The Barga Cathedral and Pascoli’s bells

One of Italy’s greatest poets, Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) felt a special bond with the beautiful Barga Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Christopher.

Pascoli, born in Romagna, moved to Castelvecchio, a hamlet in Barga, Lucca, in 1895. He fell in love with the pristine nature and mountains of the Serchio Valley – between the Alps and the Apennines – and decided to stay there for good.

The sound of the bells of the Cathedral of Saint Christopher – a beautiful Romanesque architecture built in the 11th century – could clearly be heard in Castelvecchio. Pascoli turned that ringing into verse, such as in “The Hour of Barga”:

To this shade in the garden where all I can hear / is the bristle of grain growing ripe in the fields, / wind reels the sound of the struck hours down / from a town in the hills that from here / I can’t see: the sound steady and falling / in waves, like a voice that persuades.

In 1907, he wrote an “open letter” to the people living in Garfagnana, claiming:

“Only the Cathedral brings all your memories and glories together, and speaks to the whole valley with the sweet, deep voice of its bells.”

And he added:

“In the distant past, shortly after the year 1000, the Barghigiani survived nibbling chestnuts and built the Cathedral. They said: ‘In my house I can jump from one joist to another… But the cathedral must be large, with the most beautiful marble pulpit ever’. They believed: ‘What is mine is small, what is ours is great’.”

Photos via: ©Simo Naa, ©Phil Critchley Images, ©fabryz71, ©bgiuliano58, ©Stephen Reid