L'Aquila (Tuesday)

On Tuesday, I had some meetings (and another seminar to give) in the afternoon, but outside of a scheduled conference call, I had the morning free. So we headed to Rocca Calascio and the nearby village of Santo Stefano. We climbed up to the rocca, a strong looking fort (we told Cora it was a castle; she said she preferred Buonconsiglio here in Trento). The ruins of the fortifications were very nice, and the views were amazing. It was from the top of this “hill” that I took my conference call. After clambering around for a while we headed back to the car and drove into Santa Stefano. The village is adorable, but it was also heavily damaged in the earthquake. For instance, a medieval tower constructed by the Medici family was completely turned to rubble; it is in the midst of being reconstructed now. Apparently a Finnish man has bought up large swaths of the town, done the necessary restorations, and opened some of the village’s buildings as a “hotel diffuso” … basically a hotel that spreads across the entire village. It was a very nice place to have lunch and wander around for a while (it was mostly deserted).

Later in the evening, we went for a drive to the outskirts of L’Aquila to visit the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, specifically the Anfiteatro romano di Amiternum (Cora had fun pretending to run (and, I think, dance) from the lions). Afterwards, we drove around for a bit to try to capture a city view of L’Aquila that best represented the massive reconstruction efforts.