VI.ix. In the Delta

"Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy."
- Fanny Burney

This morning I returned to Ferrara, a place that unlike Forlì, Modena, or other equally nearby towns, needs far more than one or even two visits to absorb adequately. Ferrara has a rich, evocative history and a tranquil atmosphere that lends itself well to the city's location in the flat, misty estuary of the Po valley.
    That afternoon, as Ferrara's shops and museums were closing for lunch, I boarded a tiny regional train and headed East, to Codigoro, the last stop on the line. The train was part of the miniature rail network run by the Region of Emilia-Romagna, in effect a totally separate entity from the state-run employer of ninety thousand souls, Trenitalia. Having arrived in Codigoro, a small, peaceful town only just inland from the Adriatic, I waited for the ride to my next destination. Codigoro is far too small to be served by a regularly schedules bus route, so a Taxi-Bus system has been implemented by the community. I had called ahead to reserve my particular journey to the Abbey of Pomposa some seven kilometers away. The cost of the ride, heavily subsidized of course, was eighty-three cents. Being at the mercy of public transportation in Italy is a frustrating but also a rewarding experience.
    Pomposa, lost in the estuary of the river Po, was once far more than it is today, a picnic spot and stopover point between Ravena and Venice for the erudite, mostly Italian tourists who come to see Vitale da Bologna's frescoes. Long before malaria had infested the surrounding swamps, Guido d'Arezzo, inventor of the musical scale, lived here while his superiors exercised control over a vast and extremely rich fiefdom. All that remains from these centuries as a power centre are a few conventual buildings, the Abbey Church, and the facing Palazzo della Ragione, an enormous hall built by the monks for the sole purposes of secular administration. The building would be more at home in one of the bustling centres of active lay life, like Ferrara or Padova, but instead is left desolate here in a quiet oasis of towering oak trees. The whole complex is surveyed by a prominent campanile, inlaid with ceramics brought from distant Syria in the ninth century, which makes for a stark silhouette against the winter sky. A beautiful place, far from anything, to visit once in a lifetime.
    On the return from Pomposa, stopping once again at Codigoro, I wanted to have an aperitivo before boarding my train back to Ferrara. The café nearest to the station was a bustling affair, and the barman beckoned me to sit down as he brought me a few plates of tramezzini and a large beaker of wine.
    "I haven't much time," I said to him, "because the last train inland leaves in fifteen minutes."
    "Not to worry," he replied, as he gestured to a man in a stationmaster's cap, surrounded by a gaggle of fawning locals, drinking a large glass of prosecco, "the conductor is here too."



The Gentle Winter of Ferrara, and the low sun in a villa's courtyard


The great Abbey church at Pomposa


Inlaid reliefs on the façade of Pomposa