With the allure of the sun, spring nudges my mind away from Paris with daydreams of destinations meridional. With greater and more frequent distraction I open an online window during my work breaks, and do travel research to Milano, to Torino, to the Cinque Terre that embraces the Ligurian Sea. I mentally have my black leather travel bag already packed, and have at the ready my Ray Ban sunglasses as I picture jumping onto a train for the warmth of Italy.
What constitutes profound satisfaction is just the idea, the vivid thought of enjoying a steaming bowl of fresh pasta tossed in a gentle saffron cream sauce and chunks of salmon topped with a couple of clumsy spoonfuls of Parmesan cheese, accompanied by a chilled bottle of San Pelegrino and a glass of a deep red Barolo wine from Piedmont. Savoring this idyll I can imagine walking the picturesque sidewalks and cobblestoned streets of a Tuscan village, my dark silhouette stark against ochre walls, variously burnt orange and sunflower yellow, the tints alternate with each turn of the narrow ancient street as if in a private mambo toscano with me.
All of these are shadows on Plato's cave for me, however. They are inchoate approximations of what Italian perfection is.
The fulfillment of the Italian sweet life is best embodied not in the tempestuous passion of a Sophia Loren, although as an icon of Our Lady of Dolce Vita there are few pretenders who could mount such a challenge, nor in the sultry gaze of a random handsome ragazzo lounging in the shade sipping an espresso.
No, what captures the essence of Italian style and sexiness is the curved beauty of a classic Alfa Romeo Giuletta.
The legend of her birth is shrouded, but the most repeated telling of how this fabled jewel of a car got its name is as follows. Perhaps surprisingly, it begins in Paris.
Following World War Two, Italy like the rest of Europe was rebuilding following the destruction left in the wake of aerial bombing and the long military campaign up the Italian peninsula beating back the Germans and their Italian fascist collaborators. Alfa Romeo had to reinvent themselves from the luxury touring sedans and racing cars during the previous generation and into a mass production, general market automobile manufacturer.
In 1950 the company successfully transformed itself with the launch of its "1900" model at the prestigious Paris auto show. To celebrate the rave reviews in the press and the huge response from the public with record pre-ordered sales, the team of company directors in Paris for the show went out to a nightclub for drinks. An eccentric exiled Russian prince recognized the Italian men since they were the toast of the town, and he came over to congratulate the team on their success by asking them "You are eight Romeos without even one Giuletta?" The marketing director thought this was clever, and three years later the design team introduced their Giuletta to the world.
That iconic logo for Alfa Romeo was designed by a young Milanese draftsman in 1910, Romano Cattaneo, and consists of two major elements. The first is the red cross on the white background which is the flag of Milan, Italy. The other half of the design is the biscione, a snake swallowing a child, which is the family crest of the House of Visconti — the noblemen who ruled over Milan and Lombardy in the 15th century. As you can infer due to its visual cues tying it back to Milan, the car manufacturer is emblematic of northern Italy, of Milan, as a source of immense Italian pride in the beauty of its form, in its reputation as one of the finest examples of a racing car having bested Porsche and Mercedes Benz in Grand Prix contests.
By 1954 the "Sprint," the forerunner of the Giuletta family, immediately captured the attention of everyone — at the Turin Motor Show alone more than 700 orders were made. This was an unheard of sensation, especially when you consider that the average monthly salary of the typical Italian was about 40,000 lira, and the price for the Giuletta was more than 1,700,000 lira.
Acknowledged as having not only perhaps the most perfect design of any automobile of its day, but also having unparalleled performance from an engineering perspective, the Giulietta Sprint was the best that the car industry could offer at the time. Its many options included revolutionary attributes that were absolutely unique for the day: a set of suitcases with straps to fasten them to the cushions of one of two rear seats (a divan-type rear seat was available as an alternative); fog lamps and radio; imitation leather trimmed dashboard and upholstery in real leather; side air deflector and a three-spoke aluminum steering wheel with wooden rim. Additionally, the proud owner had his choice of color with evocative names: Iseo Blue, Capri Blue, Alfa Red, Gardenia White, Black, Pale Green, Very Pale Blue, Very Pale Grey, Banana Beige and Winter Blue.
In October of 1955 came perhaps the most idyllic of all the Giuletta family of cars: the Giulietta Spider. ‘The signorina’ as she was baptized affectionately by Gian Battista Farina, who designed its streamlined shape to give it a strong personality of its own, was built on a Sprint floor-plan but with a short wheelbase and won international success. It was enthusiastically greeted in the United States where the motoring press deemed it: ‘a splendid continuity of the Italian tradition of good taste that means you can pick out an Alfa Romeo from a thousand other cars at a glance’.
By the lead up to the 1960 Rome Olympics, the idea of the "dolce vita" came into being. One summer evening the film director Federico Fellini organized a boisterous dinner at his villa that included the paparazzi journalists of the late 1950s, the so-called Via Veneto reporters who prowled the cafés and clubs of Rome's Via Veneto for exclusive photos and interviews with stars and celebrities. With Fellini orchestrating the images of a newly vibrant Italy, teeming with sensual starlets and charming actors riding about on Vespas and Alfa Romeo Giulettas, Rome became synonymous with cinema and the international jet-set.
Today that image rests in the public imagination, and each time I see a classic Giuletta my mind races to the amber Tuscan countryside, and I can see myself in sunglasses, tan and vibrant, exploring all of the beauty Italy has to offer.