Classical Overtures

RELATIVELY FREE FROM PROSAIC URBAN TRAPPINGS, THE ITALIAN CITY’S ALLURE REMAINS TIMELESS, ITS MYTHICAL AURA BORN FROM THE RENAISSANCE’S GREATEST MINDS.

- Debashree Majumdar

The Trenitalia express we are on is speeding past expansive swathes of muted green fields, undulating in rolling intervals of dull, dry crops of maize and olives, their continuity broken only by narrow paths that run all the way up to the base of the low hills beyond. The cypresses appear every now and then lining the horizon like sentries standing guard against unknown enemies. It’s late November and the sun is a weak yellow, barely holding up against the vast stretch of grey sky that is pitched tight and gloomy over us.

Everything in Italy feels surreal on the first visit. It is difficult to imagine a land so lyrical and beautiful from continents away. Art, sculpture, and remnants of ancient civilisations are scattered along street corners and town squares in swells of luminous Carrara domes, life-like statues carved from marble and alabaster bent in impossible arches to fend off an unseen attacker or lay obeisance to higher powers. The figures are alive—their veins are protruding, blood pulsing, mouths open in vitriol and vengeance—all frozen to take you back hundreds of years where this modern world was conceived and its first stirrings experienced.

The Santa Maria Novella Firenze, the main station in Florence, appears provincial after the great rush and buzz of Roma Termini. It is almost empty, the platforms are wet, there has been a persistent rain since morning, and people seem rather quiet in conducting their commute-related activity. Cigarette butts can be found almost at every corner, as can be tourists wandering along, figuring out ways to leave the grey of the station behind and be swallowed up whole in the promise of the city outside its gates.