I arrive in Anticoli Corrado at lunchtime, with the sun illuminating the whole square and you just want something fresh.
It is the last of the villages of the day in my tour in search of Town Ambassadors of the Aniene Valley and I must confess that I didn't have too many expectations, but what I found left me speechless.
I enter the bar in the square to get an ice cream and sit outside. I ask questions as usual and immediately a gentleman proud of his country shows me a video available on Facebook and me or send. Meanwhile, Mrs. Daniela who manages the bar with an attitude and smile lists a series of beauties of the village for me.
While I am enjoying my gelato on an outdoor chair, Daniela comes out of the café to introduce me to three artists who have come for their coffee after lunch. And so I meet Eclario Barone and Silvia Gambini, a couple of artists who decided over 30 years ago to settle in Anticoli Corrado and have never regretted their choice.
He is originally from Salerno and she is from Siena (and retains all her Tuscan accent) and they met right here where art and nature, colors and woods affect people's daily lives.
The third is a young Iranian artist, Azadeh Shirmast who works in ceramics and her partner Antonio Sanna is an actor and they came to Anticoli Corrado after the pandemic and other Iranian artists have joined.
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We all go to his study (which I had already noticed while wandering around the village) by the large window. The studio smells of clay and enamel and Azadeh's works have a particular style that subtly recalls the East. He comes from a family of potters who made tiles for mosques.
The list of artists who have relocated or are looking for a studio in this borough is staggering. “The fact is that Anticoli Corrado faces north and the light remains constant during the day. For those who love to paint in the open air this is very important because they give me more time to work during the day ”, Eclario explains to me that he is a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts but above all in his soul.
I was lucky because these three friends slowly guide me to discover this village where each stone has its own artistic history.
“Anticoli was discovered thanks to the women who went to sell flowers under the Spanish Steps in Rome and were taken as models by the artists of the nearby Via Margutta. Then many artists fell in love and came to cool off in the summer in the village (whose houses cost even less than those in Rome)”.
Everything here is art, even the large central fountain has its own particular story. It almost seemed to me in lava stone and instead it is one of the first works made in reinforced concrete. It is said that the artist Arturo Martini was inspired by an Indian stupa that he had seen on a postcard a short time before. He was then young and collaborated with the American artist Maurice Sterne who had received this postcard. They learned of this detail through the stories of Enrico Gaudenzi who was a model for Sterne as a child and had witnessed the scene.
But among the illustrious characters we must also mention Fausto Pirandello. And so I understand why several villages in the Aniene Valley have told me about the presence of their father Luigi, the great Sicilian writer, saying that he had created one of his stories right in their village.
We then go to visit the museum of contemporary art, so rich that it competes with other more famous ones. An entire floor is dedicated to the twentieth century starting from the fascist period.
“The Anticolane models were highly regarded because they embodied precisely the beautiful and robust image that the regime required. Their features united the Arab beauty of the Saracens and the ethereal beauty of the Germans (of the Swabians of Conrad of Antioch to whom the name of the town is dedicated). Furthermore, they were very robust because they had to go down to the valley every day to fetch water from the fountain along a steep road, carrying their weight uphill to the ancient village where they lived".
I can't help but buy some art books at the museum's book shop, also to thank for this wonderful afternoon. Eclario, Silvia and Azadeh are so kind that they accompany me to the car that I had parked near the old Albergo degli Artisti and so they also tell me about the fountain made with ceramic fragments designed by their friend Paula Caccavale.
I leave Anticoli Corrado with one certainty: he will play a very important role in the project of the network of Town Ambassadors of the Aniene Valley wanted by the Metropolitan Area of Rome.
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