On this blog I often quote passages from journeys in Italy recorded by travelers. From now on I want to call these quotes "once upon a land", since they mostly revolve on what the falling country was, and isn't anymore. (I know it's a little too conservative as approach, but I do believe conservatives are needed in a society as much as liberals are.)

For example, I will quote from the monumental Viaggio in Italia ("Journey in Italy") written by Guido Piovene in 1953, at the time of the other transformation of Italy which was in the end the same transformation still happening today (the erasure of the Italian rural culture).
Piovene was a conservative christian, and not entirely happy with the deeds of Italian modernity. At the time as a writer he was laughed at by all the liberals and the communists, but today I believe it is more clear what was it all about.

In his book Piovene details everything from landscape, folk culture, urban life, activities and crises between modernity and that thing you had right before modernity back then. It's the perfect vademecum of what cannot be found in Italy today.
It makes a moving read because everything he describes is lost, and also because the regional characters he identifies so thoroughly, and the passions and the faults, are still visible as ghosts in the background of the Italian regions today.
Hedonist Veneto, reserved Umbria, practical Lombardia, imaginative Campania, passionate Emilia and so forth. Regardless TVs and freeways, the Italian regions could still be like those small states, each with its superficial or profound differences in the culture, the attitudes and habits of the people.

If only we weren't aware that this is the left-over of the past, and not at all an indication of what tomorrow will be, given that tomorrow will probably simply and justly be half Muslim and half superficial soulless western culture and nothing more.