ON SMOOTH ITALIAN HIGHWAYS, MY RIDE TO POTENZA WAS much shorter than Francesco and Leonardantonio’s three-day journey. It was just ninety minutes, fully air-conditioned, though we no longer needed the AC by the time we arrived. The town was in the mountains and at least ten degrees cooler than the coast. I was actually a little chilly when I stepped out of the car, the first time I felt so that month. I thought of Francesco and how cold it would be at night in that prison in the middle of November.
Giuseppe couldn’t come with us. His long-awaited wheat harvest was taking place that day. So Imma and I made the trip without him.
We wanted to see the prison, Santa Croce, where Francesco and Leonardantonio served time, and the old courthouse where they had been put on trial.
People from Matera still hadn’t gotten over the fact that Potenza had replaced them as the capital of the region more than two centuries ago. But Potenza’s 380,000 residents could not care less. Their city was more than six times larger.
Most of the town was modern and ugly. Earthquakes over the centuries had destroyed many of the old, beautiful historic buildings. Potenza was brutta. It couldn’t compare to Matera’s tragic beauty. When you told someone from Matera you were going to Potenza, they sneered and always made some snide comment. “Why would you want to go to Potenza?” “What does Potenza have that we haven’t got?” “Have you been there? It’s not worth the gas to get there.”
The city’s last major earthquake had been in 1980, so much of the architecture looked like it belonged in a drab office park in suburban America. Tall, featureless, boxy buildings were everywhere, eyesores compared to the charming medieval towns nearby.
Giuseppe put us in touch with someone he knew who worked in one of the new government buildings. He pointed us in the right direction. Imma had studied at the university here for a little while, so she was familiar with a few neighborhoods. After a few stops and what seemed like several miles walking up and down the steep hills of Potenza, we arrived at the state archive. My bunions were killing me.
We had to place all our belongings in a locker when we arrived. The building was very modern, even more modern than the archive in Matera, larger and more upscale, with polished wooden desks and wooden, cushioned chairs, tall ceilings and windows, and a shining tile floor. Framed posters covered the walls and glass cases displayed ancient texts. There didn’t seem to be a speck of dust and the air was much cooler than in the stuffy archive in Matera.
It was nearly empty, with only one other person there doing research at one of the wooden desks. She shushed us when we spoke too loudly. The file clerks and librarians were dressed in long white lab coats and seemed especially official, more like scientists than librarians.
Imma told the clerk that we were searching for information on the Santa Croce prison. The lab-coated woman disappeared and emerged moments later with a cart full of large blueprints. Santa Croce—Holy Cross—was located on Strada Fuori near Porta San Luca.
Strada Fuori translated as Way Out. And this place was way the hell out there, at the very edge of town, surrounded by farmlands owned by Nicola Doti and someone named Decanto. According to the architectural drawings, a prison yard was surrounded by a series of cells. When we asked if the prison was still there, the clerk shrugged.
We headed out toward the historic district, one of the only places where old buildings were left standing and where the prison was supposed to have been. We found Via Pretoria, the Fifth Avenue of Potenza, with its fancy designer shops and Apple Store, where Imma had dropped off her waterlogged phone earlier this month. The neighborhood was quite beautiful and looked like a small town in France, houses made of large stones, with distressed wooden shutters and ornate metal balconies.
We found the street where the prison should have been, and the Porta San Luca—which was one of the three ancient gates into the walled city. Though the wall was long gone, the tall arched entryway was still standing. Down the block was a stone medieval tower—Torre Guevara—built by the Lombards in the ninth century as part of the city’s battlements, the only part left standing. On the same property was a closed three-story school from the 1960s or ’70s, judging by the architecture. The ugly beige school was boarded up and covered in graffiti. “I told my therapist about you,” read one line in Magic Marker. Another read, “What does the fox say?”
Most of the buildings and the surrounding property were closed off by a high iron fence. But through the bars you could see that the expansive space around the tower was covered in concrete, with clumps of grass, Queen Anne’s lace and dandelions popping through. The property overlooked the lush, green countryside and was indeed the place where the prison had once been. It had been demolished sometime in the 1950s to make room for this school, which had itself closed in the last decade or so. The place was deserted. A sadness and seediness permeated the neighborhood and the spot, as if the awful things that had happened in the prison still somehow lingered.
We headed over to Piazza Prefeturra, where the courthouse—the Palazzo di Giustizia—was located, just a few blocks away in a much livelier, happy neighborhood. The courthouse was an orange three-story historic building with arched doorways, a center balcony, and windows topped with triangular Greek lintels. Though it was officially closed for renovation, I walked right in and pretended I belonged there, strolling past the few workers in the hallways, who greeted me with a simple “Buongiorno.”
Old doors and entryways were plastered over, the skeletons of the original stone walls showing through in some places. From most windows, you could see the medieval church next door, which was practically pressed up against the courthouse.
The church was called San Francesco, naturally.
I thought of Francesco walking up these same worn, marble courthouse stairs I was climbing now, pausing for a moment, his hands in his rusty bagno cuffs, his body leaning against the smooth, wide wooden banister. I wondered if he stared out at the church that bore his name, saying a prayer under his breath to his patron saint that he did not get sentenced to a lifetime in prison. Or to death.
The church had a tall pointed tower, orange terra-cotta roof tiles, and a large circular window over its Romanesque rounded portal. It dated back to 1274 and held several treasures, including a faded fresco of San Francesco from the school of Giotto. It was said to be the first portrait of San Francesco in Southern Italy.
San Francesco was dressed in a friar’s robe cinched with a rope, with a bald head ringed by a fringe of orange hair. His eyes were narrow as if he were concentrating and his chin was covered in an orange beard, a book under his left arm and his right hand raised. If you looked closely, you could see the stigmata wounds on his hand. He was wearing a golden halo. The painting was tucked away in a corner, near a Madonna and Child, and unless you were looking for it, it was nearly impossible to find. It was a hidden treasure that I’m sure my great-great-grandfather never glimpsed.
According to legend, the church was actually founded by San Francesco, Italy’s national saint, who was passing through Potenza and laid the first stone for the building while on his way to Jerusalem.
The Franciscans owned and ran the church for centuries. The door, made from olive wood, was intricately carved with both saints and demons, including a devil rising up in an attempt to drag San Francesco down to hell. Griffins and gargoyles were everywhere. And I thought of Francesco, our Francesco, passing here day after day on his way from the prison a few blocks away, and staring at that terrible, beautiful door each time, his and his brother-in-law’s fate growing closer and closer with each visit.