Winter comes early to the Cimini Hills, these mist-swathed ridges rising inland north of Rome. Once an obligatory stop along the old pilgrim’s route to the Holy City, a midpoint between Tuscany and Umbria, this area, the Tuscia, lies off the beaten track today. Its villages — Vitorchiano, Soriano, Vignanello, San Martino, all chiseled from volcanic rock, resemble rough lacework hewn in stone. Overhanging verdant canyons, tucked away on wooded slopes, these tiny towns are mentioned in few guidebooks.
Outsiders stumbling upon my village stare up at its stalwart medieval walls, wondering how people in the 21st century manage to live in such places.
Although these houses and towers may look picturesque, it’s backbreaking work that makes this village thrive: quarrying stone, felling trees, reconstructing houses — the harvesting of grapes, olives, chestnuts, and hazelnuts from these hills. But now in winter the frenetic activity of autumn has ceased. The mosto fermenting in casks has been laid to rest in cellars which were once Etruscan tombs. All the olives have been pressed for oil and the olive press has shut down till next year. Mushrooms and fennel have been set to dry in baskets on stove tops. Branches laden with persimmons and pomegranates have been hung from the ceiling beams in the kitchens of the humbler houses, next to garlands of onions and bundles of bay laurel leaves. Outside every door in the village, a tidy pile of firewood has been stacked with an eye for size, type of wood, and overall pattern — for many of the homes here are still heated only by wood stoves. All this meticulous preparation seems to say: We are ready to wait the winter out.
The village clock tower chimes the hours above a maze of deserted alleys and stairways. Nearly four o’clock. Time lies heavy on your hands indoors when it’s too cold to sit out on the balcony and chat with neighbors or to launder sheets in the communal fountain where the water gushes up bitter cold from a spring, turning your hands as red as a broiled lobster.
Through the kitchen window I see my neighbor rolling out pasta dough on her marble-topped table. Her father and husband sit nearby, playing an animated game of cards by the fireside. The manger scene I can see set on her mantelpiece reminds me that it’s time I prepared my little house in Tuscia for the holiday season. So I wrap up warmly, pull on a pair of boots, and basket in hand, I take to the woods, along a path bordered by the remnants of an old Etruscan wall.
This village is surrounded by forests and farmland where hundreds of Etruscan tombs and other pre-Roman ruins lie abandoned in an unchartered wood, the Selva del Malano. Here there are primitive cave dwellings carved in the cliffs, Etruscan altars to unknown gods, bizarre-shaped boulders inscribed with symbols. Here last autumn I went looking for porcini mushrooms. Today I have come hunting for pine cones and butcher’s broom with its bright red berries to decorate my hearth, and for rocks, twigs and moss to construct my presepe, the nativity scene — the traditional Christmas decoration in most Italian homes and public places, from hospitals to train stations.
All you need to make the backdrop for your presepe is a board covered with moss and twigs to set your figurines on, mountains made from crumpled paper, a sky of dark blue wrapping paper studded with stars. Assembling these miniature scenes, inventing each year a new backdrop inspired by exotic or familiar landscapes, adding twinkling lights or ingenious trickling streams are part of the creative play delighting children and adults alike.
But it is the figurines that steal the show, whether they are hand-carved family heirlooms or just plastic clones made in China picked up cheaply at the market. The presepe hearkens back to the Christmas pageants of medieval theater staged by craftsmen and shepherds. Here in the Cimini Hills, the tradition of the presepe is so strongly felt that for the twelve days of Christmas, entire villages transform themselves into living manger scenes and compete with each other to create the most opulent tableau vivant, drawing visitors from the neighboring towns, and sometimes even further. This year’s precept vivente in Tuscia may be found here.
Cellars, courtyards, barns, are requisitioned to make the set. Village notables and beauty queens vie for the leading roles and the whole village pitches in providing the needed skills: sewing costumes of brocade and burlap, collecting props, wiring for lights and music. Small children, pet ponies, donkeys, and sheep are enlisted as extras. Craftsmen and bakers set up their stalls where Christmas visitors will see how bread is baked in a wood oven, how pots are created on a wheel, how cloth is woven on a rudimentary loom, how stone is carved. They bear witness to the traditions of handicraft which still survive in these remote hills and offer a feast of rich colors, aromas, and music enlivening these old stone walls and reviving the community’s sense of identity. Then after Epiphany, all is dismantled and put away till next year. The grey tedium of winter will triumph till Carnival.
The streets are still empty when I return from the woods with my basket of moss and rocks. Smoke curls up from the chimneys above the red-tiled roof tops.
Tonight I’ll sit by the fire and assemble my more modest presepe and then hang my home-made wreath on the door. But first I’ll indulge in the Tuscia’s preferred winter entertainment, especially when the temperature drops below freezing like today: a plunge in the sulfur spring where the water bubbles up over one hundred degrees. There are half a dozen such springs scattered throughout the area, all within a ten minute drive.
My favorite is an open pool in a field right off the highway, surrounded by an olive grove and a crumbling piece of Roman aqueduct. The locals come here to soak as a prelude or conclusion to a meal, to cure skin problems and arthritis, to relax and socialize. As I sit in the steaming yellow water with the cold wind ruffling my hair, I contemplate Orion hanging low over the Cimini Hills in a sky of liquid cobalt. Although the long winter has just begun in the Tuscia, I’m not afraid of the cold, for I know it will have its comforts and distractions, its rituals of renewal.
The Magic Library of Bomarzo 