Let’s all move to Trento. We’d never regret it. We’d be surrounded by the impressive towns of Merano, Bolzano, Rovereto, the marly green Adige river rushing through the countryside, easy drives to nature reserves, ski resorts, bicycle and hiking trails in the mountains, the great wines of the Alto Adige. The cheese, the food! Compact and walkable, but still big enough (with a population of around 117,000) to feel like a real city, Trento easily wins hearts and minds.
Its center is anchored by the weighty Castello Buonconsiglio and protected by a stretch of steep, machicolated stone walls. We’re drawn first into the travel bookstore and emerge with a stack. William needs batteries and spots a camera store where he also buys a sensible bag for all his supplies. Although the center looks as though it could be preserved in amber, the vibe feels totally modern. The Pasticceria San Vigilio offers delicious juice extracts in fresh combinations: mint, ginger, apple, and lemon or pineapple, peach, and lemon. We order one melon-carrot-orange juice and one strawberry-pomegranate-carrot. Ed sticks to espresso. We leave with a bag of pastel macarons. More bookstores— irresistible!
GETTING HERE WAS less enjoyable. We left Cortona early, planning on reaching the Alto Adige by late morning. On the traffic-crazed autostrada north of Bologna, we had just pulled out of an Autogrill and gotten up to speed when the car lurched and made a screeching sound. “Blowout!” William shouted. Ed squeezed over two lanes, hazard light flashing. Not easy in hundred-mile-an-hour traffic. What luck—he reached a pull-out space just ahead. The front right tire wasn’t just flat: it was shredded down to the wheel rim. Too hot to touch. Though valiant, the two guys couldn’t get the thing off. The space where we parked was littered with food wrappers, condoms (who would have sex here?), rotting fruit. On the phone, we tried to reach roadside assistance from Alfa Romeo. Hard to say exactly where we were, but William noticed a kilometer marker on the median. The phone kept cutting out. Finally, Ed got through. They would send a tow truck but warned that on Saturday, it would be hard to locate an open garage. Cars and mammoth trucks whooshed by. We drank water to survive the ninety-degree heat, and searched the Internet for any gommista in the area. The tow truck came. We were ratcheted up onto the back and the driver took off like the Formula One racer he must have once been. We swayed and bounced, trying not to look sideways when he took a curve. But he found an open garage; we were able to buy a used tire, the only one they had that fit with our others, and soon we were back on the mad autostrada. “Things have a way of working out in Italy,” Ed reminded us.
AROUND A CORNER, we face the grand Piazza Duomo—one of the most harmonious squares in the country, ringed with handsome buildings and centered on the playful fountain of Neptune. We scan the elegant bishops’ palace, the long north side of the Basilica Duomo di San Vigilio, and the eleventh-century bell tower with a crenellated top. All the domes are different—hexagonal, onion-shaped, square-topped. A fine rose window and rows of slender colonnades enliven the side of the church. Midway, a small porch juts out. The bishops at the Council of Trent entered here, it is said, and I imagine them passing through the rose-variegated columns supported by a pair of doleful lions. They would have looked out at the mountains rising in the background, peaks still sporting snow in mid-June.
The rest of the piazza looks secular, inviting. A four-story frescoed building with arcaded sidewalks and green awnings shelters a café. When I walk closer, I see that the paintings are of mythological scenes on the left, and on the right, allegorical scenes representing time, love, virtue, and other good things. My guidebook says the scenes form “a moral book inspired by renaissance culture.” Other buildings of varying heights, painted soft apricot, Pompeian red, and butter yellow, contribute to the vital pulse of the piazza. And everywhere, umbrellas sheltering those sipping drinks, staring into phones, and visiting with friends. What more could you want? Well, another espresso for Ed. William is taking a million photos. Then we gelato along, happily.
Running off the piazza, via Rodolfo Belenzani, the most elegant street in town, is wider than other streets and lined with seignorial palazzi. Most are frescoed. Palazzo Quetta Alberti-Colico’s sixteenth-century paintings show traces of fifteenth-century ones beneath. The designs in faded royal blues and reds echo the shapes of the windows. Other fanciful geometric touches resemble some sort of renaissance board game. During the Council of Trent meetings, which were convened in three sessions between 1545 and 1563, many of the visiting bishops stayed on this street. In similar washed-away colors, Palazzo Geremia’s frescoes depict characters from history, a wheel of fortune, and people arranged in trompe-l’oeil windows beside real ones. The street ends with the church of San Francesco Saverio, where we see traces of an earlier structure on the façade.
This town is adorned with towers and other incredible palazzi. I especially admire Palazzo Larcher Fogazzaro on via Mazzini—a noble Baroque building with a marvelous tall, polished door, and a balcony held up by two carvings of Atlas. A woman is buzzing herself in while balancing a bag of groceries. I wish I could see her apartment, the life lived inside it.
IN LATE AFTERNOON, we check into the oxblood-red Villa Madruzzo, a former grand home. There are newer rooms in another building, but we’re in the old villa. Our big, old-fashioned and comfortable room is next to William’s. He is old enough at fifteen to have his own room, but I still want him close by. We reach his favorite amenity—an indoor pool—by tunnel.
We didn’t realize when we booked, but we signed up for half-board. This breakfast-and-dinner-included custom lingers in many traditional Italian hotels. I rather like sitting down among people who have their wine bottles, half-empty from last night, on the table and already know the waitstaff. The window-lined dining room reminds me of summers when I would go with my grandmother to White Springs, Florida. The grand white hotel was always full of regulars, who came frequently to sip the sulfur waters. The water tasted like the smell of Easter eggs I found in the bushes weeks after the hunt. In the grand dining room, or so I remember it, we ate butter beans, corn, ham, biscuits, peach turnovers—all the southern delights of summer.
At Villa Madruzzo, they’re serving local German-influenced food. This tree-level dining room feels like a terrarium. The guests speak German. Trento citizens speak predominantly Italian; but north of here, German prevails. And in pockets, the ancient language Ladin, a mix of Latin and Friulian-Swiss dialects, still thrives.
William and I are up for the platter of herb dumplings poached in broth with sauerkraut, smoked pork, and potato pancakes. Very tasty, and nothing like anything I’ve ever eaten in Italy! Ed’s choice on the set menu is another hearty serving of yellow mushrooms, veal meatballs, chard, and polenta.
BRILLIANT. EXHILARATING. MUSE: Muse delle Scienze. We are overwhelmed by the hard, soaring lines of the museum of science designed by Renzo Piano. Trento has brought to stunning success a languishing industrial area just a short walk from town. The whole complex is near the Adige. The museum, residences, parks, conference centers, and more give the impression that the space is a town unto itself. Alto Adige is one of the richest areas in the whole European Union. How enlightened—they’re translating their success into artistic works.
The large and airy museum is like a giant, sharp-angled greenhouse, whose jutting, pointed shapes recall glaciers and the surrounding mountains. Pools reflect the glass panels, a watery mosaic. The initial visual impact primes us for a stupendous interior.
We start on the sixth floor, the top. The exhibits are built around a large atrium looking down all the way to the bottom floor. Here’s the magic, what mesmerizes: Suspended by thin wires at different heights all the way to the ground floor are the birds and animals of the Dolomiti. As if in a dream, the animals float in midair. The taxidermy is superb—everything looks caught right now, in motion. This is the most fabulous science and natural history museum I’ve ever seen. (Many are gloomy.) We’re interactive with all the smart exhibits—ecology, aquariums, history of the Dolomites, pendulums, extinction, avalanches, climate change, even a way to see how you’d look in the caveman era. MUSE floods the mind and senses.
We walk around the atrium as we descend, catching the creatures from different perspectives. When I was a child, my father told me that when pets died, they went to “happy hunting ground.” I imagined meadows, not questioning if my rabbit and baby ducks still would be prey to his bird dogs. In MUSE, these suspended rabbits and foxes and wolves and deer all inhabit the air of a peaceable kingdom. Here, Daddy, is happy hunting ground.
Trento, a hard place to leave.
NOTES:
The languages Ladin and Ladino are often confused. Ladino, evolved from Spanish and Hebrew, is not spoken in this area. The local language, Ladin, has different forms and evolved from Latin roots, plus Swiss and Friulian dialects.
A description of MUSE: https://www.cultura.trentino.it/eng/Cultural-venues/All-cultural-venues/Museums-and-collections/Muse-Science-Museum-Trento
On Renzo Piano: http://www.archdaily.com/273403/happy-birthday-renzo-piano