Local ambassador stories: Ludovica Fales, Cetona

A moving story is the one that links Ludovica Fales to Cetona. If some ties arise spontaneously, others are created, as in this case.

"The person who literally created the relationship between my family and Cetona was my grandmother, the writer Angela Bianchini, who decided to buy a house here because of a beautiful story of humanity experienced by her mother."

During wartime, on October 16, 1944, Ludovica's great-grandmother was traveling on a train from Rome to Tuscany. The woman, an Italian Jew, was on the run, and it was a railwayman from Chiusi, a certain Luigi Gori, who noticed her plight and with great humanity decided to help her. He then took her in at his home, hiding her and making everyone believe that she was an aunt who had arrived from afar. Meanwhile, her daughter, Angela, had gone to the United States.

"So when my grandmother was able to return from the United States, she decided to look for a home in Valdichiana Senese, because in that area near Chiusi, her mother had been rescued during the war. She thought there were great people here, thinking back to that totally unselfish but full of humanity unknown man who extended his hand to a woman by hosting her in his home for months. So when it was time to look for a home, he looked for it right here, without hesitation."

Angela Bianchini set out to look for a house in Valdichiana with her friend Emma, and together every weekend they went around the towns in the area, until one day they saw an ad in a newspaper: "They went to knock on the little door of a little house in an alley in Cetona, which when it opened wide, revealed a house in the Parisian style but with elements of Tuscan-ness that impressed her greatly: it was the house-museum of the Cetona painter Lionello Balestrieri. An enchanted place where there was a twentieth-century atmosphere, which had its back to the village and looked out over the valley with its hanging garden. Needless to say, my grandmother fell in love with it."

Today the house is a little renovated historic home where Angela spent many summers of her life, and so did Ludovica and her recently deceased father, archaeologist Mario Fales: "Cetona is the place where we would like to keep our roots. This house is a bit of a place of meditation, we have all passed through here. Mine has always been an intellectual family with an internationalist element, all people with an international education both linguistically and culturally, and in fact everyone has been very much involved in interculturalism, a vocation we have always had and maintain."

Ludovica was born in Rome, grew up partly in Verona, studied between Rome, London and Berlin, and now lives in Paris, but Cetona has always been the place to come back to: "For me Cetona is the place where I am totally in harmony with myself, and that house is magical, you are immersed in the landscape and at the same time you are in the village, a double dimension that I like. And then in the garden, where there is a magical microclimate with its special smells, sounds, scents, the view is sensational with Mount Cetona in front. I have a strong affection for nature, a relationship that I developed precisely in Cetona, because as a child here I was always in the fields with friends, we would climb trees, go to steal fruit, run from one house to another leaving the doors open and then take great walks. There was a strong feeling of being in a collective dimension. For me, Cetona is still like that today, and the Cetona population is one big extended family for me."

Ludovica is a filmmaker and university lecturer between London and Paris, and in the Valdichiana Senese town she has created a cultural association, the Casa Bianchini-Balestrieri Association, which combines the story of Lionello Balestrieri with the story of Angela Bianchini with the intention of continuing the cultural work not only privately but also opening it to others, to people who want to know, discover and experiment, using the house as a place of experimentation. She was also asked to collaborate in the creation of the Maccari Prize, which made her particularly proud: "Sharing with the people of Cetona with whom I have been talking for a long time, my vision of cinema, was important. To be able to speak here about my work is the realization of a dream and a great privilege. I like this dimension of dialogue and hope that it will expand further, that it can be more and more inclusive."

Local ambassador's place of the heart

In addition to the garden of my house, which is not only mine, but is open to many people, place of the heart is the Belvedere della Rocca, from where there is a splendid view, because it seems to be at the level of Mount Cetona. I like the mountain because it has its own sinuosity in profile, with gentle and soft lines, but at the same time it is solid and strong, as if it were the point of orientation. In my life, when I needed a suggestion on how to proceed, sitting in front of Mount Cetona always revealed an answer. And then I like the Franciscan dimension of the countryside around Cetona, these little sparse churches with a very simple religiosity, it has always fascinated me.

Ludovica Fales, director, deeply connected to Cetona for generations