Florence remembers ‘Angels of the Mud’

FIFTY years after the river Arno burst its banks with devastating consequences, Florence will this week remember the Angels of the Mud who came to save the Italian city’s artistic treasures.

The army of cultural rescue volunteers came from all over and, half a century later, the events of November 4 1966 and its aftermath still burn bright in the memory of Antonina Bargellini, 72.

“We were living near the Santa Croce church,” she said.

“We had a roaring river crashing against our doors.”

Bargellini recalls the acts of kindness among neighbours without food, water or electricity.

The flood left 34 people dead, half of them in Florence, the others in the surrounding countryside.

Two days later the water receded, exposing meadows of mud, studded with debris and contaminated by heating fuel that had been stored in city centre cellars.

The water rushed in everywhere, into every nook and cranny of churches, the central library and museums, causing immense damage to the city’s priceless cultural heritage.

Despair, however, quickly gave way to a spontaneous outburst of offers to help, from all over Italy and the rest of the world.

“Gli Angeli del Fango” [Angels of the Mud] they came to be called, many of them young students brimming with the idealism and optimism of the time.

And hundreds of the estimated total of 10 000 volunteers are back in Florence this week to celebrate the anniversary of the disaster and their efforts to save irreplaceable works of art.

Florence mayor Dario Nardella said: “We want to remember them and thank all of them in commemorating an event that is part of the city’s identity.”

Over the course of the last 50 years, many of the 1 800 works of art and some four million books that were saved by the Angels of the Mud have been returned to their original settings. – AFP