Tourist guide historical romance about Ferrara: The exodus from Ferrara

Di Umberto Vitali

This is a guide for a trip to Ferrara and at the same time a historical romance, which is set in some areas of the city, shown in photographs. The references are also fictional, without the precision of a historical text. In my humble opinion, a simple tourist guide is not enough to get to know a city in depth, you need to be involved by associating the life of people, purposes: historical, moral, speculative and sentimental, from the Middle Ages to today.  
 

• Lingua: Italiano
• Editore: Umberto Vitali
• Data di uscita: 23 feb 2021
• ISBN: 9791220268226

Anteprima del libro

FAMEDIUM

1. A BEAUTIFUL DAY OF SUN. first excursion

It was an ideal day with the sun to perform a home medical visit in Ferrara city.

The name of the city is of uncertain derivation: from the name of a girl who arrived from Troia (Ferrara) or from the iron (worked in this area in ancient times) or from the spelt (cultivated in this area and widely used by the Romans) or for important fairs (feriarum area) or for the seat of the bishop (Ferrariola) or for the Byzantine military (Castrum Ferrariae) near the river Po (the branch of saint George).

Then the city developed towards the north, beyond the river, because it was more defensible under the kindom of the Longobards.

The first settlements developed along the north bank with Ripagrande street and Volte street, thus the Cathedral and the Municipal Square were built.

Placed the doctor’s bag on the rear rack of the bicycle, I crossed the corridor of the garden to leave the house. In both sides the path was so lush with trees and plants that it seemed like crossing a jungle. The gigantic fig tree in the corner of the neighboring wall, then the laurel hedges on both sides, an olive tree, a sycamore tree, a climbing rose on the wall, a row of sempervirens cypresses.

I opened the green iron gate in Arianuova 72 street and slowly went with my bicycle towards the main street Ercole I ° d’Este, enjoying the atmosphere of early autumn.

All around there were fields of grass and I reached the intersection with Ercole I ° d’Este, where the beautiful renaissance palaces overlooked: Trotti Mosti palace (the nobleman took part in the battles of Cornuda and Vittorio Veneto in 1848 to free the homeland enslaved by the Austrian yoke); Giordani palace (noble palace, later known as the commerce palace, which has two pilasters with two rotundas, in which it is very curiously written just like this: her culis et musarum commerce, fa ve te linguis et ani mis), both had spaces for cavalry and became the seat of the university Faculty of Law; then the house of the notary Brighenti, formerly a coffee house, which stood out for a particular style, a romanesque front with white columns, capitals and iron gate, with only the ground floor.

Before turning the corner, I threw my gaze towards the city Charterhouse, where in the distance the four harmonious statues of angels dominated the corners of the aedicule in the first circle, in the attitude of playing the trumpets of the last judgment.

This aedicule has always fascinated me for the round arches, the lightness of the baked clay red stone columns, the iron fence that separates it from the living people, while arousing the somewhat sad thought of when the thankless moment would come to say goodbye to the world.

But I pushed away bad thoughts, with such a beautiful sun. I stopped to contemplate that geometric and elegant road intersection (Arianuova street, Guarini street and the main street Ercole I ° d’Este, where tall buildings with exposed red brick walls rose, with large and important doors).

On the right side the double row of poplars, as high as the three-storey houses, while the foliage danced in the light breeze, the cobbled street, flanked by white marble pillars, rounded at the top, about thirty meters one from each other, which gave elegance and lightness to the route. Turning my gaze to the left I could see at the end of the main street, centrally in the perspective, the mysterious tower, known as the house of the ducal family Este executioner.

In truth, the executioner’s house was inside the Este’s Castle, but over the years the things changed.

I continued the bike ride towards the Palace of the Diamonds, I passed the Massari park on the left, with a large iron gate for the entrance from main street Ercole I ° d’Este, full of ancient trees:

cedars of Lebanon, ginko iloba, badgers, plane trees, which overlooked the surrounding wall until they fell back onto the road.

The park was part of the sixteenth-century Massari palace, it was designed in 1780 for the Marquis Bevilacqua, from whom the military barracks further took its name.

The Massari park inspired the writer Giorgio Bassani to realize the book Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini, where was the tennis court, in whom the young friends used to play.

Excursion a part. In truth, the tennis court doesn’t exist there, because it was inside the garden of a house in Mascheraio street 14 a, recognizable by the great door a little inside in front of the street (sometimes open during spring visits to the gardens of Ferrara). And it is also recognizable the wall from which Micole protruded to say goodby to Bassani, after having climbed an internal wooden staircase.

Bassani himself wrote there were even big rusty nails, still protruding from the wall willing to act as a ladder. I caught up with him on the second attempt, and, grabbing it, I was then quite easy to get to the top.

It could be possible to climb over and go down or up by resting your feet on iron nails, planted on the outside of the wall.

The last time that Bassani saw Micole, he climbed the wall clinging to the nails driven in on the outside, he realized that she loved another. Disappointed he went back down and the last nail came off the wall with the weight of his body. He was shocked and saddened, as if it were a sign of fate that his love was finally over and that he would never climb that wall again. He took that nail away with him and one day, as I was a young medical colleague, he confessed to me that it was all that was left of the meetings with Micole, and he gave it to me as a sign of sympathy and to detach himself definitively from the painful disappointment of love.

The main entrance of the house was in the Street Borgo dei Leoni at number 76: Magrini house. Not far from the Classic Liceum, where Bassani attended it, now it is home to the court of justice.

In that garden there was a raised ground with the size of a tennis court, with a grass floor, without double rows.

This tennis court had awakened fascist hatred for the fact that those young Jews could play tennis, despite the ban from tennis club Marfisa court by racial law.

A document, deposited at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, revealed the presence of a complaint forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior in Rome in August of 1941, about a tennis court frequented by Jews and Aryans, their acquaintances, becoming a place to meet them with impunity. With request to prevent that this tennis court was not used only by the owner’s relatives. Probably with the nastiness of adding frequented by Aryans.

Mr. Giulio Magrini, alias Finzi Contini, son of of Mose’ Magrini and of Fausta Artom, born in Ferrara on 1/8/1881, of Jewish religion, was the owner of: the garden, the field, the house, the well-stocked library, the monumental family tomb in the Jewish cemetery in Vigne street. Ironically only Alberto, who died young for illness, ended up in the latter.

In fact Giulio Magrini and his wife were deported to Fossoli and then to Buckenwald.

With the exception of Alberto, none of the Magrini ever had the opportunity to rest