Foxes Hill

Foxes Hill Parte 5

I say goodbye and leave the bar; I decided to go up to the castle, which seeing it from the balcony of the house intrigued me.

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Castles always intrigue; there is always a story behind it.

It is that, in addition to architecture, which still intrigues me today.

Curiosity, this type of curiosity, is synonymous with the desire to learn and the update, in short to know: to improve culturally.

This is what we Italians of today lack, the culture, which is something quite different from school education.

Everyone today, with compulsory schooling, we are more or less educated, but it is culture, with civic education, that must make us a civilized people: but there is neither one nor the other.

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I start walking again; the square, small, ends early, and the course begins uphill.

On the left is the church of the Mary Magdalene, the grandmother's church, on whose facade, overlooking the course, has the war memorial, with all the names of the young people of Rocchetta who died in the war, who, looking up, I stopped to read.

After, the road begins to climb and the slope increases more and more; now, to advance you have to push hard on your legs: the climb is tiring.

I pass in front of a fabric shop; it is Ida's mother's shop, and she is behind the window; sees me and greets me with a smile, wrinkling her hooked nose; I wave my hand and go on.

I arrive at the mother church, the course ends there; I go up a few steps, and I am at the entrance: and enter.

In this church, my parents got married nine years ago; who knows if the priest is the same; I would like to ask him, but he isn't there, I do not see him.

Entering, and immediately looking at the altar, I imagine the scene with the couple sitting there with relatives and guests invited to serve as a side dish.

This is because I have never seen photos of their ceremony; maybe they have not thought about it, and anyway I never asked them two.

Perhaps the photographer was not commissioned, or the photos were lost.

The church is large and the central nave very high; entering on the right, the statue of Saint Filomena, and above the entrance, a large organ.

On the left, hidden by the entrance portal, a commemorative plaque in memory of eight Grenadiers, (Soldiers of the Piedmontese army) killed in a firefight, on 28 September 1863, with a band of brigands.

I pause to read their names, the first of which is that of a young lieutenant from Udine.

These are the characteristics that impressed me most of all.

I go out and take to the left, go up other steps and a small road begins that immediately leads to a small square, and the castle is there in front of me, higher still, with the imposing tower that looks like the prow of a ship.

I approach the base, and she, you can see, rests on the rock, which in some places, can be seen emerging from below with irregular and massive points, of a yellowish color: it must be very hard and solid rock.

I continue: it is all uphill here.

Crows flutter around the keep and make a great din, croaking, with their shrill cries; there must be their nests with young in the crevices of the roof, for there to be so many.

I pass in front of the entrance where, at the top, I see a coat of arms that could probably be of the squire who had it built.

The castle is large, and you can see that it is also old; it was probably built first to guard the valley below, which from the left comes from Irpini Mountains, and flows right to the Apulia plain.