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I drove with my family to Civita di Bagnoregio. The weather over the Apennine Peninsula was just right for spring: a clear sky, gentle sunlight, ideal for travelling. Four months had passed since my last long journey in winter, and I could not help feeling excited. Yet the distance was considerable. The scenery along the motorway was striking at first, but after several continuous hours even that began to grow a little dull.
After leaving the car, we took a bus to the entrance. Through a rectangular opening roughly two metres wide and three metres high, Civita was already visible. Every unnecessary element seemed to have been removed: only the blue sky, the vivid green forest and the fortress standing on the summit remained. Those three things alone formed a harmonious scene.
Descending from the entrance, I reached a gravel platform where the view suddenly opened. At once it felt as though I had stepped into the world composed of those three elements. The road ahead wound downwards, all the way to the stone bridge.
Civita was built upon a precipitous hilltop. The rocks surrounding the settlement form almost vertical slopes, terrain that must once have been extraordinarily difficult to attack. Geological disasters eventually drove away all its residents, and the town lost its original function. What remained was a formal shell, revealing a beauty purified of use. The narrow, elongated stone bridge is an umbilical cord, connecting the worldly mother body with a newly born realm of pure form.
Visitors came and went, crowding the bridge. Though rebuilt with modern materials, it preserved its former incline. Climbing it step by step, I felt as if I were entering a cathedral constructed jointly by nature and humankind, a cathedral dedicated to human achievement. Yet once inside the old town, seemingly detached from time, I could not avoid disappointment: merchants had occupied its interior. A beautiful shell on the beach ought to retain an eternal beauty after the brief living matter within has vanished; instead, an alien creature had taken up residence by force, producing an awkward new species.
Once that thought arose, walking among the buildings felt no different from walking through a shopping centre, and the place immediately became tedious. Only after leaving it, standing far enough away that the traces of commerce could no longer be seen, did the lost beauty return—in the breeze and in the view of the ancient town beneath the sunlight.
By the time the visit ended it was already four in the afternoon. Because of a poorly arranged plan, we then travelled on, tired, towards Siena, a hundred li away, accompanying my cousin to see the cypress trees celebrated online.
The car stopped on a grey asphalt road. Before my eyes appeared an expanse of deep blue, as though the sea had been overturned above us. Extremely thin, linear clouds moved slowly forward like waves. The indistinct edge of that ocean merged into the curving mountains, which in turn opened onto a broad plain. Houses lay scattered over green fields. Here and there, ponds rested like mirrors, reflecting everything around them. It was indeed a beautiful scene, no different from the landscapes painted by Raphael and other Renaissance artists.