The bus took an age. The landscape was flat and dry and very, very stony. White stone walls and groves of dusty olive trees and small, hot, sprawling villages with flat Arab roofs. Every time two roads crossed, invariably there would be a sign to Otranto, and invariably our driver took the opposite direction. There seemed to be a sort of rule about this. I began to find it uncanny, and despite having promised myself a few days ago, on that Regionale from Crotone to Sibari, that never again would I worry about a train’s punctuality, especially if I was on holiday, nevertheless I began to grow impatient. At a place called Bagnolo the driver did it again. And again at another place whose name I couldn’t see. Otranto to the left, we turn to the right. The €60 for the taxi began to look like a deal. Eventually I realised that the bus was doing this so as to visit all the tiny stations the train would have gone through if its driver hadn’t been ill. These stations were no doubt sensibly and very directly linked by rail but not by road. At none of these stations did we set anyone down or pick anyone up.
But when we did finally get there, the station at Otranto was definitely worth seeing. To be honest it looked more like a stately home than a station: three storeys of white stucco with fine lines and good, solid, sober proportions. Tall palm trees rose above the roof behind it, a brand-new roundabout had been laid out in front, with attractive stone paving and a lawn and plenty of parking space. Absolutely no cars or buses or people or animals of any kind were anywhere in sight, but the June bugs were deafening. The air was electrically still. While my fellow passengers set off on foot towards the town and the beach, I went into the station. You had to climb a flight of stairs and go through to the other side of the building to reach the head of the platform, which was surrounded by a charming little garden that had a hothouse feel to it. Going back through the station I noticed a ticket window, which was actually occupied. Two men were talking. There was no one to interrupt them.
THE STREETS DOWN TO the sea offer the typical southern combination of the ramshackle and the haphazard. There seems no logic to their direction, or to the orientation of the buildings thrown up beside them. Scrub, cactuses, sheds, a small cafe, a pleasant bungalow. You cross a busy road, then move down more purposefully towards the sea, the waterfront, the place where all the action is.
It’s dazzling, a well-rounded bay with perhaps half a mile of promenade, looking eastwards across an absolutely transparent sea, a shimmer of pale turquoise and happy bathers. The road between town and beach is jammed with cars inching along looking for parking spots. The promenade is a line of cafes and restaurants, low prefab buildings mixing outside and inside, packed with holidaymakers drinking, eating and smoking in various states of undress. Everywhere you are aware of commerce satisfying appetite in an atmosphere of easy hedonism. I turn right and walk along the waterfront to the castle that dominates the distant promontory.
It has nothing of the Gothic castle. It’s just a zigzag of massive brick-built fortifications defending the southern approach to the bay, an absolutely impenetrable vantage point from which to bombard marauding Turks. Walpole’s story of the place as home to an ancient family doomed to extinction by mysterious supernatural powers is sheer fantasy. Inside there is an Andy Warhol exhibition titled ‘I WANT TO BE A MACHINE’. There’s the famous image of Marilyn Monroe in a garishly coloured photographic negative. This is at once hilarious and too much; I can’t bring myself to see it. To think that the railways brought me all the way to the foot of Italy to rediscover Andy Warhol throws me into a state of denial. I opt for a tour of the rest of the building. Windowless underground vaults have been transformed into conference venues. The bare brick of arched walls and ceilings where once prisoners or munitions were housed has been scrubbed clean and softened with discreet lighting. In another room a wedding has just ended. Guests in smart clothes are gathering outside ready to throw confetti over the happy couple. I make a rapid exit.
The truth is that you can’t visit the past. Either you find a ruin, which is merely melancholy, or some new purpose has been found for the place. In Verona, too, Juliet’s tomb (yes, she of Romeo and Juliet fame) has been transformed into a marriage registry office. Why anyone would want to marry in a place of such ill omen is beyond me, but my son did. His reasoning was that if one isn’t going to marry in church, at least a fine medieval building adds a touch of solemnity. He wasn’t marrying in church because his beautiful bride was Muslim; not a marauding Turk, but of the same religion. I took comfort from the fact that it isn’t really Juliet’s tomb, of course; the designation is merest legend with crass commercial intent.
But the Castle of Otranto really is the Castle of Otranto; a once-serious military structure is now important only insofar as it completes a picturesque seaside panorama and has space to accommodate a variety of public services. Modern Italian genius is largely about inhabiting the past in a way that makes sense and money. Whole university degrees are dedicated
