There are places in Italy where the fire of the sun,
water, air, and earth, primordial elements,
tell us about an original harmony.
The Massaciuccoli lake,
still offers glimpses of intact nature,
as it appeared before man began to heavily modify it.
This coastal basin, which stretches between the provinces of Lucca and Pisa,
has inspired works of imperishable greatness
to great musicians, painters, and poets.
The small hamlet that gave the lake its name has ancient origins.
Roman patrician families built sumptuous villas on its banks.
Torre del Lago stands on the west side.
The sea is nearby, as are the sharp peaks of the Apuan Alps.
Giacomo Puccini, born in Lucca and author of touching operas represented all over the world,
lived and was buried here.
In the early twentieth century,
the lake was still a source of life for the inhabitants of its coastlines.
The fruits of fishing and hunting were abundant and the land,
fertile and wet even in the driest summers, gave a rich harvest.
In more recent times, other economic activities have replaced traditional ones.
Roberto Cheli practices a hard and ancient profession, the blacksmith.
Nevertheless, he keeps memories of the lake that he cannot and do not want to forget.
The lake was a forbidden place for us kids.
Our parents did not want us to go there because it was very risky,
from time to time someone drowned.
But for us, it was so much fun, a transgression.
We fished, sometimes we had a bath.
For our grandparents it was a source of work, a place to get food.
They fished and hunted, but not like nowadays.
My grandfather got out of the house with only three
cartridges in his pocket and the rifle
and returned with food.
In one period the lake was really mistreated,
all the factories in the surrounding discharged into the lake.
Now it is looking better.
I think it is getting better,
there is still a lot to do,
but it is getting better.
For the more demanding making,
those that require the talent of a true master craftsman,
Roberto leaves the blowtorch to resort to the powerful force of the forge and mallet.
The mallet is a machine that stays between the ancient and the modern
and allows you not to standardize the products,
that is, you can design an object and make it different every time.
Today, in a modern company,
the machines produce objects all equal,
while the mallet allows great expressive freedom.
It's like working by hand, I always say it is like a big hammer.
I can work very thick iron.
Modern machines can do it, too,
but by using molds.
With the mallet, every object is different from the others,
thanks to the manual skill,
and I think it is an advantage.
I did not want to work in the factory
because I like being outdoors,
having diversity in the job,
and not always doing the same thing.
You pay for this, the craftsman often pays for it,
because freedom has a cost,
but I have not regretted it yet, I move forward!
The shallow waters of the lake have always been an ideal habitat for eels.
They were once fished using mostly small fishing pots,
made with thin strips of reeds stems,
still abundantly present along the entire perimeter of the lake basin.
Today this traditional form of fishing is prohibited,
but there are still those who, like Paolo,
want to keep memory of it that is folklore and material culture.
Many years ago, the peasants built these objects in the evening.
They used them to catch some eel to eat with polenta,
because once ...
it was not like nowadays!
The winter evenings were long and so they had time
to make a certain number of them until they were been enough.
Then they had to be baited by putting the worms into them,
it is not that you immerse them and immediately the eels enter ... they are not stupid!
In the evening they put them into the water
and the morning after they took out them.
If there were been eels, good,
otherwise so be it, they would have tried again.
One day I went to a shop
and saw a fishing pot,
but it looked ugly,
so I said "That is a fishing pot,
my dad also made them".
So, I started to make some of them, about ten, to give to some friends.
When the fishing pots were still in use,
millions of frogs populated the lake,
but in recent decades they have almost disappeared due to pollution.
Paolo believes there is an additional reason.
Once the ditches among the fields were kept clean by hand with the shovel.
Now they use a tractor that has two wheels behind it
and a device that cleans the ditch in only one pass.
But what happens ...
While it passes, if there are frogs,
such as in winter when they seek shelter under the ground ...
in my opinion, it was that tool that eliminated them,
because it hooks them and throws them in the air along with mud.
They clean the ditch well and in a short time,
but at the expense of amphibians.
They blame the killer shrimp.
I am not agree, I think instead ...
In my opinion …
It was enough to remove the cap,
and the fish came out.
The bait was put here,
especially earthworms,
attached to a reed strip, not to an iron wire
because that one had to be bought
but there was no money.
They then attached 4 or 5 earthworms
and inserted it up to this height, more or less,
then they stopped it with the cap
so that it remained in position.
The eel saw the inside through the cracks,
or perhaps felt the smell,
and entered the hole.
Once inside, someone might manage to get out,
but most remained trapped.
And anyway,
if there was nothing ...
peace and love.
Together with his sister and with the help of his father,
Nicola builds and reconditions precious wooden hulls,
streamlined boats that are well suited to the nervous sea of Viareggio and Versilia.
But his dream is to return to the time when
they built in large number what that mainly represents Massaciuccoli lake,
the “barchino”,
a small and slender flat hull boat
that every inhabitant utilized
to sail on the shallow water among the dense reeds of the lake.
Today, however, the demand for these characteristic boats is very low.
My grandfather was a great "barchino" builder
who handed down the business to my father and consequently to me.
In the last years, few of them have been built
because the lake has been largely abandoned for various reasons,
above all because traditional activities have been left
and consequently the demand for these boats is less and less.
I have beautiful memories of my grandfather and father
when they built the wooden "barchino".
Unfortunately, I built too few of them,
and therefore my intention is to develop this activity,
either from an economic point of view
and to resume the family business.
This job allows us to live, but we have to struggle
because we work mainly in the wood sector, so,
on the one hand, we are lucky enough because we have little competition,
but on the other side there are far fewer potential customers.
Boat-building was not the only activity of Nicola's family.
Another activity of my grandfather's family was rice cultivation.
They started sowing in mid-March and harvested in September,
so it was a seasonal activity
but my grandfather told me it was quite profitable.
By using what they called "garzina",
practically a dewatering pump with an internal-combustion engine,
they dried up the rice paddy
and spade all the terrain by hand,
a very tiring task.
They told me that the quality of the rice was very good,
according to many experts in the area due to the salinity of this lake.
Since the lake's water has a fair percentage of seawater,
this salinity gave a particular flavor to rice,
and also to fish.
To keep this activity alive, you have to suffer a little.
For centuries fishing has been a fundamental resource for coastal populations.
The fish was abundant and valuable and was sold by many families with good profit.
Times have changed.
Roberto Bianchi is 80 years and has spent more than 60 as a fisherman.
Although now retired, every morning, at the first light,
his thought is for the lake.
Even on the coldest and grayest days of winter,
he does not give up taking his boat to insinuate into the maze of reeds.
Nowadays there are no longer Tenches in all the marshes of Massaciuccoli, all over the lake.
I have not caught a Tench for years,
there are Pikes, Carps, and Wels catfish.
Those ones eat everything and are said to reach even the weight of a quintal and a half ...
they are like crocodiles, they eat everything.
The first stop is at the Chinese fishing net,
the traditional square net that is lowered into the water by means of a winch.
In the past, every lowering caught excellent prey.
Today, this rarely happens.
A month ago there were beautiful Grey mullets,
they went away, but they could come back,
the fish does not stand still, you know.
I have been the first professional fisherman of Lake Massaciuccoli,
so my life has always been tied to the marshes.
I made many nets like these,
I bought the raw material in a factory in Brescia
and built Chinese fishing nets.
At that time there were many nets to make
and I worked night and day to build them
because people were always in a hurry.
It has always been my job, fishing at night and making nets during the day,
then until 1994, I went to sell fish as a street vendor.
We went with a rowboat, in the summer, a heat to die,
I took the water with my hands and I drank it ...
I am still alive, how many times I drunk the lake water.
If you try now ...
Here there is shallow water, but elsewhere,
in canals like this, the bottom is even 5 meters below.
In summer, when passing, you saw large tenches steady on the bottom ...
now you do not see anything anymore.
And the lake was full of aquatic vegetation, algae, and plants.
In summer the lake flourished,
the water was green because it was fully covered by plants with small white flowers.
Then one day they rented the lake
and closed all the canals with large nets
and then threw something into the water.
Fish and eels jumped out of the water because they could not breathe.
In two or three years the vegetation disappeared
and from that moment on there has always been little of it.
This year there is vegetation,
at least along the coast there is a lot.
The "bertibelli" is another traditional fishing tool.
Today, inside them it is not difficult to find a crustacean
that caused damage to the delicate ecosystem of the lake.
Huge damages.
They brought them from Louisiana, I think,
people from Viareggio who sold sea fish in those countries.
They took two or three boxes of these prawns
from Louisiana, I not even know where it is, anyway,
they put them in some boxes
and either it rained too much and they overflowed,
or the shrimps became too numerous and they released them into the lake.
Every day they came out of the water to eat tomatoes and salad, they invaded the fields.
Along the streets, there were hundreds crushed by cars.
The only thing they could not eat were the unripe persimmons,
they barely scratched them but they must be so bad
that they were not able to eat them,
otherwise, they ate anything.
We went by boat along the canal,
dipping a piece of meat attached to a rope
and we took even two or three at a time.
Then the Region Authority decided to pay the fishermen to eliminate them.
We were 5 fishermen, plus 7 or 8 squatters,
and in about six months we caught about 600 quintals of shrimp.
We caught many.
Fishermen sometimes exaggerate the size of their prey.
But the bragging does not belong to Roberto,
who nevertheless likes to remember a truly extraordinary catch
that took place long ago,
when he was still a boy.
It was 12 kilograms.
It was a huge pike and we screamed because we had never seen such a big fish.
After 5 minutes all the boats were around us.
They said: "You so small have caught such a big fish!"
Good old days, there was health.
And there was hunger!
When I was hungry, I had nothing to eat but the bread.
Now that I could do it without problems I cannot eat too much because it hurts me ...
I do not guess one!
Sciusci, come on!
I have 7 or 8, not one only.
Since time, a small but very affectionate feline community
is a part of Roberto's family,
extended also to a beautiful rooster and his harem.
When the food is in the bowl, the competition starts.
For many decades of an epoch not far away,
the lake has suffered from aggression, neglect,
and contempt that man too often reserves for the environment.
However, the original value of this area
is better preserved today than in the recent past.
The establishment of the Migliarino-San Rossore-Massaciuccoli regional park
has been a first step towards achieving greater protection.
A small portion of the park has been entrusted to the careful care of Lipu
(Italian league for bird protection)
which has made it an oasis among the most important in Italy.
Andrea is its manager.
With three colleagues and several volunteers,
he curated the restoration of the walkways,
leads visitors along the guided paths and is active
in the indispensable work of raising awareness about environmental issues.
I came here in 1994, at that time I was doing civil service for the Lipu,
I was still a student of natural sciences close to graduation
and Lipu had this presidium on lake Massaciuccoli,
abandoned since a few years by now.
I involved some volunteers from the Lipu delegation in Pisa
and we started coming here on the weekends to fix the walkways.
In my eyes as a young naturalist who was preparing to enter the world of work
and that dreamed of a different world,
I saw in this thing the possibility of realizing myself,
my dreams, my expectations, and doing useful work for the community.
Today is time for mowing the reeds, an indispensable activity to do,
even if the day is windy and the temperature is very cold.
With the help of Secu and Marcello, who is arriving onboard a barge,
he has to preserve the survival of a particular type of vegetation
that has unique characteristics here.
This is a particular area.
It is a floating island where one of the last sphagnous
survives at sea level in the Mediterranean basin.
Sphagnum is a moss that does not grow in Italy below 1000 meters above sea level.
Its presence at sea level on Lake Massaciuccoli is due to the climate
affected by the amount of water around it,
that is it is cool at ground level in summer,
and not too cold in winter.
This allowed the maintenance of this relict species that comes to us from the glaciations.
The reeds are born and die every year and there is the risk that they
could completely cover the underlying moss layer until suffocated it.
Therefore, we carry out the mowing every year.
In the month of February we mow
and collect the reeds that we cut
and use them also for covering the roofs of the huts.
It is quite a demanding job,
we try to do what the local population once did.
When people lived on the resources of nature,
they managed the environment so that these resources were maintained over time.
Today this is no longer thus, people live on other things,
and the public bodies, and us in this case,
try to make up for this void that has been created in an environment
that has always lived together with the man in great symbiosis.
Ours is an indirect safeguard work because we manage 60 hectares out of 2,000,
so the effect of our management on the environment is clearly limited,
but the effect on people's sensitivity and on communication is great
because being able to bring people to see the lake,
to appreciate its beauty and biodiversity,
means to create consensus towards certain policies.
Since we arrived here the number of visitors has increased a lot,
some 40,000 people come to visit the reserve every year.
This has undoubted effects on the local economy.
Today, the park is seen in a completely different way than when I arrived in 1994,
and the economic activities, the few that exist in the village of Massaciuccoli,
benefit a lot from this.
Clearly, what a naturalistic oasis can bring is an economy of a small scale.
If we were to bring 500,000 people a year here,
it would no longer be an oasis, it would be something else,
and therefore we must think about an economy of this type,
a sweet economy that makes people who live there feel good,
and makes the animals that live in the reserve feel good too.
Here, between 19th and 20th centuries,
coots, ducks and many other species of birds
were so numerous that they filled the sky when they rose in flight.
The lake was at that time private property and hunting reserve
of a great admirer and friend of Giacomo Puccini,
the ceramic industrialist Carlo Ginori Lisci.
His home, a fine Tuscan neo-Gothic villa, is now owned by his heirs,
the cousins Claudia and Donatella, and Mariuccia, Claudia's mother.
Many people do not know this lake,
so much so that when I say I live on Lake Massaciuccoli they answer:
“Where is Lake Massaciuccoli?
Ahh, Torre del Lago ... Puccini."
You can feel Puccini's inspiration with regards to music.
These reeds, this lake, this silence ...
Giacomo Puccini, who had become a great friend of Carlo,
came frequently here to ask permission to hunt,
as the whole lake belonged to the Ginori,
so a very important friendship was created,
so important that La Boheme was dedicated to Carlo Ginori Lisci.
Place of peace, silence, and meditation,
the lake is still a source of artistic inspiration.
I draw, paint, and I have managed an engraving school for several years.
It is always very exciting,
there are beautiful sunsets and I am a great lover of trees,
they give me joy, they give me strength,
and therefore I live very well here.
Besides, I am a country woman, I am from the Emilia region!
The lake is ...
not always so beautiful, sometimes it is also a bit distressing,
when the weather is bad it turns black,
but anyway, it always has a great charm.
Yes, it is time.
They are almost ready to make jam, we have to collect them.
I think that it is mainly a matter of survival of these places.
As we grow and grandparents and parents die,
these environments are emptied and lose what is their soul
and therefore need to be replaced in some way.
This is the reason why, with Donatella,
about ten years ago we decided to open this B&B
trying as much as possible not to distort the place.
This is the place where we were born and raised and
we played in this garden being up all sort of things,
so we tried to make sure that it remained our home anyway.
If I am not mistaken, the first cases of Red palm weevil in Italy occurred in 2005 in Palermo.
Then it went up the peninsula and were signaled the first cases here in the surrounding.
In 2011 we had the first palm tree ill and we panicked.
Above all, because it is something you must continue to do over the years,
that is, from now on and throughout your life,
you must cure the palms that risk being attacked by the parasite.
The only possible cure is chemical, but we are close to the lake,
it means every 20 days you have to treat 10 or 15 palms trees with large quantities of pesticide ...
we chose to preserve the lake and lose the palm trees.
This was a living lake that for years has sustained all the local inhabitants,
either as a job and food.
When we were children, there was a gentleman
who came to fish for eels with an upsidedown umbrella.
It was an impressive thing, in half an hour he filled it, it was an incredible thing.
Now there is almost nothing anymore.
We had a lot of fun.
Also because there is always something to discover here,
so you have no time for getting bored.
Even doing silly things,
you always have the opportunity to discover new things and spend time happily,
without ever getting bored, being outdoors.
Sometimes we got lost, we came back sometimes in the dark
or they came to pick us up, like that time in winter
when we left after lunch and at 6 pm we still had not come back.
It was quite worrying for our parents.
They also recovered us in the middle of the lake ...
when the lake gets angry it's dangerous, it's scary,
you have to be careful, you have to know it.
Of the many species of fish that the lake was rich in,
one, in particular, has long since disappeared:
Tench.
In traditional cuisine, it was served together with rice, the variety grown locally.
In Massaciuccoli every year there is the festival of risotto with tench,
an event that attracts a large number of gourmets.
Woman of character and a very talented cook,
Iole is one of the custodians of the recipe that she still prepares for family and friends.
When the diners are many, his friend Ivano comes to his aid.
I worked as a janitor and cook,
every day I had to prepare meals for 75 children.
They celebrated me when I retired.
I did not get a gold and silver bonus,
but I was given the excellence award!
Let’s put the onion, the basis,
and some chili pepper that goes with it.
This risotto has fed also many workers
who worked on the excavation of construction material,
in the past one of the main economic activities of Massaciuccoli.
The port of Massaciuccoli is on the map.
Where Lipu made a kind of flowerbed with a boat,
there was not the square.
There they unloaded the stones coming from the quarry over there,
now abandoned,
carried by means large boats called "barchetto".
There were 15 here at the port,
they took these blocks to Viareggio where they used them to build the pier.
In the quarry, they made mines exploding to detach the rock from the mountain,
but then they had to stop because when the mines detonated, and they were many,
the roofs of the village's houses cracked.
It is fine for me.
- Is it salty?
- No, it is good.
- Spicey?
- It is tasty.
- Is it really okay?
- Okay okay.
Better to know it because there are those who eat more or less salty.
When perfectly cooked, the tench must be boned.
- Does it still burn? Yes, isn't it?
- No, it is good.
- Otherwise, we can wait another minute.
- No, no, it is fine.
The tail has the fishbones forked!
Freed from thorns and skin, the soft and tasty tench meats
are now ready to provide rice with a worthy accompaniment.
After carefully chopping the fish, Iole puts it back in his gravy.
You just have to add the rice and wait for the end of cooking to taste it in the family warmth.
Congratulations to the cook!
Thanks! Thank goodness my son-in-law complimented me.
Very good, huh? Do you like it?
Good! Enjoy your meal.
Once the natural environment was the only source of life for human beings
and was therefore loved and respected.
In the industrial age that symbiosis broke,
to become indiscriminate exploitation.
But today a new sensitivity, new respect are emerging.
It has been understood that we cannot live only in the material dimension.
It has been understood that we need to feed also the spirit,
with the emotions that landscapes like these,
beautiful to cry, can instill.
Peace and serenity,
emotions whose these lake people
can feed on every day.
