View of Urbania

18th C. Map of Urbania

Anita, Feliciano and Laura

Last Tuesday, I drove up to Urbania in the Marche region of Italy, near Urbino. It's a bit less than 200 miles, I think, but it took four hours since there is a highway only a small part of the way. Unfortunately, for me, it's on the other side of a couple of mountain ranges from Rome and north, so it's a leisurely drive for most of the way, twisting around mountain roads behind fully loaded trucks struggling in first gear to get up the incline. I came back a slightly different way and it took the same amount of time, so I don't think there's anything much I can do to shorten the time. On the other hand, much of it is absolutely gorgeous. Going up, I took the slightly more mountainous route and it is just beautiful landscape, especially as you get into the Marche, called in English, the Marches. By the time I got near Urbania, I was getting pretty excited, since this was the land of Cornelia and I assume that she probably traveled pretty much the same route. I was following the Via Flaminia, which more or less follows the route of the ancient Roman via Flaminia, the main drag from Rome toward the north. Of course, she was probably on a mule, while I'm in a nice new Citroen. The other reason for excitement is that the landscape just kept getting more beautiful as I went along and I was really just stunned. It's very hilly with mountains in the background - Urbania is about 300 meters above sea level, so it's on the level among some hills but not too low-lying - and seems to be primarily agricultural. So every meter of fields and hills is cultivated in that wonderful Italian way of dividing fields into squares and then seemingly placing them randomly across the landscape. Looked at from afar, it's a bit like a checkerboard that's been broken into its component parts and these have been allowed to settle down where they will. And they are planted with different crops, including grapevines, while some are lying fallow, so you get a wonderful combination of shapes, colors and patterns. As you can tell, I find it impossible to convey why I found this particular landscape so beautiful and moving, but I did and, were it within the realm of possibility, I would move there immediately! As I said, it's highly agricultural and there are no large highways around, so it is also very tranquil, an extraordinary change from Rome. And it seems to be thriving: the fields are all cultivated, houses are well tended and flowers everywhere.

Urbania itself is just as nice. It's very small - on Wednesday I set out about 8:00 am to walk around the city before the archives opened at 9:30, took lots of pictures, and found myself at about 8:45 having covered the whole of the old city - perhaps a bit too small for me really to move here, but I'm awfully tempted. A fair amount of it dates back to the 15^th and 16^th centuries and several streets probably look pretty much as they did when Cornelia lived there. She apparently lived quite near the main square, near the Ducal Palace which, I imagine, functioned then as an administrative center. Now it houses the communal library, museum and archives, though the museum is currently closed for restoration and the central courtyard is filled with scaffolding. The town, like the surrounding land, seems prosperous - very clean and tidy with lots of people in the streets and the requisite group of elderly men sitting around the town center watching life go on that you find in every Italian city and town. The main streets and squares are arcaded, so you walk under porticos, nice both for appearance and shelter from sun and rain.

I got in town about 11:00 and found my way with no difficulty to the library (as I say, it's very small). I had spoken by phone with a young woman who seems to be somewhat in charge and her assistant was expecting me. I had to write out a formal request to the mayor to use the archives, but that seemed to be a formality since there was no time interval between that and getting a book I asked for. I spent until 1:00 there, when they closed, and then came back from 3:00 until 6:00. The following day, I was there from 9:30 - 1 and 3 - 6 and then again Thursday morning, after which, yesterday, I drove back to Rome. I was able to consult bound copies of 16th century notarial records, with numerous references to Cornelia and her family. She appears in the records receiving rents on properties held by her first husband's heirs, the two sons and also giving up and then taking back legal responsibility for them. There is also her will - she died in early January 1581 - and an inventory of what was in her house at the time. All of this is in Latin, much of it conventional legalisms and abbreviations which I am slowly, oh so slowly, becoming familiar with, and in various notarial handwritings, some legible, some less so. I am helped in both finding and deciphering these by an old inventory in which some of the entries are noted and summarized. These at least are in Italian and are marginally more legible. There is also a book, written by Corrado Leonardi, a past director of the archives, that makes reference to many of these and transcribes a few - though very few - and this also provided a great deal of help. Fortunately, I had been trying to make my way through a number of published Latin documents before I went, so I was at least somewhat familiar with the legalisms and forms, but it ain't easy. I'm going to take the next couple of weeks and sort out what I have and try to read more of it and then I'll go back there and stay for perhaps a week to see what else I can find. I doubt I'll be able to find Cornelia's birth date, since there are apparently are no baptismal documents, though there is an ecclesiastical archive in town that doesn't seem to have been consolidated with that of the commune. I'm told it isn't open but I'll see whether there is any way to consult it. I must say, there is something very moving about sitting there with these 16th century documents in your hands - they're certainly easier to read if someone has already transcribed and published them, but it's different holding the real thing. And I did find that, even after this short time, I was getting better at making out words and abbreviations.

Now about the library/archive itself. It's all in 4 rooms in the ducal palace (in the 16th century Urbania was under the control of the Dukes of Urbino) and the library is the town library. So while I was sitting amidst a growing pile of 16th century notarial books (sneezing from the dust), various library users from teenagers to mothers with children were also coming in and asking for things, all very well-mannered. There is no separation between these functions and they seem to be overseen by several young women, chiefly Anita Guerra, with whom I had talked on the phone, and Laura Benedetti. There are also some young men, but I wasn't clear on what they were doing. All were quite casually dressed - jeans and floppy shirts and sneakers - though, again, neat. The director, Feliciano Paoli, is also a poet, with glasses and a shock of unruly hair, and he often seems lost in thought. Indeed, the second day I was there, he went past me twice and the third time apparently noticed me and said "Buon giorno." Everyone greets you. This is actually something else that struck me. When I first lived in Italy years ago, it was also in a small town and it was not unlike this; that is, a certain etiquette and formality that mandates that you give recognition to the people in your space, whether you know them or not, with a conventional greeting. This is on the way out in the more urban areas.

So it is, as we say in Italy, "un ambiente molto simpatico," a very pleasant atmosphere. One other thing: these young women nearly always move at the run. Not a brisk walk, a run. Hence the sneakers, I guess. I asked one of them about this, and she said that they have such a big area to cover - from the museum on the other side of the courtyard to the various rooms of the library, the director's office, etc. - that they have just gotten into the habit of running. Also, they're in the process of mounting an exhibition that will open on 20 July as part of a series of exhibitions in the Marches and they're very busy with things to do with that. At first, I found it distracting when someone would thunder past, but then I just got used to it and found it charming. The book I mentioned above was sent to me at the Academy the previous week on "urgent" interlibrary loan, but Italian mails being Italian mails, it hadn't arrived by the time I decided I just had to make the trip. They had another copy in the library, so I was able to use it there but, since it was a recent publication and helpful, I asked Laura whether it was available to buy. She suggested a local bookstore, but they didn't have it, so the next day she said she would check with the author. A little while later she came trotting back with it: she'd gone out to his apartment - fairly close by apparently - and picked it up for me. This gives you an idea of the kind of place it is and why I want to move there.