Return to Ravenna, part 1: Weather report
We’d planned to go to Mantua the weekend of Oct. 19-21 with our friend Valerie, to see the sights and eat some of the famous tortelli produced in the neighboring village of Valeggio. As the time for our trip drew near, though, weather predictions for the weekend became increasingly grim: rain, rain, and more rain, not only in Mantua but all across northern Italy. Our itinerary included a lot of walking in Mantua and Valeggio and a visit to the latter’s reportedly gorgeous Sigurtà Garden, none of which now sounded very appealing if we’d have to do it in a downpour.
So at the last minute we canceled our Mantua Airbnb reservation and decided to go to Ravenna instead. Why Ravenna? Danny and I were there back in 2009, and for a few years he’s been talking about returning for another look at the city’s famous mosaics. Now, seeing his chance, he reminded us that mosaic-viewing would be a mostly indoor activity. Valerie, who’d never seen Ravenna, was happy to go along, but I was a little resistant. I remembered that the mosaics we’d seen there had been awe-inspiring, but I could retrieve few details out of the cluttered, disorganized respository my brain has become, which made me question whether it was worth going to see them again, or indeed to go anywhere to see anything. But Danny’s enthusiasm carried me along. Ravenna it would be.
Valerie arrived from her place in Orvieto on Wednesday evening and we headed to Ravenna after breakfast the next day. I’d been worried that driving in the rain would be unpleasant, if not terrifying, but we encountered only a few showers. Apparently the real storm was yet to come.
We stopped off for lunch in a cute little village with the cute little name of Brisighella.
Its historic center is a pretty place and we had a nice lunch there, but the truth is that I no longer seem to have it in me to get excited about Italian villages, cute or otherwise, if I’m just passing through. Although I did enjoy this slightly modernized fountain in one of the little piazzas.
Aside from a brief shower on Friday night, the drizzle on Thursday was the only rain we ran into until we were driving home on Saturday afternoon. What happened to the huge storms everyone was predicting? I assumed it was just one more example of hyping up everyone’s anxiety to get clicks and eyeballs, but Valerie had an even better explanation.
In late 2008 and early 2009 L’Aquila, a city in the Abruzzo in central Italy, began experiencing tremors and small shocks—thousands of them, eventually—that residents worried might indicate that a major earthquake was in the offing. A group of earthquake experts was summoned to figure out what, if any, steps should be taken. A government hydrologist announced that the tremors were effecting a “discharge of energy” that would prevent a quake. Six other scientists reviewed the data and declared that a major earthquake was possible, but not probable. Officials then reassured residents that a major temblor was unlikely.
A week later, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake devastated the city, killing 309 people. Outrage followed, and eventually seven of the scientists were brought to trial on manslaughter charges. Despite protests from scientists all over the world, and despite the scientific consensus that accurate, specific predictions of earthquakes are impossible, the seven scientists were convicted and sentenced to serve five years in prison and pay a $10 million fine.
The scientists appealed, and six of them were acquitted in 2014. The hydrologist, whose comment about energy discharge was scientifically false, had his sentence reduced to two years. The scientific community was not reassured. "We worry that subjecting scientists to criminal charges for adhering to accepted scientific practices may have a chilling effect on researchers,” an officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned the Italian president.
Valerie speculated that the aftershocks of this case may be encouraging weather forecasters to paint any weather event as a potential disaster, just to protect themselves from being blamed later—especially now that extreme weather is causing floods and fires all over the world on an almost daily basis.
Whatever the reason, the misguided forecast deprived me of a trip to Mantua and Valeggio, and I still feel a bit sulky about it. But now here we were in Ravenna, and I did my best to enjoy it.
(Part 1 of 3)