One Day in Calcata, Italy

Last week I had the opportunity to pose Eight Questions for author David Farley just as his first book, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town, made its debut.  I asked Farley about how he would spend just one day in Calcata, Italy, the town where his book takes place.  This was his response...

AKN: If you only had one day to spend in Calcata, what would you do and clearly, where would you eat?

It would be a Saturday or Sunday because that’s the most lively day in Calcata. I would start off with a walk down in the valley below which is etched with footpaths and littered with tombs from the Faliscans, a pre-Christian people who inhabited the area but were wiped out by the Romans. Then I would have lunch at my friend Pancho’s restaurant, La Grotta dei Germogli, an eatery fashioned out of a cave and one of my favorite spots in the village. I’d hope my friend Paul Steffen—an 87-year-old American who at one time was very famous in Italy for being a dancer and choreographer—would be dining with me (we had lunch there every Saturday and Sunday). Afterward, I’d sit on the square for a while, perhaps do some reading. For dinner I’d eat at Tugurio, a phenomenal place in Calcata. I’d go for a primo (hopefully the carbonara would be on the menu) and a secondo (the rosemary-encrusted pork chop is buonissimo). Then I’d head back to the Grotta for a limoncello and chat with Pancho some more. A perfect day in Calcata.

If you want to have a perfect day in Calcata, I've placed all of the spots Farley recommends on this map...


View David Farley's One Day in Calcata in a larger map

David Farley also wrote about a day trip to Calcata for the New York Times.  Click the link to read his article: Calcata, Italy: Where Newcomers Give an Old Town a Second Life.

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Eight Questions for David Farley

David Farley's work as a travel writer has appeared in national magazines, web publications, and newspapers including the The New York Times, The Washington Post, Conde Nast Traveler, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, Playboy, National Geographic Traveler and WorldHum.com.  He has lived in some of the world's most fascinating cities including Prague, Rome, and, currently, New York.  

Now his first book, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town (Penguin/Gotham Books) chronicles his time spent in a small town outside of Rome and his personal quest to solve a spiritual mystery.  


David Farley was gracious enough to answer a few questions about his new book and his writing life.


AKN: An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town
is about your time spent living in Calcata, Italy and your search for one of Christianity’s most interesting relics:  the Holy Foreskin.  How did your book come about?

I had been living in Rome for a few months and read an article in a local magazine about Calcata. It sounded just about the most intriguing place I’d ever heard of: a medieval fortress town on 450-foot cliffs inhabited by the artists and hippies who saved the village from demolition. So I went there on a day trip and fell in love with it. It was also on that trip when I heard about another intriguing aspect about Calcata: the cult of the Holy Foreskin. Actually, somehow it must have been too terrorizing to my mind at the time because I actually forgot about the Holy Foreskin for a while until my wife reminded me a couple years later in New York about the miraculous membrane that went missing from Calcata in the 1980s. That’s when I decided I had to write a book about it.

AKN: Your search for the Holy Foreskin has moments of great humor and fascinating history, though fundamentally the subject is of a religious nature.  Did you experience anything spiritually on your quest?  Were there any surprises along the way?

Not of the traditional variety. The residents of Calcata speak matter-of-factly about a curious and generally negative energy that oozes from the rock Calcata sits on. I could never really feel this energy, which surprised some of the locals who acted as if my not feeling it was akin to an inability to tasting and appreciating their grandmother’s ragu. The locals claimed there was a fertility-giving nature to Calcata and its energy and, interestingly, the Holy Foreskin has long been associated with fertility. It would seem Calcata and Jesus’s foreskin went together like pasta and tomato sauce.

After a few months of being there when things would go badly for me—one time I strained a muscle in my leg and limped for a week or two, for example—I started to wonder if the energy and the Holy Foreskin were in cahoots with each other and that I would end up dead or at the very least with a permanent limp. Fortunately, all my limbs are in perfectly working order.

AKN: Food clearly became an important part of your Calcata experience, and much has been written about the importance of food in Italian culture.  Have your eating habits and attitudes toward meals changed at all after your Italian immersion?

They have. After eating nearly every day at various salt-of-the-earth restaurants in the countryside north of Rome, I really appreciate good, simple meals. Also, the produce and ingredients are of such high quality in Italy that I’ve realized Italian cuisine can be so simple because they let the bold-tasting ingredients drive the flavor and not necessarily any type of complex cooking technique.

AKN: You write candidly about your learning disabilities and your difficulties learning languages.  How did being immersed in the Italian language effect the writing you were doing in English?

I’m not sure it did. Or at the very least, it probably made my mind a bit sharper, since part of it was being taxed by the constant struggle to speak another language. What helps my writing and thinking when I’m immersed in another country is that I’m able to escape the quiet but pervasive bombardment of media and TV that we endure. Without this, I feel like my brain works a lot better.

AKN: Many, many journalists have been rejected in their quests to do research in the Vatican Library  What tips can you offer those of us who want to get in one day? 

Pray really hard. No, really, I was lucky because I teach at New York University and once I presented a letter from there claiming I was associated with the university, it wasn’t very hard to gain access to the Vatican Library. Another way of getting in for at least one day would be to interview the head librarian at the Vatican. If I re-call correctly, he’s Irish.

AKN: You have lived for extended periods overseas and now live in New York City.  What is it like to return home to the US after living abroad?  Is it different after coming back from each place (Paris, Calcata, Prague… ) or is the experience universal regardless of where you have been?

It’s different. One of the first things I notice when I come back to the United States from extended times in Italy, for example, is how seldom we interact with each other on the street. In Italy, strangers are constantly interacting in these minute ways. At supermarkets in the United States, for example, people will silently bulldoze past you rather than looking at the person and saying “excuse me.” Also, people greet each other and say goodbye when entering and exiting a shop. At least where I live—in New York City—this doesn’t happen much. So I get a lot of strange looks when just get back from Italy because without thinking about it, I’ll walk into a shop and give a gregarious hello to the person working there. It always makes me feel a bit lonely when I come back from Italy.

When I come back from Prague, the big culture shock is that people don’t start drinking beer at seven in the morning.

AKN: If you only had one day to spend in Calcata, what would you do and clearly, where would you eat?

It would be a Saturday or Sunday because that’s the most lively day in Calcata. I would start off with a walk down in the valley below which is etched with footpaths and littered with tombs from the Faliscans, a pre-Christian people who inhabited the area but were wiped out by the Romans. Then I would have lunch at my friend Pancho’s restaurant, La Grotta dei Germogli, an eatery fashioned out of a cave and one of my favorite spots in the village. I’d hope my friend Paul Steffen—an 87-year-old American who at one time was very famous in Italy for being a dancer and choreographer—would be dining with me (we had lunch there every Saturday and Sunday). Afterward, I’d sit on the square for a while, perhaps do some reading. For dinner I’d eat at Tugurio, a phenomenal place in Calcata. I’d go for a primo (hopefully the carbonara would be on the menu) and a secondo (the rosemary-encrusted pork chop is buonissimo). Then I’d head back to the Grotta for a limoncello and chat with Pancho some more. A perfect day in Calcata.

AKN: Has anyone in Calcata seen An Irreverent Curiosity yet? 

Not that I know of. I’m sure they will soon enough. I expect people to react the same way they did to the New York Times story I wrote about Calcata a couple years ago. Some people will like it, some people will hate it, some people will have some warped and false understanding of what I said and didn’t say. I love Calcata and only want the best for it, so hopefully the reaction will be largely positive.

Many thanks to David Farley for his candid responses!  

Follow the link to read my review of An Irreverent Curiosity.

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An Irreverent Curiosity by David Farley

I grew up in Texas and was raised in a Protestant church. On my first trip to Rome, I found one thing most shocking: the prevalence of relics. Growing up in a Southern Methodist church, I had never thought that perhaps the heads of John the Baptist or St. Valentine might be hanging around – or that they might have spiritual significance. But I quickly learned.

Author David Farley has a leg up on me in the relics department. He was raised in the Catholic church, so at least the concept of relics and their adoration was not so foreign for him. And in his new book, An Irreverent Curiosity (Gotham Books, 2009), Farley takes his readers in search of “the church’s strangest relic in Italy’s oddest town.” Namely, Farley is off on a hunt for the Holy Foreskin – as in the foreskin of Jesus.

As the Christian church emerged from the shadow of the Roman Empire and spread throughout Europe, a competitive spirit developed between cathedrals and other places of pilgrimage. For where pilgrims go, money follows. Churches started to compete for the best relics – those which drew the most pilgrims. As Farley recounts, the Holy Foreskin emerged from the folds of history, wrapped up in legends of Charlemagne until a dozen or so churches in Europe claimed to hold the Holy Foreskin – “the only remnant of the Christ remaining on the planet.”

Farley, his wife, and their dog, Abraham Lincoln, move to Calcata, a small town outside of Rome, in search of the town's one claim to fame: the true Holy Foreskin.  At least, the Holy Foreskin had been in Calcata until it was stolen in 1983… or was that 1986?  And thus begins Farley's quest.

As a resident of Calcata, Farley becomes as fascinated with the interior lives of the town’s eccentric population as he is with the mysterious disappearance of the relic. Don’t expect sunburned, Tuscan rhapsodies. Farley is neither lovelorn nor scorned. He balances both humor and reverence, and he removes the romantic veil over Calcata, revealing it to be a rather unusual Italian town. He eschews the common Italian stereotypes, and paints vivid portraits of the town’s residents. Not everyone in Calcata, for example, is a good cook. Take Palma…

She pushed a bowl toward us and, in her usual bossy manner, ordered us to eat. The crunchy, unidentifiable objects had that bitter, wrong-part-of-the-animal taste. I’m an adventurous eater, however, so I kept chewing. Finally, Jessie asked Scot, who was sitting across from us (and happened to be going out with Palma at the time) what we were eating. Scot had an annoying habit of staring back at you for a long five seconds before answering your question, but this time it seemed like he was really struggling to come up with adequate words. Finally he opened his mouth and cavalierly said, “Fried cow nerves.” Jessie spit and I swallowed. “It’s a typical Roman dish,” he said, with just enough condescension to make us both feel like uncultured ignoramuses for not wanting to eat more. Of course, I didn’t see him digging into the cow’s nerves much.

Farley is also writing about a religious relic – a subject which might make some squeamish and which, in the hands of a less-skillful writer, might become a farce. The residents of Calcata had been burned by journalists who set out to make a mockery of their relic. Patrizia won’t even speak to Farley at first because “she once cooperated with a journalist from Britain who then wrote a piece for a magazine totally making fun of the relic and making fun of her.” But Patrizia does speak with him in the end, and her cooperation is just one illustration of the delicate balance Farley is able to achieve between faithful reverence, solid research, and artful humor.

In the months he spends in Calcata, Farley makes some interesting discoveries about the history and legend of the Holy Foreskin. He elegantly weaves a tale of religious and political maneuverings together with character sketches of the people and places he encounters in Italy. And in the end, he comes to a rather incredible conclusion of just what did happen to the Holy Foreskin when it was stolen in 1983.

Or was that in 1986?

Only the priest, Don Dario, knows for sure.

Pertinent Information:
An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town
By David Farley
Copyright 2009
Published by Gotham Books
Hardcover: $25.00

You can find David Farley on Twitter and on Facebook as well as at his own blog.

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Kilronan Castle

I had hoped that Kilronan Castle would be a lower-budget, Ashford Castle-type experience.  It is situated north of Boyle in Co. Roscommon, on the small but lovely Lough Meelah.  With packages under €200 per night including breakfast and dinner as well as gorgeous photos on the website, it looked like the kind of place a budget-friendly traveler might stop for the iconic Ireland castle stay. 

However, Kilronan Castle was a disappointment. 

First of all, it really isn’t an old castle.  The original building was built in the early 1800’s.  However, it was abandoned, and when the current owners bought it, all that remained were a few walls.  Within those walls, the owners have constructed a facsimile of a castle complete with dark wood, brooding fabrics, and crystal chandeliers.  They clearly were inspired by Ireland’s famous castle inns like Ashford, freely borrowing names like “The Dungeon Bar” and “The Drawing Room.”  And it turns out some of the photos on Kilronan Castle’s website and in their materials are actually borrowed from their sister-property, Lough Rynn.

But all this borrowing hampers Kilronan Castle for the place lacks polish and a sense of self.  Indeed, as I walked the hallways, I realized that nothing about the hotel said “Ireland” – not the furnishings, nor the artwork, and least of all the tacky mirrors emblazoned with the Kilronan crest.  Even the printed materials in the hotel room left me confused.  The “history” of Kilronan Castle made absolutely no sense with incomplete sentences, misspellings, and paragraphs that are clearly casualties of poor cutting and pasting. 

The Gypsy’s Essentials

• The Shower: good with nice bath products provided.  We had a handicapped-accessible room, something many castles do not have.  The floor, however, was not leveled correctly, and the water from the shower drained toward the door and the carpeting rather than into the drain.  
• The Bed: very comfortable with plenty of pillows and a good mattress
• The Green Report: CFCs in all public spaces as well as in our room; no evidence of a recycling program.  When we checked in the woman at the front desk had to check to make sure the electricity to our building was on.  From the looks of the dark hallways, the hotel cuts power to unused portions of the buildings, though that may be motivated by finances rather than by environmental concerns.
• Internet Access:  None.  The website and printed materials advertise internet access, but it is “coming soon.”
• Children Welcome:  There’s a lovely green lawn where children can play, and certainly this would be a less-expensive castle experience for aspiring princes and princesses.  The pool is lovely when it is open, too.  The castle does not have any special provisions for children, however. 
• Breakfast: not included in the room price except with special packages
• Price:  moderate
• Notes: be sure to request a room in the “old” part of the castle, and the castle restaurants are the only options nearby, so you may want to bring some snacks.
  

There are two parts to the hotel, and the rooms in the “old” part – within the old castle walls and near the front entrance – are clearly superior.  The furnishings throughout the hotel are largely the same: large-scale wood furniture fashioned to look like over-sized antiques, dressed in brocades and damasks with exaggerated trims and plenty of pillows.  But the rooms in the castle portion of the hotel appear to be much more finished than those in the odd adjoining building.   

Looking more like Medieval Times than a castle, the addition to the original building feels unused and unfinished.  Indeed, I think we were the only guests in that portion of the hotel on the night we stayed at Kilronan.  Our room was unfinished and a disappointing example of poor workmanship.  There were holes in the bathroom ceiling with wires sticking out of them.  The bathroom floor was made from lovely marble, which sported large stains.  An access panel for the HVAC system lacked any kind of covering, so we had a grand view right into the building’s ductwork.  Two of the four windows in our room were so ill-fitting that they had 1/4” gaps around three sides.  Much of the trim in the room was primed but hadn’t been painted, odd wires stuck out of the wall, the wallpaper was peeling… the punch list goes on and on.  And mind you, this hotel has been open for more than a year.

But more distressing even than the condition of our room was the view from our windows – construction detritus and bare dirt everywhere.  There are some lovely, finished lawns at Kilronan, but much of the area around the castle is in dirty disarray with piles of pallets and debris and no attempt being made to hide the mess.  From the looks of things, the owners ran out of money and opened the place long before it was ready.  The promotional materials boast about the €50 million spent to open the doors, but it obviously was not enough. 

During my stay the pool, steam room, and spa were closed as was the Dungeon Bar.  I had dinner in The Drawing Room, a sitting-room style bar which also serves food.  Located in the “old” part of the hotel, the décor here is comfortable though several of the oil paintings need to be restretched and rehung (and one painting just outside in the hallway has a large hole in it). 

Like the paintings, our meals showed a lack of care.  I’d chosen the B.B.Q. Gourmet Beef Burger (€15.75) from the bar menu which said it would be served “in Floured Bap” (a kind of Irish roll). Instead the overcooked burger lay on a rather stale hamburger bun; the meat had clearly been fried, not grilled or bar-b-qued as advertised.  My traveling companion ordered a fillet of salmon (€15.95).  She was initially served the wrong entrée, which the server quickly corrected.  But she, too, was disappointed with her entrée finding it to be flavorless and uninteresting.  

Having said all of that, I firmly believe Kilronan Castle has potential.  The small staff was kind and helpful.  They spoke of plans for kayaking and rafting on Lough Meelah, and it sounds as if a great deal of their business comes from weekend weddings which might be quite charming there.  However, if Kilronan Castle truly wants to live up to their promotional materials, the campus simply must be finished and cleaned up.  But more importantly, Kilronan Castle must develop its own identity and live into its own history rather than scabbing from other landmark properties.

The Details:
Kilronan Castle
Ballyfarnon
Co. Roscommon, Ireland
www.kilronancastle.ie

Getting there:
Kilronan Castle is north of Boyle in Co. Roscommon.  The directions on the castle’s website are clear, and they have done an excellent job of putting signs along the long and remote route. 

Nearby:
Boyle Abbey in the town of Boyle is worth a visit.  There is a lot of restoration work being done right now (to be completed in 2011), so the church itself can only be seen from the outside.  But you can ask for a guided tour.  Our guide, Eugene, was excellent, and helped us to make sense of what we were seeing.  The best part: entrance to the Abbey and the tour are both free. 

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