Destinations

If they had asked me then what shape the world has, I would have said that it is sloping, with uneven gradients, with projections and recesses, so that I always find myself somehow as if on a balcony, facing a balustrade, and I see what the world contains arranged to the right and left at different distances, on other balconies or theater boxes above or below, of a theater whose proscenium opens onto the void, on the strip of sea high against the sky crossed by winds and clouds.
(Italo Calvino)

That Sky of Lombardy, so beautiful when it is beautiful, so splendid, so at peace.
(Alessandro Manzoni)

We could feel that stretch of land becoming a thin strip. It is difficult to express what it feels like when it feels like running on a map. We were balancing on a line. And that line meant at the same time the South and the East, fabulous points of Italy. Apulia was beautiful, you had to touch the bottom of it.
(Franco Antonicelli)

A rustic little square, a festive day; the panorama of the Langhe. Hills on which vineyards thrive stupendously, dotted with castles, and feudal in appearance. They come to meet with gentleness.
(Guido Piovene)

Do you know what our life is? Yours and mine? A dream made in Sicily. Maybe we are still there and dreaming.
(Leonardo Sciascia)

Tuscany is magical landscape where everything is kind around, everything is ancient and new.
(Curzio Malaparte)

From above one contemplates landscapes as if patinated, silvery green basins, hills that slowly descend to the valley bearing towers, bell towers, basilicas, monasteries. Clear sunsets, red without excess, fade over fortresses and olive groves, amid sounds of bells and swallows. The light air gives a sense of physical exhilaration.
(Guido Piovene)

The world sweeps me off my feet and I have chosen the valley of the beautiful and the good and where time does not run.
(Giovanni Pascoli)

Really at that moment it felt like I was somewhere else, that I had reached the destination of my journey. From there I didn’t want to leave, I had been there hundreds of years before, but I had forgotten it, and now it all came back to me. I found in the square the display of the density, the warmth of life that I feel in myself. While I was there, I was that square. I think I am always that square.
(Elias Canetti)