Marco Polo's Spirit

It's June. It's hot and no one would think of entering an Italian bunker of the Cold War. All around San Michele al Tagliamento, a small town on the Venetian coast, beaches are in fact already teeming with tourists lying in the sun.  Instead I am visiting the womb of the earth because hidden down the village of San Michele al Tagliamento there are a series of bunkers from the First and Second World War which were refurbished and used also during the Cold War.  No one would ever think that an isolated village like San Michele al Tagliamento was fundamental during the World Wars and the Cold War.  Bunker underground command room Bunker turret Gun turret to sight targets Bunker access: hatch accessing the underground stairs SAN MICHELE AL TAGLIAMENTO: THE CASSINO OF THE NORTH IN THE II WORLD WAR This tiny Italian municipality home to 11.000 people had a strategic position during the Second World War: San Michele al Tagliamento was called "the Cassino of the North". Cassi

In the tiny village of San Michele al Tagliamento, lost in the middle of nowhere in the Italian Veneto region countryside, an hour drive from Venice, there is a Venetian villa: Villa Mocenigo-Ivancich. It is a Venetian villa like no other as it was the set for the tormented love relationship between the famous American writer, Ernest Hemingway, and what became his literary muse, the 18-yearl old noble Venetian, Adriana Ivancich. It was a life-long love story between them with a tragic end which was descrived in disguise by Hemingway in his novel "Across the river and into the trees". The link between Ernest Hemingway and the Italian Veneto region is quite well known in literature as he often described the areas in the province of Venice in many of his famous books. He actually had come to Italy when he was young during the First World War, and later in life, when he was fifty, in the summer 1948 he actually returned to visit the places where he had volunteerd as an ambulance