I love seaside resorts out of season. Glistening seas, bright sunshine and rows of umbrellas all have the energy youth and summer love but it is out of season that you see the bones, the face of resorts without makeup, when you discover their true identity.
And then – boom – it all changed again. We had gone back further to a darker vibe.
The road became a wide and straight, a boulevard. Facist architecture appeared – big, bold and unmistakable. One one side appeared huge ruined fascist era buildings built on dunes just set back from the sea, all wrapped in ‘keep out’ wire fences. They were too big to individual villas. On the other were more ugly, if perhaps later, buildings.
Intrigued we pulled over. Parking was easy – the whole area derelict and abandoned.
‘We can’t go in – It’s all barricaded up’ said GS hopefully
‘There’s a gate open’
‘It says Calambrone – isn’t that the word for ‘hornets’ maybe that’s why its all derelict
There was a gap alongside the perimeter fencing. It fed alongside side the barracades before spilling out onto a beach. The sea was obstructed by a bordered up shack and upturned boats smothered by sand so fine it whispered. The hulls reminded me of Dickens ‘Great Expectations’, the deep dusting of sand, Dr Zhivargo’s summer palace full of ice and drifts of snow.
The deserted beach was grey and moody. Notices warned of dangerous under currents and rips.
Out to sea, islands appeared and disappeared lit or obscured by rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds. There are seven islands in the Tuscan archipelago. Legend has it that Venus emerging from the Tryrrhenian broke a pearl necklace and each dropped pearl became one of the seven islands. Venus, Goddess of Love, is everywhere in this part of the Tuscan coast, but she seemed absent, hiding her islands, the moody sea surly and restless.
I followed the footsteps of a barefoot man and his dog who had walked on the damp sand. Even they seemed to have a narrative of loneliness not love.
We went back to try to climb the shallow dunes bordered the ruins. Away from the sea the sand was dry, as fine as talc, crumbling underfoot. Around us bushes with jagged thorns warned of wounds to come if we persisted. Instead we looked over into the vast, imposing ruins and back tracked away.
When I got home I researched them. Originally the site had been used for treating children with diseases like tuberculosis, but then under Mussolini, they had become a propaganda tools – huge places for children to swim, march and salute Il Duce, places where maidens danced in white removed from the horrors of Fascism building on the horizon. The children in their 1930s matching swimwear rushing for the shallows reminded me of something but I couldn’t place it, not yet. And the Jewish community so close in Livorno-what happened to them? Then after the war they had housed Allied troops, a US hospital sprang up, prisoner of war camps. The shadow of the Second World War stretching into the 21st Century embodied in near by Camp Darby and its fences topped by razor wire curls that are not intended to confine the deer or wild boar.
There were no seagulls, they aren’t as common as in England but if this place had a sound track it would be ghost children and the low throb of war machinery.
Greetings from Tuscany, this 22 November 23. I hope you have enjoyed my blog! I look forward to reading any thoughts and comments. If you enjoy the blog, please do follow and share.
