Pisa to Lake Garda Great Continental Railway Journeys

I'm embarking on a new railway adventure that will take me

across the heart of Europe.

I'll be using this - my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide,

dated 1913, which opened up an exotic world of foreign

travel for the British tourist.

It told travellers were to go, what to see and how to navigate

the thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossing the Continent.

Now, a century later,

I'm using my copy to reveal an era of great optimism and energy

where technology, industry, science and the arts were flourishing.

I want to rediscover that lost Europe that, in 1913, couldn't know

that its way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war.

On this journey,

I'm heading to one of the most popular

destinations on an Edwardian traveller's itinerary,

to a country whose famous sights had, in 1913,

already attracted British grand tourists for more than 200 years.

A century ago, foreign tourists in Italy,

armed with their Bradshaw's guide, regarded the country as a museum.

They ambled through its glorious past

and endured its present day of beggars and smells and bad hotels.

Their attitude was unconsciously condescending

but there was, apparently, amongst Italians a Futurist movement,

proud of Italy's engineering prowess and obsessed with speeding cars

and trains and aeroplanes. Whoa!

The foreign tourist might need to fasten his seatbelt.

In 1913, Italy had been a united kingdom for a little over half

a century.

Unification had involved a decade of war, which had taken its toll.

While the British enjoyed

nostalgia for the Italian Renaissance, Italians felt

that their country had been reborn and many wanted to look forward.

My journey begins in Tuscany at the coastal city of Pisa.

From there, I'll travel inland to the ancient walled city of Lucca

before continuing east to the cradle of the Renaissance - Florence.

I'll then head north to Bologna before ending my journey

at glorious Lake Garda.

Along the way, I'll learn how violence

hit the streets of Florence after the Futurists arrived by train.

There was no friendly discussion.

They arrived here to defend Futurism with their fists.

-Aha!

-Really, it's tagliatelle.

'I'll delight in dishes that titillated the taste buds

'of Edwardian tourists...'

That is amazing!

'..and I'll get to experience the Italians' century-long

'need for speed.'

BEEPING

HE CHUCKLES

IN ITALIAN:

In 1913, when Italy was a new nation forging its future,

many thousands of British tourists flocked to marvel at its past.

My first stop is Pisa.

Bradshaw's reminds me it was "the Pisai of the Romans.

"It's situated on both banks of the River Arno.

"The campanile, generally known as the Leaning Tower, 179 feet high

"and 13 foot out of the perpendicular, was finished in 1350."

Since time immemorial, tourists have had a penchant for the tower

and I believe that we retain that inclination today.

Those tourists arriving here 100 years ago came to experience

Italietta - a small,

sleepy country packed with treasures to be picked over.

That attitude endured despite Italy's tectonic political change and

its impressive industrial revolution at the start of the 20th century.

In Pisa, the sights that those tourists were coming to enjoy

still draw the crowds today.

What do you think of the Leaning Tower? Is it as good as you

-hoped it would be?

-It is a little smaller than we thought it would be.

-Is it your first time in Pisa?

-Yes. Very... It's beautiful.

The Leaning Tower is very, very special. It looks very attractive.

It just pulls your attention.

Do you think the tower will fall down?

-No, I didn't think so.

-Never, never! It won't.

The precarious-looking tower belongs to the 11th century cathedral.

Tourists may, in fact, be confident of its safety now

but not long ago, the monument teetered on the edge of collapse

until a group of engineers was charged with saving it.

I'm meeting emeritus professor John Burland from Imperial College

in London.

He was part of the rescue mission a quarter of a century ago.

-John, why does it lean?

-Ah!

Now, every child has tried to build a model brick tower on a carpet,

and what you all learn, all children, is you can get it

so high and then it begins to lean...

..and that's exactly the same with this tower.

Instead of a carpet, it's on, really, marsh land,

so the foundations are very soft

and there's a certain height at which a tower of that weight

and that height would start to lean,

and the tower is exactly at that height and that's why it's leaning.

Begun in the 12th century, the tower took nearly 200 years to construct.

Although it leaned from the outset, it wasn't

until the early 20th century that the danger became apparent.

The tower has had a very long history.

What was happening around the time of my Bradshaw's guide?

In 1911, they started making very precise

measurements on the inclination of the tower.

They did it every Christmas Day, presumably before they had a drink!

But they'd go out on Christmas morning

and make a measurement on the tower. It was quite a ritual.

Those measurements were very important to the commission

that I was on.

-100 years of precise records?

-Yes, that's right.

By the late 20th century, the tower leaned by around 15 feet

and was in danger of collapse.

In 1990, it was closed to the public as the government realised

that something had to be done.

Now, what was it that you came to do?

They were very concerned that it was about to fall over,

and it actually was.

And what we did was reduced its inclination, which took

the load off the south side because it was about to explode.

And the way we did it was instead of trying to push the leaning

side up, we actually took some ground out.

-So it leans less than it did?

-Yes.

John and his team attached 900 tonnes of lead weights to the tower's

north side to stabilise it

while earth underneath the higher side was removed.

Overall, it took more than a decade to secure the structure

and to reduce the inclination by almost two feet.

Finally, in 2001, the 800-year-old tower was reopened,

deemed safe for the next three centuries.

John, it's such a strange feeling as we ascend the tower.

-First we're thrown to the right, then we're thrown to the left.

-Yes.

Michael, that's because we're going up an inclined helix.

HE CHUCKLES

How did it feel to work on this project?

There were times when the stress was enormous

and I wondered why I had ever taken it on or agreed to it

but now that it's all done, you can look back on it and say, to have

worked on a World Heritage monument like that is a huge privilege.

You couldn't ask for any more, as an engineer.

The glistening tower, like many of Italy's most famous statues

and structures, was made of white marble,

which could be found in abundance just along the coast.

I'm leaving Pisa, taking the train 30 miles north.

I'm on my way to Carrara.

The guide calls it "an agreeable little town,

"almost exclusively engaged in working

"the world-known marble quarries.

"Many sculptors have studios here."

At the time of my guidebook, Italy had not long begun its industrial

revolution, which was concentrated in the north of the country.

In Carrara,

the population swelled as workers sought employment in the quarries.

The stone excavated here over millennia has been

used in some of the world's most famous monuments,

including the Pantheon in Rome and London's Marble Arch.

Thanks to its grain and purity of colour,

more marble has been mined here than anywhere else on Earth.

By contrast with Pisa, Carrara has no tourists,

and so one can appreciate its charming cathedral alone.

It's decorated with lovely friezes of animals and a cartwheel symbolising

the carts that used to bring the marble down from the mountain.

And here is the marble, close up and personal.

So many colours, so many variations of grain, so absolutely beautiful.

It's not just architects who've sought out the precious stone.

Renaissance masters like Michelangelo

and modern artists like Anish Kapoor have chosen to work with pure Carrara marble.

I'm meeting tour guide Nicola Musetti just outside town.

From these jagged hillsides,

close to a million tonnes of marble is exported every year.

It's a wonderful view of the mountains

and an enormous industrial scale.

Why is it that Carrara is so valued by sculptors?

Because in Carrara,

they can find the real, good marble to make sculptures, so that's

why Michelangelo came over here many times, in order to look for blocks.

So the Pieta, the Moses, the David,

all the masterpieces by Michelangelo were carved in our marble.

Only here they can find a huge quantity

and the best quality in the world to make sculptures and statues.

Until the 19th century,

the marble was cut by hand or blasted out in chunks.

In the late 1800s, the introduction of the helicoidal wire,

a kind of lubricated, giant cheese cutter,

allowed huge cubes to be precisely excavated.

Other innovations made their mark at the time.

When the railway age came,

-did that make a difference to the way that they mined the marble?

-Yeah.

It was a very big evolution and development

for the industry of marble

because they started to increase the quantity of marble to be

transported downwards to the sea, to the harbour,

so that was really a revolution for our marble industry.

Carrara maintains its position as one of the world's leading marble

producers.

I'm now heading to one of its oldest marble workshops.

I'm meeting Francesca Nicoli amongst an amazing library of plaster

casts, which are the first stage in the creation of a marble statue.

Francesca, what an extraordinary place.

Here, I find a British Prime Minister, WE Gladstone, here,

the very substantial figure of King Edward VII,

and here, the disapproving form of his mother, Queen Victoria.

Why are these plaster casts here?

These plaster casts belong to an important

tradition of portraits of eminent politicians.

My ancestor, Carlo Nicoli, he made, himself,

13 portraits of Queen Victoria.

One very important one was made for Brighton,

so it's been a very important production during the Victorian age.

First, a plaster cast was made

and approved before being passed on to the sculptor or to

a series of skilled carvers to be meticulously crafted in marble.

A custom-made statue was the ultimate display of 19th-century importance.

And are you still making monuments like this?

Little by little, this tradition, glorious tradition, of the portraits

of eminent politicians like William Gladstone has come to an end,

making space for modern artists.

Politicians really don't have much hope now of getting a monument?

No, but top models like Naomi Campbell, yes they do.

How the world changes!

The subjects of sculpture may be different today,

but they are created in much the same way as 100 years ago.

Ciao.

Michele.

-Diego.

-Diego.

It takes years to learn this art, but today I've been granted

permission to lay my untrained hands on this precious stone.

This is the most important implement

and there is the second most important implement.

Michelangelo, eat your heart out!

HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

I have to do it gently, he says.

It would take Diego over two months to carve a statue out of this block.

Let's hope I don't set him back too far.

-Not ready to hire!

-Not now!

-Not at the moment. Not now!

Oops!

Very satisfying. Lovely work.

Diego, I'm going to let you finish.

After all that concentration, I'm ready for sleep.

Tomorrow, I'll be bound for the heart of Tuscany.

I'm up bright and early to catch a connection from Pisa

headed 35 miles inland.

My next stop is Lucca, which Bradshaw's tells me,

"is a pleasant town, Roman again, situated in a fertile plain.

"From the railway station the Duomo is seen towering above the ramparts."

100 years ago, Bradshaw tourists came to see

the heavily fortified city states that had warred against each other.

But Italians were proud that for 50 years they had been a united kingdom.

OPERA SINGING

Lucca's defensive walls

and the exquisite mediaeval streets within them

are some of the best preserved in Italy, and a great draw for visitors.

For early 20th century travellers, there was another attraction.

As an opera lover,

I'm excited to be in a city associated with a favourite composer.

I'm meeting theatre and opera director Vivian Hewitt,

who is based in Italy just behind the opera house.

Vivian, why is Lucca Puccini's city?

Not only was he born here but throughout his long,

much travelled career in which he travelled all over the world,

he kept coming back here.

He has this very intense relationship with his home town.

-Do we find any influences of Lucca in the music?

-It's everywhere.

He somehow or other draws on his own personal experience

of where he lives and of what surrounds him

to create extremely exotic places that are very far from him.

Puccini's operas became familiar to British audiences

in the years before my guidebook.

Between 1897 and 1904 La boheme, Tosca and Madame Butterfly

were performed in Britain shortly after their Italian premiers.

The British were seduced by the Italian language

and by Italian romanticism.

But Puccini transported audiences far afield to Paris, China,

Japan and the Wild West.

The operas are full of passion,

the most extraordinary elongated love duets.

What was the inspiration for that?

I think Puccini is a man who is almost permanently in love.

He is not just a Don Giovanni,

he just doesn't amuse himself seducing women.

I think it's often women who seduce him.

As a very young man, he falls in love with Elvira,

who is a married woman and already has a family.

She is the wife of a friend of his.

She becomes pregnant and they run away together.

She is his permanent life companion.

In the meantime of course, every time he writes an opera

he has a muse and he falls madly in love with somebody.

His passion-filled operas, inspired by real life,

made Puccini a huge success.

He rapidly became Italy's best loved new composer,

taking his place alongside Giuseppe Verdi.

How should we view Puccini?

He seems to be writing traditional, melodic, Italian music

at a time when Italy is bubbling with new ideas.

Indeed he is a melodist, but he is looking very much at Schoenberg

and Stravinsky and at Northern Europe and he is using his own style

to create new music that is within the Italian tradition.

# O soave fanciulla

# O dolce viso

# Di mite circinfuso alba lunar

# Fremon

# Gi nell'anima

# Le doclezze estreme

# Tu sol comandi, amore

# Nel bacio

# Freme amor. #

Bravo!

With that duet ringing in my ears,

I must leave Lucca to continue my journey.

I'm bound for the Tuscan capital

and one of the most celebrated stops on any tourist itinerary.

Bradshaw struggles to sum up the beauty of Florence.

"It's generally conceded pre-eminence as the centre of intellectual life.

"Literature and fine arts have attained a dignity

"and grace that fittingly adorn a city set like a gem amidst beautiful,

"natural surroundings."

It tells me that Florence was formally the capital

of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and sometime

the capital of the Kingdom of Italy between 1865 and 1871.

I'd like to find out how it was that this gem lost its crown.

Since the Italian Renaissance began here in the 14th century,

Florence has drawn people from around the globe to admire

its intoxicating mix of art, architecture and literary history.

Certainly no Edwardian tour of Italy

could be complete without visiting the city.

In 1913, the old town had recently undergone extensive transformation

after the capital of Italy moved here from Turin in 1865.

I've arranged to meet historian Silvia Cavicchioli.

Silvia, what was the effect then on Florence physically

on becoming the capital of Italy?

Well, Florence at the time was still a medieval town

with an ancient heart within the medieval walls.

The problem was that many people who had arrived from Turin,

we are talking about a flux

of something like 30,000 people.

It was hastily re-planned by an architect,

Giuseppe Poggi, who intended to enlarge

and to modernise the ancient town.

The population of 118,000 swelled

as politicians and citizens moved to the new capital.

Poggi re-planned the city to accommodate them,

replacing the medieval walls with a ring road around the ancient centre.

As parts of Florentine history were torn down,

Italy's united future was being built.

The geographical achievement of unification had been very fast

so the ruling class needed symbols

to create a sense of national identity.

And this is why they looked for symbols of unity in the past.

And so the modernisation of Florence went hand in hand

with the recovery of the glorious past of Italy.

Along with rebuilding the city,

the government commissioned celebrations and statues

to glorify Italian heroes such as the 13th century poet, Dante.

But Florence's role as Italian capital wasn't to last.

In 1871 it was moved to its final location - Rome.

Did Florence regret losing the status of capital city?

Michael, I think that Florentines were, and are, very clever people.

They were aware that Rome was destined to be the final step

of the Italian Risorgimento.

Florence may have been the country's capital just briefly,

but the streets today were shaped by changes made during those six years.

I'm ready for some rest before I continue my exploration

in the morning.

CHURCH BELLS CHIME

-Buongiorno.

-Buongiorno.

-Cappuccino.

-Grazie.

-Prego.

Uno pasta.

-Buon appetito.

-Fantastico. Grazie.

The word tourist used to apply to people doing

the Grand Tour like Byron, and Shelley and Keats.

But mass tourism had already got underway by the beginning

of the 20th century, thanks to the railways.

And then travellers of the old sort snobbishly

tried to set themselves apart from the mass tourists

by inventing new tests.

Had you come to Florence for months? Were you here to study?

Could you do without your Baedeker's Guide or, indeed, your Bradshaw's?

The boom in train travel in the 1840s meant that the middle classes

were now able to appreciate cultural treasures which had once been

enjoyed only by aristocrats on their Grand Tour.

That change was well satirised by the writer, EM Forster,

in his 1908 classic, A Room With A View, partly set in Florence.

But far removed from that gentle and old-fashioned British novel,

Italian Futurists had a hard headed determination

to turn society upside-down.

I'm meeting historian Dr Irene Auerbach

in the Piazza della Repubblica.

Irene, what was Futurism?

Italian Futurism was a movement that strove to rejuvenate

Italian culture and society.

It was planned as a cultural revolution, really,

and they wanted to change the society

and the static society of Italy

by a radical change with achievements,

which glorified the achievements of the industrial revolution.

The movement was started in Milan in 1909 by a poet, Filippo Marinetti.

He saw an industrial way of life as the future and loathed the old Italy.

Futurists would fight for a secular, modern nation

using any means possible.

I believe that Filippo Marinetti launched a manifesto.

-He talked about incendiary violence. Was there incendiary violence?

-Yes.

The first manifesto of Futurism was really a scandal because they

glorified war and they proclaimed the love of danger, fearlessness.

-And to reject the past?

-Yes, of course.

They wanted to destroy museums, academies and also libraries.

The Futurist movement was not only an artistic or literary movement,

it was much more.

It was a way of life, it was a new way of looking at the world.

At the start of the 20th century,

Futurist art was the catalyst for a violent event in Florence

as leading members clashed with local journalists.

Irene, why have you brought me to this beautiful, historic cafe?

I brought you to the Giubbe Rosse

because it's a famous cafe where the artists and writers of Florence met.

In 1911, the painter and critic Ardengo Soffici,

who lived here in Florence, wrote a critique on the Futurist painting

and he criticised them very harshly.

He said what they were painting was not what they had said

in their manifesto.

They weren't living up to their ideals?

At that time he said, no.

Now, how did Marinetti take this criticism?

Oh, he was very angry about this and he didn't like criticism very much.

He decided, with the painters, to go to Florence

in defence of Futurist painting.

They came here to defend Futurism with their fists.

There was a great brawl here at the Giubbe Rosso.

When the Futurists in the evening wanted to depart

from the train station, the critics waited there for them

and there was another fist fight.

And they all had to go to the police station and to make peace there.

Irene, it's an amazing story.

Although the brawling groups made a temporary peace,

as war swept Europe from 1914, Futurism ran out of fuel

and was later absorbed by Mussolini's Fascist movement.

Futurism, with its goal of rejecting the nation's history,

itself became a thing of the past.

I'm going in search of one enduring Florentine tradition

that I gather no hungry traveller should miss out on.

For the moment the doors are closed

and the most enormous crowd has assembled.

I guess I'm not the only person to have heard of this place.

-There's two.

-Tres.

Bambina! Sorry, sir.

The Latini family has been serving traditional Tuscan food since

before my guide book and they still attract a loyal following today.

Three. Tre.

-Portillo, due. Prego.

-Grazie.

Most come here for one dish - the famous Bistecca alla Fiorentina.

I'm here to meet food writer Filippo Bartolotta to find out

what all the fuss is about.

-Filippo.

-Michael, nice to see you.

-Great to see you.

The steak it comes.

-Michael, are you hungry?

-It's absolutely huge!

What is the origin of this steak?

The English apparently invented this bistecca, beef steak literally.

Of course.

The reason why it's Bistecca alla Fiorentina is,

beef steak made the Florentine style.

It's funny how as a matter of fact outside of Tuscany

you can't find this kind of cut.

With a steak this thick, what are the complications of cooking it?

Bistecca alla Fiornetina has got the sirloin and the fillet.

You want to make sure you're cooking a little better the sirloin

and not too much the fillet because this cooks really quickly.

Look at the colour here. This is perfect, this is rare.

That is amazing.

So tender.

So tasty.

This is yet another great contribution

that Florence has made to civilisation!

No doubt about it.

TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT

Today I'm heading out of Florence.

Bound north towards another well-known stop

on the early 20th century tourist trail.

Bologna.

One thing the Futurists were right about was that the future was speed.

And today many of the world's fastest cars and bikes bear Italian names.

And the Italians have thrown themselves into high speed rail

with gusto too.

I'm on my way to Bologna.

In my 1913 timetable the fastest train seems to take about

three and a half hours.

Today, that's reduced to about 35 minutes

and nearly all of my 50 mile journey

will be through tunnel under the Apennine Mountains.

-TANNOY:

-Buongiorno. Il treno fermera a Bologna Centrale.

Constructed in 1864, this line has allowed passengers to access

the Po Valley, just over the Appennine Mountains, for 150 years.

I'm leaving Tuscany, travelling north into the region

of Emilia-Romagna to its largest city, Bologna.

Before continuing onto the last part of my journey

towards Italy's largest lake - Garda.

MUSIC: Brindisi from La Traviata.

Like many other capitals of former Italian states,

Bologna has a long history of rivalry with its neighbours.

The city even has its own leaning towers, built before their more

famous counterpart in Pisa.

As well as being celebrated for its architecture,

Bologna is also a food lover's paradise.

And there's one dish that the city is most famous for.

I'm looking for a restaurant that has the very best spaghetti bolognese, please.

Oh, my gosh, no!

-Assolutamente, no!

-No?

-No, no, no!

Spaghetti bolognese not here in Bologna.

Spaghetti bolognese is one of Italy's most famous food exports

and I'm intrigued to understand why I can't find it here.

-Monica, I'm Michael.

-Hello. How are you?

I've come to Monica Venture's pasta workshop.

They've been making traditional Bolognese dishes

for over 70 years, and I'm hoping that she can help.

Everywhere I go, I ask for spaghetti bolognese

and people get quite cross, quite excited. What's going wrong?

You have to ask for something else with Bolognese.

Tagliatelle al ragu.

How do you make that?

It's very easy.

Tagliatelle is not like spaghetti, it's not semola

but it is flour and eggs.

I am here to show you.

This is sfoglia to make tagliatelle.

'The pasta must be freshly made

'and I can't wait to taste some true Bolognese cooking.'

OK, then you roll like that.

Start to cut.

The size,

it should be seven millimetres of taglitatelle with ragu,

because every sauce got its proper size.

-Do you want to try?

-Yes.

'Different pasta shapes are paired with different sauces.

'A thicker sauce will cling better to a fatter,

'longer ribbon.'

-A little bit more?

-A little bit more, yes, like that.

-OK.

-Not too much.

-Not too much. And not too little.

-OK.

-Aha!

Release the tagliatelle.

Suddenly we have lovely ribbons of tagliatelle.

'Now that we have the pasta, we need the sauce.

'Monica's invited me to her home to show me how that's made.'

-Grazie, Monica.

-Prego.

-Grazie.

-So...

-You can see that the water is boiling and the ragu is ready.

'The pasta may take just seconds

'but the meaty ragu is cooked over five days.'

Oh, they look lovely, Monica.

Va bene.

OK. Ready?

-How is it?

-It's absolutely wonderful.

-OK.

The pasta is perfectly cooked, wonderfully fresh

and the meat sauce, wow!

Here's my tip for survival in Bologna -

do not ask for spaghetti bolognese!

In the early 20th century the Futurists wanted to ban pasta

citing it as the enemy of speed and modernity.

However, as a newly-industrialised Italy began to lead the way

in the production of cars and planes, another of this city's creations

most certainly won the Futurist seal of approval.

Bradshaw's has steered me towards the Piazza del Nettuno

and there's something familiar about Neptune's trident.

I think that weapon pierced the future and came to represent speed.

The symbol of the trident, inspired by one of Bologna's most

famous statues, was adopted by Italian car firm Maserati in 1920.

Fabio Collina, the company's classic cars manager,

is picking me up in a 1969 Quattroporte.

-Va bene, Fabio.

-Ciao, Michael.

-Andiamo via.

-Andiamo.

I want to learn more about the famous sports car manufacturer

conceived over a century ago.

What was the origin of Maserati cars?

The origin of the factory, Maserati, is here.

It's in Bologna.

The Maserati brothers opened the first workshop

in the very centre of the town.

What were they doing in the workshop? Were they already making cars?

At the very beginning, not.

They were a service workshop.

After the war, when the brother came back from the war,

they decided finally to prepare cars for race.

-Were they successful?

-Absolutely.

Every car they prepared, the car won.

Where are we going now, by the way?

-Now we are driving to Modena.

-To Modena?

-Yeah.

The company moved to Modena in 1939.

With other car manufacturers also in this region,

including the first incarnations of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani,

no wonder it's called the Motor Valley.

I'm getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the production line

from a retired mechanic from the company, Giorgio.

Giorgio, it's a very impressive facility -

it's very clean, it's very quiet.

And while the cars are stationary, what is happening to them?

So, in every station, there is a different job.

We have 12 stations where we fit all the mechanics on the car,

and another 12 near where we fit all the interior of the car.

24 to be completely assembled.

At each of the 24 assembly stations,

skilled mechanics have just under 36 minutes

to complete their phase of the work

before the car is moved on to the next.

Here is just the assembly of the car,

but later on, there are a lot of checks, testing, finishing area.

To build one car completely, from zero to the end,

you need at least 21 working days.

Are Italians still as keen on speed as they ever were?

Sure - speed is very, very important.

You see, we must have a powerful car.

ALARM SOUNDS

Capable of speeds of up to 190mph,

these machines can cost as much as £110,000.

Today, I'm being trusted with possibly the most important job.

The final part of the production process

is, of course, the test drive.

And, being in Italy, I've acquired an Italian's taste for speed.

HE LAUGHS

As soon as you tap the accelerator, here's that great roar and off we go.

ENGINE REVS

HE CHUCKLES

This is really the only way to arrive at a railway station.

I'll swap the car for a train before I do any damage.

I'm heading back to Bologna for the night

before I continue on the last leg of my journey tomorrow.

I'll travel over 130 miles north

towards one of Italy's most glamorous holiday hot spots -

Lake Garda.

I will shortly be arriving at Lake Garda.

Bradshaw's tells me that steamboats ascend and descend the lake

between Peschiera and Riva,

corresponding with the railways at each end of the lake.

Situated to the south of the Dolomite mountains,

and with a Mediterranean climate,

the lake has attracted tourists - including artists -

to its shores for three centuries.

DUCKS QUACK

In 1912, a British writer visited here to escape

and to seek inspiration.

I'm in Gargnano, on the lake's west shore,

to meet Professor Stefania Michelucci from the University of Genoa.

-Hello, Stefania.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-Fine, thanks.

Stefania, what adventure is it that brings DH Lawrence to Lake Garda

the year before my guidebook is published?

Well, it was a very particular adventure,

because he had met Frieda,

who was Frieda von Richtofen,

who was the wife of his professor in Nottingham,

and they fell in love,

they were mutually attracted to each other,

so she decided to leave England and then they came to Gargnano.

All the writers and artists are doing the Grand Tour,

back from the 17th century and spend some time on Lake Garda.

Embroiled in an affair which scandalised England,

Lawrence and Frieda were drawn to Italy

by its more liberal attitudes,

as well as by their curiosity about the changes taking place there.

What did Lawrence think of Lake Garda?

He had a very different attitude, I would say, modern and new,

because he wasn't at all romanticising,

having a sort of romantic view of Lake Garda.

He tried to understand what it was really like.

He's sensing that it is...decaying.

It's going to be overwhelmed

by the spreading mechanisation and industrialisation

which is coming from the north.

What attraction did he find in the Futurists?

He couldn't stand their worship of the machine,

but he was so attracted by the Futurists' vitalism.

He liked the idea of breaking with the past.

Although excited by that atmosphere in Italy,

Lawrence wanted to preserve the beauty of regions like Garda.

It was partly the spectacular scenery here

that inspired him to write some of his most famous works.

So this is the view that DH Lawrence and Frieda

would have had from their bedroom?

Exactly.

A very inspiring view.

He was certainly inspired by being abroad

and by the beauty of the place.

Lake Garda played an important role in his life.

But he was also desperately needing money

and so he completed Sons And Lovers, which was his first masterpiece.

And then he also wrote all the essays of Twilight In Italy.

After the First World War, Lawrence returned to Italy,

where he wrote his most controversial novel,

Lady Chatterley's Lover.

It was first published privately in Florence in 1928.

Banned in Britain, lest it should corrupt public morals,

it was a further 32 years before it reached British readers.

Now the book, with its modern themes of sex, class and war,

is acknowledged to have played an important role

in 20th century literature.

Writers were drawn to the lake's tranquillity,

but some areas of Garda were far from calm.

They were caught up in the nation's obsession with speed.

I'm at the docks to meet Fausto and Mauro Feltrinelli.

Their family has been building boats here for over 100 years.

Fausto. Sono Michael. Piacere.

-Mauro.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Fausto...

HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

Si? Si.

Fausto's great-grandfather Bernardo and his son Egidio

travelled from town to town repairing boats.

After a trip to America in 1919,

Egidio discovered how to build not just fishing boats

but speed boats, too.

It went...20 knots over the water.

It's incredible for that time.

And the fever, the fever of speed took him so strongly.

The whole of Italy was boiling with the sensation of new speed,

new life, new progress.

Egidio, Mauro's great-grandfather, also developed the hydroplane here,

based on American designs and capable of speeds of over 100mph.

So, your family developed the high-performance boat business.

Do you then find that the tourists are coming to enjoy them?

I think it automatically happened.

Before, work boats, boats for working.

Then, sport boats, racing.

And suddenly, after the speed, then came just the fun.

-Can we have some fun with this?

-Oh, why not?

THEY LAUGH

-But attention, eh?

-I'll be careful.

REVVING

HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

The steady flow of tourists to Italy 100 years ago turned into a flood

and is now virtually an invasion.

Most of them come still to see

the historic towers and domes and statues,

hoping for a room with a view,

maybe even a Chianti-fuelled romance.

But on this journey, I've discovered, just off the beaten track,

another, futuristic Italy of high-speed trains

and racy cars and boats -

it's not Italy that we come to visit,

but with its cool and elegant designs,

it's certainly one that we admire.

'Next time, I'll find out about

'the surprisingly ancient Greek origins of our modern railways

'at the spectacular Corinth canal.'

So, this is incredible - 600 BC,

two parallel lines of stone, logs running between them

and on top of the logs, the ships.

-Yes.

-That's even more extraordinary than the canal.

'I'll learn how to satisfy the nation's sweet tooth...'

-More.

-More? More?!

I'm having to hoof it through these beautiful olive groves.

'..and show a strength that would rival Hercules.'

MAN YELLS

Done!