Ascoli Piceno - Piazza Roma

Ascoli Piceno has the majestic Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Arringo that are the showcase of the city, but there is also a piazza that is the working heart of the centro storico - Piazza Roma. These three piazze are all just a few steps from each other; in fact from Piazza Roma you can see both Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Arringo.

Piazza Roma is full of a mini-mercato every morning Monday through Saturday, empties in the afternoon, and then fills up with teenagers and their motorini in the evening before dinner. Old timers fill the benches daily in warm sunny weather, and stay long enough to watch the ragazzi as they begin to gather.

This piazza also holds the city’s war memorial. Each city in Italy has a memorial to those who died in World War I and World War II. Many were erected after WWI with the hope of commemorating the end of all such conflicts in Europe. Unfortunately, they had to be added to after WWII. The large bronze statue dominates the piazza and is the scene of several small military ceremonies during the year with wreaths, bands and politicians.

Piazza Roma is only a few minutes away from our apartment and one of the many places here in the centro where we can witness the pulse of Ascoli Piceno.

"Twin" city

Twinsburg

Growing up in Ohio we lived close to the city of Twinsburg which had a festival every summer to bring twins from all over America together in one city. I remember seeing pictures in the paper every year of the groups of twins that would gather, hence the city name “Twinsburg”. I recall personally knowing of or seeing few twins, neither in Ohio nor when we lived in the Albuquerque area.

In Ascoli Piceno we regularly see i gemelli. This past week-end I counted seven groups of identical twins, from young toddlers to teenagers and adults. I knew they were twins as each pair was together when I saw them, the children in similar clothing. After I noticed a couple of these pairs, it struck me as to the number of twins we see here. In addition we regularly see a pair of grown twin brothers at one of the pasticceria we frequent.

Add to these numbers our landlord, Guerrino, and his brother Angelo, who are fraternal twins. Their parents must have had insight into their character as Guerrino means “little warrior” and Angelo is “angel”. Guerrino is the feisty one who is always working on a project and Angelo is the mellow and laid back fratello.

Perhaps Ascoli Piceno needs to start its own Festa dei Gemelli.

Nostra bici

una bicicletta

One of my favorite Italian movies is “The Bicycle Thief”, which is a post-war story of a poor family and the loss of their bicycle and how that impacts their life. For an Italian in those times a bike was much like a horse in the old American west.

Ascoli Piceno is a relatively flat city where you will see biciclette or bicycles everywhere. Many of these bikes look like they have been in use since the war and they are fitted with baskets for groceries, seats for the kids, or both. Earlier this month there was a national bike day to promote using bicycles instead of motorized vehicles to reduce pollution.

We decided we needed to acquire a bike of our own recently and decided we would try and find a used bike. There are two stores in the centro storico that always have ten or twenty different bikes outside their little shops so we figured they had to have some for sale. I stopped by these establishments several times and each time was told they had no bici usato. We also checked the local office for students and there were no signs up for used bikes.

We watched the advertisements for a week or two and when we had no results with the used bike shops and saw a good price at one of the local iper-markets we decided we better buy a new bike while we could. The most common bikes in town are what are called Olanda (Holland) or Trekking that are used by young and old, men and women. These “city” bikes are a women’s style with wide seat, lights front and rear, carriers front and rear and of course a bell to warn pedestrians.

Our new bike was lacking a basket and bell but we easily acquired those items and now Valerie is all set to peddle around town.

Codice fiscale address change

In Italy the tax number assigned to each person is called a codice fiscale and is similar to an American social security number. The codice fiscale is required to open a bank account or to purchase a cell phone and is one of the easiest official documents to obtain from the Italian government.

While we were still living in the United States I applied for and received my codice fiscale via the consulate in Los Angeles, thinking it might be helpful to have this before we arrived in Italy. It was simple to obtain by mail and seemed like it had been a fine piece of planning ahead.

This year we have attempted to transfer all of our government documents to our address in Ascoli Piceno, which has become a regular source of frustration for us in dealing with the associated bureaucracy. In March I applied to the national health system, called ASUR in the Marche region, and received a receipt showing I was enrolled. Earlier this month when I went back to the ASUR office to find out why I had not received my enrollment card in the mail and I was told that there was a problem.

It appears the same government agency that issues the codice fiscale also operates the national health system and when they cross referenced my codice fiscale number to my health coverage it showed the Los Angeles Consulate address. To correct this I would need to have my address corrected on my codice fiscale. This requires a visit to yet another agency.

Today Valerie and I went to the office where we applied for her codice fiscale, the Agenzia delle Entrate. After some language issues the clerk made it clear he needed our receipt for applying for the new Permesso di Soggiorno in Ascoli Piceno, my passport and my Permesso di Soggiorno for Roma, made some copies, gave me a short form to fill out and took my codice fiscale card and tossed it into the trash (no cutting it up or shredding it). We waited a half-hour for another clerk who input our current address and printed a receipt showing it was valid and a new card is being mailed to me.

Now I will need to make another visit to the ASUR office to see if my address has been updated and I can get a card issued to me here in Ascoli Piceno and not Los Angeles.

Special delivery

Local delivery service

There is a supermercato near us that we go to that have some of the staple items not available at the fruttivendolo, macelleria or forno that we frequent. This store is not much bigger than many living rooms I have seen in the US but is packed with just about every item you might need for preparing your daily meals. The staff is friendly and patient with my Italian plus one of the clerks likes to joke with me about how far I go jogging, he thinks it is “pochi”. My jogging habits seem to be well known around the centro storico where my route is.

There is a young clerk who I see around the centro storico on a motorino with boxes strapped to the front and back. This is used to deliver groceries and I have seen him at both residences and some local restaurants making deliveries before lunch. He packs a couple bags into each box so he can make more than one delivery on each trip. Customer service might still be alive in Ascoli Piceno.

Always something to do in Ascoli Piceno

Too much to do?

When we lived in Albuquerque we sometimes found it frustrating that there seemed to be limited organized activities going on in town that locals could attend. Of course there were things you could pay to participate in, major events like sporting activities and the International Balloon Fiesta. However, we were never at a loss of things to do with the mountains is such close proximity.

Ascoli Piceno is a city that is one tenth the size in population of Albuquerque but there are an abundance of free events to keep the populace busy in the heart of the city. Sometimes in the centro storico it seems like there is too much going on to fit into one day. Since we moved here I do not recall a week-end when there was not at least one event. In addition to the weekly mercato there is the monthly mercato antico and the major events like Il Carnevale and the upcoming Quintana. There have been car rallies and antique car shows, bike and foot races, military parades and bands, folk groups dancing in the piazza, the centro has been turned into a mini Olympic village, special food exhibitions, religious festivals and parades, opening ceremonies for new museums or refurbished buildings, regular events at the historic Teatro Ventidio Basso and ever changing art exhibits in the Palazzo Capitani. Many events are announced with posters pasted to walls in a few select locations in the centro storico. These posters usually only show up a week before the event. As with all things in Italy many times there is an associated food or beverage with the event.

This week-end is one of those where there is more to do than we can fit in a day. All week-end is the mercato antico, there are two different sagre (neighborhood festivals), a festival for a holy relic, they are having concerts for the youth each night on the hill above our apartment and there is a mini-car Formula 1 race this afternoon.

July starts the famous Quintana where all of Ascoli Piceno participates in this medieval festival that stretches into August. It might get hot but there will be no lack of things for us to see, taste, hear and enjoy.

First Panorama Italy tour

Yesterday we had our first group with Panorama Italy. This was a day trip for Vickie and Pam from Birmingham, Alabama who were in Ancona with their husband/partner who were in Italy visiting a company that manufactures coffee equipment. While the men worked the women were looking to take in the sights of Italy for the first time.

We were contacted just over a week ago by another lady who was supposed to be with them but had flight problems at JFK in New York. We made the arrangements on short notice and picked them up at their hotel in Ancona and brought them back to Ascoli Piceno for a tour of the centro storico. It was a warm and sunny which made it a perfect day for strolling around town. We had a leisurely lunch at the historic Caffe’ Meletti and then headed to Loreto to visit the Santa Casa at their request before returning them to their hotel.

This gave us a good opportunity to “get our feet wet” with a small day trip while Pam and Vickie thoroughly enjoyed the sights and tastes of Marche.

Fishing on stilts

Trabocchi

Wooden structures on stilts precariously perched above water always gave me a vision of a tropical area in the Far East, something you would see in a travel brochure or documentary show. These however are on the coast of southern Abruzzo.

Trabocchi are fishing platforms that have been used since the fifteenth century in an area they call Costa dei Trabocchi. They are suspended over deep water and accessed by walkways that look like they would require a prayer before crossing. There are long poles, resembling antennae, that stretch out over the water which they attach netsto be lowered into the sea. They resemble a huge crab entering the Adriatic Sea.

We have never seen these listed in any English language guide for Abruzzo, and finding a good book in English for this area can be difficult. I saw these mentioned briefly in an Italian guide for the region and recently we received a notice from Slow Food Abruzzo (www.calenta.com) that they will be having a series of dinners hosted on some of the trabocchi. We recently made the hour and a half drive down the A14 to see these for ourselves and they are certainly a unique site to see.

Keeping cars simple

Little cars

When we lived in New Mexico I had a company vehicle which was always a large comfortable four door sedan. On the roads around that state a sedan was still dwarfed by the majority of vehicles which were oversized SUVs and pick-up trucks. In a state with a lot of rural areas and farming/ranching these vehicle would be needed except that most of these I saw appeared that they had never seen the dust of an unpaved road, they were simply the latest version of the “mini-van” for taking Junior to his latest activity.
Here in Italy we have a 2 door Ford Fiesta which is about an average size vehicle for this area (a VW Bug is bigger). Considering that many of the hill towns have streets barely wide enough for this vehicle to fit through anything bigger just seems wrong. This is the land of the Fiat 500, three wheeled Ape and Vespa scooter. There are also some vehicles that have engines no bigger than a motorcycle and use a motorcycle license plate.

With the price of unleaded gasoline around $7.00 a gallon I have little sympathy when I see stories in the US bemoaning about gas prices approaching $4.00 a gallon. Pump prices closer to $7.00 a gallon might create some changes in the automobile market in the US…in my opinion.

This is not to say that we do not see large vehicles in Italy. Any trip on the autostrada will have you maneuvering around the tandem trailer trucks and being passed by Mercedes, Audio, Alfa Romeo and other sedans. You will also spot some Chrysler products like Jeep Cherokees and Voyager vans as well as other “small” SUVs. We even saw a Hummer H1 once on the outskirts of Rome – where would you go with something that big in Italy! Whenever we see one of these vehicles we just shake our heads, that is just wrong.

But then this is also the land of Ferrari and Lamborghini and where speed limits seem to be considered merely a suggestion.

Big Brother is watching

Eye in the sky

Ascoli Piceno has installed at least seven remote cameras around the centro storico area in an attempt to curtail vandalism. This is not a high crime area and we have never felt uncomfortable in any area of town at any hour but they do have a vandalism problem, mostly graffiti. To try and control the graffiti il sindaco, or mayor, has pushed a plan to install these cameras that are controlled by a central control office. There have been several articles in the papers about these since we moved here.

Graffiti is a problem in many areas of Italy and we saw plenty in the area around Anzio and you can’t get away from it in cities like Roma. Here in Ascoli it is mostly in the areas away from the main foot traffic and piazzas where you will find scribbling. There are some areas where I regularly see groups of i ragazzi hanging out and in those locations you will find entire alleys covered with graffiti. Some people here think of the graffiti as reflecting the “soul” of the city but most of what we see is just crap: someone professing love to their latest girlfriend, somebody’s name, bad English or just scribbles. There are some that may be more than this such as the one speaking out against all of the apartment renovations taking place so owners can charge higher rents, but to me it is still graffiti.

A camera was installed in the newly renovated and recently opened Chiostro di San Francesco and I have seen mention in the papers where the il sindaco wants to install more in other parts of the city outside of the centro storico. A local friend of ours repeatedly reminds us that il sindaco is a facist, so perhaps he is just looking at ways to control the populace. Another one of those things in Italy that would make an ACLU lawyer go nuts.

Parents in town

My parents had planned a trip to Greece with the hostel program over a year ago and when we announced our plans to be in Italy for all of 2007 they added a flight into Ancona to spend a couple days with us. We picked them up on Monday in Ancona and drove back to Ascoli Piceno after stopping for lunch in Recanati and taking a tour of Santa Casa in Loreto. Tuesday we took them up through the picturesque country north of Ascoli Piceno around Castignano and Montedinove.

While in Castignano at the top of the town we were fortunate to find the Chiesa San Pietro Apostole open and there was a lady inside doing some restoration work. She took some time to explain some of the artwork inside the church including the large partial fresco of the Last Judgment and a beautiful bejeweled reliquary. She also explained some of the signs on the front of the church relating to the Templar Knights who traveled through this area during the time of the Crusades.

On Wednesday we drove up into the Sibillini Mountains to Casteluccio to see if the flowers that area is so famous for were in bloom. Unfortunately only the yellows were out and the locals advised it would be mid-June before the valley would be full of color. From there we headed to Norcia to visit the home of their famous salami, funghi and tartufi.

Thursday morning we strolled around Ascoli Piceno and my Mom picked up a few souvenirs for herself and some friends. We then took them up to Jesi, just west of the Ancona airport, as they wanted to be closer for their early morning flight on Friday. It was a short visit but we were glad they were able to add a stop in Italy to their trip to Greece and we enjoyed the time to just be together.