When a photo of this little building popped up on the Milano per Sempre Facebook page (Jan. 5, 2022), I thought, “I’ve got to go see that!” The age and “flavor” of the Trattoria Villetta Bar caught my eye.
The next day, I took the Metro out toward the end of the line, at Fermata Inganni, then mistakenly walked a very long loop until I finally arrived at my destination. (Google had misguided my walking direction, but in the process, I saw an area of Milan I had never been to before.)
There were several people at the bar, and we started chatting about the building’s history. Salvatore, a local, and I walked outside to chat. He has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years, and told me about his childhood memories of the surroundings.
In Italy, a “bar” does serve alcohol, but it’s where you go for a “caffè normale” – shot of espresso – as well as a pastry and fresh-squeezed orange juice. It’s often combined with the “Tabacchi” designation, where you can also buy cigarettes, add to your cell phone minutes, or get transit tickets.
Read, below, the original post from Milano per Sempre’s Facebook page, in Italian, and Google-translated into English.
Questa caratteristica e graziosa casetta adibita a trattoria/tabaccheria è un retaggio di ciò che riconduce a Cascina Creta (“La Crea” in dialetto),un antico casale le cui tracce compiano con certezza sulle Carte del Fieno del Claricio dal 1659, e che prese il nome stesso dall’argilla che si estraeva presso le cave delle campagne circostanti.
Il complesso rurale era circondato dalle acque del fontanile Marcione che irrorandone i campi utilizzati per le coltivazioni,permetteva alle varie aree di essere raggiunte solo tramite dei ponticelli,donando alla cascina un aspetto associabile ad una rocca fortificata.
Sul finire degli anni ’30,la cascina venne spostata in una struttura più moderna, denominata poi “Creta Nuova”.
Pressappoco ad inizio del Novecento risale anche questo piccolo edificio assomigliante ad una baita di montagna,eretta su quella che era la strada per Baggio,ora Via Forze Armate 163.
Il suo impiego principale ero quello di stallo per le carrozze ed i cavalli che dovevano raggiungere le fattorie situate nella zona. Provvista di due campi da bocce,oltre che un luogo di ristoro offriva anche uno svago per gli avventori.
Negli anni successivi cadde in disuso e dagli orti limitrofi,si passò ad un lento degrado della zona circostante,in cui si trovava anche un rottamaio (“rottamat” in dialetto milanese).
Ora rimane questa immagine architettonica tra le più iconiche, nonché da salvaguardare nel bel mezzo delle case popolari, per gli amanti della vecchia Milano e di ciò che riguarda la sua storia.
This characteristic and charming little house used as a trattoria / tobacconist is a legacy of what leads back to Cascina Creta (“La Crea” in dialect), an ancient farmhouse whose traces have been traced with certainty on the Claricio’s Hay Cards since 1659, and which the name itself from the clay that was extracted in the quarries of the surrounding countryside.
The rural complex was surrounded by the waters of the Marcione fountain which, by spraying the fields used for cultivation, allowed the various areas to be reached only by means of bridges, giving the farmhouse an aspect that can be associated with a fortified fortress.
At the end of the 1930s, the farmhouse was moved to a more modern structure, later called “Creta Nuova”.
This small building resembling a mountain hut also dates back to about the beginning of the twentieth century, built on what was the road to Baggio, now Via Forze Armate 163.
Its main use was as a stall for carriages and horses that had to reach the farms located in the area. Equipped with two bowling green, as well as a place for refreshment it also offered entertainment for the patrons.
In the following years it fell into disuse and from the neighboring gardens, there was a slow deterioration of the surrounding area, where there was also a scrap dealer (“rottamat” in Milanese dialect).
Now this architectural image remains among the most iconic, as well as to be safeguarded in the midst of public houses, for lovers of old Milan and what concerns its history.
In one of the fashion capitals of the world, what better sight is there to see than a show of eighteenth century clothing, and modern-day clothing it inspired. The show at Palazzo Morando is titled “Sette Cento” – literally “seven hundred”, but referring to the 1700s, thus the eighteenth century. (This is a common way of referring to the centuries, dropping reference to the first thousand years. I hear this often when speaking of antiques.)
Several of the garments had construction details that wowed me: a modified princess seam, adjustable back waist belt, detachable collar, pre-angled sleeves, uncommon gathers, over-embroidered prints. (The blue-on-white Vivienne Westwood Jacket from 1996 was particularly intriguing to me.) Seeing both the old and the new, the textiles, the details, the forms, made me itch to get in front of my sewing machine.
What an incredible, jaw-dropping collection of mineral specimens from around the world! Such size, color, geometry, variety, complexity/simplicity. Wow.
In all these years of coming to Milano, I had never been to the Museo di Storia Naturale di Milano – The Natural History Museum of Milan – though I had passed it many times. Due to Covid precautions, I’m not traveling beyond Milan much this time, so I’m doing more exploration right here in town.
I looked up the museum online and saw that they have the mineral collection, so I went specifically to see it. (I’ll save the rest of the museum for another visit.)
When I first entered the collection space, I faced handwritten ledgers documenting the collection, plus illustrations and beautiful instruments. Then I walked into the grand hall and marveled at the stones in front of me.
I found Opal, Quartz, Flourite, Beryl, Topaz, Gold, Silver and Copper. The Zolfo – Sulfur – is brilliant yellow, and the specimens are huge, wonderfully-formed crystals. Schorl-Elbaite is Tourmaline. Impressive!
The museum visit was a great way to spend one of the few rainy afternoons we’ve had in the last few weeks.
Early Sunday morning and I’ve opened up the house to the first warm breeze since I arrived two weeks ago. Perhaps it will take the stone chill away so a borrowed, heavy wool sweater is no longer needed inside while I’m working.
Both church bells and sirens are chiming. Always dogs barking and the sound of scooters. Though birds chatter, they’ve paused their reliable early morning song until later.
For the first time on this visit, I am wearing a skimpy top, skirt and sandals as I “take some sun” and write.
This place continues to hold me in a hundred ways. I have no answers regarding its place in my life, but know that every time I leave, a part of me stays behind which begs my return. There is still discovery and enchantment, though very different than when I arrived for the first time in 2008. The biggest difference I find is that being here now moves me in a deeper way. The visual rapture I swoon over will always be here. It’s the relationships, however, that get me on the plane.
Yesterday, while out walking around, I caught a glimpse of the woman that was my Fashion Design instructor in 2008. I ran ahead, called out her name and we stopped to chat, both surprised and pleased to see each other.
Imagine being in a large, international city, halfway around the world from home, and being recognized by and recognizing other people! One-by-one I have created a community for myself with whom I share a wave, a “ciao” and conversation. This is what continues to stir and tug me, prompting each return. This is the magic that makes me marvel.
WHERE are these being grown right now?! The tomatoes are like sugar candy and the nespole are exotic after apples and pears alone. And they’re so beautiful together! The food alone could keep me here…
It’s no joke that I’m in the “presidential suite” at the Palace Hotel, in the region of Calabria, the town of Catanzaro Lido. The waves of the Ionian Sea are rolling in just off my private balcony. I could throw a stone (hard) and it would land in the water, on the other side of the Via Lungomare – the road along the sea. I will sleep with the sound of incoming saltwater tonight.
When one “leaves their options open” or “plays it by ear” sometimes there aren’t many options left, thus, the Presidential Suite, with it’s brocade-clad, padded walls. But after the raucous three nights in Cefalu and Taormina Sicilia, I needed some quiet and something unlike Disneyland.
Last night I slept a much-needed, holy sleep. Today I amused myself with exploration. First thing, I went to the little travel agency next to my hotel to buy my ticket for a long train ride tomorrow. At the agency, I met Valentina and Aurelia, and a man they know from Naples. We all laughed and talked for half an hour and it was the kind of personal connection I needed. (When I returned to my room tonight, Aurelia dropped by a beautifully packaged gift of some homemade soppressata. How dear! I happened to have brought some “Seattle Spices” along with me in case I needed a gift, plus some personal note cards, so I wrote out some notes to the two women and stopped over to drop them off.)
Aurelia’s Soppressata is delicious, with a slight smokey flavor:
After the travel agency, I hit the road… and then stood there. I found the newsstand where I could buy a city bus ticket, then I found the bus stop and asked a young guy if I was in the right place to go to the city of Catanzaro (the part up on the hill). I was at the right stop and the bus was “10 minutes away”. Hopeful and anxious passengers started gathering, and waiting, and complaining. Congested traffic on narrow streets in Catanzaro Lido was almost comic. (Imagine two cement mixers passing each other! They did so in the extra width of an intersection, likely well-practiced.)
As I waited with everyone else, I was pleased that I was having a snippet of REAL daily life of a Catanzaro citizen. (There wasn’t a tour group in sight.) An hour after waiting, I got on the bus with just a small, general map of the two Catanzaros, and absolutely NO idea where I was going, what I would see or when I would get off. How lost could I get? I could always get a cab if it came to that.
I marvel at the systematic chaos that is traffic in Italy, and especially here in the south. It all seems to work, but slowly. There are very few stop lights and much bravado, and it took forever for the full-size city bus to make it through Catanzaro Lido. We stopped at the train station, then through little pocket towns like beads on a string that seem to comprise greater Catanzaro.
We kept winding up toward the hill top. What was I looking for? People. Curious sights and signs. Something to catch my eye. History. I could find the duomo – cathedral – on my little map, but couldn’t determine where we were in relation to each other.
I rode until the near-northernmost point of the city and got out at lunchtime. In a little grocery, I bought toothpaste, shampoo, 50 grams of mortadella and a sliver wedge of some lovely blue cheese. At the neighboring baker’s, I bought a square of focaccia with tomato sauce, which they heated for me. I carried my stash through the city amidst 10-story apartment buildings and scrawny, stray cats, and found a little park bench in a windy spot. I lay the meat and cheese onto my focaccia, folded the whole thing in half and had an amazing sandwich, washed down with San Pellegrino.
Since it had taken nearly 2 hours to get UP to the top, by 3:00 I figured I’d better start heading back down to the hotel. It was a quicker journey somehow, and I got off at the west end of town to walk, look, shoot and shop for dinner and my train lunch tomorrow. It’ll be a 7-hour journey tomorrow, with one shuttle ride, three coarse, regional trains and two quick train transfers. There’ll be no time or place to buy food, so this afternoon I stopped at the bakery for a couple of fresh rolls, at the meat shop for fresh buffalo mozzarella, at the produce vendor for fresh peas in-the-shell, datterini tomatoes, two mandarins and a pear, and the pastry shop for a couple of biscotti. That ought to be a lovely train lunch!
How did I pick Catanzaro in the first place? I was in Sicilia and just had to get out of Taormina. I was heading east to Puglia and Catanzaro was in between. It’s also the hometown of my first Italian “professoressa”, Enza. And… quite simply, I was able to find a hotel room available.
Tomorrow, from the ball-of-the-foot here in Calabria, to the heel in Puglia.
Haven’t you always heard of “the straits of Messina”?
Today I took a train from Taormina, about halfway down the east coast of Sicily, up to the northeastern point of the large island, at Messina. I wondered how this would work, since my train ticket included going up the northwest-facing shoreline of Italy. There was about an hour and a half of finagling, I’ve been told longer than usual, but they split the eight-car train into two parts, and then individually pushed the two halves onto a large ferry. We eventually got back underway across the waters of the Straits of Messina. I was riding ON a train ON a boat! How cool is that!?
While underway, I went up onto the passenger deck to enjoy the view and the breeze.
At the snack bar, I bought “arancini”, a deep fried rice ball filled with Ragu sauce and cheese – a Sicillian typical food – plus some sparkling water with which to wash it down. The sun was shining, the water was calm.
Now I’ll have to Google “The Straits” to see what it says.
8 May – In the “centro storico” – historic center – of this little seacoast town east of Palermo, on the north shore of the island of Sicily. The narrow, climbing, maze-like streets remind me of the towns of the Cinque Terre, rooted into the spaces at the bases of their hills. Navigation must come of childhood exploration. How could one possibly give directions home?
Cefalù is FULL of tourists: elderly Europeans speaking German, French, Danish… some Italian. They are here in crowds with cameras. How can I find myself bristle when I, too, am a tourist? But I want to get away from them and the shops selling knick-knacks, and see the atypical sight. I lose myself on the side streets. Go to the hill tops that require a healthful youth the elders lack. I take the “roads less traveled” and marvel that they never stray from the most-worn path. As in Venice, get off the main drag and find solitude and visual treasures.
– – –
9 May – I had the absolute noisiest B&B room imaginable in Cefalù (Hotel Villelmi). Granted, I had a little balcony and access to a rooftop terrace that looked right out to the Piazza del Duomo and “La Rocca”. But the rowdy crowd of tourists and locals expressively chattered late into the night. Then, early in the morning, 4:00 or 5:00, workers used every sort of process or equipment to clean that piazza. Pressure-washers, mini street sweepers, manual laborers. And the recycling trucks came to pick up the 1000s of wine bottles emptied the day before. The bottle bins were right outside my window.
And as much as I like spring birdsong, I have never heard such loud and sleep-preventing birds as those this morning! And then, at 7:00, the duomo bells chimed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 times, 3 repetitions of this in rapid succession, as if to say “get up, get moving, get out now!”
Hmmm. Proximity to a Piazza del Duomo is not such a great idea.
– – –
9 May – I’m traveling the regional train along the shoreline toward Taormina: “the straights of Messina” at my left! The straights are something I’ve always heard of, but I have no recollection of what I’ve heard. I’ll have to look them up.
Coming back from a day trip up the hill to Monreale, I got off the bus at Piazza Indipendenza and started walking home to my B&B. Off on a low side road, I saw smoke and smelled grilling meat. “Milza“? (Sicilian, cooked organ meats.) No. It was skewered veal intestines and they smelled great.
The guy had a little cart on the sidewalk in a torn up construction zone. NOT the kind of place any germophobe would eat! No running water, but rather a gallon bucket with water that had oil floating on top.
The bowels had been zig-zag plucked onto the metal skewers and partly precooked. I ordered one: “Budello… Stiglione”
The grill was smoking hot… A good sign.
The “chef” cooked the skewered gut until it was hot through, then skimmed it off the metal rod onto a cutting board that’s been working all afternoon. He motioned me to stand aside while he cut the fatty gut into bite-sized chunks, splurting grease as he did so. He swept them with his knife onto a plastic plate, added a wedge of lemon, then showed me the tub of salt that at least a hundred hands have visited just today.
I wagered the risks, paid my 1.50 euro, then started eating with my post-public-bus fingers. A mouth experience much like fatty liver: that consistency and flavor with pockets of hot, grilled grease.
My Siciliano-Palermitano adventure left veal guts in my teeth and a smile on my face. Italy has made me far less cautious about the foods I eat, and the FDA would think I’m tempting fate by trying it all. But bring it on! Yum.
In pushing myself to “pack light, pack light, pack light”… in wanting to ease any worry about leaving my laptop behind in my hotel room while out exploring for the day… and in urging myself to go as “unplugged and off-the-grid” as I can stand, I left my laptop with a friend in Milan and am traveling around the south of Italy with just an iPad.
This is a great experiment for me on many counts, not the least of which is the technical limitations of the device and my ability to interact with the blogging interface. So far, I haven’t figured out how to upload photos from my iPad to the blog, but I may figure that out along the way, during my “spare time” when I’m not out wandering the little back streets or sitting in a trattoria eating spaghetti with sardines.
Rest assured, I’m gathering lots of images and also lots of experiences, meeting people every step of the way. Perhaps after I return to Milan I’ll have a marathon photo upload session and go back to add photos to my Sicilian and Pugliese posts. Stay tuned!
