To the Centre of the Earth Italy Unpacked

'I'm Andrew Graham-Dixon and I'm an art historian.'

It's one of the top five most beautiful paintings in the world.

'I'm Giorgio Locatelli and I'm a chef.'

When you say handmade, that's what it means!

'We're both passionate about my homeland, Italy.'

It's so, so beautiful.

'The rich flavours and classic dishes of this land are in my culinary DNA.'

I wouldn't mind being a pig if I have to grow up here.

'And this country's rich layers of art and history

'have captivated me since childhood.'

Primitive but actually fantastic.

Beautiful, sophisticated.

'In this series, we'll be travelling all the way up

'the east coast of the country,

'from the deep south to the extreme north,

'stepping off the tourist track wherever we go.'

-Not a bad spot, is it?

-This is a dream.

'I want to show off some of my country's most surprising food,

'often most born out of necessity but leaving a legacy that's

'still shaping Italian modern cuisine around the world.'

-It's better than an oyster.

-Much better than an oyster.

'And the art, too, is extraordinary, exotic

'and deeply rooted in history.'

We began in the deep south

and will finish up in the far north in the Veneto,

but on this leg of our journey, we'll be unpacking

two regions in the very middle - Le Marche and Umbria,

home to some of the most captivating Renaissance art in all of Italy.

And trying its delicious,

natural flavours as we travel into the heart of Italy.

We start in Le Marche,

a region that rolls from the Apennine Mountains,

the backbone of Italy, down to the Adriatic coast.

We're going to begin in a place that I love - Urbino,

the town that gave us the painter Raphael

and the architect Bramante, who created St Peters in Rome.

It's a little Renaissance gem of a town.

So, this stand seems to have caught your eye. What is this?

This is what I wanted to show you for a long time.

This is a real speciality of Le Marche.

This is called olive ascolane.

-Buongiorno.

-Buongiorno a voi.

-This is Ze Migliori.

-Ciao. Buongiorno.

-Mio figlio.

-And this is his son.

And his father used to do this, and his father's father used to do this.

-Oh, OK.

-So they travel all over the region to make this delicacy.

To make olive ascolane, Ze Migliori stuffs the olives with meat

and his son Augusto deep fries them in breadcrumbs...

..to create this simple but richly-flavoured snack.

The most important thing is to use the right type of olives.

-Have I tasted these olives...

-No.

-..sometimes stuffed with pepper?

-No, no, no, no.

-They're only used for this?

-Yes.

The olives...

TRANSLATION:

You have to taste these olives because they taste different.

-What does it mean, 'tenera'?

-Tenera - tender.

Tenera e crocante.

Because it's tender and very crispy in the same time

and it has a fantastic flavour.

These olives really makes the difference, you know.

-They're sweet, they're sweet.

-Sweet, completely.

Let me show you how to make one.

I cut the tip and then I follow it.

Just go around without breaking until you make it a spiral out of it.

-Brilliant.

-So we got the spiral.

-You've got a S-shaped curl of olive.

And then I got a little bit of the stuffing...

Manzo e maiale fatto a tocchetti.

Beef...beef and pork all cut in little pieces and cooked like a ragu.

I put it here.

And then we rebuild the olives around it.

-So you are kind of replacing the olive stone?

-Yeah.

Then it goes into the flour, and then in the egg...

and from the eggs onto the breadcrumbs.

Remember, the fritto - the fried - is always something for Sunday.

It was something you have to be a rich occasion to have fritto.

-Is that because traditionally it was quite a luxurious thing to do?

-Si.

TRANSLATION:

They ask you

-when you come back from a wedding, "Was the..."

-"Was the bride..."

"..bride beautiful?" "Yes, what about the olives?"

THEY LAUGH

-What about the olives?!

-Much more important.

-E la verita.

-Ti credo. I believe you, I believe you.

Look at that. You can put it in there.

Do we just wait a second?

No, no, eat them straightaway. Nice and hot, Andrew.

Sempre cosi. "Be careful," thank you.

You tell me the truth.

-Eccole qua.

-Mmm.

Is it delicious?

-It's unbelievable.

-Yes!

Can you imagine this...

E buonissimo. It's beautiful.

What's surprising about them is how delicate the taste is.

You've got this sort of sweetness in the olives

and then you've got this, um...

-saltiness.

-Saltiness.

I remember, I went to a wedding.

I must have been 18 or something like that. They had these.

I tell you what, it's the first time I had them.

I just went on, and on, and on.

I never had nothing else to eat than olive ascolane.

When I discovered them, I was like, "My God, this is incredible!"

I can see why, they're very moreish.

-Grazie mille.

-Grazie a voi.

Mi raccomando, eh? TRANSLATION:

-ALL:

-Grazie.

Grazie. Arrivederci.

Take one.

The olives are mouthwatering,

but today's main course is a rather different kind of dish.

I'm taking Giorgio to see perhaps Urbino's greatest treasure,

the vast palace of the man who put this town on the map.

Scholar, connoisseur, commander of a private army,

he was one of the driving forces behind the Italian Renaissance.

Urbino as we see it now is very much the creation of one man.

And he's signed the city.

Everywhere you look, you see his initials.

FE DVX, Federico Da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.

He wasn't afraid to show off.

Oh, no, he ruled this place.

He was the tyrant of the town.

A benevolent tyrant, or so he liked to think.

Federico was obsessed by the classical past.

And this beautiful inscription tells us all about him.

He won every battle in which he fought,

he lead his troops into action six times,

but through war he brought peace.

He was victorious.

This inscription is a masterpiece of early Renaissance typography.

Absolutely beautiful writing.

Very modern, in a way, isn't it?

Very, very, very sharp and clear and rational.

I love the 'Q'.

The 'Q' is the same as the 'O' but it's got this really long tail.

I love these punctuation points between the words.

There's the sort of little leaf.

He loved really fine stone carving.

This palace is his domain, it's all about him.

Federico was a warrior, but with an enquiring mind.

He'd had a classical education, he read Latin military texts

and he studied rhetoric so he could persuade his enemies to

surrender without even fighting, and he'd still get paid.

Knowledge, for Federico, was power.

Everything in this palace is calculated to his specifications,

even the shallowness of these steps.

-You notice how easy they are to walk up?

-Yes.

-That's because

he said to his architect, "If I get to the top of my stairs

"and I've broken into a sweat, you've done a bad job."

The palace was heavily looted in the years after Federico's death

and now it's eerily empty.

From the few things that remain, you can still piece together

a portrait of Federico himself, a true Renaissance man.

They have kept this, which is a very rare portrait of Federico himself...

Hmm.

..with his son in his library.

I like the idea that instead of being on the horse like that,

he's there with a book in his hand.

Knowledge was as important to him as courage.

I think the expression is incredible.

Look, he's got lines all over his head,

like he's really thinking heavily.

Almost like saying, "I'm strong, I'm powerful. I also have knowledge."

He's always painted from this side

because, when he was young,

he was passionately in love with this woman

and he jousted in her colours.

And one day, his opponent's lance

went through his visor and completely removed Federico's eye.

So he was blind in one eye on the other side

and apparently had a very disfiguring scar.

Do you notice that he has no bridge to his nose?

-A gap.

-There's a gap.

Now, some people think that's because

when the lance entered the visor of his helmet,

it removed part of his nose as well as his eye.

There's another theory which I really like -

according to which Federico actually asked his surgeon,

his court surgeon,

to remove the bridge of his nose.

So that he could see with the other eye...

Exactly, cos he was a great student of optics.

He commissioned the first great Renaissance treatise

on perspective, and it's all about what the single eye can see.

Over here, there's a really good example, or proof, of Federico's

interest in the science of vision, the science of optics.

This...this is called The Ideal City,

and it's a perfectly perspectively

drawn and painted depiction of, I think,

the kind of city that Federico wanted to turn Urbino into.

This was all absolutely brand-new, this Renaissance ability

to create a perspectively perfect depiction

mathematically receding through space of an architectural vision.

You know, Andrew, I like to think that somebody 600 years ago

just comes here and saw this and thought, "Wow, this is the future!"

This would have seemed absolutely futuristic.

Federico and his artists saw themselves as visionaries.

They WERE visionaries.

The new Renaissance ideas

that lie behind a picture like this

have very much shaped our world.

-Definitely.

-If you think of a city like Paris,

which is...with its huge, wide avenues, very carefully planned.

Central buildings, like the Theatre de Paris.

It's absolutely that notion.

It's about doing away with the medieval labyrinth of old towns.

It's very beautiful and very peaceful

and there is nobody there.

The only live things -

two little pigeon there.

They've crept unnoticed, or they've flown unnoticed,

into The Ideal City.

All the door open. The windows are open as well.

It's quite eerie.

It's like a sort of Marie Celeste city.

Federico's Ideal Cities had a huge influence on the public

spaces of the modern world,

but he was actually a very private man.

And behind this empty enthronement hall is his personal study,

a place of retreat,

which is one of my favourite rooms in the whole world.

In this great huge palace with its vast, echoing halls,

the best room of all is the smallest.

-This is Federico's private Studiolo, his study.

-Wow.

Still with its original 15th-century wood-panelled walls.

Every inch decorated with this tremendously intricate,

absolutely beautiful inlaid wood.

Designed and created by the very finest artists

of the early Renaissance.

Botticelli designed this figure of one the three Graces.

Piero della Francesca possibly designed this landscape.

Everywhere you look it's just a feast for the eyes.

Unbelievable.

You see that trapezoidal circle?

Almost impossible to create the image of that in perspective

if you're painting, let alone to do it in inlaid wood.

Isn't it something? I mean, the sheer level of optical trickery

and illusionism in these panels.

This is the absolute pinnacle of the art form of intarsio.

It's all different types of wood, no?

Different types of wood to create different kind of colours,

and sometimes they would burn the wood to create those shadows,

that sense of the shadow, and then they would polish it

so that the char would stay fixed.

Look at the armour. Looks like it's shining!

It's as if he's hung up his armour in that cupboard

and you've got the trompe l'oeil curtains that enable us to see it.

How can you make wood shining?

The skill of that, the spur dangling over the edge.

I think he planned the rooms as carefully

as a military campaign.

Definitely.

Always in the art created for Federico and his palace,

you've got the two symbols together - I am a warrior

but I am also a man of learning.

There's the books.

In a sense, the whole Studiolo is kind of a room to reflect

a man's brain, a man's spirit,

a man's sense of who he was.

I've never seen anything like that.

There isn't really anything else like it in the world.

The Studiolo was such a feast for the eyes that now

we need a hearty Le Marche feast for our palates.

I'm going to make something that Federico probably ate himself,

and is one of my favourite dishes from the region,

if not all Italy.

The classic Le Marche dish of coniglio in porchetta.

Rabbit in the style of roast pork.

-Buongiorno! Buongiorno.

-Buongiorno.

TRANSLATION:

Why does she leave the head on the rabbit?

The head is the most important thing.

First of all, because you know that it's a rabbit and not a cat.

First. ANDREW LAUGHS

Second, because you can tell the age of the rabbit

from the size of his teeth.

You don't want a rabbit that is too old.

You want a maximum of eight months old, nine months old.

So you can tell...

So, the head of the rabbit is like a sell-by date?

That is...that is exactly what it is.

Look at the array of meat and how beautiful and well kept.

You don't only just buy the meat, you buy the knowledge of the person.

If you decide to buy that piece of meat,

they'll tell you how to cook it.

TRANSLATION:

-Prego.

-Grazie.

And the smile as well, look at the beautiful smile.

-Un bel sorriso.

-Buona giornata.

-Grazie. Arrivederci.

-Arrivederci. Grazie.

With our rabbit, we're heading down the valley below Urbino.

We'll be cooking at the historic Le Marche hunting lodge.

It's the very house where Torquato Tasso,

the great 16th-century poet,

wrote beautiful verses in homage to the landscapes of Le Marche.

Everywhere you go in this part of Italy

you seem to touch a little piece of history.

So, Andrew, this recipe fascinates me from the first time I had it.

My grandad used to actually, you know, raise rabbit.

And my grandmother used to be like cooking this rabbit.

It's almost like my signature dish.

One of the main ingredients, and obviously you know

in the middle of Italy, is going to be this wild fennel.

It's lovely. Smell that.

It's fantastic, isn't it?

-So, you're creating a kind of broth?

-That's right.

OK, I'm going to put that in cold water with two or three

cloves of garlic

and close the whole thing and put it on to boil.

This is going to be my stock.

I think we need to cook the rabbit cos it's staring at me, Giorgio.

Hold on a second.

The next step is to prepare the rabbit.

I'm going to cut it in half for you so that you can eat the actual...

The meat must be really pink and beautiful.

The fat must be really white.

-The lady in the butcher's said leave the bone...

-Leave the bones in.

Some people takes all the bones off.

I feel that if you leave the bones in it, it's so much better.

I'm ready with that.

Now I'm going to make the stuffing.

I'm going to chop the liver.

The only problem with houses like this is

they also have historical chopping boards which are never straight.

'Along with the liver, I add one fresh sausage, raw pancetta

'and a good dollop of lard.'

I'm putting all this stuffing in it.

It will make it really juicy and really cook perfectly.

I often think we don't eat enough rabbit.

No. It has bad publicity because the kids looks at them like a pet.

The rabbit has become this thing that talks to us.

I blame Richard Adams - Watership Down.

I tell you what, me and my brother grow up,

and when we were little, we'd go with my grandad

and we'd choose the one, the rabbit to kill.

I think that it teach us

to appreciate that it wasn't just something that arrived from the shop

in a packet.

One of the thing the lady this morning in the shop told me,

"As you're starting it, just put a little bit of the pancetta

"on top of it."

When it start to colour, I will add some of the stock to keep it moist

-and I will cover it and cook it in the oven, OK?

-Hmm.

So, are you ready to wait two hours now?

Yeah, I'm ready to wait.

I'm actually ready to eat it now but if two hours is necessary,

two hours is necessary.

As the rabbit cooks, we'll take a passeggiata through the lush

ground of the hunting lodge.

When people talk about central Italy,

they often really mean Tuscany.

There is so much more to discover in the heart of Italy.

This undulating landscape on the eastern side of the Apennines

is truly breathtaking.

After basting the rabbit with wild fennel broth,

we are ready to eat our feast.

Il coniglio in porchetta, Andrew.

Looking good!

Whoa.

What a wonderful, hearty plate of food.

Bello.

There you go. That looks good.

Eh, wait a minute.

-Ah, I've got some gravy as well.

-Yeah.

-Looks rich, doesn't it?

So, what would you recommend, that I take a little bit of rabbit?

-A little bit of the stuffing.

-Dip it round in the gravy.

That's right.

Mmm.

Really good. Really good.

-What...?

-Is it tender?

It's completely tender, it's not dry.

I can see how it might be dry but it isn't. Perfect.

This is like one of my favourite recipe.

The meat it's closest to that I'm familiar with

-would have to be chicken, I suppose.

-Yes.

It's got a lovely, delicate taste.

Yeah, unbelievable.

-The stuffing with the liver gives it that little kick.

-Hmm.

It's a great flavour there.

So, what makes this a Marchigiana dish?

Once upon a time, every household will have 10, 20 rabbits,

then they just give all the scrapes,

the vegetable and something like that,

and that's how they just got their protein through the years.

I can't believe that from this small rabbit,

this huge plate of food emerges,

but that's fairly Marchigiana maybe, you know,

they make a lot out of a little.

Like Urbino.

Little town but it produces Raphael,

Bramante - the architect of St Peter's.

I think this is a place that really punches above its weight.

It's a small place but it produced so many great figures.

Even in modernity, you know.

You know who came from Marche?

Valentino Rossi, the greatest motorbike driver in the entire world!

I think I just heard him driving past.

THEY LAUGH

So far we've seen the sunny, gentle side of Le Marche.

Now I want to show Andrew the darker side of the region

and begin our descent to the centre of the Earth.

There we can get a different perspective

on what makes Le Marche so special.

I've never been to this part of Le Marche, Giorgio.

When people think about Italy and especially, you know,

not northern Italy with the Alps, they always think about

these beaches and sea, don't they?

They never think about the Apennine.

The Apennine, they really are big mountains, they're really steep.

Geologically, they're very interesting as well.

-Are they like the spine of Italy?

-That's right.

So where are you taking me?

I'm going to take you to Frasassi.

There's a little surprise for you here.

They must have a lot of rock falls

cos they've sort of bound the mountain in wire caging.

Very porous rocks that allow water to come through.

This is a road cut through next to the river.

It's an incredible place. Here we are.

We're in the middle of nowhere.

-It's a long tunnel.

-Yes.

You're going to be absolutely gobsmacked when you see this.

L'Abisso di Ancona, Andrew.

Here we are.

Look at the magnificence of this.

That is something!

-That is incredible.

-It's so big. It's enormous.

The Abisso di Ancona, or Ancona Abyss,

lies deep beneath the Frasassi Gorge.

Discovered by chance in 1971, the abyss is one of the largest

underground caves in the world at 240m high.

It's a place that takes us back to a world before history.

These stalagmites took more than 100,000 years,

drip by drip, to grow to over 60ft high,

as tall as Nelson's Column.

You showed me some massive buildings and things like that.

Apparently it's as big as the cathedral of Milan.

-A cathedral made by nature.

-That's right.

I want to take a closer look

at some of these stalagmites and stalactites.

-They're beautiful, aren't they?

-They really are.

I don't think I've ever seen such wonderful ones.

It's really awe-inspiring to be down here looking up.

You can see why the surrealists called these cave formations

petrified forests.

Yes. They look like trees, don't they?

They look like so many different things.

That could be made of candle wax.

That one reminds me of a Chinese pagoda,

maybe at Kew Gardens or somewhere. It's fantastic.

Have you see up there?

There's a shape that looks almost like tripe or something like that.

You know, Andrew, this was a very humbling experience

to be inside here.

Time really is relative when you look at something like that.

-There's someone coming down there.

-Yes. That is the actual way in...

in which the actually cave was discovered.

-That's...they abseiled down.

-Unbelievable, no?

They found this hole apparently and it was the size of a football.

And some really cold air was coming up.

They drop a stone

and they thought it was 100 metres

but then it turned out to be 200 metres high.

ANDREW SHOUTS

ANDREW'S VOICE ECHOES

Imagine if you shouted... You'd know, wouldn't you?

-They must have thought...

-This is a big cave.

"..I did found something incredible here."

Like discovering a new planet if you're an astronomer.

Definitely.

Must have been such an exhilarating moment.

Look at the shadow of him.

We really are in the belly of the Apennines.

So brilliant, this mountain. It's so beautiful from the outside to ever...

..hide such a secret for such a long time.

We haven't crossed the Apennines so much as gone under them,

and now we've emerged on the other side, we're in Umbria.

Without a coastline, Umbria is often called 'the green heart of Italy.'

A landscape of fertile plains dotted with hilltop towns,

Umbria has a long tradition of men working with nature

to create some of the best produce in Italy.

And some of the best paintings in Italy too,

which is what we're just about to see.

It's so nice to see these lowlands.

We're right at the bottom of the valley.

Each of the village is just up at the top, isn't it?

We're on our way to Spello,

which I don't think very many people visit,

but it contains, for me, one of the great series of fresco paintings

of the Renaissance

by an artist called Pinturicchio - the little painter.

-That's the...

-There it is now.

During the Renaissance,

powerful local families fought for control of Umbria's fertile land.

You can still feel that rather troubled past...

if you know where to look.

The Baglioni family once controlled Spello,

and in 1500, they asked Pinturicchio to paint

the chapel of the Santa Maria Maggiore Church

and demonstrate to the world,

through their art, the grip they had on the area.

It's one of the great things of the Renaissance

but very few people know about it, very few people

come and see these paintings.

They've recently been restored, the colours are singing.

Look at the gold of the halos,

the green of the grass, the blue of the sky.

It's just stunning.

There are three frescoes,

each telling a different story from the early life of Christ.

To bring biblical legend home to his audience, Pinturicchio set

the action not in the Holy Land but on Umbrian soil.

Painting less than 50 years after the death

of Federico da Montefeltro, Pinturicchio clearly knew all about

the tricks of perspective developed in Urbino.

This scene, of the young Christ teaching his elders,

is like Federico's Ideal City, except now it's full of people.

But Pinturicchio wasn't just a follower,

he was an innovator in his own right, with his own unique

sense of colour, grace and heavenly harmony.

This is the Annunciation.

Wow, look at that.

Look at the ray of light coming down to Earth

with the dove.

Look at the dove, it's got this... HE WHISTLES

..like she's whistling, really, to the Madonna.

That's God impregnating the Virgin Mary.

And she's going, "Ooh, I can feel it."

The spirit of the Lord moves within me...

..and at the same time,

Gabriel with the lily -

symbol of the virgin's purity, the white lily.

That might be one of the most beautiful archangel

Gabriels in the world.

It's so delicate, androgynous and beautiful.

-Look at that.

-Look at the wings.

GIORGIO GASPS Look at the colour on there.

Like peacock wings.

It's a feast for the eyes.

Really a feast. It's just incredible.

-Here is the man.

-Pinturicchio himself.

Pinturicchio was so proud of this chapel,

of this sequence of frescoes that he included his own self portrait

in a gold frame.

Look at the choir of angels.

-Angels are beau...

-Just beautiful.

If you ever want to explain to anybody what is the heavenly choir,

bring them here, that's it.

That entire group with all its swirling drapery,

its wonderful symphony of colours,

all done in a single day of painting.

That's eight hours, the time it takes for plaster to dry.

Just doesn't get better than that.

I think the message of the painting is to say,

"Jesus Christ has been born again, here, in Umbria."

The scene of the Nativity is all set in the local landscape

and these are probably portraits of the local peasantry.

Although they look so peaceful, so calm, you would imagine

no violence ever takes place in this world.

The context for these paintings being commissioned

was one of extreme violence and conflict.

And those have got swords, so they must be like, I don't know,

warriors.

There's a fight taking place.

This is the Baglioni Chapel.

The Baglioni was a local family - very rich, very powerful,

but they'd just gone through a period of horrible vendetta.

-Hmm.

-Grifonetto Baglioni had actually been to the

wedding of his cousin Astore to Lavinia Colonna and had used it...

Because everyone was together.

..he'd used it to kill the entire family and try to seize control

of the region. He'd been defeated

by this man, Troilo, who commissioned

these beautiful paintings

from Pinturicchio to celebrate and reaffirm the Baglioni family's grip

on this territory.

So, behind these paintings, there's a lot of blood.

In fact, they called the marriage where Grifonetto killed

all the guests, they called it "the marriage of blood."

(Wow.)

It seems to happen again and again in Italy in so many families.

Because you have this sort of family control over an area.

You know, the Medici controlling Florence,

the Sforza controlling Milan,

the Baglioni controlling this part of Umbria.

But Troilo, he looks like a pretty tough character.

He does, doesn't he? What's that?

That's somebody hanging up there.

That is Pinturicchio's way of conveying

the murders are in the past,

the blood wedding has been,

Grifonetto has been executed, justice has been done,

order has been restored.

From the skilled artist of Spello to the skilled

artisan of the valley of Norcia.

For centuries, people from this valley have been known

as master pig butchers and makers of delicious pork sausages and salamis.

Butchers in Italy are still sometimes even called Norcino,

or the person from Norcia.

Where are you taking me?

I'm going to take you to see a real Norcino.

The guys just breed the animals, kills them

and turn them into sausages and things like that, and ham.

A real, traditional one.

-So this is the real deal?

-This is the real deal.

A fantastic place. The fields and the...

This is where they grow the lentils

that they use as a feed for the animals.

It's beautiful, this Valle di Norcia.

It looks really fertile.

I love the colour of the earth.

I think they've just ploughed the fields.

I can't leave here without getting some local sausages

and they are the ingredient of the traditional Umbrian recipe

I want to make.

Fresh pork sausages with lentils.

People have farmed pigs in this majestic valley

for thousands of years.

And this farm is one of only a few in Italy

trying to reintroduce an ancient breed of Umbrian pigs.

Andrew, you can't even imagine how excited I am to see these pigs.

I love them.

Look at them.

They're just so beautiful.

This is maiale nero cintato...

-So the black belted pig...

-..di Nor...

-..of Norcia.

-..from Norcia.

As you can see, the pig is black,

and he has this belt that goes around the front legs.

So, that's la cinta. Cinta is this, the belt.

So our belt.

They look more to me like...

almost like a cross between a domesticated pig and a wild boar.

They are closer to the wild boar than, you know,

those completely northern European shaved pink pigs

that we are used to seeing.

And what makes them so special?

Why are they so desirable to the Norcino pig butchers?

You will tell me why they are so desirable when you taste it.

-That's when you know.

-Very simple.

But the idea of this is that, you know,

the animal is reared in a very humane way.

The animal is very happy.

It's fed lentils,

which are the by-product of those lands

that you got here.

Big ones are in pens and they are opened up on the woods,

so they are half woods

and half sort of, you know, open area, like that.

So they'll eat acorns and nuts and maybe berries even.

Berries.

That gives them a fantastic flavour to the meat, you know?

Plus the animal's moving around.

I think, what it is is just...

this relation between this meat and this land.

And this is, like, you know...

I wouldn't mind being a pig if I had to grow up here, wouldn't you?

Yes, if you're going to be a pig, this is a good place to be.

It's, um... What would pig heaven be called?

Porkadise!

Pigtopia!

Pigtopia. I love that.

-Well, this is kind of pigtopia.

-Pigtopia!

Next to the farm is the family butcher's store.

The couple who runs it are known locally as Li Tappi

or the little corks, as they're both so short.

Mr Mario is a Norcino,

and he's going to make some sausage for us.

He's here with his wife, look!

By the way, these people have been married for 48 years,

so making sausages is something that could save your marriage.

'Mario and Gabriella Salvatori make fresh sausages

'which people drive from all over Italy to buy.

'The only ingredients are pork from their farm, salt, pepper,

'and for every 20 kilos of meat, one clove of garlic,

'as well as their love and pride.'

They use prime pieces of the pork,

Look at the mixture.

100% of fresh meat.

This operation, usually, is always made by machine.

TRANSLATION:

When they start... When they really start to do that by themselves,

when they run their business, this is how they would do it.

Now, a lot of the people do this by machine,

but, look, now, what we're going to witness now is incredible.

And what's is the sausage skin made from?

From the intestine of the pig.

This looks very easy.

-Doesn't look very easy...

-Look very easy.

But there is so much rhythm and strength...

Almost looks like an umbilical cord...

I love this machine.

The machine is fabulous, isn't it?

-Look, she's sewing it up.

-She's just doing that...

But there's a kind of surgical precision about the whole process.

Unbelievable.

And, in fact, there is a connection between

this part of Italy and surgery,

because the skills of the pork butcher

were then transplanted

and the first surgeons came from here

and there was this man called Cesare Scacchi

who actually went to the court of Queen Elizabeth

in 1588, the year of the Armada.

Yet, I think that their precision and capacity

to cutting down and go through muscles and understanding fibres

-and understanding what was...

-Yeah!

-It was then translated into humans.

-Yeah.

I mean, Elizabeth I had a cataract in her eye

-and that's why she asked...

-So they got a guy from...?

-..a guy from here, cos they knew how to use a knife.

-It's unbelievable.

Fantastic.

The manuality is incredible.

-How many we going to buy, Andrew?

-Um... Well, I would say...

maybe, like, about that many for me.

No, I'm only kidding. I don't know!

I don't know. I imagine they're very rich.

I think to be on the safe side, we buy 10 of them.

Five for you, five for me.

That sounds plenty.

-All right.

-Do you think we should buy some...?

Grazie!

Un bacio.

Siete uno spettacolo.

Grazie!

Grazie.

Arrivederci.

We've got our sausages,

and to get our lentils, we need to climb up into the mountains

and the highest village of the Apennines.

The town of Castelluccio, 4,500 feet above sea level,

and home to some of the best lentils in the world.

And as we're driving up, the mists suddenly clear

and we're given another vision of celestial beauty.

This time, it's not in a painting.

I thought you said there was no sea in Umbria?!

THEY LAUGH

This is so, so beautiful.

God...

I'm speechless, Andrew.

It's something, isn't it?

I mean, we have drove all through that,

and I had no hope that we were going to see the sun today,

-I really didn't.

-I know!

But look at this!

You really feel like you're in the Apennines here.

I mean, if... Well, we're kind of above everything.

So, our man who makes the sausages,

he's somewhere down there beneath the sea of fog.

We're lucky today though, aren't we? I mean, to have this view.

To actually rise above the clouds.

The clouds are formed during the night

until the heat is kind of like...

melting them off.

And, so, the last one will be like

the one who's at the bottom of the valley.

-It's a beautiful, beautiful day.

-It is.

-And, er...

Umbria, Umbria.

The whole of this road's like a wonderful rollercoaster

through the natural landscape of Umbria.

And our destination -

this fertile valley.

Here, I am discovering for the first time in my life

the Piano Grande of Castelluccio.

The Great Plain of Castelluccio.

Wow, look at that.

-This is...

-That is something.

-There's nothing at all...

-And that's all lentils.

It's very special.

That is Castelluccio!

-Like a painting! It's beautiful.

-Unbelievable.

It's really unusual to find a lovely city like that

which is completely in a valley without any upper somethings.

Look at this strange road.

You can see that the Romans

have been here. But, whoa!

The road to Castelluccio takes you through

what today is a national park.

The lentils grown here are known throughout Italy

as Castelluccio lentils,

for their unique flavour that comes from

this majestic land in the clouds.

I'm excited to prepare this dish

in the very town that gives the lentils their name.

Look how beautiful they are. They're so special.

Look, they haven't got even the same colour.

What I love is this beautiful pinky, brown, green.

I mean, all the colours are there.

'To cook the lentils, I chop some celery,

'add a few cloves of garlic,

'and just cover them with fresh mountain water.

'No stock cubes, no soaking.

'A simple recipe built on centuries of Umbrian skills and tradition.'

We're going to have to cook the sausages.

How many you want?

Well, what about three for you, three for me

and one in case somebody wants some more.

-I love them, the fact that they are not exactly the same size.

-Yeah.

I'm ready. I'm putting the sausages in.

I'm going to get the colour.

You know, leaving some nice flavour in there.

Straight from the land to the table.

Absolutely. This is really peasant cooking at its best.

The mud! You know, those beautiful pigs.

That they have been fed with the leftovers of those...

-Lentils.

-..lentils.

It's lovely cooking the meal that comes from the land

directly above the land.

It's a great view from here.

Now I'm going to get them out.

They're not cooked yet, they're still a bit rare.

Get the onions, Andrew.

Put them in there.

-Just straight in here?

-In there, perfect.

You chopped them very fine.

You see, it melts straight away.

This is the passata.

The home-made one.

OK, here we are.

So, you've got gold onions and red tomato sauce.

You can see already that that's going to taste good.

The tomato sauce is boiling, sausages are in...

I am proud of this recipe, because we have managed to produce it

with the minimum of ingredients.

Like the real people here would produce it.

I mean, you could have, could add tonnes of things.

You can add rosemary, sage, carrots, celery.

You can add anything, you know...

I don't think it's going to make it better.

-No, I agree with you.

-I think this is the essential.

Do you want to taste it?

Good flavour. Almost like a nut.

Yeah, yeah, the really nice nutty flavours.

Scoop them out...

..and put them in it.

A tiny little bit of this beautiful Umbrian olive oil...

..and we are ready.

OK, here you are.

So, it's a one-pot meal.

Well, that's not good enough, it's a one-pot masterpiece.

-Yeah, it's a masterpiece from this land.

-Yeah.

Not from the cook, this is not the cook.

-You've stepped back.

-This is the land which talk to you. Not the chef.

-Well...

-This is a very important thing.

I think it takes a really good cook to say that.

Where we going to eat it? Have we got...?

-Let's just eat outside...

-OK.

-..and take in the view.

Yeah, let's do that.

Andrew, guarda.

TRANSLATION:

Not bad, hey?

Siediti.

Are you ready to taste Umbria?

-Yeah, I am.

-Are you?

-Give me some Umbria.

You've got to prepare yourself.

Bello!

Can I have a bit of lentils?

Is that enough?

I think to be beginning with, yeah.

Here we go.

Look at that.

Lentils.

Mm!

Aren't those sausages fantastic?

Sometimes less is much better.

Simplicity delivers a better taste.

Yeah, what I love about this recipe is it doesn't confuse your mind.

You're not thinking, "Oh, what's that? Huh? Oo? What's? Oo!

"What's that? Why's that there?"

No, you've just got the beautiful meat of the perfectly raised pig.

The wonderful taste of the lentils, the tomato sauce

and a kiss of garlic.

-Perfect.

-That's right.

The lentils really...brings it up, almost, isn't it?

What I really like is the way the sausage has very little fat.

It doesn't taste greasy in any way.

The moisture comes from the lentil, not from the fat.

-Tastes like it's really good for you.

-Hmm.

I think what is also amazing is that, really,

these are flavours that really are so representative of Umbria.

You know, this area, Castelluccio and Norcia.

How nice is it to eat it here!

So, that's where the lentils came from.

All around. They don't only use the flat,

they use also the sides.

You can see the agricultural bit goes really right up as well.

So everything on our plate is from within 10km.

Amazing!

It's almost like a divine gift.

This concentration of goodness that comes to your plates.

And we better eat quickly, because the storms are coming across.

It doesn't rhyme, but it's true,

the rain in Umbria falls mostly on the lentils.

Umbria is an amazing patchwork of valleys,

each hiding its own treasures.

The most famous town in the region

is the birthplace of St Francis, Assisi.

Today, this holy town is full of day trippers and pilgrims.

But we're not stopping at Assisi.

We're heading off to a little town off the beaten track

called Montefalco.

Here, you can get up close to the life of St Francis

in some beautiful frescoes

painted by a young Renaissance master.

I like this kind of place.

Little church, little town.

All on our own with some frescoes painted by Benozzo Gozzoli.

This was his first work as a maestro in his own right

in the early 1450s.

This is his debut.

These are his first ambitious paintings and here in Umbria,

of course, the subject is the life of...

Francis.

Francis of Assisi. And here is the birth.

Gozzoli has set it in his own time and because Francis was rich,

he has him being born in a beautiful luxurious 15th-century palazzo.

They haven't had Venetian blinds yet

-but there are like blinds but with holes in it.

-It's brilliant.

That nail hanging out between the windows.

I hadn't seen the nail.

That actually becomes a device in painting.

You know, when the painter wants to show off that he can paint shadows,

he does this trompe l'oeil nail.

What I love about these is they're almost like little

photographs of 15th-century life.

This type of fresco cycle, it's very much the forerunner of cinema,

cartoons, our way of telling stories one image after another.

Here, Jesus Christ came to St Francis in a dream and showed him

a vision of the heavenly city.

You can imagine Gozzoli scratching his head

and thinking, "What should the heavenly city look like?

"What is the most fantastic building I can think of?"

Where is Gozzoli from? He's from Florence.

And so, what's he depicted? The Palazzo Signoria.

The main building of Florence

with all of the Christian flags flying from it.

Francis gets the dream wrong and he thinks he's being called

actually to go on a crusade.

In fact, he's being called by God

to rebuild his church, to remake the heavenly city on Earth.

And for me, this is the most dramatic scene in the whole chapel.

Beautiful painting of the early Renaissance city.

What's happening here is that St Francis has

-renounced his worldly possessions.

-Right.

His father was in the textile trade and was very rich

and Francis has given away all his clothes, given away all his money.

His father, furious, is coming with all the things that Francis

has rejected, all the beautiful textiles and clothes

and he's about to beat him with his belt

and, look, there are two children of the family there.

They've got stones that they are ready to throw at Francis.

The family is about to get him

and who comes to his rescue?

It's the bishop of Assisi.

I find it slightly sinister because Gozzoli is painting 220 years

after Francis' death and this is a time when the church very much

wants to make Francis its own when, in fact, in his own time,

Francis had been revolutionary

and had a lot of friction with the church cos he felt the church

was losing touch with ordinary people and he was very

critical of the rich bishops living luxuriously and the monks in their

monasteries eating their fill while the poor people went without food.

Here we've got, I think it's a sort of strange paradoxical image.

He's thrown away his rich clothing

and here the bishop is wrapping him in his cope which is richly

embroidered, make him more part of the church than he really was.

Also the father has a really very aggressive stance, isn't it,

and the face.

He's absolutely brilliant with faces, I think.

And the hairstyle, absolutely exceptional.

He is the master of the golden ringlet.

I mean, you're dead right about the faces.

Every single detail of those faces is really carefully painted

and we know that the time allotted for these paintings

was, you know, you'd expect maybe a year.

Gozzoli took two years to paint these pictures.

And, in fact, he got so late that his patrons in Florence

began to get impatient.

They were like, "Where are you, man? Where are you, Benozzo? Come back!"

There's a wonderful detail over here.

It's a sort of footnote to the experience

of looking at the frescoes.

This is a fantastic thing.

It's a letter from Benozzo to a friend in Florence.

It's, I suppose, the 15th-century equivalent

of a hastily dashed off e-mail,

and he's writing in 1452 to say,

"I'm really sorry. I know

"I said I'd come to see you, I know I'd come to visit.

"I think there's probably a commission involved

"but I can't because I'm still stuck here in Montefalco

"painting my frescoes."

So ancient and so modern.

-We still write like that to people, don't we, sometimes?

-Yeah!

When we want to be really proper, we do write something like that.

Yeah.

On the paper with your name on it and the date.

Incredible.

-Beautiful thing.

-Yeah.

Well, it took him two years to paint these frescoes

so this poor chap was obviously kept waiting quite some time.

Andiamo.

Andrew has shown me the Renaissance masterpieces of Umbria.

We are at the end of our journey

and we cannot leave this beautiful region without me showing him

what I think is Umbria's greatest natural masterpiece.

A spectacle forged by human hands and the power of nature.

The Waterfall of Marmore.

The Cascatta delle Marmore.

Fantastic, hey?

And you know what?

That's man-made. By the Romans.

Amazing.

The waterfall is said to be the highest man-made

waterfall in the world.

At 165m high, it was created by an entire Roman legion diverting

a river to get rid of malaria.

I love this cloud of mist.

During the 19th century and 18th century, English Romantics...

That's right.

This was one of the places the Grand Tour...

Byron used to come here.

He said, "Horribly beautiful."

-Horribly beautiful.

-Horribly beautiful.

This was the epitome of the sublime.

Something in nature that makes you feel scared.

The waterfall today is regulated by a dam

and only runs at half the power it did when Byron saw it.

Around one million litres of water pour through the waterfall

every minute creating its own torrent of air.

It's a powerful symbol of Umbria itself, a place where man has

worked with the forces of nature for thousands of years and continues

to do so.

A tradition flowing from the past on into the future.

So I think we've travelled thousand of kilometres through Le Marche

and Umbria, huge territory.

-Beautiful territory.

-Beautiful.

I'm trying to think what my favourite things have been.

I loved the coniglio in porchetta that you made,

the rabbit - that was just so delicious.

Also I loved those Pinturicchio paintings.

They were beautiful. Just restored like that,

they were absolutely live and vibrant. So nice.

But the thing that shocked me more, Andrew,

was that Altopiano di Castelluccio.

That was like being in another world.

I never knew that in Italy there was a place like that.

It was so beautiful.

It was. It was like being on top of the world.

But now it's onward and upwards

because we are on our way to the Veneto,

but not the familiar Veneto of Venezia because we're not

even going to go to Venice, right?

No Venice at all. We are going to go to Padova, we are

going to go to Vicenza, and then the best, Andrew,

is going to be that we are going to go right up,

right up to the Dolomites,

which are these rocks that look back to Italy and

you're not going to believe what you are going to see, I'm telling you.

Andiamo!