Yesterday (Saturday) Myrna and I drove two hours, mostly on Autostrada (toll freeway, where you can drive quite fast), to a mountain village north of Torino (the highway continues on north to the famous Saint Bernard Pass) to find the village, population 450, of Castelnuovo Nigra. This is the place where Amber Caretto's (our daughter-in-law, married to Mark) Italian ancestors came from a little after 1900. They immigrated to Globe, Arizona, to work on the masonry (stones cut from mountain) Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River, which provides water to the Phoenix valley. We found a pix of the birth record for her grandfather on Family Search, although it has probably not been officially indexed. My brother, Fred Hoopes, who has indexed over 12,000 of these Italian records, helped us decipher the writing, Our goal was to find Grandpa Peter's grave, and we did.
This is the grave, which even includes a pix. Graves are mostly found in the walls around the
town cemetery. The people can only be buried there for about 100 or so years, then the remains (bones) are removed (dumped in a common grave). We need to learn more about this. We couldn't do it yesterday, because the city hall was closed on Saturday, our P-day. There are a few people who are actually buried in the ground, but this is probably expensive, and also isn't forever.
The village is a charming place, and there were a few people around yesterday. We spoke with the only other person at the cemetery, a nice looking, relatively young Italian woman, who, when we told her who we were looking for, said she is related to them. She said that last summer a couple from Colorado, USA, came to look for their ancestors.
Another view of the cemetery, looking toward the mountain, This town is on the side of a mountain.
This is the "Main Street" of Castelnuova (which means new castle) Nigra. We followed this woman, who was walking down the middle of the road with her fresh flowers. Thankfully, no cars were coming. Italians drive way too fast. In the background is the main piazza with the old church, which, of course, we visited.
It was lunch time and we were hungry. They did not have a restaurant or pizza place in town, only a coffee place, although a very little store sold what tasted sort of like pizza, although it was cold and wasn't very good, compared with hot, fresh pizza we usually get. Pizza is truly Italy's favorite fast food, and the places are everywhere, except this little town.
Sign as we first entered the village. To get there we had to drive about 30 minutes (from the freeway) on a very winding mountain road which wasn't really wide enough for two cars to pass, although we did, to get to the village.
There were a few old and some vacant houses in the village. We never found house number 142, where Great Great Grandpa Caretto was born on June 15, 1892, according to the birth record now on Family Search.
And some nicer homes with interesting things, like this tree which had flowers growing from the trunk.
The front door of the village church, which had a sign on the side that says it is being restored by government grants. Below is a pix of the sign about the restoration.
Inside the church, there was one old man praying when we first went in. As he left, he told us to keep the door open so the sun could get in to help warm up the cold church.
Church from inside the main front door. Lots of marble. There has probably been a church here for 800 or more years, but most decorations are from the 1600s, according to style of architecture, painting, etc.
Above the high altar, painted on the ceiling, was a depiction not typical in Catholic churches, which shows the Godhead as 3 separate persons, the Father (on the right) giving a crown to His Son (Jesus, holding the cross, on the left), with the dove (Holy Ghost above), and, of course, Mary below, with a few saints, and probably a portrait of the person or people who paid for the painting. Is common to have the donor have himself painted in the picture.
Left side of the old pipe organ in the back balcony of the church. It was obvious that the organ does not work any more because the shade over the pipes is pulled and they have a little, new, electronic organ on the floor, which I played.
Another painting on the ceiling, showing Michael slaying the Dragon (hosts of hell). This painting is probably about 6 feet high, and brightens up well with Picasa, which this isn't from.
Another ceiling painting of a couple of female saints, the castle on the right is probably a depiction of the castle, Castelnuova, which we did not see, perhaps it has been taken down. Painters liked to paint local scenes in the church paintings, and historians use these paintings for documentation as to what things looked like.
This church is named for Saint Sebastian, who was martyred by arrows, and his image can be found in many Italian churches. It is interesting that in this statue he has blue eyes. (You probably have to enlarge the pix to see them, and I don't know if this blog will allow you to do that.)
This is the main altarpiece (oval is unusual), where St. Sebastian is also found in the lower left. Again, God and Jesus above, with the dove between them and, of course, Mary, in the middle, and a few saints.
Village square, where we parked our car (on the right). There were a few bikers going through town. The coffee shop, on the right, is the only place where you could buy food, other than the tiny store where we bought our pizza, if you could call it that. It had some anchovy (fish) on it.
The town hall, on the left, and emergency room, on the right of this building. The town hall was closed but the ER was open on Saturday. Someone had been working in his garden in front. This is a very small village. Google says it has 450 people, maybe
An old street sign, saying Via Caretto Capella, or the way to Caretto Chapel. We went on the road but did not find a chapel.
We drove a couple of kilometers straight up (lots of switch backs) the mountain to a place called Caretto, marked by a sign, that says Caretto Inf, which I suppose means Caretto Inferiore, or lower Caretto, although we did not find an upper Caretto or a chapel, just a few houses, some of which looked like summer homes for wealthy people from the city, perhaps Torino. This is in the province of Torino, which has several million people.
This pix was taken looking down the hill from the place we parked next to the old church in Castelnuova Nigra. The structure with the blue roof is a new water dispensing kisok. It cost .05 euros (about 7 cents) for 1.5 liters or either plain or frizzante (carbonated) drinking water. You take your jug and put it under the spout. These things are found everywhere, including across the street from our office in Opera. You can see the other side of the mountain (there is a valley below), with storm clouds on the top of the mountain. There was still a little snow on the top of the mountain. We were afraid we would get wet, but it didn't rain on us.
This was on the wall of the church, in the piazza. it says "in this piazza under nazi fascist lead (piombo or bullets) fell for the liberty of Italy" these five young men, with the dates they died. There must have been a couple of mass shootings by the nazis during WWII.
On the way home, before we got back on the freeway, we stopped off at another church. It had an organ built in 1855, a fairly new organ for Italy, which I was able to play. The priest was from Brazil, but was very friendly. (Italy has to import their priests, there aren't enough Italians who want to be priests for obvious reasons.)
Plaque on the organ showing who made it and when. It has not been restored, and was a little difficult to play because the wooden and metal mechanical parts were probably a little warped.
Console of the organ below the pipes. Typical old Italian organ with one keyboard and short pedal board, with sliding stops on the right side. It had been electrified, in other words, someone does not have to pump the bellows and it had a lamp to light the music. It was very dark up there in the balcony, although the church was open and lights on. I had to use the light on my cell phone to see the names of the stops on the right side, the light didn't reach that far. This pix was taken with flash.
The pipes, from the facade, illuminated with the flash. It was pretty dark during mid day.
We couldn't play long, as there were about 30 children coming to practice for their first communion (the priest said I could play until he started the practice), and the floor sweeping ladies on the right were finishing their Saturday afternoon work. This pix was taken from the organ balcony. The priest said they do not have a regular organist, but a couple of teenagers, who can play a little, play for their services. (He used the word giocare, which means play, like games, rather than suonare, or to sound, which is normally used for playing the organ.) Myrna took video of me playing, but I don't know how to add video to this blog.
This is now Sunday evening. We went home/visiting teaching this evening to two of our assigned four families. It was a good and somewhat unusual experience. I took a pix of one of the apartment buildings with my cell phone, and when I get the cable from our apartment I will upload it and write about home teaching. This has been another great week. Today was Mother's day, both in Italy and the US. In Relief Society today Myrna received a long stem fresh red rose and they had refreshments. Italians are into fresh flowers, and the roses around where we live are beginning to bloom, and I suppose will bloom all summer. Also, along the roads there are lots of red poppies, like what you see in tourist pix of Italy. Yesterday along the freeway we saw lots of rice fields. I never knew that rice is such a large crop in Italy. It is interesting that we could see a difference in the rice plants after only one week. Most of the fields were flooded. I wish I would have stopped by the side of the freeway and taken pixs, but it is a little dangerous with cars whizzing by at 140 or more. (Of course, that's 140 km/hr).
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