Roman Bridge and the Town of Narnia (now Narni)

15 October 2024

 

The Augustus Bridge, a Roman bridge built in roughly 27 BCE, crossed the Nera River and was part of the Via Flaminia, one of many roads leading to Rome.  The original bridge was wide enough for two carriage ways as well as footpaths or sidewalks.  The bridge stood for roughly 1000 years before part of it collapsed, but one huge arch still remains, still standing strong.

 

It really is a wonderful Roman artifact, and has been memorialized in sketches and paintings by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.   This one remaining arch was also a destination on the Grand Tour that many aristocratic young men from England took through Europe during the late 17th to early 19th century.

 

We had a gorgeous sunny day to view the arch.  I especially like standing under the arch and looking up, it's such an amazing feat of engineering to create an arch of stone using nothing more than physics and gravity to keep the shaped rocks from falling!

 

I also found a view of the monastery that Turner included in his drawing.  His sketch shows the monastery framed by the arch, although in reality it really isn't possible to see it that way, at least now.  It's possible Turner didn't see it that way either.  Artists do tend to "improve" the composition of paintings by subtracting part of their view, or creating a new view by including/adding components of a different view.

We also wandered down to the river and footbridge.  It was funny, several of the people doing the yarn dyeing were picking more leaves and such.  The mother of Shelley (our instructor) had an app on her phone, so she'd aim her phone at a tree or bush and get the name of the plant.  The app gave the scientific name, common name, all kinds of info - including whether this looked like a healthy plant.

Of course, that made me wonder if the app would tell us if a plant was unhealthy.  So we found a broken branch with dead leaves, and she aimed the phone at that.  Yes, the app wrote "this is a very unhealthy plant!"  Complete with exclamation point!  We got a good laugh out of that.

 

We headed up to the town of Narni, which was originally named Narnia.  The name was shortened but the town is trying to rebrand themselves with the old name.  (Yes, C.S. Lewis found the name of Narnia on a map, and used it for his famous novels.)

Narni sits atop a steep hill, surrounded by walls built on steep cliffs that drop precipitously on three sides of the city.  There is one road in and out, again that ancient Via Flaminia.  I became quite lost wandering the side streets of Narni two years ago, so I've learned to stick with the main streets - walk up and down the main street, take a few side streets but get right back to that main road!

Narnia was first established by the Umbrians, then the Romans inhabited the town.  People came and went, more and more buildings were erected, and now it's an interesting town full of Medieval architecture with the occasional Roman arch or column reminding us of the history.

There's a large church or cathedral in town which most people visit.  I've been there, and it just emanates some kind of bad karma to me.  Not sure what happened there, but I no longer will visit that place.  

 

So I wandered up the main street with my friends, taking photos, looking in shops, and focusing on the town's emblem, the griffon.  There are griffons on the flag, carved on buildings, created in metal and affixed to walls.  I know, the usual English spelling is "griffin," but the Italian word is "grifone," so I'm going with one of the alternate English spellings of "griffon."

 

Eventually I needed a restroom - most of these old town don't have public restrooms, so the easiest thing to do is find a café, buy something small, use the restroom.  Narni is a long narrow town, and the "business district" is mainly near the entrance to the city.  I told my friends I was heading back toward the piazza where we had been dropped off by the bus, knowing there was a nice coffee and gelato bar there, complete with outdoor tables.

 

My trip back included wandering through the Roman tunnel, and back to Piazza Garibaldi.  Took care of the necessities, ordered a cappuccino and a single cookie (for under two Euros - gotta love small town prices!), and set outside in the sunshine.  We only had maybe 45 minutes before the bus was due, so I slowly sipped my coffee and sketched a griffon from one of the photos I had taken.  He's a bit top-heavy, but given the huge wings plus the lion's mane, well, I suppose griffons are naturally top-heavy.  I did like the curling fur on the legs and tail of the flag's griffon, though, and had fun with those embellishments. 

People from our class slowly showed up, buying a coffee or cup of gelato, and joining me in the piazza.  Our bus drove by and had to continue on several blocks before the driver could change directions to come back - the old Via Flaminia is fairly narrow through town, I guess.  

Our afternoon studio time included more weaving.  I forgot to mention yesterday that I ended up with a major color consultation and, well, almost an intervention!

 

We were using natural dyes, and our dyeing masters were focusing on plant materials they were able to forage everywhere we went.  Natural dyes from vegetation tend to produce colors that are decidedly earthy.  Makes perfect sense.

Shelley had brought a number of natural dyes with her, concentrating on dye matter that had been used during the Medieval era.  (She studied tapestry weaving at the traditional Gobelins factory in Paris, France.  The other big French weaving is the Aubusson - the actual techniques are just a bit different, though I'm not sure exactly how much of a difference there is.) 

 

Anyway, the natural dyes from foraged stuff wouldn't produce a blue, nor a true bright red.  Making dye from indigo is a very long and involved process.  And the blue dye stuff Shelley brought would produce a very pretty blue with aqua tones, but that wasn't the color I wanted.  My design was based on the Rione La Rocca flags in San Gemini, and their colors are bright red, white, and a deep cobalt or ultramarine blue.

One of the natural dye women brought two balls of wool dyed with indigo with her, and she very kindly gave me one of the balls.  Our yarn was already white, so I was set with that.  Shelley had cochineal, a weird little beetle that lives on cactus - it makes a gorgeous red dye, however creepy it is to kill and boil beetles.  It requires tin as a mordant, which is a bit more dangerous to use than some of the milder mordants.  Well, after dinner Shelley boiled up those cochineal beetles, added the tin, and made two batches of red red yarn!  One was slightly deeper, a red that was thinking about turning toward violet.  The other was a deep scarlet, almost a lacquer red, and that was perfect.

So with the kindness of two very helpful women, I had my yarns all set!