It is not the first time that it has happened that untold stories are much more compelling than told stories and, if they then took place close to us, they arouse the tasty interest of gossip.
That is what occurred here in Spotorno, just a stone's throw from us, almost a century ago.
While the life of our community was marked by the seasons and next to the farmers and fishermen a new social class emerged: the laborers who worked in Vado; winter tourism began in Spotorno and our beautiful Riviera was sold throughout Northern Europe as a remedy for those suffering from respiratory diseases. In London's subways, large advertising posters invited people to vacation: "Sunshine is life, come to the Riviera." (Sunshine is life, come to the Riviera).
Prominent European physicians had noted how the sun and climate of our region was a real panacea for those suffering from tuberculosis; if you were not cured, you would certainly not get worse and death would still come, but milder and in an environment described by the Baedeker guide in 1931 as one of the most beautiful places in the world: "... nowhere else in the Mediterranean does nature display its beauty with such sumptuousness."
Nobles and aristocrats from all over Europe began to spend their winters in the Ponente.
When D.H. Lawrence arrived in Spotorno on November 15, 1925, Liguria was known throughout northern Europe for its November of mild climate, and already by the end of the previous century tourism-winter had begun in many places on the Riviera. Alassio immediately defined itself as a favorite place for the English intellectual elite, while Spotorno, a little defiladed and unfortunately with a slightly harsher climate, was less frequented, but between 1900 and 1920 the first hotels began to spring up here and in this new international climate our story was born.
D.H. Lawrence, an indefatigable traveler, discovered during his stay in Mexico that he was ill with tuberculosis; therefore, he decided with his wife Frieda to return to Italy, to that Italy made up of contrasts that he deeply loved, even though, from time to time, he felt the need to get away.
At that time the writer also felt the need to be away from the British community and asked his publisher Martin Seeker to find suitable accommodation for him and his wife.
Martin Seeker knew Spotorno very well because his wife, Rina Capellero, was the daughter of the owner of the Hotel Miramare and suggested that he visit Spotorno because it was far enough away from Alassio and British high society.
Frieda and Lawrence arrived in Spotorno in November 1925 and at the train station was Rina Capellero waiting for them. Together they headed to the inn run by Rina's parents and in those few steps, which separated the station from Villa Maria, they unwittingly met all the characters of what would become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, which Lawrence did not write here, but a year later in Scandicci. In a few steps, the writer's life and Frieda's life changed forever. Spotorno exerted on them a kind of spell that took shape when the couple met bersaglieri lieutenant Angelo Ravaglieri. A novel within a novel will be born, under the eyes of the small community of Spotorno, that will keep the protagonists linked forever, and Spotorno will become the set of the most scandalous story of the entire twentieth century: Lady Chatterley's lover.
Angelo Ravagli inspired not only Lawrence in characterizing the figure of gamekeeper Oliver Mellors, but after the writer's death he became Frieda's third husband. Together they went to live in New Mexico on the ranch that Lawrence had previously purchased, and it would be Ravagli himself who would take care of the writer's final wishes.
We can therefore say that the most scandalous novel of the twentieth century had its genesis, right here, between the Hotel Miramare and the Villa Bernarda.
To find out more, I invite you to visit the Circolo Socio Culturale Pontorno website (www.spesturno.it) so that you can get a complete overview of Lawrence's stay in Spotorno and discover the figure of Angelo Ravagli, who after the death of Frieda, whose third husband he became, died in Spotorno in 1975. In the 1970s, when he was now elderly, Angelo gave an interview to Alberto Bevilacqua that would flow into the novel, "Through Your Body." This story within the story also attracted the interest of English journalist and "Times" correspondent in Italy, Richard Owen, who published the novel in 2014: Lady Chattterley's Villa: D.H. Lawrence on the Italian Riviera, where the author retraces the places that inspired Lawrence's novel, and much of the book is devoted to the English writer's stay in Spotorno.
Finally, if you are interested in experiencing a real literary marathon, I invite you to follow the Author's trek: reading Lawrence in the places that inspired his novels, as soon as it is scheduled again. It will also be an opportunity to discover undiscovered corners of Spotorno, in the meantime, happy reading!
