CULTURE AT RISK - Medieval Italian Town, Civita di Bagnoregio

"The crumbling, picture-perfect Italian town that’s making a comeback" PBS NewsHour 10/27/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  There are just seven year-round residents -- and who knows how many cats -- in the Medieval Italian town of Civita di Bagnoregio, also known as the dying city.  The picturesque hilltop town, visited by droves of tourists, is built upon layers of rock and shifting clay, susceptible to weather and natural disaster.  Jeffrey Brown reports on efforts to revive and reinforce the city.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Next, an Italian hilltop town hovering between life and death, and the efforts being made to save it.

Jeffrey Brown traveled there as part of our ongoing series Culture at Risk.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Each morning, as the sun rises on this medieval town seemingly plucked from a fairy tale, the narrow lanes of Civita di Bagnoregio are quiet.  By the latest count, there are just seven year-round residents, and who knows how many cats.

By mid-morning, though, the scene on this beautiful fall day has changed, as thousands of tourists make the difficult hike up a long, steep footbridge.  There’s no cars allowed here, drawn by the beauty and peculiarity of this place, where staircases lead off cliffs and windows lead into the clouds.

In Italian, it’s called la Citta Che Muore, the Dying City, dying because it’s literally crumbling before our eyes.  But now a mix a geological engineering and tourism is giving this ancient city new life.

CLAUDIO MARGOTTINI, Italy Geological Survey:  After we have a collapse, it takes about two, three, 10 years to have the next collapse in the same part of the cliff.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Claudio Margottini, with Italy’s Geological Survey, has worked in Civita for several decades.

So, here’s part of the problem, right, buildings falling down?

CLAUDIO MARGOTTINI:  Yes, exactly.  This is exactly an example of what the problem is in this town.  So, we are just close to the cliff.  And the cliff is falling down piece by piece, maybe five, six meters at a time.

HBO TV - 'Game of Thrones' Resembles Medieval History

I really love this series.  I watch via DVDs, have the first 3 seasons and panting for the 4th.

Also, I love dragons so you can guess who's side I'm on (if you watch the series).

"What does a medieval literature scholar read into ‘Game of Thrones?’" by Victoria Fleischer, PBS NewsHour 4/3/2014

In the video above, Brantley Bryant, associate professor of medieval literature at Sonoma State University, shares what he and others in his field see of the Canterbury Tales, Le Morte d’Arthur and Beowulf in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”  Spoiler alert:  If you haven’t watched the first three seasons, you will learn what happens to certain characters.

The land of Westeros may seem far off for fans of “Game of Thrones,” but as season four of HBO’s successful show is gearing up to start on Sunday, (NewsHour's) Art Beat learned it may not be as distant as one might think.

According to Brantley Bryant, an associate professor of medieval literature at Sonoma State University, George R.R. Martin, the author of the fantasy series that inspired the HBO show, “has read deeply into medieval history.”

“Sometimes people who haven’t had a chance to read a lot of medieval literature have this idea that it’s a kind of fairy tale world, that medieval literature is this kind of thing where everyone is always very chaste and everyone is very pure and nice,” said Bryant, who specializes in Chaucer and writes a blog in the meter and style of the poet.

“Some of the most sensational, violent aspects of ‘Game of Thrones’ are actually also present in medieval literature.”

From Ned Stark to Jaime Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, the violence, the conceptions of justice and the use of monsters and mythical creatures hark back to the worlds of Geoffrey Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory.

Are Stannis Baratheon and Melisandre a new version of King Arthur and Morgan le Fay?  How are the characters of Beowulf and John Snow similar?