Italy- Anghiari, Medieval Tuscan Hilltown

[fumobici]

Anghiari is a small medieval hill town of perhaps 5000 inhabitants in the upper Tiber (Tevere) valley of Tuscany where my father lives.






Every Tuesday Stefano the fishmonger (pesciaiolo) sets up shop and does a good business.


Looking down Corso Matteotti towards the Tiber and Sansepolcro




Thursday is market day in Anghiari, these were taken a couple of years back when the market was temporarily relocated to the Piazza Teatro while work was being done on the main piazza. This market was immortalized in the recent Italian film Una Moglia Bellissima.


Love this ironwork and ceramic sign for a bank on the main piazza.



Garibaldi in the main square, O ROMA O MORTE! it says, but alas he's pointing NE towards Cesena! One of the local pastimes is explaining the directional mix-up. A local lad mugs for the camera.






Teatro Municipale- note the road running through the building through the portal on the right. Find a seat on the floor for a show, the opera boxes look cool but they are built for very very small people aka Italians before WWII.


Technically horrible picture of the butcher at the Eurospar- one of the town's two only real general markets- with cat looking hungrily for scraps.


We've got pecorino or pecorino or pecorino, take your pick. Not quite like that but close to it!






Palazzo del Popolo- The Town Hall, you can see all the coats of arms of the many overlords of this village has known over the centuries on the wall. You'll see this in almost any Italian town.










Menu for little restaurant in the centro,I hjaven't tried this one but the menu is absolutely typical of what you'll see in Tuscany.

i38.tinypic.com/2potiqd.jpg

^Link to larger presumably more legible menu photo








Old disused train station. Now you have to drive about 5 minutes to Sansepolcro to catch the train.


View of the centro from old station.



Calcietto pitch adjacent to the station. Calcietto is five a side football played on a small pitch.


Covered bocce court on the other side of the station.


View From Wall- valtiburina (local name for Tiber Valley)


View From Wall II








Bar Baldaccio- best pizza I've ever had. And it's baked in an electric oven!








Spaniel guarding Pelargonia.








Zucche, which can be pumpkins or anything similar.

[Deleted]

Absolutely EXCELLENT looking place. The only thing that really surprised me is how some of the market products are displayed in plastic crates. Not that it makes any difference, but in a French market, they would NEVER do such a thing, even if they use plastic crates to bring the stuff in and to carry the unsold items away.

[bixaorellana]

What an absolutely gorgeous place! Whew -- I could feel my calf muscles tightening just looking at all the steep walks throughout the town. I think what I like most are the all the rich textures afforded by the old walls and roofs. Photo #22, with the misty landscape beyond the round wall, looks as though it came directly from an early Renaissance painting.

It looks as though the pictures were taken in the autumn. Is that correct? How often do you get to visit?

This was a great trip, Fumobici -- panoramas, stately buildings, homely details, everyday life -- you got it all!

[fumobici]

I go every year or so, some of these are Fall and some are Spring and perhaps a Winter or two. These were actually taken over a number of separate stays.

[imec]

Great pics! That looks like a Dolcelatte Torta just behind the blue cheese on the far right - it's one of my favorites.

[lagatta]

In case anyone is wondering why I've not weighed in on a thread about a central Italian hilltown, it is because it is loading very badly for me - after several attempts I still can't see everything. No cat at the Spar grocery for one thing, no lad under Garibaldi, only the top of corso Matteoti etc. I can go elsewhere where I have faster internet access, but wanted to see it on my own compuer. Can see the cheeses; they look lovely indeed. So does the "Liberty" (turn of the last century) villa and a lot of views remind me of Perugia and other nearby Umbrian towns (think this town is just across the Tuscan-Umbrian border. Pity that it has lost its railway station - is there a shuttle bus?

I can read all the menu on the larger photo linked, despite a few rain spots. Hmm, wondering what the daily specials are? Indeed it is very Tuscan, and in this slightly different from neighbouring Umbria.

[bixaorellana]

LaGatta, apologies if you've already tried this, but ............... rather than trying to reload the whole page, right-click on any image that's not showing and select "Reload image". If you find one that is particularly balky, right-click on it and select "View image." That option will open another page with the photo on it.

[fumobici]

To be honest I often have the same problem on pages heavy with photos even though I have have a reasonably fast 1Mb/sec connection. Even if all the photos load, there are often a few that don't load all the way so I can only see the top half or so. It doesn't seem to matter who is hosting the photos.

[auntieannie]

Superbe pictures, Fumobici! Thank you!

[bixaorellana]

Here is something that helps, plus means you don't have to wait around ~~

When you have AnyPort open and want to view a thread that you know is picture heavy, right-click on the menu at the top of the page on the Board you want. Select "Open Link in New Window", then when it opens, click on the desired thread. Now go away and let it load -- don't scroll on that page or anything. You can return to the original page and navigate around, then when you go to where the slow-loader was cranking up, it will be all ready for you.

[lagatta]

Usually that works, but this thread seems to thwart even that measure!

[Don Cuevas]

OP might try distributing the images into seprate posts/installments to reduce the bandwith requirements.

[bixaorellana]

Fumobici ~~ is that building with all the statues on the top as narrow as it looks in the picture? (#11)

And picture #26 -- "View of the centro from old station." -- I'm assuming the tall square tower mid-left is the church. Is the pointy-towered building on the far right part of a castle, or the old town walls? That's the same building with the round wall shown in #22, isn't it?

[fumobici]

Oct 1, 2009 0:37:14 GMT bixaorellana said:

Fumobici ~~ is that building with all the statues on the top as narrow as it looks in the picture? (#11)

No. It houses a theater of conventional shape that seats perhaps 1000.

And picture #26 -- "View of the centro from old station." -- I'm assuming the tall square tower mid-left is the church. Is the pointy-towered building on the far right part of a castle, or the old town walls? That's the same building with the round wall shown in #22, isn't it?

That tower is a church, a very, very old one. Here's a photo of its interior:



I'm not sure what the other building with the bell tower was originally but yes it's the same building as in the other photo.

[ctoner]

Thank you so much for posting the pics of Anghiari! We are staying at a villa near there in Sept 2011. Really enjoyed a preview of the town, since we have never been there!!
This is a great forum!! Just discovered thru Fodors!! Really looking forward to our trip!

[bixaorellana]

Thanks for the kind words about the forum, CToner, & also thanks for bringing this lovely and interesting thread to the foreground again.

[Deleted]

Yes, I was happy to admire it again myself.

[fumobici]

I'm flattered. If I remember I'll be freshening it up with photos of the new and improved 2011 version of Anghiari when I get back from my next stay.

[thill25]

Oooohhhh...Anghiari looks like a grat town to explore. Enjoyed the pics!

[fumobici]

OK, as promised Anghiari v.2011:











































*whew*

[fumobici]

This is the main square, Piazza Baldaccio:







And on the right in the photo above you see the main street, Corsa Matteotti, which the locals call "la discesa" because it goes down the hill.





If you rolled a bowling ball down it might not stop 'til the Tiber ~5km away.

Blue collar bar Il Cocomero (the watermelon)



Back to the centro,

















I'd never been inside this little church before.


This effigy was paraded through town in a torchlit Good Friday parade!



and then a few more random ones:























Next installment, giorno di mercato. But later.

[Deleted]

Now the we know our way around town, we know where you took most of the new set of pictures.

I saw a few satellite dishes peeping over the roofs. We need to find a solution for this. (Actually, they were selling plastic camouflage to stick on the dishes (brick, stone, leafy....) but it never caught on although it really worked well at making them almost impossible to spot.

[Kimby]

What a lovely portrait of a place.
I am intrigued by the room in a bridge over the street, and the little corner room wedged into an angle between two walls. Do people expand their houses by using the space over the streets? Do they "own" that space, even though it is above a public byway?

The sweet window kitty makes me think Any Port should have a thread dedicated to kitties, window or otherwise, if we don't already.

[fumobici]

I don't know how that works!

Let's check out another market day shall we?



It's of course as much about shmoozing as shopping.











































I don't think I'm done even yet. At this rate you won't even need to visit.