500 metres above the sea, and much of it was almost completely hidden from view behind its mediaeval walls and ramparts. The hotel we had chosen to stay in stood just outside the lower of the two principal gates. To the east and west the ramparts terminated in a series of precipices, falling away on the eastern side to dense forests. To the west they fell, equally steeply, to the same sort of terraced hill country in which I Castagni was situated. Through it ran a deep gorge, carved out by a torrent that had its origin higher up the mountainside, and eventually emptied itself, that is when there was any water to empty, into the Magra near Sarzana. All in all, Fosdinovo would have been a difficult place for a besieging army to take. The only possible way would have been to attack it from the top of the spur but this was effectively defended by the vast Castello Malaspina.
The Castello was an ideal residence for the Malaspina who spent much of the time over many centuries, in common with other members of the local aristocracy, plotting. From the fourteenth century onwards, they were a power in the region, reinforced by judicious couplings with such famous families as the Gambacorti of Pisa, the Doria, the Centurione, the Pallavicini of Genoa, the Orsucci of Lucca, the Santelli of Pesaro and the Cangrande della Scala, a union recorded by a marble relief over the entrance to the Castello, depicting a dog with a flowering hawthorn in its mouth. And they remained a power until 1796 when Carlo Emanuele Malaspina was deprived of his domains by the French.
The hotel was of a sort that had already long since become a rarity in most parts of Italy, even the most remote, and although we neither of us knew it at the time, its days in its present form were numbered.
Old, if not ancient, dark, cavernous, rambling were just some of the epithets that could be applied to it without being offensive. In fact it was lovely. Its rooms were full of good rustic furniture of the mid-nineteenth century and of later date, of a sort that we would have been only too happy to acquire for I Castagni: presses and chests-of-drawers in mahogany and chestnut which could swallow up heaps of clothes; cylindrical marble-topped bedside tables of the sort that Attilio possessed which also secreted within them massive vasi da notte with floral embellishments, receptacles of which, judging by the sanitary arrangements obtaining at I Castagni, we were going to stand in constant need.
But most desirable of all were the beautiful bedsteads, of all shapes and sizes, built of wood or wrought iron with tin-plate panels painted with flowers and arcadian landscapes, or decorated with mother-of-pearl, or very simple ones constructed entirely of wrought iron with no embellishment at all.
The hotel was owned by a local butcher who had a shop a few yards up the road, inside what had been one of the gates of the town. He also made excellent salami. He was a good butcher, but he always gave the impression of being on the point of falling asleep, like the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland. Even shaking hands with him was an enervating experience.
His wife was of an entirely different disposition: large but not fat, black-haired, full of energy, what the Italians call slancio , and with a voice that made the rafters ring, and she was as adept at cutting meat or boning hams as her husband.
She was also extremely generous. The morning of Easter Saturday when we left the hotel to go down to I Castagni andpaid our bill she gave us an entire salame as if it were an arrival present, and whenever thereafter we bought anything in the shop and she was there she always gave us something extra, which meant that we couldn’t use it as much as we might otherwise have done.
There were two daughters of marriageable age, both of whom had fiancés. They were personable girls and were a good catch for any young men, with an hotel, a ristorante , a caffè/bar and butcher’s shop as visible
The Castello was an ideal residence for the Malaspina who spent much of the time over many centuries, in common with other members of the local aristocracy, plotting. From the fourteenth century onwards, they were a power in the region, reinforced by judicious couplings with such famous families as the Gambacorti of Pisa, the Doria, the Centurione, the Pallavicini of Genoa, the Orsucci of Lucca, the Santelli of Pesaro and the Cangrande della Scala, a union recorded by a marble relief over the entrance to the Castello, depicting a dog with a flowering hawthorn in its mouth. And they remained a power until 1796 when Carlo Emanuele Malaspina was deprived of his domains by the French.
The hotel was of a sort that had already long since become a rarity in most parts of Italy, even the most remote, and although we neither of us knew it at the time, its days in its present form were numbered.
Old, if not ancient, dark, cavernous, rambling were just some of the epithets that could be applied to it without being offensive. In fact it was lovely. Its rooms were full of good rustic furniture of the mid-nineteenth century and of later date, of a sort that we would have been only too happy to acquire for I Castagni: presses and chests-of-drawers in mahogany and chestnut which could swallow up heaps of clothes; cylindrical marble-topped bedside tables of the sort that Attilio possessed which also secreted within them massive vasi da notte with floral embellishments, receptacles of which, judging by the sanitary arrangements obtaining at I Castagni, we were going to stand in constant need.
But most desirable of all were the beautiful bedsteads, of all shapes and sizes, built of wood or wrought iron with tin-plate panels painted with flowers and arcadian landscapes, or decorated with mother-of-pearl, or very simple ones constructed entirely of wrought iron with no embellishment at all.
The hotel was owned by a local butcher who had a shop a few yards up the road, inside what had been one of the gates of the town. He also made excellent salami. He was a good butcher, but he always gave the impression of being on the point of falling asleep, like the Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland. Even shaking hands with him was an enervating experience.
His wife was of an entirely different disposition: large but not fat, black-haired, full of energy, what the Italians call slancio , and with a voice that made the rafters ring, and she was as adept at cutting meat or boning hams as her husband.
She was also extremely generous. The morning of Easter Saturday when we left the hotel to go down to I Castagni andpaid our bill she gave us an entire salame as if it were an arrival present, and whenever thereafter we bought anything in the shop and she was there she always gave us something extra, which meant that we couldn’t use it as much as we might otherwise have done.
There were two daughters of marriageable age, both of whom had fiancés. They were personable girls and were a good catch for any young men, with an hotel, a ristorante , a caffè/bar and butcher’s shop as visible
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