WHY LOMBARDY HAS ALWAYS SET THE FASHION!

ON HIS TRAVELS MAL ROGERS

I’M INTO MILAN

JUST returned from a weekend break in Lombardy – excellent, thanks for asking.

It was a thought-provoking journey, one that led me to the conclusion that the Italians are masters of PR.

Take Christianity. The epicentre of the religion should by rights be Jerusalem. Yet the wily Romans have persuaded a billion people worldwide that their city is the heart of the religion – despite there being nowhere in the Bible where a pope or a pontiff is mentioned.

Better than that, the Italians have persuaded the world that they’re a free-wheeling race, with a lifestyle epitomised by languor and la dolce vita. Which is what we tourists love about the country.

But the locals work very hard at bringing the world this picture of Mediterranean craic. In actual fact, Italy is a rigidly conformist society, the people are industrious and efficient; and above all wonderful illusionists.

Lombardy is no exception. Milan is impressively historic, stuffed full of art treasures, ancient churches and Roman remains.

But it also has high fashion, F1 racing, jack-the-lad architecture – and Europe’s third largest sports stadium, the San Siro.

An excellent record – and you don’t get that by sitting in the sun all day sipping wine. That’s the job of the tourist.

Up the road is Cremona – this is basically where classical music started. Because the town is home of the violin, developed here some 500 years ago by the likes of Stradivari and Amati beavering away.

Lodi, to the south east of Milan, is an ancient Celtic city brought up to date with spectacular architecture from the likes of Renzo Piano, of London Shard fame.

Lodi is also notable because Mozart wrote his first violin concerto here in 1770.

The young Mozart along with his father left Milan and headed for Parma. They stopped for just a night in Lodi where it is believed the young Wolfgang Amadeus, no doubt infected by the Italian work ethic, composed his first string quartet. And it wasn’t called O Lord, Stuck in Lodi Again. No matter what the barmaid Carlotta in La Cantinetta on Via Nina Dall’Oro says.

AT CROSS PURPOSES

‘THE Turin Shroud is a fake: official’! This is not the first time the Turin Shroud has been linked to fake news, but the latest research by forensic scientist Dr Matteo Borrini of Liverpool John Moores University and Luigi Garlaschelli of the University of Pavia seems to leave little doubt that the revered relic is a mediaeval con trick.

Of course, the phenomenon of relics is a somewhat arcane one with a history encompassing faith, persecution, hope and sound business sense.

This was brought home to me on the one occasion I saw a fragment of the true Holy Cross. In the company of a handful of other journalists I visited the Monasterio de Santo Toribia in Cantabria, on the pilgrims’ route of the Camino de Santiago de Compostelo.

Now, to keep a monastery like Santo Toribia going over the centuries has required a lot of customers – namely pilgrims on their way to Santiago. The best way to flag them down is to have a first-class relic, and they don’t come much bigger than bits of the True Cross.

Now, it would be fair to say that if the many fragments of the True Cross remaining in existence were put together, they could build a bridge across the Jordan River.

But the fragment of the cross in the verdant valley of Liébana does have some claims to authenticity – it appears to be of the same tree as other documented portions of the cross elsewhere in Christendom; further, studies have shown it to be a Mediterranean cypress common throughout the Middle East.

Unlike the Turin Shroud, the piece of wood could be more than 2,000 years old. Being journalists, our party were allowed into the holy of holies where the reliquary is kept (I trust when our time comes, it will be the same story at the Pearly Gates.) However some Spanish tourists were also milling about, so were allowed in too. After all, the Bible leans in the direction of inclusivity. The other visitors were ebullient and excitable, and brought to mind that splendid parlour game, Bogus Advice for Tourists.

You know the sort of thing: ‘When the organ starts playing in St Patrick’s Cathedral, the first couple on the dance floor win a prize.’

At the Monasterio de Toribia the advice might be: ‘Visitors are encouraged to scratch their initials into the wood of the True Holy Cross, just beside the indentation left by the Crucifixion nail.’

Because, I tell you, some of the Spanish tourists were close to doing just that.

The elderly priest on duty did his best to hold back the shouting, arguing crowd (the Spanish tourists, not the Irish journalists), but you could sense he was glad when the visitors departed and the monastery was returned to solitude and tranquility.

GUYS AND GHOULS

EARLIER in the summer I spent a bracing few days in Whitby. The name might ring a bell. It first came to the notice of the Irish way back in 663AD when a synod was called there to sort out differences between Celtic and Roman usages in the Christian Church. The Romans seem to have won the argument (so far at any rate), the Celtic church drifted off into obscurity, and Whitby remained untroubled by an Irish presence for approximately 1300 years.

It was a feast of crabs which heralded in the next Irish influence to the Yorkshire town. On one of his many holidays in the area, Dublin civil servant Bram Stoker dined on a meal of local seafood, and that night had a vivid dream that inspired his story based in Transylvania, Whitby and London. It was probably the first time in history that the three places were mentioned in the same sentence, but the greatest horror story ever written, Dracula, was fashioned from this in 1897.

It was a momentous work: the Transylvanian tourist board have been eternally grateful to Bram, Whitby similarly. Meanwhile he can be held responsible for giving what was already an Irish celebration, Halloween, a veneer of Gothic horror that has shaped it since. The plot of Dracula, in case you need reminding, is of an extravagantly-fanged Count, weary of the scarcity of succulent necks back home in Wallachia, travelling to England. There he terrorised innocent people, sucked their blood and turned ’em into vampires. (Don’t try this at home, folks.) Young Jonathan Harker, in Romania on behalf of Dracula’s law firm, escorted him on his journey to England, namely the seaside resort of Whitby.

The supernatural cauldron from which Stoker’s Dracula sprang was largely drawn was in fact from Irish mythology and history.

Bram’s mother Charlotte would regale her son with stories about the 1832 cholera epidemic in the West of Ireland, rumoured to have originated in an unknown place in central Europe.

One stranger who strayed into Co. Sligo, thought to be infected with the disease, was buried alive, she said. Other local victims of the plague were rumoured to have disappeared from their coffins, presumably risen from the dead.

She also claimed to have heard banshees calling and spirits keening on the night of her mother’s death. Your average Irish mammy, in fact.