CONOR O'CLERYfirst learned about Italy, from its ice cream to its wine and films, from the owners of a chip shop in his home town in Co Down. But life as a foreign correspondent intervened, and they lost touch. A quarter of a century later the friends met up again in Tuscany
MY LOVE AFFAIR with Italy in general, and with Tuscany in particular, began in Newcastle, the Co Down town where I grew up. Like every Irish seaside town, Newcastle has an Italian ice-cream and fish-and-chip shop. Situated on the promenade, the Broadway Cafe is as much part of the resort as the Mountains of Mourne. Here as teenagers in the 1950s we would linger for hours on wet summer afternoons, playing Pat Boone and Elvis Presley on the jukebox.
The Broadway was run by the Paolinelli brothers, Arthur and Lido, who were married to two sisters, Franca and Landa Giuntini. I tried to teach myself a little Italian and one day summoned up the courage to order a gelato from Arthur, later discovering to my embarrassment that I had mispronounced the word for ice cream.
But you learn a language through mistakes, and it was the start of a lifelong friendship with the Paolinelli family and a fascination with Italy. They gave me copies of the magazine Oggito study and invited me to see Italian films on their home projector. I tasted wine for the first time when, as a 16-year-old, I went with Arthur and Lido to motorcycle racing at Dundrod and shared their picnic. I found it rather unpalatable, but that changed with time!
Most Italian immigrants in Ireland originate from the area around Frosinone, southeast of Rome, but the Paolinellis were an exception. They came from a village called Partigliano, in the hills outside Lucca, in northern Tuscany.
Their links with the ancestral home were strong. The two families often took turns to go back there during the winter months, making the long drive to Partigliano and back when the seaside trade in Newcastle was quiet.
I visited them a couple of times many years ago when they were in residence in Partigliano, and I stayed in their traditional Tuscan home, with its antique furniture and colourful murals on the living-room walls. But over the years, when posted to other parts of the world as a foreign correspondent, I lost contact with my Italian friends.
Lido passed away many years ago, and Arthur, Franca and Landa retired permanently to Partigliano. This summer I managed to make up for missed opportunities. For the first time in a quarter of a century I travelled again to Tuscany, and made the 30-minute drive from Lucca to the little town of Valdottavo, then up the narrow winding road to Partigliano, to renew our friendship. It says something for the healthy Italian lifestyle, but they all looked as young to me as they did 25 years ago.
Like many Italian villages, Partigliano suffered the pain of emigration over the centuries, and the Paolinellis and Giuntinis were no exception in seeking their fortune in northern Europe. Set on a steep hillside among olive trees and little vineyards, and dating back to the 10th century, it is little more than a hamlet of about 200 people. It has a tiny piazza with a centuries-old church that had to be partly rebuilt after an earthquake in 1920. Arthur recalled how during a more recent earthquake he rushed from the house, then, realising he would crave a smoke to calm his nerves, ran back inside to rescue his cigarette packet as the shaking continued. Outside again, he opened the packet to find it was empty.
The centre of cultural activity in Partigliano is the dopolavoro (afterwork, or spare time), one of a national recreation network of clubs and bars built during the Mussolini era, where locals play cards in the evenings. It has stayed open when many dopolavoros and bars in the villages around have closed. Though tiny, the village has its own website, partigliano.com, with pictures of festivals and the village under snow.
It was on this visit that I really came to appreciate Lucca as one of the most beautiful and least appreciated of Italian cities. Famous as the birthplace of Puccini, it is set in a plain between the Apennines and the Mediterranean coast and has a historical centre surrounded by four kilometres of medieval walls. Built as a defence against Florence, they are so thick that the top forms a tree-lined avenue.
Within the walls is a city within a city, a maze of narrow medieval streets, pink-hued buildings, enchanting churches – of which the most striking is the Duomo di San Martino, or St Martin’s Cathedral – and restaurants specialising in Tuscan dishes.
The city is a wonderful base for day trips to the more crowded tourist centres of Tuscany. Pisa is only a half-hour train ride away, and you can reach both Florence and the lively Mediterranean resort of Viareggio in an hour. The city today restricts traffic, and tourists are encouraged to explore by rented bicycle. Somewhat controversially, the city council has decreed that only restaurants serving Tuscan dishes may be opened within the walls, so as to preserve the historic character. We had no problem with that.
Ireland has seen many people of other nationalities come and go in recent times, but this Irish-Italian connection endures and expands. To my delight I found that Lido and Landa’s daughter, Anna, and her husband, Dessie Murphy from Newcastle, today run a bed and breakfast in Lucca, which they call Evelina after Anna’s grandmother. It is on the upper floors of a building on Via Streghi, a quiet street at the heart of the old city, close to the delightful Piazza Anfiteatro, which is ringed by pavement cafes, restaurants and pastry shops. They have lavished a small fortune restoring the spacious rooms and furnishing them with old-fashioned beds and antique pieces from Anna’s ancestral home in Partigliano.
Back in Newcastle, Arthur’s sons Franco and Marco today still run the Broadway as a classic seaside cafe, along with the Toscano pizza restaurant on the first floor.
Where to stay, where to eat and where to go
Where to stay
Evelina Bed Breakfast. Via Streghi 12, Lucca, 00-39-0583-493643, bedandbreakfastevelina.it. Six spacious rooms; Wi-Fi.
San Luca Palace Hotel. Via San Paolino 103, Lucca, 00-39-0583-317446, sanlucapalace.com. Excellent four-star hotel with parking just inside the city walls.
Agriturismo Costa d’Orsola. Orsola, Pontremoli, 00-39-0187-833332, costadorsola.it. Old stone farmhouses with pool and barn-style restaurant with Garfagnana cuisine.
Where to eat
Ristorante Giglio. Piazza del Giglio 2, Lucca, 00-39-0583-494058, ristorantegiglio.com. Outdoor dining opposite theatre on lovely piazza.
La Bottega Delle Cose Buone. Via della Fratta 21, Lucca, 00-39-0583-493462. Basic local restaurant.
Buca di Sant’Antonio. Via della Cervia 3, 00-39-0583- 55881, bucadisantantonio.it. High-class Lucchese and Garfagnana dishes.
Where to go
Rent a bicycle and explore Lucca’s maze of narrow streets.
Climb the city’s 14th-century Torre Guinigi for wonderful views of the medieval city and surrounding hills.
Explore the quaint hilltop village of Barga, with its multilevel alleyways, an hour’s drive north of Lucca.
Go there
Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies to Pisa from Dublin. Jet2.com flies from Belfast. Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com) flies to Nice from Dublin and Cork, and to Rome from Dublin, Cork and Belfast.