Mark Russell; No. 2005; Viva Italia!

<v Mark Russell>[classical music playing] In the beginning, the world needed flavor, exuberance, drama <v Mark Russell>and God created Italy. <v Mark Russell>Let's face it, in a popularity contest among the nations of the world, Italy would <v Mark Russell>win on artistic and culinary contributions alone. <v Mark Russell>And after centuries of civil wars and world wars, spirits remain <v Mark Russell>remarkably robust along this narrow boot, which appears to be drop kicking <v Mark Russell>Sicily over the goalpost. <v Mark Russell>Italy is unsurpassed in human creativity. <v Mark Russell>Its music, art and food. <v Mark Russell>You only had pasta once today? <v Mark Russell>You must be a foreigner. And what a uh, shall we say, interesting cast of <v Mark Russell>characters from Julius Caesar to whomever is the current prime minister this month. <v Mark Russell>I forget. From Luciano Pavarotti to Lucky Luciano, from the godly <v Mark Russell>Francis of Assisi to the godfather Frank Costello, to say the least, this <v Mark Russell>has never been a dull country. <v Mark Russell>You say you don't want that much excitement? <v Mark Russell>Well, Finland is nice. <v Mark Russell>Oscar Wilde once said that Italy is a nation of 55 million actors, the worst

<v Mark Russell>of whom are on stage. [inaudible chatter] [music plays]. <v Mark Russell>Grazie, <v Mark Russell>welcome to Milano. That's Milan to you tourists and in spite of the fact that it's a <v Mark Russell>center of finance,, industry and crass materialism, it's also the home of all those <v Mark Russell>saints up there. <v Mark Russell>I don't know how many saints are perched atop the Duomo Cathedral here, some books say <v Mark Russell>300, others say a thousand. Anyway, it's a lot of saints.

<v Mark Russell>So if you have the urge to pray for something, this is the place to do it. <v Mark Russell>And if only half the saints have their pagers turned on, you'll still get through. <v Mark Russell>After wars and air raids, they are still up there. <v Mark Russell>Not far from here. A direct hit was made on another church, Santa Maria Della Grassy, <v Mark Russell>completely destroying it, except for one remaining wall upon which Leonardo <v Mark Russell>da Vinci's The Last Supper just happened to be painted. <v Speaker>The painting is being restored as we speak. <v Speaker>In fact, it's been redone many times over the five hundred years since it was completed. <v Speaker>Experts disagree as to whether any of DA Vinci's brush strokes or even left. <v Speaker>So there are many last suppers, if you will, which must be penetrated before you get <v Speaker>down to the original one painted on Velvet. <v Speaker>That's the one with the Wonder Bread on the table. <v Speaker>Where to begin with Leonardo da Vinci? <v Speaker>The Mona Lisa with her emmick mattock smile. <v Speaker>In the 16th century, he had the concept of an enigmatic airplane painter, <v Speaker>engineer, astronomer.

<v Speaker>Could do it all. He knew how the human eye worked with the enigmatic retina. <v Speaker>He understood the solar system, but he didn't tell anybody otherwise. <v Speaker>Like Galileo, who also had this nutty idea that the planets rotated around <v Speaker>the sun. It would have been excommunicated from the Catholic Church and loses season <v Speaker>tickets to the Holy Cross home games. <v Speaker>In the world of opera, this theater, La Scala in Milan, is the holy of holies, <v Speaker>Verdi's Aida and Puccini's Madame Butterfly premiered here. <v Speaker>And when I think of all the works performed in this theater and by whom I tremble <v Speaker>and at the La Scala management could hear me sing, they would tremble. <v Speaker>Well, give it a shot. <v Speaker>Lay your arm or lay Biyombo. <v Speaker>Leave Myanmar. Know your. <v Speaker>So solar power or LA? <v Speaker>Muscala was destroyed during World War 2, but later reopened with conductor Arturo

<v Speaker>Toscanini in 1946. <v Speaker>Giuseppe Verdi. I mean, he wrote La Traviata, Rigoletto. <v Speaker>He wrote an opera called Attallah about Attila the Hun place in the fifth century. <v Speaker>But when it ran here in the 19th century, during the Austrian occupation <v Speaker>in the opera, an Italian citizen says to Attila the Hun would take the whole universe, <v Speaker>but leave Italy to us. <v Speaker>Well, this slip by the Austrian censors, it ignited the audience. <v Speaker>They started yelling out the phrase late, Talya, annoy the Italian, annoy, leave Italy <v Speaker>to us. And this inspired Italy's quest for independence. <v Speaker>And when they wanted, Giuseppe Verdi was elected to the first parliament. <v Speaker>Mallam, a center of Italian finance and commerce, is the home of La Borsa, <v Speaker>which is the stock exchange. <v Speaker>One thing about the Italians, they will not tolerate a bad tenor or a bad soprano, <v Speaker>but a general or politician who cares.

<v Speaker>What they want to know is can he say? <v Speaker>Almost to the Switzerland border at a lake called Komal. <v Speaker>I have a problem trying to decide where a paradise in this <v Speaker>life is to be found. It's either the west coast of Ireland, perhaps, or <v Speaker>here. The tiled covered villas and inviting little hotels <v Speaker>sloped gently into the liquid mirror through which fish can be clearly <v Speaker>seen 30 feet down. <v Speaker>And oh, look, they forgot to build a boardwalk. <v Speaker>If your idea of a feast for the eyes is a t shirt display or a video <v Speaker>game emporium, Lake Como is not for you. <v Speaker>What it is is a pretty good example of how not to ruin a resort.

<v Speaker>What has to be one of the oldest company towns in the world, Cremona, this <v Speaker>quiet hamlet on the Pole River, was devoted to the making of masterpieces, <v Speaker>rare stringed instruments bearing the most treasured of labels Stradivarius. <v Speaker>Each of these priceless instruments must be played every day. <v Speaker>As Professor Mosconi, director of Museums Stradivari, Mariani makes <v Speaker>his daily rounds. <v Speaker>My partner on her own quadrilateral, soon I got married cuando not necessarily

<v Speaker>my letter, but the verses, you know, I think we see Owls the Richaun, <v Speaker>which are coming at it. <v Speaker>David faribault, Kaser Cheetham, Elias's psycho-social say that come through and talk <v Speaker>us through metal there. Love radical to Joe Lieberman, our record man. <v Speaker>Said Shatto says they saw Okoro point out for integrating <v Speaker>love. Orono Fast oppresive anti-matter moneyless rovito grocery store <v Speaker>Popsicle DeMille which aren't all but and travyon in geology alone CHIRLA are picky <v Speaker>Porsha term on dollar initial argentino <v Speaker>epochal Kuzey C-Change or green dyscalculia Smokie Jirgah. <v Speaker>What pro-change of your lenience or no jaunty annoy a buried <v Speaker>of a store viana your own Chidi about this sanity it's possible to <v Speaker>mongo in quality only providing quality only bootlicking <v Speaker>a possibility that Dahlstrom A.S. <v Speaker>really needs to be released of your lunch. At least pocket UTSA tanktop in

<v Speaker>other amantha a two tier a.k 41 apartness full of orthotic. <v Speaker>It's already met with Opelousas of the audio. <v Speaker>Outrightly dizzying you modo least. <v Speaker>The violin making tradition lives on and Cremona, where I dropped in at the shop of these <v Speaker>enterprising young craftsmen. <v Speaker>How did you get started as a family they knew your father do? <v Speaker>No. <v Speaker>I'm the first in my family and my friend is his father. <v Speaker>He's a violin maker. Manali Finish it all to work. <v Speaker>His father make only five or six violin.

<v Speaker>And after the war and change at work <v Speaker>for a two, we turn for a family. <v Speaker>How many in in promoter? <v Speaker>How many shops like this are? <v Speaker>I think 100. <v Speaker>Really? Yes. <v Speaker>Yes. This is an only only violin making a thinking, <v Speaker>Ramona. And because we are about 200 <v Speaker>violin makers by butting in one shop, usually aseries <v Speaker>a choo choo violin maker. <v Speaker>You feel intimidated working in the shadow of Stradivarius. <v Speaker>I feel the Cremona is the first in the world for the violin <v Speaker>and for me. <v Speaker>If I change it down and maybe play, I <v Speaker>have no so good feeling weird. <v Speaker>We did a violin. <v Speaker>You both played just a little.

<v Speaker>Only 14 strings. <v Speaker>We have a good violin player. <v Speaker>They say we taste a day. <v Speaker>These demands a key ask. <v Speaker>I say if there is more good to change and maybe istrying or breed's <v Speaker>or sound post for change, it just a little sound. <v Speaker>We play music. I play clarinet. <v Speaker>Exactly. And they play guitar, but we play music. <v Speaker>You have to be the only sax player that made violins. <v Speaker>Yes, you may. <v Speaker>You must make your own reeds just with the leftover. <v Speaker>We pick up our story in the year 86 B.C., when the Roman ruler Pompey, the <v Speaker>great form, the first triumvirate with two other men, Crassus and <v Speaker>one J. Caesar. <v Speaker>But Caesar and Pompey turned against each other and civil war broke out.

<v Speaker>Keep in mind that throughout Italian history, civil wars are not uncommon occurrences. <v Speaker>They are on a par with basketball playoffs in the United States. <v Speaker>I happened to run into some Americans who were not exactly tourists. <v Speaker>G.i.'s and their families stationed at the casarett, my elderly army base <v Speaker>near the town of Vicenza, where they were relaxing and having a chili cookout. <v Speaker>Well, I gotta tell you, this is the high point of my career. <v Speaker>I am honored that I need it. <v Speaker>I am honored to be here. I respect you. <v Speaker>I tell ya after this, my career is over with because <v Speaker>all my life it has been a lifelong ambition of mine <v Speaker>to appear alive on a flatbed truck at a chili cook off in

<v Speaker>Italy. <v Speaker>You are the cream of the crop of the United States Army. <v Speaker>I'm cutting edge in this tumultuous part of the world, ladies and gentlemen. <v Speaker>Your mission is top secret medicos all the way up to the chain of command <v Speaker>where they do not know what your mission is. <v Speaker>That continues all the way up to the Oval Office and the White House, where he <v Speaker>doesn't know what your mission is. <v Speaker>I know what your mission is. <v Speaker>You are here at the ready in the event that Venice is attacked <v Speaker>by Florence. <v Speaker>I die. They are you. <v Speaker>I love my dream. <v Speaker>I did want to be shipped off to <v Speaker>it so that I was in my way. <v Speaker>I wanted. Why are Malabo are timbuctoo?

<v Speaker>Not at all. Everyone at <v Speaker>all. Not at the beach. <v Speaker>And Zah is my home. <v Speaker>I bought postcards of road souvenirs <v Speaker>from my lady at the P X at. <v Speaker>I haven't seen the waves down off the base. <v Speaker>Someday I'll come back and say, ANTOLINI, someday I'll come <v Speaker>back and say. <v Speaker>Nazi Florence, we have arrived capital of Tuscany,

<v Speaker>cradle of the Renaissance, instantly identified with its landmark domed <v Speaker>cathedral. This is where Michelangelo's Statue of David is. <v Speaker>It's also where the lesser publicized Amerigo Best Beauty was born. <v Speaker>And there are more priceless art treasures per square mile in Florence than just about <v Speaker>any city in the world. <v Speaker>Would I wouldn't have given to have been a renaissance man dining with the meninges, <v Speaker>hanging out with Dante. <v Speaker>Haven't people stopped me on the street saying, pardon me? <v Speaker>But where do the model for Michelangelo's statue of David? <v Speaker>Well, no, but thank you. David was a little taller. <v Speaker>We're not going to pay to see the original David. <v Speaker>We're not going to pay to see the original David and the Academia Museum because there's <v Speaker>a free replica right here in the Piazza Senior year.

<v Speaker>Long before there were Rockefellers or Vanderbilts, there were the messages of Florence, <v Speaker>this family controlled the wealth, owned the banks and even bought its own cathedrals <v Speaker>and put up statues of themselves. <v Speaker>They had their own cardinals, even their own popes. <v Speaker>Leo the tenth and Clement the seventh were relatives. <v Speaker>If the managers told you that God was a cousin, you didn't argue with him. <v Speaker>Some Italians who do not live in Florence will sneer and tell you that the city can be a <v Speaker>little, well, precious. <v Speaker>It didn't help when local artists like Azoulay and Lappy would paint scenes from the New <v Speaker>Testament and put Florence in the background instead of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. <v Speaker>This rather crowded fresco by Ghazali is called Journey of the Magi.

<v Speaker>So who are the wise men on the way to the manger? <v Speaker>There is KCMO Medeski and Pietro Medeski, the home energy clan. <v Speaker>On the way to Bethlehem with a detour through Florence. <v Speaker>To adorn their cathedrals, they needed nice pictures. <v Speaker>On the matter, cheap payroll was a promising young lad. <v Speaker>It was not only an accomplished painter, but he was handy with a chisel and marble. <v Speaker>His name was born a ROCE, you say? <v Speaker>Never heard of him? Yes, you have. <v Speaker>His first name was Michelangelo. <v Speaker>During World War 2, the Nazis blew up every bridge in Florence over the Arno River. <v Speaker>Except this one, Punta Vecchio. <v Speaker>This bridge was begun in thirteen forty five.

<v Speaker>So what did they do that the builders of America's sagging infrastructure didn't? <v Speaker>Easy. If you restrict traffic on your bridge to donkeys and horses, it'll last <v Speaker>longer. <v Speaker>Perhaps the greatest Florentin of all was don.t allegory. <v Speaker>Three hundred years before Shakespeare, Dante's Divine Comedy became the literary <v Speaker>masterpiece of record. <v Speaker>It was the first written departure from the form of Latin of the time to the common <v Speaker>Italian vernacular we know today. <v Speaker>The Divine Comedy was an epic, three volume, moralistic poem <v Speaker>in which Dante consigned historic figures popes as well as his friends <v Speaker>to heaven, purgatory or the fiery <v Speaker>inferno checklist. <v Speaker>This was Dante's old neighborhood and place as sort of a divine comedy theme.

<v Speaker>Let's say I had the paradise salad. <v Speaker>The Purgatory pasta and the blackened scampi from hell. <v Speaker>Oh, great, they come all the way to peace and to see the leaning tower, and here they are <v Speaker>trying to straighten it. Why that ought to boost tourism. <v Speaker>Hey, folks, a straight tower. <v Speaker>As of right now, it's still tilting to the right. <v Speaker>And who isn't these days? <v Speaker>The tower is about fifteen feet off perpendicular. <v Speaker>And before it was even finished, it was only three stories high. <v Speaker>The ground on one side started to sink. <v Speaker>Well, that's when the city planners must have said, hey, let it till it's gonna be <v Speaker>straight.

<v Speaker>Who's gonna come? I promised myself I wasn't going to come here to do all those goofy <v Speaker>touristy things like holding it up or pushing it down. <v Speaker>But I will tell you that Christopher Columbus once climbed to the top of the leaning <v Speaker>tower and looked out. And that's when he had the idea that the world was slanted. <v Speaker>Julius Caesar, with the historic crossing of the Rubicon River, defeated Pompey's forces <v Speaker>and entered Rome. He put up statues of himself. <v Speaker>He put his picture on the money. The word czar comes from Caesar. <v Speaker>The word Kaizer comes from Caesar, not to mention the salad. <v Speaker>When people met Caesar, they were required to extend their arms like this and say, Hail <v Speaker>Caesar. Well, a salute worked better for some leaders than others. <v Speaker>You heard the expressions all roads lead to Rome when the roads get here, there one

<v Speaker>way. Do as the Romans do. <v Speaker>Talk with your hands while you're driving. <v Speaker>Rome wasn't built in a day. <v Speaker>By noon that day, all the unions went on strike. <v Speaker>For the best view of Rome, you go to the top of the highest of its seven hills at the <v Speaker>American Academy, founded by J.P. <v Speaker>Morgan and other industrialists as a cultural center. <v Speaker>This villa was originally the headquarters of the father of modern Italy, Giuseppe <v Speaker>Garibaldi. <v Speaker>Nothing about Garibaldi was predictable. <v Speaker>This great Italian hero was born in France on the 4th of July. <v Speaker>As a young rebel, he was condemned to death for his revolutionary activities. <v Speaker>So he escaped to South America, where he participated in two revolutions just <v Speaker>to keep his fighting skills up to speed. <v Speaker>Twelve years later, he returned to Italy to form a volunteer army to drive out the <v Speaker>French and the Austrians. Garibaldi's forces were practically wiped out.

<v Speaker>And again, he fled for his life, this time becoming a candle maker <v Speaker>in Staten Island, New York, of all places. <v Speaker>Six years later, Garibaldi again went home, this time to join forces <v Speaker>with the king of Sardinia. Victor Emanu-El, the second. <v Speaker>And in 1861, after many battles, Italy was at last united. <v Speaker>The life of Italy's great hero would make a great movie starring George C. <v Speaker>Scott, of course. But you wonder about the course of history if Garibaldi had <v Speaker>been content to live out his life making candles in Staten <v Speaker>Island, New York. <v Speaker>When in Rome, it became my patriotic duty to try out the piano at the residents <v Speaker>of the American ambassador and Mrs. Reginald Bartholomew, enormous <v Speaker>debt to gratitude. <v Speaker>The American ambassador and Mrs. Bartholomew. <v Speaker>Welcome us here. I say welcome. <v Speaker>I feel welcome, although I know that security is important.

<v Speaker>I didn't expect the guard out there to throw my script into a bucket of water. <v Speaker>We are at the residence when you are on United States property overseas <v Speaker>and you are doing political satire. <v Speaker>It's a little risky. <v Speaker>The best way I know to get a tax order just like that. <v Speaker>We are taping here for PBS Public Television. <v Speaker>We're on the same budget. <v Speaker>As a matter of fact, I have. <v Speaker>I see they took away the piano bench already. <v Speaker>No, no. <v Speaker>We traveled all over the place and the scene now takes place in the year <v Speaker>80 A.D., the opening day of the world's <v Speaker>first major sports arena, the Coliseum. <v Speaker>I went up there to the Coliseum. The floor is not there anymore. <v Speaker>You know, they had a wooden floor. <v Speaker>And you stand up there and I looked into the coliseum and I thought,

<v Speaker>Jimmy Hoffa has gotta be down there. <v Speaker>It's all day, day for the past time. <v Speaker>Overall policy. <v Speaker>Just see the lions at home. <v Speaker>Beddings be gone. <v Speaker>Christians are. You know what? <v Speaker>That's sad. Or Taine for all the fans <v Speaker>here in Rome. <v Speaker>It's a large with tailgate party out where the chariots <v Speaker>are par. Here on this side. <v Speaker>All right. <v Speaker>C see the M for his <v Speaker>order, the game to beat the Lions, I know <v Speaker>it's our favorite to win. <v Speaker>And Nero is tuning his new Why <v Speaker>the crowd misbehaves their main game the way

<v Speaker>the seats are full body. <v Speaker>We toss a coin. <v Speaker>You better believe that. A lion. <v Speaker>They like to raise your hands. <v Speaker>Find them appeals, not the levels of field. <v Speaker>The lions are saying grace before meals. <v Speaker>There were no games last season without a pay hike. <v Speaker>The Major League Gladiators were on strike. <v Speaker>Call us. <v Speaker>Because Christopher Columbus discovered America after setting sail <v Speaker>with his four children, Nina, Pito, Tiffany and Larry. <v Speaker>You would think the United States of America would have been named after him. <v Speaker>But of course, America is named after the Italian explorer Amerigo. <v Speaker>That's beauty. There are things in the Americas that are named after Christopher

<v Speaker>Columbus, Columbia, the gem of the Ocean, District of <v Speaker>Columbia, a Columbia University, and the network that fired Connie Chung. <v Speaker>All right. Now we salute a man who's been kind of left out <v Speaker>of history. Amerigo, this beauty. <v Speaker>Columba's earned his legacy at last he did get in <v Speaker>our way called Columbia Best Buji gets the crowd. <v Speaker>We are called a Marich got a name which would inspire Colombias, <v Speaker>the name of one drug cartel supplier. <v Speaker>America's named after me. <v Speaker>That led vestibules, his bio colombus turned out to be <v Speaker>a dull town in Ohio. <v Speaker>I'll raise you two, and the actress said to Amber, we go <v Speaker>see, it's right here on the map.

<v Speaker>Hang a right at Porter. <v Speaker>Go. Italian in-flow and 2lbs Ferrari Fiat. <v Speaker>America sounds better than the United States on best Fugee Baragon <v Speaker>sound better than me, and I say it's off duty. <v Speaker>Well, you don't have to be Catholic to appreciate the splendor of St. Peter's Basilica <v Speaker>and all of Vatican City, this present church begun in fourteen fifty <v Speaker>five is the creation of, among others. <v Speaker>Michelangelo, who designed the dome and the exterior colonnades are the work <v Speaker>of Bernini. My wife and I were honored to have a private audience with Pope <v Speaker>John Paul. A second. <v Speaker>OK. There were 5000 other people there. <v Speaker>Our contact at the Vatican had been concerned that I might do something <v Speaker>undignified. When I got there. <v Speaker>Wow.

<v Speaker>I mean, what did they think I'd say? Congratulations on the restored ceiling of the <v Speaker>Sistine Chapel. Although the first time I saw it, Adam was not wearing a Rolex <v Speaker>watch. <v Speaker>I was introduced to the pope as an American on television. <v Speaker>And you know something? For the rest of my life, I'll never know if he thought I was <v Speaker>Larry King. <v Speaker>Three coins in the fountain. <v Speaker>To scoop them out is quite a mess. <v Speaker>Too bad that the fountain doesn't take American Express. <v Speaker>Three streets come together here and the Italian words for three streets are Trei <v Speaker>V. Hence we have the Trevi Fountain and the water flows <v Speaker>here from a grippers aqueduct built 19 years before the birth <v Speaker>of Christ. Well, you know the legend. <v Mark Russell>You toss a coin into the Trevi Fountain, make a wish, and if the coin floats back to you, <v Mark Russell>you will return to Hawaii. But only if the groundhog sees his shadow. <v Mark Russell>Something like that. <v Mark Russell>A definite highlight of the Eternal City is the Pantheon.

<v Mark Russell>Called the most single perfect building in the world since the Emperor Hadrian <v Mark Russell>built it in the second century, the Pantheon is an ideal place to get <v Mark Russell>off of the tourist treadmill and contemplate the perfection. <v Mark Russell>Remember this thing in the movie Roman Holiday? <v Mark Russell>Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn stood here called A Mouth of Truth. <v Mark Russell>Stick your arm in there. Tell a lie it'll bite your arm off, so better tell the truth. <v Mark Russell>Here goes. <v Mark Russell>Ah, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the budget will never be balanced and light beer <v Mark Russell>has as many calories as a regular beer. <v Mark Russell>[sighs in relief] <v Mark Russell>Heading south toward Africa, we have left the European mainland.

<v Mark Russell>We're still in Italy, but now the gravestones of antiquity have given way to <v Mark Russell>Mediterranean pastels. <v Mark Russell>Here in the capital of Sicily, Palermo. <v Mark Russell>Surrounded by serious mountains, Palermo is bright and sunny and after centuries <v Mark Russell>of being ravaged by everything from earthquakes to General Patent's tanks, <v Mark Russell>at this point in her life, she looks like a cross between oh maybe Televiv <v Mark Russell>and El Paso, Texas. <v Mark Russell>That's a compliment. <v Speaker>Before I went to Sicily, I had been forewarned not to bring up the M-word Mafia, <v Speaker>whereupon my guide Antonio Melodia, a proud Sicilian, brought the <v Speaker>subject up himself. <v Speaker>Wonder if people will know about this, though. <v Speaker>I associate the name with Mafia <v Speaker>walts Mafia. Many, many people will be asking me this question. <v Speaker>It's just crime. <v Speaker>And you get that all over the world. <v Speaker>Organized crime. And you got it here, of course. <v Speaker>And now it's becoming sort of a legend.

<v Speaker>Part of the country coming to Italy. <v Speaker>And you don't really think that Sicily will be worth coming along to see <v Speaker>to visit. First of all, I'm thinking about Gerta, a German writer. <v Speaker>He told around Italy and he came over to Sicily. <v Speaker>And then I thought and he wrote down in his book, said, well, you have to come to <v Speaker>Sicily, because that's the key for the understanding for the whole of Italy. <v Speaker>You have everything here is a concentration of wall things, <v Speaker>a wall, because a cultures, a lot of history that you find on the mainland. <v Speaker>We've got 3000 years of history, Sicilian, its own cultural background. <v Speaker>It's a literature in our language. <v Speaker>We're Sicilian and then Italian. <v Speaker>We'd like to have some kind of independence of our own. <v Speaker>It would have been a nice thing if just after the war, instead <v Speaker>of joining in Italy again, we would have become, as it was, nearly <v Speaker>the forty ninth, the state of the United States of America.

<v Speaker>You're kidding. I'm not. It's true. It's history. <v Speaker>We've got records. <v Speaker>We have politicians that contacted the president of the states of America. <v Speaker>The prime minister, the pope asking for all the political support, <v Speaker>the help that you need for the forming of a new country. <v Speaker>It's just that was for one year. <v Speaker>The piazza where this fountain is was once the center of all social activity <v Speaker>in Palermo. It was the place to see and be seen with your family. <v Speaker>But the city fathers thought that their town lacked culture. <v Speaker>And what was needed here was a nice, fancy fountain. <v Speaker>A delegation was sent to the renowned fountain makers of Florence. <v Speaker>And this was the one they pick. None other would do. <v Speaker>Well, let's just say that Florence is more cosmopolitan than Palermo. <v Speaker>And this design was based on Greek mythic figures. <v Speaker>And when it was unveiled, the people were shocked and they boycott of the piazza <v Speaker>because after all, you wouldn't want to expose your wife and children to all this

<v Speaker>obscenity. The people gathered elsewhere in this piazza became <v Speaker>forever known as the square of shame. <v Speaker>I don't know who this is, but I'll bet it did stand up comedy under the name of Leonardo <v Speaker>Jay Leno. <v Speaker>Kharrazi.

<v Speaker>Upon arrival in Naples, first thing I decided to do is leave Naples has modern <v Speaker>nondescript buildings. I wanted that I had to stay in the states. <v Speaker>Naples is grimy and congested again. <v Speaker>I would have stayed in the states Naples as a monumental crime rate. <v Speaker>I rest my case. Why don't I say something good about Naples? <v Speaker>Okay. It's close to Capri. <v Speaker>The Isle of Capri or Capri, if you want people to think you wear a Gucci underwear, <v Speaker>is that quintessential Mediterranean haven for those types who grew bored with the <v Speaker>French Riviera. They're all here. <v Speaker>The rich, the famous, and also the ones who are fighting extradition. <v Speaker>A mast on your visit to Capri is the Blue Grotto, so named

<v Speaker>because it's water due to a translucent trick of the sunlight is blue. <v Speaker>The only way to pass through the narrow entrance, as in tiny, rickety boats. <v Speaker>Never designed to contain an entire television crew now turning green. <v Speaker>Okay. All right. <v Speaker>On the Ides of March, a date that will live in infamy excuse me, <v Speaker>wrong date on this very spot in the ancient Roman Senate. <v Speaker>Julius Caesar was stabbed twenty three times by his political enemies and his old <v Speaker>pal Brutus. We all know Caesar's last words at two brutal.

<v Speaker>His next to the last words were. <v Speaker>I'd rather be in Philadelphia. <v Speaker>If you're looking for a place that's a little less frantic and definitely crime free, I <v Speaker>recommend nearby Pompei, where all of the inhabitants and their belongings <v Speaker>have been petrified and volcanic ash since the year 79 A.D., <v Speaker>which can cut down on the crime rate. <v Speaker>Nobody has made a move here for nineteen hundred years. <v Speaker>They don't even lock their doors. No police or anything. <v Speaker>So what was the deterrent? <v Speaker>The volcano. <v Speaker>On August 24th, 79 A.D., the violent Vesuvius not only <v Speaker>erupted, but split open as tons of lava, rocks and <v Speaker>mud rained down on Pompei, filling the air with toxic gas and <v Speaker>fumes. The town, with all of its inhabitants and their treasures,

<v Speaker>were instantly buried and trapped in silence until their discovery <v Speaker>in the sixteen hundreds. <v Speaker>Excavations slowly began in the 18th century and continues <v Speaker>today. <v Speaker>These people probably suffocated, attempting to flee the wet volcanic ash

<v Speaker>and casing their bodies formed molds, which unbelievably remained intact <v Speaker>for centuries. When the moles were discovered, they were filled with plaster, giving us <v Speaker>lasting impressions of the poor victims. <v Speaker>Right down to their facial expressions. <v Speaker>And what do we have here? <v Speaker>But the best little brothel in Pompeii, whose first century erotic <v Speaker>billboards inform the visitor that this ain't the public library. <v Speaker>The fact that the patrons were not preserved for identification is just as well. <v Speaker>For a walk through the past, you need a guide like Giuseppe Imparato. <v Speaker>Now, it was unknown when when did they first have an idea that there was <v Speaker>something something here? <v Speaker>No, I wouldn't say so. You stirringly Pompei was known.

<v Speaker>The only thing that nobody could judge where the location was <v Speaker>so accidentally during works for an aqueduct directed by <v Speaker>Dominique Fontana, one of the very famous Italian netiquette dates. <v Speaker>This man realized that every day, seeing his employees pulling <v Speaker>off different fragments, patterns, the engine, they knew there was something down here. <v Speaker>Yeah. He was almost sure about it. <v Speaker>So you forgot about the aqueduct to tell you in a simple way. <v Speaker>And he happened to discover Pompei. And then it was about the end of the 16:00. <v Speaker>What was the population of Pompeii when when the volcano erupted? <v Speaker>Twenty five thousand inhabitants. <v Speaker>We know about the centers left by Emperor <v Speaker>Titus. <v Speaker>You can see the actual tracks, wagon tracks or cherry attraction with stones. <v Speaker>And that is really something surprising, I would say, because <v Speaker>of it. Three stones technically say the stepping stones <v Speaker>for offering a facility to people to walk across

<v Speaker>during a rainy day when water flowing through scenes they had not created <v Speaker>as sewerage system yet. <v Speaker>So and also very interesting is that between the first and <v Speaker>the third stone, because we are speaking of three stepping stones, besides the <v Speaker>spaces where a wheel of a child can come through, there is a distance, <v Speaker>a real calculation of 4 feet and inches. <v Speaker>The gage of a Roman transportation stealing U.S. <v Speaker>Railways. The distance between a truck and another is of four feet in a ditch <v Speaker>and covered wagons. And yes. <v Speaker>And is still going back to the Romans. Oh, yes. <v Speaker>That brothel where those legal at the time? <v Speaker>I think so. It was legal to the point that we know also how much <v Speaker>could have been the admission fee consisting in two silver coins <v Speaker>called in Latin Access to Access MedImmune. <v Speaker>And also it's very interesting that please build

<v Speaker>in the only windings style street that was a Roman idea to give a better <v Speaker>chance to men, specially for married, how to disappear around the first corner. <v Speaker>They really made it good civic planning. <v Speaker>I think so. <v Speaker>Let me ask you this, too. Simply, isn't Mount Vesuvius overdue to <v Speaker>erupt again? <v Speaker>We think so, because the scenes in 1944, <v Speaker>it has been very, very quiet. No smoke comes out. <v Speaker>No explosions we can hear. So there is no parasitic activity, which is <v Speaker>generally cyclic and after 20, 25 <v Speaker>years. But more than that, he's already gone. <v Speaker>So we afraid that may erupt again like it erupted <v Speaker>in 79 A.D. all of a sudden. <v Speaker>Anytime. Anytime. Are you nervous? <v Speaker>Well, I'm not nervous, but I don't want even think about it. <v Speaker>That's it.

<v Speaker>There was a time in the known world when Venice was the gateway to everywhere, three <v Speaker>times larger than Paris and London combined, her empire covered the entire <v Speaker>Mediterranean trade with China and the fast lira to be made from <v Speaker>the Crusades made Venice a major seaport where profits were high <v Speaker>and scruples were low. <v Speaker>This city, a combination of Renaissance Exotic and Oriental Bazaar, <v Speaker>contains one hundred and fifty canals, which form one hundred and seventeen <v Speaker>islands connected by 400 bridges. <v Speaker>The streets are but narrow footpaths. <v Speaker>The entire town sits on millions of wooden pylons that are centuries old, <v Speaker>and if they ever became exposed to the elements and rotted or even their chief <v Speaker>Venice. That's why the only thing worse than a high tide is a low tide. <v Speaker>When they pull the plug. <v Speaker>Central to all that is Venice as this bit of architectural understatements and Marko's

<v Speaker>basilica begun in the year 10 15. <v Speaker>The church was built to hold the remains of Saint Marc, whose pet lion <v Speaker>is the city's logo, and apparently the lion could fly. <v Speaker>Mark Twain once said of this revered shrine of Christendom that it resembled <v Speaker>a giant water beetle sunning itself in the square. <v Speaker>It took Saint-Marc a while to get here. <v Speaker>For centuries, his body was buried in Egypt. <v Speaker>Eventually it was smuggled to Venice, hidden in a large basket of pork, <v Speaker>which the Moslems wouldn't touch, thereby guaranteeing safe passage <v Speaker>for the contraband. St. Mark's arrival in Venice is depicted here by the artist <v Speaker>Tenzer Relo. He appears to be in pretty good shape for a man who's been dead for a <v Speaker>thousand years.

<v Speaker>This solid gold altar panel is the Palo d'oro containing <v Speaker>300 hundred sapphires. <v Speaker>Three hundred emeralds. Thirteen hundred pearls and 15 rubies, <v Speaker>all stolen when the Venetians sacked Constantinople in the 10th century. <v Speaker>Please feed the pigeons. <v Speaker>They say that if the pigeons go away, Venus will fall. <v Speaker>The canals will drain, the Liora will drop and the tourists will stay home in Japan. <v Speaker>Any messages? <v Speaker>Just off St. Mark's Square as the Palace of the doges. <v Speaker>The rulers of Venice for over a thousand years. <v Speaker>The Dodgers were in office for life, passing the position down to their sons. <v Speaker>Doges in Italian is ill dooce a title later adopted by

<v Speaker>Benito Mussolini. <v Speaker>In the late 13th century, this became the Asia connection. <v Speaker>The port of entry for the fabulous delights brought by Marco Polo from the East, <v Speaker>silk and jewels, an opulent finery, not to mention salt and pepper, <v Speaker>parsley, sage, rosemary and time spices never before assembled in Europe. <v Speaker>Were it not for Marco Polo. Italy might have been known for its bland <v Speaker>food. <v Speaker>Where else but in this unusual place, would you find a shopping mall on a bridge? <v Speaker>No surprise when the bridge is the Rialto. <v Speaker>Incidentally, the birthplace of the bay. <v Speaker>Speaking of bridges, this one building sixteen thirty seven was where a convicted

<v Speaker>prisoners were led from a hall of justice to the dungeon. <v Speaker>It's called the Bridge of Sighs because through these windows, prisoners have their <v Speaker>last look at the outside world. <v Speaker>On a happier note, it was said that if a couple kissed in a gondola <v Speaker>while going under this bridge, their marriage would last forever. <v Speaker>And it worked until 1976, when divorce became legal. <v Speaker>These gondolas are built by hand using eight types of wood.

<v Speaker>Each one takes six thousand hours to complete. <v Speaker>Using tools 100 generations old. <v Speaker>And they cost a minimum of 30 thousand dollars apiece. <v Speaker>These men are Venice. <v Speaker>When Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto premiered in Venice, Verdi kept the <v Speaker>rehearsals under tight security because he knew that he had a hit song <v Speaker>in the ARIA, laid down a mobi, lay off the gondoliers, <v Speaker>got a hold of the song ahead of time. <v Speaker>They'd be singing it all over town, claiming it as their own. <v Speaker>It was our good fortune to just happened to be in Venice on a major holiday there. <v Speaker>The Feast of the Redeemer when the opening salvo. <v Speaker>But to our mother of all fireworks displays goes off the ground <v Speaker>shakes and the Grand Canal lights up like high noon. <v Speaker>Every gondola, yachts and rowboat and dinghy and town heads for the harbor <v Speaker>for the best view. <v Speaker>And Carluccio.

<v Speaker>I'll bet those guys hate that song. Santa lugia. <v Speaker>Suddenly a Dixieland musician hates when the Saints go marching in. <v Speaker>Think the next time in New Orleans I'll ask him to play Santa Luchi. <v Speaker>As these guys are singing When the Saints Go Marching In. <v Speaker>To have Caesar's allies Mark Antony and Octavia and wish to avenge his death, <v Speaker>but they had a falling out when Mark left his wife, who happened to be Octavia <v Speaker>and sister, to marry the Queen of Egypt, Elizabeth Taylor, <v Speaker>Octavian changed his name to Caesar Augustus and Rome flourished <v Speaker>under his rule. But upon his death, he was succeeded. <v Speaker>By history's renowned sleaze is to. <v Speaker>Tony. Tiberius. Cheech, Caligula. <v Speaker>COO coo Claudius and his wife Agrippa in her little lab. <v Speaker>Nero, who grew up to have his mom executed. <v Speaker>Her last words were. Any word from the governor?

<v Speaker>Oh, my son is the governor. <v Speaker>At this point, we venture away from the well-trod vistas of tourism for a side trip <v Speaker>to the mountainous Abruzzo region where the Apennines run into the Adriatic <v Speaker>Sea. The Abruzzo is unfettered. <v Speaker>Simplicity makes you aware that this must be the best evidence of ancient <v Speaker>Italy. <v Mark Russell>The capital of Abruzzo is L'Aquila, known for the Novantanove. <v Mark Russell>Nowantanove means 99. Why 99? <v Mark Russell>I'll explain in a minute, but first let me say Abruzzo L'Aquila Novantanove again. <v Mark Russell>It's fun to say. Well, legend has it that L'Aquila was formed <v Mark Russell>by the merger of 99 districts in which there were 99 castles and 99 <v Mark Russell>piazzas. There were also 99 fountains and 99 churches. <v Mark Russell>Water from the Novantanove fountain gushes from 99 spouts in commemeration

<v Mark Russell>of the legend. A bell in the town hall tower rings 99 times each <v Mark Russell>evening, which means nobody gets to sleep until 9 o'clock the next morning. <v Mark Russell>A considerable number of people from the Abruzzo migrated to the United States, including <v Mark Russell>the families of Madonna, Alan Alda and one of our show's producers, <v Mark Russell>?Leie de Chinzo?. <v Mark Russell>What a wonderful way to wind up our journey through Italy here in the hills of Abruzzo <v Mark Russell>as guests of this wonderful family reunion so from all of our families in the states <v Mark Russell>to this family, we want to thank you people in the states who've never been to Italy, if <v Mark Russell>they have half of the hospitality we've received, they'll be very, very lucky. <v Mark Russell>So grazie, grazie tanto and salute! <v Everyone>Salute! [music plays] <v Speaker>Funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and

<v Speaker>annual financial support from viewers like you.