Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

At first glance the countryside around Modena looks bland and uninviting - discount furniture and lighting stores, crumbling farmhouses the size of mansions, and factories. Further north onto the plain, wide vistas of maize fields, rows of pollarded fruit trees and vines strung up from pergolas are broken only occasionally by a line of poplar trees shimmering in the heat. You might, however, want to venture out to visit the Galleria Ferrari , at Via Dino Ferrari 43 in MARANELLO , south of Modena (Tues-Sun 9.30am-12.30pm & 2.30-6pm; L15,000/¬7.75), an exhibition centre dedicated to the racing dynasty; it’s reachable on the regular ATCM Blu-bus to Maranello from Modena bus station on Via Molza. On display are the cups and trophies won by the Ferrari team over the years, an assortment of Ferrari engines, along with vintage and contemporary examples of the cars themselves and a reconstruction of Enzo Ferrari’s study.

CARPI , the region’s main centre, around 15km north, is also worth a few hours of your time. The town’s central Piazza dei Martiri is an enormous and impressive open space, almost worth the trip alone, and the sixteenth-century Castello del Pio , a mass of ornamental turrets and towers, holds another interesting museum inside - the Museo al Deportato (Thurs, Sat, Sun & public hols 9.30am-12.30pm & 3.30-6.30pm; free). German occupying forces in World War II held prisoners awaiting deportation to concentration camps at a site in Fossoli, 6km to the north - the camp sheds still stand, dilapidated, in a field - and the museum has displays on the camps and the conditions for the prisoners, neatly putting them into context with information on political and interracial exile. The most sobering aspect of the museum is its layout; you progress through the almost bare rooms accompanied by a long ribbon of quotes painted on the walls, taken from prisoners’ letters. Some were chesty to have stood by their ideals, others expressed a fear of death or simply their frustration at dying so young.

The activity outside in the square provides some welcome relief with slick clothing stores running the length of its sixteenth-century red-brick Portico Lungo . At one end of the square are a couple of cafés and the bright ochre Teatro Comunale , at the other the Renaissance Cattedrale with Baroque facade. Bar Tazza d’Oro opposite the theatre does a brisk trade (try the iced tea in summer), but for more substantial snacks head for the Bottega della Pizza at Via Berengario 13. The rest of Carpi is unexciting, so it’s unlikely that you’ll want to hang around town. There are trains and buses every hour to Modena, but if you do want to stay try the rooms at Albergo da Giorgio at Via G. Rocca 1-5 (tel 059.685.365; L90,000-120,000/¬46.48-61.98).

About 10km northeast of Modena, and reachable by bus, NONANTOLA is best known for its abbey , founded in 752 by Anselmo - then an abbot, later prefabricated a saint. The abbey seems at first unprepossessing, rebuilt as it was in red-brick in the thirteenth century, but the portal more than makes up for it, flanked by stone lions and topped by carvings executed by the workshop of Wiligelmus, who worked also on Modena’s and (probably) Cremona’s cathedrals. The carvings tell some familiar stories, in an earthy, vernacular style, perhaps best exemplified by the figures of the asses in the nativity scene. Also featured in the series of carvings are St Adrian and St Sylvester, both of whom are buried in the monastic interior - the church is in fact dedicated to St Sylvester.

Tags: countryside, dino ferrari, discount furniture, factories, farmhouses, ferrari, first glance, fruit trees, galleria ferrari, lighting stores, mansions, maranello, Modena, poplar trees, sun, vines