Amore, Storia e Gelato

by Clara Tripodi (Brazil)

Making a local connection Italy

It was a very hot day in Florence – the hottest in 10 years, hitting 42 degrees – but the sun was feeling warm like a nice cup of hot chocolate. My dad, who ever since I can remember has been obsessed with Italy, couldn´t stop talking about the Piazza del Duomo. When we got there and saw it, I was completely amazed. Humanity has managed to destroy almost every piece of beauty on Earth, but I must say, has created some beautiful stuff too. A gorgeous building was standing upon me, with precise, delicate and dazzling details carved in pink, green and white marble. The view from the top made climbing the 463 steps of the stairs totally worth it. Up there I felt something that I had never felt before: raw freedom. The blue sky seemed to have been painted by God himself, and it matched the green from the hills far away. I could stay up there forever feeling the wind in my open arms while staring at the labyrinth of red roofs which was Florence. We went back down, but before we could go to our next destination, my dad pulled me to the side of the Duomo and told me to look up. All I could see were the details on the wall, until he took my finger and pointed to something I had completely overlooked amongst the statues of saints and carvings: the statue of a bull, with an open mouth looking down, as if observing something. “There are two theories about the existence of that bull. – he started telling me – The first one is that they were essential creatures in the construction of the Duomo, and the statue is there to honor them. The second one, my personal favorite and much more Italian, I must say, is that during the construction of the Duomo a baker and his wife opened a little shop to sell bread to the workers, but the wife met one of the foreman and they ended up falling in love. When the baker found out, he took them to court, where they were humiliated and sentenced to never see each other again. The foreman, as a revenge, carved that bull and put it on the Duomo, in a position where the statue stared at the baker in his little shop, as a constant reminder that his wife loved someone else.” He always seemed to surprise me with his cultural knowledge. Our next stop was the Piazza della Signoria, and when I thought I had seen it all, Florence just surprised me again with one of the greatest things I had ever seen. Meandering through all those statues was like walking through history – and in a way I was. Each one telling a story, with different characters and perspectives. I then stopped and found myself intrigued with a specific one: The Rape of the Sabine Women. The statue is composed of a man holding a woman in the air and a second one crouched on the floor watching her. The scene was anguishing, but it didn´t seem like a rape. No one was joyful, but they were harmonious somehow. I told that to my father and he obviously knew the story behind it. When Rome was founded something quite essential was missing: women. The closest of those were in a near tribe called Sabine, and when the Romans asked their father to marry them, they declined. And so, as typical Romans, they arranged a dinner with the Sabines and by the end, they overpowered the men and kidnapped all the women. When the Sabines managed to invade Rome, it was too late. The women didn´t want to get rescued. They had fallen in love with their kidnappers and with Rome. It reminded me a bit of the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones. Later, after 15 minutes in the line of a gelateria, we got back to the Duomo. Walking during the sunset, while eating my gelato alla Stracciatella – which tasted like an explosion of glitter in my mouth – I began to understand my dad´s little obsession, because I had just fallen in love, with Italy and it´s gelato.