Day 7: Quirky Town
We are staying in what we are styling “Quirky Town”, after a short (8 km) walk this afternoon. We took the advice in our book and spent the morning exploring Sorano, especially the Orsini fortress at the top of the town. Partially dug into the tufa, it looked amazing from the outside. We purchased tickets for the tour and the four of us were the only participants as Jada, the guide, took us down narrow passageways and tunnels, with intricate ventilation systems and killing zones where the walls were pierced by slits for arquebuses and muskets.
It must have been the pride of the Orsini when complete, but the northern part of the Duchy was swallowed up by Tuscany and the south ended up in the Papal States. No one cared for centuries, explaining how the two fortresses survived where others were destroyed or demolished.
We eventually wandered out of Sorano after a very pleasant lunch — there is bad food in Italy, but you have to want to find it! We knew that our next stop, San Quirico, might not, match the standards of other accommodations so we were prepared to be surprised and determined to enjoy the walk. We wandered down the river valley below Sorano, towards a deserted medieval town that was itself built on earlier Roman and Etruscan ruins. Now everything is swallowed in the forest.
The abandoned church was just the venue Caz and Al needed to reenact their wedding procession, which was very odd in the middle of a roofless church surrounded by woods. Very funny, but in keeping with the rest of the day as we walked into San Quirico.
The remodeling of the town by the US Air Force was certainly not under the control of an architect. Apparently, another small town going back to the 16th Century, San Quirico had the misfortune to host a significant Wehrmacht headquarters in 1944, so the Americans decided to bomb it flat – a precursor to Trump’s current foreign policy triumphs. Hastily rebuilt, it has no architectural merit and a cloying aroma of sheep shit.
Our accommodation was fine and we were not unhappy with our meal, but as the only guests in the hotel, we had trouble finding a suitable venue for an aperitif. We ended up in the sports bar, where the wine was pretty good and very cheap, and the local, farmers crowded in to watch the football and drink coffee and wine. It was definitely Quirky Town, but you would feel a bit quirky too if Uncle Sam had paid you an aerial visit!
