{"id":148,"date":"2009-06-15T06:41:01","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T10:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=148"},"modified":"2009-06-15T06:41:01","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T10:41:01","slug":"a-visit-to-portovenere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/a-visit-to-portovenere\/","title":{"rendered":"A visit to Portovenere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week\u00a0my husband, my uncle and I\u00a0went for a day out to Portovenere<\/strong>, a little jewel on the Riviera di Levante (the Eastern Riviera) in Liguria. Portovenere is a\u00a0medieval fishing village situated on the southern\u00a0tip of the Golfo di La Spezia<\/strong> also known as Il Golfo dei Poeti<\/strong> (the Gulf of the Poets),\u00a0which takes\u00a0its name from the 18th century British poets Byron and Shelley, who loved this area and lived\u00a0here for a while.\u00a0On arriving\u00a0we\u00a0set out\u00a0along the promenade which is backed by an impressive\u00a0wall of multicolored case torri <\/strong>(tower houses). Reaching the end of the promenade,\u00a0we climbed up the stone steps\u00a0to the small church of San Pietro situated on a rocky outcrop on the very edge of the peninsula. This small church, originally\u00a0constructed in the\u00a0the 6th century A.D. was rebuilt in 1277 in the typical Genovese Gothic style, with its grey and black horizontal\u00a0stripes of local stone. From the cool dark shade inside the\u00a0church you can walk out onto a tiny balcony at the back\u00a0that affords a great view accross the stretto <\/strong>(straight) that divides\u00a0terraferma <\/strong>(the mainland) from the luxuriant, green\u00a0Isola della Palmaria <\/strong>(Isle of Palmaria). On the western side of the church there is a small portico with romantic arches\u00a0facing towards the beautiful coast of Le Cinque Terre<\/strong>\u00a0and its magnificent scogliere<\/strong> (cliffs). The church of San Pietro is said to be built on the remains of a\u00a0Roman temple dedicated to the goddess Venere<\/strong> (Venus), and from this comes the name of the village, Portovenere, literally \u201cVenus\u2019 port\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a quick visit to La Grotta di Byron <\/strong>(Byron\u2019s grotto),\u00a0from which\u00a0Byron famously swam to visit his friends the Shelleys in Lerici on the other side of the gulf, we walked down the main street to the molo <\/strong>(pier) where we were picked up by a beautifully stylish motoscafo <\/strong>(motor launch).\u00a0The motoscafo<\/em>\u00a0took as across the narrow stretto<\/em> to a famous restaurant on the Isola della Palmaria: I felt like\u00a0a film star arriving\u00a0at the Cannes festival! We had a wonderful meal of\u00a0fish and frutti di mare<\/strong> (fruits of the sea, e.g. shellfish etc.)\u00a0accompanied by a deliciously refreshing Vermentino<\/strong> (a white wine), and ending with a fantastic dessert, Torta di pere e cioccolato con salsa di cioccolato calda<\/strong> (pear and chocolate cake with hot chocolate sauce), and a creamy sorbetto al limone <\/strong>(lemon sorbet). All of this was a treat from my uncle, who regularly\u00a0brings his guests to this place when he wants to\u00a0fare bella figura <\/strong>(make a good\u00a0impression). While waiting for \u2018our\u2019 boat to take us back to Portovenere we chatted to an old pescatore<\/strong> (fisherman) who was cleaning his catch of\u00a0cozze <\/strong>(mussels) ready\u00a0to be sold in the pescheria <\/strong>(fishmongers). He told us that Portovenere\u2019s bay is one of the biggest farms\u00a0for cozze<\/em> in Italy, and that they export le sementi<\/strong>\u00a0 (lit. \u2018the seeds\u2019, i.e. the baby mussels) to other Italian mussel\u00a0farms. He also showed us the trecce <\/strong>(plaits, or cables), that are attached to poles planted in the water, and on which the\u00a0cozze<\/em>\u00a0live and breed, complaining that nowadays they are all made of plastic because it lasts longer, and you\u00a0can no longer find\u00a0the old ones made from canapa <\/strong>(hemp).<\/span><\/p>\n

When we got back to Portovenere, my uncle had another surprise for us: he sent\u00a0us off on\u00a0the Giro delle Tre Isole<\/strong> (Tour of the Three Islands) on a battello <\/strong>(passenger ferry). Situated in\u00a0front of the very\u00a0tip of Portovenere are three islands all\u00a0in a row. Firstly there is\u00a0Palmaria<\/strong>, (where we had our wonderful lunch) which is the biggest and has very few houses which are lived in by civilians, the\u00a0bulk of the island\u00a0being a military base. Then there is\u00a0Tino<\/strong>, the middle island, which is\u00a0owned entirely by the\u00a0military, and is only open to civilians once a year, on the 13th of September for the celebration of\u00a0the festival of San Venerio. San Venerio was\u00a0a hermit who lived on the island in\u00a0the 6th century A.D., and\u00a0on stormy nights used to light fires to warn ships of the presence of rocks and shallow waters.\u00a0He is now the patron saint of semaforisti<\/strong> and faristi<\/strong> (signals people and lighthouse keepers). The third island is Tinetto<\/strong>, which is just a largish rock in the sea. During\u00a0our tour the remains of the cave<\/strong> di portoro<\/strong> (quarries of the local marble) on Palmaria were pointed out to us by one of the crew. Portoro<\/em> is a precious black\u00a0marble with golden veins which was quarried here until about 30 years ago, and in a small sheltered bay on the far side of the island\u00a0you can still see\u00a0a scivolo<\/strong> (slide) running down the steep hillside\u00a0which was used to carry the portoro<\/em> down to the sea and load\u00a0it into\u00a0boats, a pretty dangerous operation! Also on Palmaria is the Grotta Azzurra<\/strong>\u00a0 (Blue Cave), which can only be visited\u00a0in una barca a remi <\/strong>(a rowing boat). On the island of Tino there are the remains of fortifications built by the Germans during WW2 in defense of La Spezia\u2019s harbor, which was (and still is) an important naval base; some of these fortifications and the sheer cliffs on which they are located\u00a0were used as a set\u00a0in the famous film I Cannoni di Navarrone<\/strong> (The Guns of Navarrone). <\/span><\/p>\n

The highlight of\u00a0our Giro delle Tre Isole<\/em>, however, was\u00a0the fact that we had the good fortune to see two pesci luna<\/strong> (moon fish), which are also\u00a0known as\u00a0pesci tamburo <\/strong>(drum fish). This was my first encounter with pesci luna<\/em> despite the fact that they are native to the Mediterranean sea,\u00a0and I must say\u00a0they are amazing!\u00a0This peculiar creature\u00a0is a flat, round fish that can reach over two meters in diameter. It comes up to the surface to sleep, and in fact\u00a0on first sight\u00a0I thought that the\u00a0first one\u00a0we saw\u00a0was dead, but after a couple of seconds it flipped its fin as if saluting us and disappeared into the deep.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more info. on Portovenere,\u00a0and some\u00a0photos have a look at this website: <\/span>http:\/\/it.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Porto_Venere<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week\u00a0my husband, my uncle and I\u00a0went for a day out to Portovenere, a little jewel on the Riviera di Levante (the Eastern Riviera) in Liguria. Portovenere is a\u00a0medieval fishing village situated on the southern\u00a0tip of the Golfo di La Spezia also known as Il Golfo dei Poeti (the Gulf of the Poets),\u00a0which takes\u00a0its name…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[706,824,849],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-golfo-di-la-spezia","tag-palmaria","tag-portovenere"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1656,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}