richest and most powerful of the Etruscan cities. Inevitably, the proud Roman clarion echoed one day along the Arno valley up the hillside and the inhabitants of Fiesole were either slaughtered or ordered to genuflect before the Invincible Legions. After the fall of Rome, it was subsequently plundered several times and lost its peculiar qualities. On the ancient Etruscan and Roman ruins and monuments the new town was slowly built.
In the immediate post-war years the young flower-girl sat at the corner, aggressive street hawkers strolled the streets with cardboard boxes tied round their waists containing their wares, and pitiful beggars, little more than road-rats, sold holy pictures with potent prayers for a safe wayfaring.
Poverty was a role to be performed, not social offence, so a Tuscan rispetto sings –
I cast a palm-leaf into the sea:
The waters devour it.
I see others cast lead, and –
Lo! For them it sails.
To the earliest footsore pilgrim with sturdy pastoral staff and tattered burlap outfit it was once a day’s walk from Florence to the hilltop, up the steep stony path, still there, but less trodden, which reminds one of far-off endeavour and spiritual gratification. This dusty wayfarer has given place to turbo buses pouring out streams of camera-burdened tourists.
At present, Fiesole is an open square, rewarding to the eye, with a number of aesthetically attractive buildings forming its personal façade.
Indeed, one can find some cloistered nooks with a watercolour artist at work and a gathering of shadows with a writer. A few minutes out of town one can come across the typical Tuscan farmhouse with a vine loosely drooping over the doorway.
WANDERWAY ONE
Getting