The founding of Sansepolcro is mostly legend. No one knows if it is really true, but it could be. As the story goes, Sansepolcro was founded by two pilgrims, Egidio and Aranco, who were on their way back from the Holy Land. They had a dream and built an oratory and the town began there. Sansepolcro was originally Santo Sepolcro, which means Holy Sepulchure. Egidio and Aranco are carved on to the doors of Sansepolcro’s cathedral.
Sansepolcro became a Roman Colony. In the twelfth century, it consisted of only 6 streets. Sansepolcro is located in Tuscany, but is close to Umbria and Marche. Because of its position, its ownership was continually changing. It was owned by many powerful families at different times. In 1441, the papal state, which was the current owner, sold Sansepolcro to Florence, so it became a permanent part of Tuscany. Sansepolcro natives are extremely proud of their Tuscan heritage. We compared this regional pride to state and regional pride in the US. No North Carolinians want people to think they are from a different state. Sansepolcro became part of Italy when the Italian state was unified on the 20th of September 1870, which is why the street I live on is called XX Settembre, or 20 September.
As a student in Sansepolcro, I have a regular day to day life and I occupy a lot of my time the same way I would back home. In a typical day, we start classes at 9:00 am. We get our own breakfast from the student kitchen, which is stocked with cereal, bread, jam, Nutella, yoghurt, and other common cold breakfast foods. The first class of the day is Italian. I am taking six hours of Italian. We have been doing intensive Italian since we arrived in Sansepolcro and are going to have it every day for an hour and a half until mid October. Then we will switch to regular Italian. After Italian, we will have our other classes, some on Tuesday and Thursday and others on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
We eat lunch at 12:30. Lunch is arguably everyone’s favorite part of the day. We have lunch together Monday through Friday and it is always delicious. I am always surprised by how much food there is. We start with some sort of appetizer, followed by a pasta dish. Italians eat pasta every day. We will then have a meat and a vegetable, and sometimes a dessert. I have noticed while I am here that many Italian foods are made up of local ingredients. As Americans, we eat food from a wide variety of countries and regions. There is much less variety here, and the only places to get something that isn’t Italian are the Chinese restaurant and a Kebob restaurant. I really like the Italian good though, so I don’t go to those often.
Most of the time, we have guests from the community come for lunch. We have had the town’s chief of carabineri, two shop owners who happen to be wonderful opera singers, a local artist, Americans visiting from Nebraska, a couple from New Zealand, a former host family for Meredith College, some Goblin Gelateria employees who are about our age, and a South African amongst others. This is really helpful because then people in town know us and we get to meet people who live here. Sansepolcro is a great place for meeting locals. In the larger cities, we are more likely to meet tourists. We have made several friends in town. The people who owns our favorite café, the Café Gerasmo, know our names! Sometimes we also get to practice Italian at lunch because our guests don’t always speak English.
After lunch, sometimes we have more classes. Right now, I have a class after lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I spend almost all of my time on weeknights in the Palazzo writing papers, reading books, and doing Italian homework. Sometimes we will go to the café or ride bikes around town. We are on our own for dinner. I usually get pizza, eat lunch leftovers, or cook my own food in the student kitchen. There is a grocery store nearby and we have a hot plate, so we are learning how to do a little college style cooking this semester!
We frequently head to the central Piazza for gelato or just to walk around. It is a nice place where people meet each other, walk around, and enjoy each other’s company. This piazza is called the Piazza Torre di Berta. “Torre” means tower in Italian. The piazza actually doesn’t have a tower anymore. It originally had a tall bell tower in the middle, but when the German forces retreated from Sansepolcro in World War II, they blew it up. The people of Sansepolcro didn’t have the money to rebuild it after the war, so there is no tower today. These pictures are ones that Dr. Sara Andreini emailed us of the tower before the war and the piazza after the tower was destroyed. The last two are the piazza today with the plaque where the tower stood.
We have learned a lot more about World War II in Italy in my World War II literature class and in Italy Today. Dr. Andreini invited a man visiting the region from South Africa to come as a guest speaker to Italy Today. His father, Hinton James, was a pilot who flew a Spitfire plane in Italy. Most people don’t realize how truly global World War II was. Countries from around the world that aren’t typically talked about, such as South Africa, New Zealand, Ethiopia, Mexico, India, and many others were a part of the Allied troops.
Hinton James was hit while flying a mission to destroy train tracks that were supplying Germany’s troops. He had to bail out of the plane, but this was before ejection seats. He had to turn the plane upside down, open the cover to the cockpit, and fall out with his parachute. When he landed, he was near Sansepolcro. The German defensive line at one stage was just outside Sansepolcro. He was helped by many different Italian partisans, who were civilians or former Italian military working in resistance to German occupancy and helping the Allies. They helped him get back to the Allied side of the line. Many Italians risked their lives for him and some died. His son, who came to our class, is visiting the whole area with his two sons, and will meet the sister of a man who was executed for helping him escape. We just finished reading about the fronts in Italy in one of our books for WWII Justice and Liberty class called Italy’s Sorrow, so it was really interesting to meet someone with personal connections to the battles we learned about in class. It is a part of the rich history of Sansepolcro and the surrounding area.
This weekend is our first completely independent travel break and I am leaving Tuscany for a few days. I am planning to explore Venice. We are all excited and trying to find hotels and arrange train tickets.
Goodbye for now,
Meredith
I'd never even heard of Sansepulcro before you went on this trip so I'm enjoying reading your blog. Plus it makes me feel a weeee bit closer to you!
ReplyDeleteNanno
"Anonymous" because I don't have a g-mail account.