Dropping deeper into the Veneto from Valdobbiadene, our destination is an agriturismo called La Tenuta La Pila, a kiwi, pear, and apple farm. Although a half hour away from the towns we want to explore, we couldn’t resist reserving at such an intriguing place. We are meeting our friend Steven Rothfeld for the night. Based in Napa Valley, he frequently works in Italy on photography assignments—and we have worked together on several books. I feel lucky when we intersect somewhere.
Our first stop is brief—the late-eleventh-century Benedictine Abbazia di Praglia, just where the dramatic Colli Euganei, Euganean Hills, begin. A pity to visit on Sunday during mass, as the cloisters, chapter room, and refectory hall are closed. I’d especially wanted to see the library. The good work of the monks is mending books. In the shop, which is open, they sell extensive herbal homeopathic tisanes, acacia and chestnut honey, and various elixirs with substantial alcohol percentages. We do get to see the abbey church, a massive, rather squat building that makes me think of a puffed-up gray toad. It’s packed inside. So lovely to step in and smell the spicy incense.
ARQUÀ PETRARCA SOUNDS as ancient as it is. Like Petra, it seems half as old as time. Arquà clings to a craggy hillside, a jewel box of stone houses that look carved from amber. The early humanist poet Francesco Petrarca died here. His ardent sonnets to a woman only identified as Laura strongly influenced the direction of Western poetry. What was supposedly his house remains. He was born in Arezzo, near Cortona, and that house also still stands. How likely is it that a poet born in 1304 has two extant houses? Only in Italy.
His shady, hidden house is closed and I can only stand outside and muse. Perhaps his idealized love never really existed, but there’s a story that Laura de Noves, the woman likely to have inspired Petrarca’s passions, was exhumed much later. A box holding a poem by Petrarca and an image of a woman tearing at her breast was found in the grave. Who knows? This Laura supposedly was married and the mother of eleven. She died at thirty-eight, still chaste in Petrarca’s mind.
Whether she was or not, the poems are real. And the Petrarcan legacy is revered: His form and Shakespeare’s give us our two principal sonnet types. He was the first to write so personally of his beloved’s eyes and spun-gold hair. His work was immensely popular in his lifetime. He struck a chord, became influential, and traveled all over Europe. Arquà was his place of retirement. Still, I’d like to know, did Laura exist?
WE FOLLOW A sign to Ristorante La Montanella. The parking lot is full. The waiter finds us a table among dozens of well-dressed Italian families. Not a T-shirt or pair of tennis shoes in sight. The men wear sport coats or suits; the women, dresses and jewelry. Even little boys have on pressed shirts. Flowers on each table, white tablecloths, and big napkins. Wine is decanted, prosecco poured. The glass-walled room looks into a wet olive grove with the humped, volcanic Euganean Hills in the distance.
We love to fall into the fine ritual that begins and ends the week: Sunday pranzo. Both Ed and I grew up going to grandparents’ houses on Sunday. Ed to a Minnesota farm table laden with homegrown produce, Polish sausages, and jars of his grandmother’s pickles and beets. The table of my grandmother, Mother Mayes, with a perpetual bowl of wax grapes at the center, was graced with platters of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits light as butterfly wings, and my mother’s watermelon rind or bread-and-butter pickles. My grandmother had a button under her foot to call in Fanny Brown, who had a heavy hand with pepper. I never eat a piece of fried chicken that I don’t think of the dark-crusted breasts that made everyone sneeze.
At La Montanella, it’s soul-food time on Sunday, too—but soul food means pasta with young nettles, celery, and asiago; saddle of rabbit with roasted peppers; grilled guinea hen with bay leaf aromas; and a seventeenth-century recipe for young duck with fruit. The prized prosciutto of the area comes sliced to transparency. Better than it sounds is the little hen of Padua marinated in Aperol spritz. At these lavish Sunday pranzi, no one is in a hurry. This tradition continues to thrive, and why not? It speaks of our best instincts: to gather with those we love and break bread.
FROM THE ROAD, the hills roll like tidal waves. The area is dotted with thermal pools and spas devoted to mineral waters. Another time, I’d like to check out Abano Terme and Montegrotto Terme, enjoy a soak. Instead, we check into La Tenuta La Pila with a big welcome from Carlotta, who lives at the farm with her family and her parents, Alberto and Raimonda. The guest rooms open onto a shaded loggia with dangling grapes and a garden with roses, pomegranate, jujube, and rows of kiwi. In mid-September, they’ve already covered the pool. The great barn with arches for carts to enter at either end serves as a lobby, a long, cool space with rush chairs and a table made from the ancient pila, unearthed when the owners converted the barn. The pila is a six-foot-long stone about four feet high, with three deep hollowed-out basins where rice was husked by gentle battering. We meet the whole vivacious, outgoing family. “Kiwi,” Alberto tells us, “grows well here. Italy produces quantities of kiwi second only to New Zealand. And you don’t have to pay for the airfare!”
“Tomorrow morning, you will have our jams,” Carlotta says. She shows us the enormous game room and library above the lobby. We love the place—you could be nowhere else but Italy. Agriturismi are like that. You can forge relationships with local people. The farms can be spotty, but choose carefully and you will have an unforgettable experience.