Fungi and Michelangelo

Every marble sculptor finds his way to Caprese di Michelangelo — the mountain eyrie behind San Sepolcro where, in the last Tuscan outpost on the border of Le Marche, Michelangelo was born: a pilgrimage inevitably offering a disappointment — he is confronted by plaster effigies in the castle museum — and unexpected rewards in the only inn, which, perched over a deep abyss, overlooks a blue haze of mountain ranges.

Arriving on this crag one day in autumn, the welcome we received decided us to stay. Installing a typewriter on the terrace to type a draft of one of the Sculptor’s poetic works, I was able to enjoy the view and observe through a hatch everything that was going on in the adjoining kitchen, from which delicious scents of herbs and fungi were drifting. Paradise regained: the woman who asked us if we would mind having three different fungi dishes for supper had the sweetness and civility for which Tuscany was once so famous.