Photo of the week – a little church in Poggio Catino
Church of St Egidio in Poggio Catino, overlooking the Sabine Hills near Rome, Lazio, Italy. The church is now a private home.
Taken on a sunny day in mid January
Villa degli Armeni – private rental villa near Rome
Roccantica and the Festa of Sant’Antonio Abate
The 17th of January in Italy marks the Saint’s day of St Antonio Abate, protector of domestic animals. It’s a popular festival, especially in rural areas like the Sabina, when local priests will bless animals, and, in many places, agricultural machinery and cars too!
I headed up to the neighbouring village of Roccantica, where locals were gathering with their animals to be blessed. Roccantica is an extraordinarily well preserved medieval village, nestled on the mountainside among forests. More about Roccantica in a later blog post!
It was a beautiful bright january morning, and the main piazza of Roccantica was full of animals and their owners. Unfortunately I missed the actual blessing with the priest, but the piazza was still full of people chatting and admiring the animals, and tucking into some delicious fava bean stew being served up by the local ladies.
There were mostly horses and dogs, but also a pen of sheep and a very fine looking cow
The horses were all beautifully groomed and dressed up in their finery. There are a number of riding stables locally, but horses and mules are also still used on the steep mountain slopes for transporting firewood.
Up in the winding streets of the village, the cats were staying aloof from the whole affair, and taking advantage of the winter sun!
Villa degli Armeni – private rental villa near Rome
Over the Christmas and New Year period I got to spend some of my own holiday time at Villa degli Armeni and indulge in one of my favourite things to do there: weather watching!
In contrast to the summer, when most days are rather boringly cloudless (although there is the occasional thunderstorm), autumn, winter and spring offer ever-changing panoramas of clouds, mist, light and shade across the Sabine Hills, the Tiber Valley and a large chunk of Lazio laid out below the villa.
Somehow, from nearly 500 metres up, you feel more part of the weather here than in most places: watching the play of light over the landscape, the arrival of a distant storm, the fog clinging to the valley bottom, with the little villages of the Sabina poking out like islands. Sometimes the cloud descends and all sound is muffled, the view is blanked out and you feel remote from everything.
Fascinating to watch, and even more fascinating to photograph. I wish my photography skills were greater, as well as my time available to capture all the moods of the changing landscapes and weather I experienced in just a few days, but here are a few photos taken with my phone which hope to give some idea.
The first few days we were there were very bright and sunny. On days like that in the winter what typically happens is that cold air sinks into the Tiber Valley and forms fog overnight, so you wake to a view like the one above, a sea of fog with higher areas emerging like islands.
Over the course of the morning the fog burns off, but remains as a haze which softens the landscape. Look up and the sky is pure blue.
After some days the weather changed, with showers and quite heavy rain. Heavy clouds race across the view, and where there is a gap the sun bursts through and highlights parts of the landscape.
Villa degli Armeni – private rental villa near Rome
