AVEZZANO is not a place much visited by tourists. A town of approximately 33,000 inhabitants and about 150 km east of Rome in the Abruzzo region, Avezzano at first seems a strangely nondescript place. For once, and this is unusual in Italy, we have a town with no obvious historical monument or distinguishing feature no ancient Roman temple, no mediaeval streets cape, no renaissance palazzo.
No, Avezzano has none of these and the reason is simple. The clean, flat layout of the town with its straight streets has a familiar ring to it. Clearly, this is a town that has been completely rebuilt from the destruction provoked by Mlied bombardment during the second World War.
In 1944, Avezzaao had the misfortune to find itself on a railway line that provided a vital link in the movement of arms and supplies to the German front line further south, a front line engaged in a desperate battle to halt the Mlied advance from Sicily and from the Anzio beachead. As a result, Avezzano was bombed to rubble, bombed so heavily and so frequently during the early months of 1944 that the inhabitants moved out and found refuge with friends or relatives in nearby hill villages.
I travelled to Avezzano last week with Augusto Ranocchi a friend and neighbour who just happens to be a remarkably talented artist, someone capable of working with bewildering fluency and facility in a whole range of media oil on canvas, mosaics, wood carving, ceramics, marble, bronze. Augusto has just completed two splendid bronze doors for the Church of the Holy Trinity in Avezzano, and last week the parish priest, Monsignor Franco Michetti invited him down for the installation of the doors.
Don Franco's church is a modern, unsympathetic 1960s style roundhouse in a far from handsome, flat suburb of conventional apartment buildings. Only the imposing backdrop of the Abrazzo hills lifts the church and its situation from total anonymity.
Don Franco was, of course, standing in front of the church waiting to greet Augusto. With warmth and respect but not obsequiousness, he greets him with "maestro".
Don Franco has arranged for a work party to help the installation, a work party comprising men in the 65-75 age bracket and men who have all grown up together with Don Franco. They are now all retired workers and give their time willingly. The elderly work party is more than efficient, too, with all of them able to move about, lift bricks and shove wheelbarrows with an ease that belies their age and bespeaks a lifetime of toil.
Several of the old timers express their appreciation of the splendid bronze doors with their three dimensional account of the Baptism of Christ, the Annunciation, the Teaching of the Elders and the Resurrection. Don Franco asks Augusto for specific explanations since he knows he will in turn be called on to interpret the doors to parishioner, by passer and cardinal alike.
By lunchtime, the doors are almost in place and it is time to eat. Gaetano, a retired railway worker, is the cook. On the railways, he used to work night shifts when there was little to do other than read or refine his culinary skills. Judging by the four course meal provided, he did not waste his time.
Don Franco seats Augusto and the foreign journalist on either side of him at the head of three long tables laid out in the parish house. He toasts the health of the "maestro", of his companions, of the doors, of the town. In fact, glasses of Abruzzo wine are raised for a number of toasts.
Initial awkward reserve and politeness give way to story telling and teasing among company who all know one another well. Even as Ermete is recounting how the morning's activities have gone, one of his companions a mere youngster of 65 gets down on his belly and crawls across the floor to try and tip the unsuspecting Ermete out of his chair.
Don Franco relates how relatives of some of those gathered at the table were among a party of Avezzano people shot by Nazi troops who found them climbing up into the hills in the spring of 1944. The Avezzano men had gone to look for their sheep and goats, but the Nazis refused to believe them, suspecting that they were either partisan fighters or sympathisers.
Sharing a meal with these people, listening to them joke and tease and looking at their tough, sunburned, healthy faces, it was hard not to conclude that they belong to a different generation of Italians, a generation which experienced the hunger, hardship and grief of the war.
They have grown up in the Italy of post war boom, the Italy of expensive cars, Bahamas holidays, designer clothes and "Tangentopoli". They have grown up in it but do not share its values. Their Italy, one which takes pride in its own small community and one which affords the church a central role in that community, is almost certainly a disappearing Italy. Such disappearance may be Italy's loss.