|  The
Via Vandelli owes its creation to the marriage of Ercole Rinaldo d'Este
and Maria Teresa Cybo, which led to the Duchy of Modena and the Principality
of Massa becoming one territory. However, the movement of people and goods
within this area was drastically hindered by the geographic topography;
in fact, in order to travel with a reasonable degree of comfort between
Modena and the outlet on the sea, it was necessary to cross three different
foreign states: the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, and the
Sardinian states. The only other way of avoiding crossing into foreign
territory was to venture onto the difficult centuries-old paths and mule
tracks that criss-crossed the Apennines and Apuans. The Duke decided to
create a single highway that would be "open and in such a praiseworthy
state that all the coachmen could travel with their goods safely and unhindered",
a highway able to satisfy not only military purposes but also the new
and ever-increasing needs of commerce. The road started from Massa, passed
through the Passo della Tambura (the subject of our itinerary), dropped
down to Castelnuovo Garfagnana and from there, having crossed through
the Passo di San Pellegrino, ended up at Modena.
In the village of Resceto it is not hard to find fragments of narrative
about the Vandelli, a then-modern, carefully planned and technically-complex
project which because of its history and exceptional dimensions has become
interwoven with local folklore, legends, and beliefs. The rationality
of the walls and paved way became a new framework for popular fables,
as in the legend of "The old man and the lamb" (collected by
A.C. Ambrosi), which is woven around the important role of the "Maestà",
devotional images that lie all along the road.
Ultimately, one can see in the Vandelli an interesting and concrete paradigm
of the relationship between nature and culture and a historic oscillation
in the various contrasting ways of perceiving it. The reports of the Duke's
engineers and inspectors who moved through these valleys exude a black
and white anguish, in which the Apuan wilderness is viewed as a wild and
dangerous enemy that needs to be tamed and transformed. For us today,
in the age of parks, the Resceto valley is a gratifying and glossy-coloured
oasis of tranquillity, and the Vandelli has become a cultural treasure
blending in with nature. Time has canonised rather than pardoned the gap
that was blasted by the dynamite of the Duke's engineers in order to open
up the Passo della Tambura to traffic.
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Skiing round the Apennine hermitages
Photo Gallery: The tour
