Seen from above, Cittadella is a quaint Medieval town in the Brenta Riviera of Veneto, some 20 km north of Padua. Its low townhouses speak of a quiet time when this land's sole purpose was to feed the aristocratic decadence of Venice. Its ancient villas, covered in moss and statues, were built by the region's most famous architect, Andrea Palladio, to give a countryside toy to the Republic's rich and famous. So far, so good. As I climbed on the 6:35 train from Milan to Venice yesterday morning, I was ready to meet this idyllic landscape in the deep, scary North-East.
Six hours later I was trying to hitchike my way out of it, shaking with fear.
The North-East is the site of Italy's second economic miracle, the one that started in the 1980s and turned a fomrerly depressed region (Veneto) into one of Europe's richest regions (in GDP per capita). Scores of former farmers started opening little workshops, then factories and warehouses, and before anyone noticed, they were churning out most of the goods designed and sold in Milan under the "Made in Italy" label. This - to make just one example - is prime Benetton land.
The deep North-East has long lost its agricultural identity. What were once endless cornfields feeding polenta to the workers of Turin and Milan's factories were soon turned into rows of industrial production sites. And as the cash started rolling in, farms became houses, houses villas, and villas palaces. But the inspiration did not come this time from Ancient Greece's classical lines, but from Vegas and Dubai. From those plastic cities of the world where sudden wealth pours into a formerly deprived area. The result is - to putit mildly - an anthropological and architectural collapse.
As I sat in the back of the car driving me to the meeting I was supposed to attend, I stared out of the window, progressively more nauseated. Warehouse. Bloated villa. Cornfield. Factory. Bloated villa. Cornfield. Factory. Warehouse. Cornfield. Bloated villa. On and on and on for miles.
Thankfully, the guys I was about to meet were the exact opposite of this lunar lanscape. Lago Design, cool, urban, intelligent and the most celebrated thing to emerge out of Italy's design world since... well... a long time. Not just their furniture, but also their factory, something you'd expect to see on an Alpine lake. And their personality, the kind of people you'd want to get drunk with and talk to until the end of the world. I was instantly seduced.
Once the meeting was over, I was dumped with my fellow traveller along a busy road, waiting for a bus that would take me back to Padua, and from there to Planet Earth. The bus was 30 minutes late. Hitchiking was useless, drivers glanced at us with the suspicion of the paranoid schitzofrenic.
When the bus finally arrived, I shivered when I noticed it was full of 15 year olds returning from school. But when I climbed onto it, I was even more shocked. The kids - about 40 of them - just sat silently in the chairs, or stood holding on to railings. The bus was quiet as a church. The kids LOOKED normal, but I have never, EVER been in a bus full of teenagers in my life without feeling my ears bleed. This is when I realised they are all aliens. Most of them climbed out of the bus before Padua. Their houses where along that busy road, grotesque villas fenced by their fathers' factories. Born into a trade. Dead before reaching their 18th year.
This is when I seriously wonder about the future.
5 comments:
Oh dear, sweetie. You're on fire tonight, aren't you? Hmm? Hmm?
mmm yes. all very creepy.
my family tree of course goes back to this neck of the woods, as tiz won't fail to remind me as bangs on about the good old days. i almost stopped off at the ancestral home in vittorio veneto. but gave it a miss and was well happy to catch the earlier train south to rome.
all sorts of scary murders happen here of course. bored kids throwing stones onto motorways trying to catch cars. for kicks. adolescents who want their inheritance early (in spite of cars, and designer labels) and knocking their parents off. etc. etc.
I spent a delightful couple of weeks in this part of Italy on a Shakespearean homage -- touring all the cities mentioned in his plays (Padua, Mantua, etc).
The countryside was immensely dull (reminded me of my own flat Fenland), but some of the cities were, architecturally, interesting.
Then again, I'm easily pleased.
Looks like a good place for an edgy teen angst movie, what in the US would be set in New Jersey.
OR it could be Attack of the Teen Zombies/Aliens/Robots!
Either way, Willy S. would LOVE it.
Is it wrong that despite your story, I kept going back to the girl in the Benetton ad, wondering how she got there and lucky she was?
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