Journey to the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing

PHOENIX, Arizona- WE continue our trip through the video vaults of the International Swimming Hall of Fame on today's edition of The Morning Swim Show, with a look inside the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing.

ISHOF CEO Bruce Wigo talks about this artifact that contains very early paintings of civilizations that is believed to be the oldest representation of an aquatic athlete in the Western world. This artifact was found in Italy in the region formerly inhabited by the Etruscans. Be sure to visit SwimmingWorld.TV for more video interviews.

Peter Busch: This is The Morning Swim Show for Monday, February 13th 2012. I'm your host Peter Busch. In the FINIS monitor today we're talking once again with Bruce Wigo, the CEO of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. The past few days we've featured some of the new videos in their archives and each one highlights a fascinating part of swimming history as Bruce articulates so well. Bruce joins us right now in the FINIS monitor from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Bruce welcome back to the show. How are you doing?

Bruce Wigo: Doing great, Peter, thanks for having me.

Peter Busch: Okay, today we're talking about the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing.

Bruce Wigo: Yes, this is the oldest representation of an aquatic athlete or a swimmer if you will in Western art and it's actually from an Etruscan Tomb up in Tarquinia, Italy which was the capital of the Etruscans actually in Rome in the time of 5th century BC was a vassal state of the Etruscans. And it's really one of the great tourist areas of Rome, particularly for someone that has an interest in swimming. You can walk down these caves that are almost 3000 years old and see that artwork that the Etruscans did that captured the scene and it's really a remarkable experience to go out there. If you want to go on a vacation and see something that relates to your sport this is another great area to go, there's a magnificent beach that's here, and the artwork's just fantastic and the significance of it for us swimmers 3000 years later is that swimming has just been part of mankind from the earliest days.

Peter Busch: All right, let's check out the video.

Peter Busch: Bruce the diorama in the video -- that seemed pretty interesting.

Bruce Wigo: Yes, that was really a lot of fun. After we travelled there Winnie, my wife, came back and created that. It probably took a year and a half to get it all done because you have to get the molds and you have to wear the water but it was a lot of fun to put that together and watch that progress. But really one of the most amazing things about the Swimming Hall of Fame is that we have a collection of greatest artwork related to swimming from around the world, the originals hang in some of the greatest museums in the world from Tokyo to Italy to China and even some of these like a cave drawing, like you have that we just saw on the Tomb of Hunting and Fishing. We especially recreated that, I believe it's the only authentic reproduction of that that I've ever seen and they certainly don't have one like what we have in Tarquinia. You can travel and spend millions of dollars travelling all over the world to find the great artworks related to swimming or you can come to the Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale and see them hanging in our museum here.

Peter Busch: Well it kind of goes to a point that you made last week when we were highlighting another video about the ancient Greek baths. Swimming's more than a sport, it's been a part of cultures for centuries and centuries or thousands of years I should say.

Bruce Wigo: Yes, and the way it's impacted world history. For example if the Greeks didn't know how to swim when the Greek and the Persian fleets were both sunk and wrecked during the Battle of Salamis it was the Greeks who could swim ashore and caught another day where all the Persians drowned. Or if you take a look at how it's affected world history, without guys that could swim who would have done the reconnaissance on the beaches of D-Day? Would President Kennedy have ever been president or would he have drowned when his PT boat sank? And there are just so many ways that - for example in Europe the Fall of the Roman Empire it was the baths that were blamed by the Christian Church for the decline in the morality of the Roman public so the Europeans lost the art of swimming for about a thousand years and they didn't bathe either. So then the Africans and the Indians were the great swimmers and now end up cultural, these cultural influences, the segregation of women and men from bathing, so for hundreds of years men never swam with women, women didn't swim at all. One way that they tested if you were a witch or not was if they threw you in the water and you didn't sink that proved you were a witch. The role of swimming in history is just phenomenal, it's just unbelievable and it's influenced our culture and history in ways that people can't even imagine today so it's not just getting in the Olympics, it's being healthy, it's being happy, it's being able to participate in activities really, water environment just covers two-thirds of the planet.

Peter Busch: Bruce thanks again for joining us and shedding some light on the history, an amazing piece of history of swimming.

Bruce Wigo: It sure is.

Peter Busch: All right, that's Bruce Wigo joining us once again from the International Swimming Hall of Fame. I really appreciate all of their help with this series. I'm Peter Busch reminding you to keep your head down at the finish.

Italy's Civita di Bagnoregio, Jewel on the hill

Italy's Civita di Bagnoregio, Jewel on the hill

By Rick Steves, Tribune Media ServicesRick Steves' Europe

Of all the Italian hill towns, Civita di Bagnoregio is my favorite. Less well-known than Siena or Assisi, this stunning little gem has escaped the modern age mostly because of topography.

The town teeters atop a pinnacle rising high above a vast canyon ruled by wind and erosion; the saddle of earth that once connected Civita to its bigger and busier sister town, Bagnoregio, has worn away. Photographs around town show the old donkey path that once linked the hamlets. Today, the only way in or out is by a footbridge. Supplies are ferried in on mopeds.

The main entrance is a huge stone passageway, cut by the Etruscans 2,500 years ago and decorated in the 12th century with a Romanesque arch. Passing through the portal, you enter another world -- one stuck in the Middle Ages. You can feel history in the smooth cobblestones under your feet.

Inside the gate, the charms of Civita are subtle. Those searching for arcade tourism won't know where to look. There are no lists of attractions, orientation tours, or museum hours. It's just Italy. Civita is an artist's dream, a town in the nude. Each lane and footpath holds a surprise. Ivy drapes over arches and scrambles up walls; potted flowers parade across balconies. The warm stone walls glow, and each stairway is dessert to a sketch pad or camera.

For me, exploring Civita is a cultural scavenger hunt. Rounding one quiet corner, I encounter the stately facade of a Renaissance palace with a fancy wooden door and grand windows leading to -- thin air. The rest of the building fell away into the valley decades ago, riding a chunk of the town's ever-eroding rock. Pondering the view, I'm reminded that slowly but surely this town will succumb to the march of geological time.

The Swiss-cheese ground beneath Civita is honeycombed with ancient cellars, perfect for storing wine, and cisterns for collecting rainwater. Many date from Etruscan times. A pre-Roman tunnel below the town doubled as a bomb shelter during World War II.

Civita has one famous son, St. Bonaventure, the "second founder" of the Franciscan order. His home is long gone, but the basic grid plan of the old town survives, with a church as its centerpiece. The identity of this holy place of worship has rotated with the centuries: An Etruscan temple, then a Roman temple, rose here before today's Catholic church. Ancient pillars from those pagan temples stand like giant bar stools just outside the church door. To beat the heat, I like to step inside and enjoy a quiet moment in a pew.

The main piazza is the heartbeat and pride of the village, the spot where festivals and processions start, visitors are escorted, and the town's past is honored. Wild donkey races take place here in June and September, and at Christmastime, a living nativity scene is enacted in the square.

Civita's young people are gone, lured away by the dazzle of more modern places where they can take part in Italy's cosmopolitan parade. And as old people become frail, they move into apartments in nearby Bagnoregio. With the permanent population dwindling, Civita is becoming a weekend getaway for wealthy urbanites, who are slowly buying up the place. The remaining full-time families cater to visitors.

To enrich your experience of this rustic place, be an extrovert. Poke around and talk to people. I take a seat in the piazza, and smile and nod at each passerby. It's a social jigsaw puzzle, and each person fits. Cats, the fastest-growing segment of the population, scratch their itches on age-old stones.

Nothing is abandoned in this town. At one restaurant, the owner proudly shows off a huge olive press that is about 1,500 years old. Until the 1960s, blindfolded donkeys trudged in a circle to operate the press, crushing olives. Now it is the centerpiece of the restaurant, which sells bruschetta to day-trippers. Bread toasted on an open fire, drizzled with the finest oil, rubbed with pungent garlic, and topped with chopped tomatoes -- these edible souvenirs stay on your breath for hours and in your memory forever.

I love my cool, late evenings in Civita. After dinner, I wander back to sit on the church steps with people who've been doing exactly this under the same moon, night after night, year after year. Children play on the piazza until midnight in the light of the lampposts. I listen to the sounds of rural Italy, mixed with voices and fortissimo crickets. Towering above its moat, Civita feels well-fortified against change.

(Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.)

Finding your Tuscan happy place

For a sliver of time, during a recent long holiday weekend, I found myself spelling happiness differently from anyone else — varying letters strung together to form the name of an ancient Etruscan hilltop town that, for three days, for me, became synonymous with happiness.

Montalcino.

I love Tuscany — a retreat from the frenzied life of Naples, where I reside. It’s a refuge, a quick getaway to recharge the batteries, if you will. I already had fallen for the neighboring hilltop town of Montepulciano, larger and perhaps better known, and I adore the Chianti region (though not so much its wine). The leather markets of Florence are unparalleled.

Then I discovered Montalcino.

Happiness.

The area is surrounded by vineyards. How can one not love that? And they are vineyards that produce one of my favorite wines: Brunello di Montalcino.

One particular long weekend began with a tour of a winery. In the hills of Tuscany, where else would you begin? (Rhetorical question — but in case you needed an answer: nowhere. A winery is where to begin.)

There are many from which to choose; I drove up the cypress-lined driveway to Il Greppo, the estate that houses the now-famous Biondi Santi winery — the very family credited with producing the first bottle of Brunello di Montalcio in 1888, director Franco Biondi Santi, 90, said during an interview.

Franco says he uses the same techniques his ancestors used 124 years ago — why mess with perfection, says the man who started working in the family cantina in 1930. The family’s Brunello Riserva, for example, is exclusively produced with grapes from vines that are 25 years old or older. It also relies on the right amount of rain, because artificial irrigation systems are not permitted if the wines are to be true Brunellos.Franco Santi’s grandfather, Ferruccio Biondi Santi, began making the wine using 100 percent Sangiovese grapes indigenous to the region. Ferruccio Santi also improved on a bottling and preservation technique started two generations earlier by Clemente Santi, who harvested the grapes earlier in the season than usual, thus paving the way for producing a wine that can be preserved for decades, if not centuries.

In 1999, Wine Spectator magazine classified the 1955 Brunello Riserva Biondi Santi among the editors’ “dream dozen” as one of the 12 best wines of the 20th century.

While an entire weekend could be devoted to touring Brunello-producing vineyards, Montalcino and neighboring Castelnuovo dell’Abate offer tourists some spectacular alternatives.

Montalcino’s hilltop perch offers visitors stunning views over the Asso, Ombrone and Arbia valleys of Tuscany, and throughout the town, the cobblestone roads — some rather steep — wind between and around stone houses, churches and quaint shops.

The pentagonal-shaped fortress of Montalcino sits at the highest point of the town and was built in 1361. Some of the town’s pre-existing walls were made part of the fortress, which houses — you guessed it — a wine shop.

In Castelnuovo dell’Abate, about five miles from Montalcino, visitors can tour, by appointment, the Abbey of Saint Antimo, which traces its origins to a small oratory built in 352 and is said to be one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches in Italy.

Directions: From Naples, take the A1 Autostrade north past Rome. Take the Chiusi-Chianciano Terme exit and follow signs for Chiusi-Chianciano Terme or Montepulciano until you see signs for Montalcino.

Times: Most winery visits and wine tastings require an appointment, so look on the website of the winery you wish to visit for information.

Costs: Costs vary, so the website of the winery you wish to visit is your best bet for information. My visit to the Biondi Santi winery cost 15 euros, but didn't include the sit-down tasting.

Food: While Montalcino isn't brimming with restaurants, there are a number that pepper the town, some tucked away in tiny alleys. Dishes to try include ribollita, a Tuscan soup made of beans and vegetables and sometimes served in a bread bowl or with bits of bread tossed into the soup; wild boar; steak Florentine; and tripe.

Information: The official town website is montalcinonet.com (in Italian.)

jontzs@estripes.osd.mi