Ligabue Magazine 49

On looking at the images accompanying the article by Lucia Simion on migratory birds, however, you really do feel as if you’re up in the sky flying alongside ducks and swans. This miracle was created by a French team of documentary-makers, brought together by the actor, director and producer Jacques Perrin. For five years they raised- literally from the nest to the sky- all kinds of birds and trained them to become familiar with humans and their flying machines. The team then set the birds free and followed them in the sky, flying over continents like birds among birds. Perrin and his assistants didn’t make the drearn of flying with your own wings come true, but their photos take you closer to the sensation than ever before.

For would-be explorers – In the 19th century, when travelling almost always also involved exploring, learning how predecessors dealt with tricky situations could mean the difference between success and failure. Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Dalton was convinced of this and so set about collecting all imaginable useful information for explorers. The result was a valuable and remarkable book (published in Italy by Ibis). Davide Domenici has chosen some of the most unusual or fanciful recommendations. Here are a few: to disinfect wounds, cover them with gunpowder and make it explode; to avoid starving to death, boil up some horses’ harnesses and eat them; and to hide precious gems, sow them under the skin of your arm. This explorer’s handbook is well worth exploring!

The king’s treasure – In the 8th century BC, when a Hittite army razed the city of Qatna in Syria, the buildings were so completely flattened the rubble covered up everything. Absolutely everything, including the king’s palace and the tombs
of his royal forebears. No one ever noticed that the collapsed buildings concealed gold bracelets and necklaces, ivory inlays, precious goblets, statues and carved sarcophaguses. The treasure lay buried for millennia. Then some archaeologists came along and by removing the bricks and earth discovered a deep well leading to the royal tombs. Gabriele Rossi Osmida, an expert on buried treasures, tells the story of how he experienced first-hand the thrill of descending underground and discovering a treasure worthy of Ali Baba’s cave.

A fairytale land – Anyone who has visited Cappadocia knows it’s impossible to really describe what they have seen. All words fail because the people who write dictionaries have never been to this Turkish region. You would need to tell how the old volcanoes shoot out white, yellow or red ashes, creating multi-coloured layers or how the rain and wind have shaped pinnacles and gorges, as if dug out of a chocolate cake with custard or cream. When the peasants and monks began to dig into the tufa to make houses, cellars and churches, they unwittingly created an “inside-out” architecture confounding our ideas further. In the churches, artists painted Eastern drapes, alabaster walls, capitals with agate fascias and lapis lazuli columns – all fake, but more strikingly beautiful than reality. Then they covered the naves and apses with crowds of saints, Madonnas, apostles and Christs with great wide-open eyes. In fact you can’t describe Cappadocia with words we know, simply because it’s an unreal fairytale land.

Elephants and boats – They say that southern Indian region of Kerala was created by a generous god with open hands, there are so many beautiful things to be seen: the stunning landscape moulded by river canals and palm groves, embroidering patterns under the red dusk sky; the gorgeous intense eyes of the women; the magnificent parade of elephants covered with variegated drapes; and the regattas with boats forty metres long as elegant as gondolas. This is the Kerala recounted by Cristina Del Mare, who also explains that each religious festival in the region provides the opportunity to celebrate together and renew links with traditions that have survived the ravages of time. Her vivid account immediately makes us long to be there.

A bird’s-eye view of Venice – The year 1500 was just around the corner when a German publisher decided to print a “postcard” of Venice that would make history: a printed engraving almost three metres long. He appointed Jacopo de’ Barberi to draw and engrave a “bird’s-eye view” of the city, i.e. as viewed from above. Bruno Berti tells the story how the artist met the challenge by sending his assistants up the city’s towers and campanili to make sketch upon sketch and then put them all together to engrave the view on six large pear-wood blocks. He then sent them off for printing. The subsequent publishing event was the talk of all the European courts. For de’ Barberi it brought honours and glory, but he decided to settle in Germany and never set foot in Venice again.