Gaeta

And the relics of war

I have now arrived in Gaeta, where the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies came to die, but not without a fight. I have written about the fall of the Kingdom before now, and Gaeta is the place where the last act was played out. Having been betrayed by virtually everyone, including his brothers, and indeed his cousin, the King of Piedmont, Francis II and his wife Queen Maria Sofia retreated to the fortress of Gaeta and endured a three month siege, only surrendering and sailing off into perpetual exile when it was clear that Gaeta would be bombarded from the sea as well as from the land, thanks to the withdrawal of the French fleet.

Gaeta is a natural fortress, being a mountain that is connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, a bit like Gibraltar. It surveys a magnificent gulf, which is the view I contemplate as I write this.

The tourist signs point people to medieval Gaeta, of which practically nothing exists. Wandering round the old town one sees a few relics of the past, a doorway here, or a window there, but the overwhelming majority of buildings are nineteenth century with a few from the seventeenth and eighteenth. There are also a few Roman remains, built into modern buildings, for this was a major holiday resort for the ancients.

At the top of the mountain, which is a national park, there is a Roman mausoleum, belonging to one Plancus, well preserved, but very uninteresting.

What is interesting, however, is to see that the signs of the bombardments of 1860-1861 are still there. I do not mean the tombs of the Bourbon generals in the Cathedral, but the mighty holes in the walls and the various gaps in the streets. The parish church I have been frequenting is intact but attached to a ruined former convent, victim of Piedmontese aggression.

Poor Gaeta was bombarded again in the Second World War, and there are signs of that two. A local church is ancient but modern, a rebuild to replace a lost building; and along the sea front there is a wide boulevard which is clearly built on land reclaimed from the sea through the dumping of war debris.

Despite all this, there is strong sense of history here. The Bourbon standard still flies, one is glad to see, and the chapel where Blessed Pius IX prayed during his exile in the year of revolutions, 1848, and where he contemplated proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, is exactly as it was.

In summer the place must be crowded, but in February it is delightfully empty, sunny, warm, but not oppressive.

Readers will be glad to know (or so I hope) that the fourth volume of my Sicilian series is now substantially complete and is with the proofreader. It will be entitled The Castle of the Women which is the meaning of the place name Caltanissetta, as the main incident takes place somewhere in the province of Caltanissetta. It is, as one would expect, a gripping tale, or, once again, so I hope. It should be published on Amazon in time for the first anniversary of The Chemist of Catania, that is, 5th April, and the Easter holidays.

The joys of self-publishing, or independent publishing, should be obvious, and I am not alone in thinking so, as you can read here. Almost a year on, I am amazed to note, The Chemist is still selling. With the way that traditional publishing works, that would simply mot have been possible. Many thanks to all who have bought it, and its successors, and happy reading. Now onto the next volume, to be entitled The Gravedigger of Bronte.