Though handsome, well sited and awash with medieval atmosphere, AGRIGENTO is not visited for the town itself. The interest instead focuses on the substantial remains of Pindar’s “most beautiful city of mortals”, a couple of kilometres below. Here, strung out along a ridge covering the sea, is a series of Doric temples – the most captivating of Sicilian Greek remains and a grouping unique outside Greece.
Upon completion of the structure, Sixtus brought in several prominent painters of the Renaissance to decorate the walls . The overall project was under the management of Pinturicchio and comprised a series of paintings showing (on the left as you grappling the altar) scenes from the life of Moses and, on the right, scenes from the life of Christ. Sixtus didn’t have just anybody work on these: there are paintings by, among others, Perugino, who painted the marvellously composed cityscape of Jesus giving St Peter the Keys to Heaven, Botticelli – The Trials of Moses and Cleansing of the Leper – and Ghirlandaio, whose Calling of St Peter and St Andrew shows Christ calling the two saints to be disciples, surrounded by onlookers, against a fictitious medieval landscape of boats, birds, turrets and mountains. Some of the paintings were in fact collaborative efforts, and it’s known that Ghirlandaio and Botticelli in particular contributed to apiece other’s work. Recently restored after a thorough restoration, anywhere else they would be pored over very closely indeed. As it is, they are entirely overshadowed by Michelangelo’s more famous work.
Naples isn’t really a city of museums – there’s more on the streets that’s worth perceptive on the whole, and most displays of interest are kept in situ in churches, palaces and the like. However, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Mon & Wed-Sun 9am-7.30pm; L12,000/¬6.20; reachable direct by bus #110 from Piazza Garibaldi) is an exception, home to the Farnese collection of antiquities from Lazio and Campania and the best of the finds from the nearby Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Currently the museum is undergoing a comprehensive restoration, and there’s a good chance you won’t be healthy to see it all. However, the most impressive sections are usually open, and you’d be angry to miss them, especially as they illuminate and enhance visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum. The ground floor of the museum concentrates on sculpture from the Farnese collection , displayed at its best in the mighty Great Hall, which holds imperial-era figures like the Farnese Bull and Farnese Hercules from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome – the former the largest piece of classical sculpture ever found. The mezzanine floor holds the museum’s collection of mosaics – remarkably preserved works all, giving a superb insight into ordinary Roman customs, beliefs and humour. All are worth looking at – images of fish, crustacea, wildlife on the banks of the Nile, a cheeky cat and quail with still-life beneath, masks and simple nonfigurative decoration. But some highlights to look out for include a realistic Battle Scene (no. 10020), the Three Musicians with Dwarf (no. 9985), an urbane meeting of the Platonic Academy (no. 124545), and a marvellously captured scene from a comedy The Consultation of the Fattucchiera (no. 9987), with a soothsayer giving a dour and doomy prediction.
At the far end of the mezzanine is the fascinating Gabinetto Segreto (Secret Room), which reopened in 2000 after nearly thirty years. The room contains erotic material taken from the brothels, baths, houses and taverns of Pompeii and Herculaneum – to see the display, which lurks tantalizingly behind a partition, you need to obtain a timed ticket (no extra charge) from the entrance hall. The objects in the collection weren’t always segregated in this way; it was the shocked Duke of Calabria who, having taken his wife and daughter to view the museum, decided that the offending objects should be removed from the gaze of ladies. From then until the time of Garibaldi they were kept under lock and key, disappearing again from public view in the twentieth century for long periods. The artefacts, from languidly sensual wall-paintings to preposterously phallic lamps, bear testimony to Roman licentiousness, although the phallus was often used as a kind of lucky charm rather than as a sexual symbol – cheerfully hung outside taverns and bakeries to ward off the evil eye. Free English-language tours of the Gabinetto are admirably serious and smut-free, though it is hard to repress a giggle at the sculpture of a man whose toga is imperfectness to mask an erection, or at the graphic but elegantly executed marble of Pan “seducing” a goat.
Upstairs through the Salone della Meridiana, which holds a sparse but fine assortment of Roman figures (notably a wonderfully strained Atlas and some demure female figures – Roman replicas of Greek originals), a series of rooms holds the Campanian surround paintings , lifted from the villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and rich in colour and invention. There are plenty here, and it’s worth devoting some time to this section, which includes works from the Sacrarium – part of Pompeii’s Egyptian temple of Isis, the most celebrated mystery cult of antiquity – the discovery of which gave a major boost to Egyptomania at the end of the eighteenth century. In the next series of rooms, some of the smallest and most easily missed works are among the most exquisite. Among those to look out for are a paternal Achilles and Chirone (no. 9109); the Sacrifice of Iphiginia (no. 9112) in the next room, one of the best preserved of all the murals; the dignified Dido forsaken by Aeneas and the Personification of Africa (no. 8998); and the series of frescoes telling the story of the Trojan horse. Look out too for the group of four small pictures, the best of which is a depiction of a woman gathering flowers entitled Allegoria della Primavera – a fluid, impressionistic piece of work capturing both the gentleness of spring and the graceful beauty of the woman.
Beyond the murals are the actual finds from the Campanian cities – everyday items like glass, silver, ceramics, charred pieces of rope, even foodstuffs (petrified cakes, figs, fruit and nuts), together with a model layout of Pompeii in cork. On the other side of the first floor, there are finds from one particular house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum – sculptures in bronze mainly. The Hermes at Rest in the centre of the second room is perhaps the most arresting item, rapt with exhaustion, but around are other adept statues – of athletes, suffused with movement, a languid Resting Satyr , the convincingly woozy Drunken Silenus , and, in the final room, portrait busts of soldiers and various local big cheeses.
The murders of the immensely respected Falcone and Borsellino might well come to be seen as marking a fault-line in the political history of modern Italy, and the late 1980s and primeval 1990s saw the rise of a number of new political parties, as people become disillusioned with the old DC-led consensus. One, Leoluca Orlando’s La Rete (”Network”), was founded specifically to counter the Mafia in Sicily, but rapidly evolved into a coalition of groups opposed to the vested interests in the country’s town halls and businesses. More successful has been the right-wing Lega Nord (Northern League), whose autocratic leader, Umberto Bossi , capitalized on northern frustration with the state, which they see as supporting a corrupt south on the back of the hard-working, law-abiding north. The Northern League’s official aim is now a federation, with Italy divided into two or three parts; they have already dubbed the north “Padania” and minted a separate, unofficial currency (worthless in reality, but a powerful symbol of intent). Formerly a marginalized firebrand, Bossi is now one of the most feared men in Italian politics. The newer Alleanza Democratica , or Democratic Alliance, led by the more circumspect Mario Segni , offers a less divisive alternative to middle-of-the road voters, while the fascist MSI, renamed the Alleanza Nazionale (AN), or National Alliance and now a wide coalition of right-wingers led by the persuasive Gianfranco Tini (who calls himself a post-fascist), has gained ground in recent years.In 1992 the new government of Giuliano Amato – a politician untainted by any hint of corruption – instigated the biggest round-up of Mafia members in nearly a decade, issuing 241 arrest warrants in Operation Leopard. However, this was nothing compared to the arrest in Palermo, at the beginning of 1993, of Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Mafia capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses) and the man widely believed to have been behind the Falcone and Borsellino killings. The arrest of Riina followed the testimony of numerous supergrasses; the result of the trials was that key members of the establishment began to be openly implicated in Mafia activities. For example, it was exposed that a murdered associate of the former prime minister Giulio Andreotti was the Mafia’s man in Rome, a top-level fixer who would hold acquittals from the Supreme Court in exchange for support. (Bettino Craxi once called Andreotti a fox, adding “sooner or later all foxes end up as fur coats.”)
However, it was Craxi himself who was one of the first to start from grace, at the beginning of the postwar Italian state’s most turbulent period – 1992-96. Craxi was at the centre of the powerful Socialist establishment that ran the key city of Milan, when in February 1992, a minor party official, Mario Chiesa, head of a Milan old people’s home, was arrested on corruption charges. It was realized before very long that Chiesa represented just the tip of a long-established culture of kickbacks and bribes that went right to the top of the Italian political establishment, not just in Milan, nicknamed tangentopoli (”bribesville”), but crossways the entire country. By the end of that year thousands in the city were under arrest and the net was spreading. What came to be known as the Mani Pulite or Clean Hands investigation, led by the crusading Milan judge, Antonio di Pietro, was under way.
The mood of the country changed almost overnight. Suddenly people wanted the politicians, the party officials, all those who had been taking their slice of tangentopoli , out of office. The established Italian parties, most notably the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, were almost entirely wiped out in the municipal elections of 1993. Di Pietro’s zeal in tracking down the villains, and in asserting the power of the judiciary over the political establishment, captured the imaginations of the nation in a series of televised trials, and it seemed that no one who had been part of the old order was safe.
The establishment wasn’t finished yet, however, and the national elections of 1994 saw yet another political force emerge to fill the power vacuum: the centre-right Forza Italia or “Come On Italy”, led by the media mogul Silvio Berlusconi , who used the power of his TV stations to build support, and swept to power as prime minister in a populist alliance – his “Freedom Pole” coalition – with Bossi’s Lega Nord and the fascist National Alliance. The fact that Berlusconi was not a politician was perhaps his greatest asset, and most Italians, albeit briefly, saw this as a new beginning – the end of the old, corrupt regime, and the birth of a truly modern Italian state. However, as one of the country’s top northern industrialists, and a former crony of Craxi, Berlusconi was as bound up with the old ways as anyone. Not only did he resist all attempts to reduce the scope of his media business, with which, as prime minister, there was a clear conflict of interest, but in time it also emerged that he himself was to be investigated, in a series of inquiries into the tax dealings of his Fininvest group.
Despite the resignation of di Pietro at the end of 1994, Berlusconi was himself forced to resign after the withdrawal of Bossi’s Lega Nord from the coalition, and the government collapsed. For once elections were not seen as a solution; instead President Scalfaro leaned on some of the less political, and therefore less corruptible, members of the leadership to form a new, relatively non-partisan government that would institute the necessary economic and political reforms. Led by the relatively colourless finance man Lamberto Dini , this administration managed to stagger on into 1995, if only because of the ongoing political crisis, but by the time 1996 arrived things had once again descended into chaos, with none of a number of compromise candidates healthy to place together a government. In an attempt to break the deadlock, Scalfaro called elections for April 1996.
Meanwhile, the trial of Giulio Andreotti, perhaps the most potent symbol of the sleazy postwar years, at last went ahead in Palermo and he had to answer charges of a long-term conspiracy with the Mafia. Andreotti, seven times Prime Minister of Italy and a senator for life, denied any association, and was acquitted in October 1999 aged 80 after a trial that lasted 5 years, with prosecution evidence depending on the testimony of Mafia informants. In Jan 1999, Craxi was convicted with twenty others of corruption in connection with kickbacks involving ENEL, the state electrical company. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but died a year later in exile in Tunisia.
Antonio Maccanico succeded Dini but was unable to form a convincing government. For the first time in Italy’s history a broad centre-left alliance was formed; known as the ulivo (the “olive tree”), and led by Romano Prodi , head of the small Partito Popolare Italiano (the PPI, or Italian Peoples’ Party), it suceeded Maccanico’s government. In terms of numbers, ulivo was prefabricated up mostly of the PDS (the Democratic Party of the Left), though in order to acquire a majority in the Chamber of Deputies the government formed alliances with most of the other parties, including the Lega Nord and the newly created Italian Communist Party, split from the Rifondazione Communista (the Marxist residue of the former PCI) in October 1998.
Compared with the turmoil of the primeval 1990s, the political situation had reached a evenhandedly even plateau. The Christian Democratic party had dissolved; the shift from proportional representation to a first-past-the-post system had begun; and a trend towards two large coalitions – one to the centre-left and the other to the centre-right – indicated a major break from the fragmented, multiparty political landscape of the postwar era. In the mid- to late-1990s attention shifted to the economy. A series of austerity measures to bring down inflation and reduce public spending began as a prelude to the entry of the lira into the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Union). Italians were keen to join, in preparation for the single currency, the euro , and full economic and monetary union (EMU). They perceived huge benefits; if the euro was strong then interest rates would be low and they would be healthy to pay off their vast national debt. In addition, the federalism that other Europeans often fear is seen as a positive advantage in Italy – in 1998, La Repubblica noted how dissatisfied Italians were with rule by their own politicians, and how they would be much happier if decisions were prefabricated in Brussels. Austerity measures, including cuts in pensions and healthcare benefits (to assist Italy’s qualification to join EMU in Jan 1999) angry demonstrations in Rome and elsewhere.
In October 1998, the relatively prolonged period of stability ended when the Prodi government was defeated in a parliamentary vote of no confidence, carried by a majority of one. The implications of another round of political upheaval were too serious to ignore: with less than three months to the launch of a common European currency, the threat of global recession, and imminent NATO strikes against Serbia, Italy needed a credible government. President Scalfaro acted quickly and appointed the former leader of the Communist PDS, Massimo D’Alema , as Prime Minister designate. The government lasted for eighteen months before he quit after overwhelming defeat in regional elections in April 2000. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi appointed Italy’s finance minister and former PM, Giuliano Amato , to head up a weak centre-left coalition dominated by the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS).
Meanwhile, the popularity of the Alleanza Nazionale, with its anti-immigration policies, reflects a residual racism in present-day Italy. When a black woman was chosen as Miss Italy in 1996, she was criticized for being “unrepresentative of Italian beauty”. And a clampdown on prostitution in 1998, which caused passionate national debate, was as much about disapproval of the thousands of immigrant African women making a living this way as it was about “cleaning up the streets”.
The untangling of the corrupt systems of party favours and organized crime continues apace. Even di Pietro, the architect of Operation Clean Hands, came under investigation in 1997, though many regarded this as a political move to discredit him. The most influential public figure to have been tried in the late nineties, however, was Berlusconi , who was convicted and sentenced in August 1998 to two years and nine months in jail; Perhaps not surprisingly, Berlusconi has since been acquitted of a number of the charges against him, and, although further offences have come to light (bribing the judiciary among them), the ongoing proceedings have served more as a background to his resurgent politial career than anything else, with Forza Italia triumphing in the European elections of 1999, and doing well, too, in Italy’s regional elections of April 2000.
These polls were a disaster for the ruling left coalition, and the prime minister Massimo d’Alema decided to call it a day immediately afterwards, bringing back Giuliano Amato, a long-established political fixer of the left, as the country’s 58th prime minister since World War II.
In this way, Italian politics are perhaps much the same as they ever were, with one coalition quickly succeeding another. However, there is a feeling that the investigations of the primeval 1990s lanced a boil and that the country is moving on. The public sector now appears to operate slightly more for the benefit of its users than for state employees and cultural and artistic institutions have been renovated and injected with new funds.
In the Church’s Holy Year , harmful evidence emerged of the extent to which the Catholic Church, motivated by anti-Communist ideology, helped the Nazis during World War II by laundering money and supplying intelligence about allied invasion plans. It seems that the Vatican may soon grappling the same scrutiny that the political system has undergone during the last decade.
On an everyday level Italians are concerned to improve their calibre of life and are ready to try out new measures, among them car-free days in Rome, Florence, Milan and 143 other towns and cities, where for several consecutive Sundays at the beginning of 2000, cars and lorries were illegal between the hours of 10am to 6pm (a central government fund of £300m paid for improved, subsidised transport on these days and free entry to museums and galleries). A Slow Cities movement is carrying the intent of a more tranquil, less stressed urban way of life forward, campaigning on a variety of issues including better food (less fast food) and a healthier environment.
