came to its lusty end, she was rewarded with sincere applause and whistles from the small crowd gathered on the street below. She bowed with great solemnity, turned, and continued polishing the windows.
God, I love Italy.
As with many northern Italian towns, Bassano was badly damaged during World War ll, and has been restored with much care. I stood on the charming *Ponte degli Alpini, a notable covered wooden bridge spanning the Brenta. The iconic symbol of the city, it has been destroyed and faithfully rebuilt many times since the 13th century. From my vantage point, with the heavy rumble of the waters rushing beneath, I saw homes on both sides of the river that still bear the scars of artillery fire in their plaster walls, left that way all these many years on purpose, I would imagine, as a reminder of their resilience.
Though Bassano has several war memorials, I found one to be particularly touching. In 1944, there was a rastrellamento or a round-up of the partisans in the area, which culminated in the hanging of thirty-one young Bassano men in the center of the town. The monument is on what is now named the *Viale dei Martiri , a circular esplanade with a view out toward Monte Grappa. It is a small park encircled by 31 identical trees. Each tree has a pot attached to its trunk filled with blooms, and on each pot is an engraved plaque bearing the name and photograph of one of these martyred sons and husbands. As I stepped from tree to tree looking at the faces, reading their names – Fabio, Lorenzo, Angelo, Gianni, tears clouded my eyes to think of the pain this town still feels and to see how lovingly they have remembered their lost ones for more than seventy years with this tribute.
I put my book down early tonight. By nine o’clock, I’d read the same page three times and still wasn’t taking it in, and, let’s face it, Thomas Mann is not that challenging. It could have been the second dram of grappa. Or perhaps that lone 40-watt light bulb dangling at the end of a cord from the ceiling was just no match for the full moon over the dome of Santa Maria Formosa outside my window. Maybe it was the enticing fragrance of the simmering cioppino coming from a restaurant across the canal that stalled my concentration. Whatever the cause, Mann slipped to the floor, forgotten, and I fell asleep in a monumentally sagging bed with a little smile on my lips.
* Ponte degli Alpini is a bridge dedicated to the Alpini, the Italian mountain infantry
* Viale dei Martiri is Avenue of the Martyrs. The monument is sited on the exact spot that the young men were executed.
this takes me from ecstasy to melancholy, from the magnificent balcony aria to the poignant memory of martyrs. Thank you, Sharron.
Such a sweet retelling of this small town and its wonder, how it touched your soul with its beauty and its sad memories still full of love.