The Scent of the City
Morning errands in the city centre have a bittersweet flavour. The need to park far away brings a long walk which, depending on the day, can be either a punishment or a tonic.
This morning fell at that particular hour - the moment when every city releases its own scent. Like nature in spring, every city gives its best when the morning's activities begin to stir. Like when a curtain rises: the real theatre begins. The one where, in London, you could smell the Starbucks coffee everyone carried to the office. Too hot to consume on the go, scalding at just the right temperature to fill the air, otherwise already saturated with the smell of kebab. The one where, in Paris, you smell croissants and pain au chocolat, while the traffic on the Champs-Élysées reminds you that frenzy and poetry travel side by side, there. The one where, when I went to the market with my grandmother, it meant I would soon be eating my corn focaccia - the reward for... having eaten. Because, back then, getting me to eat was difficult, and they tried everything just to stop me wasting away.
And crossing Corso della Giovecca, you catch the stately, ancient scent of the old hospital. A place of care, respect, and reverence - the way hospitals were once regarded. Different and distant from the smell of disinfectant in the new one. Brighter, certainly. Precisely - more sterile. Smells that are familiar to me - like when I used to visit my parents at work, in a hospital too, but hundreds of kilometres from here. Yet the sensations remain the same.
The Palazzina Marfisa d'Este opens its ancient door and, from within, that unmistakable scent of old walls, mingled with the perfume of the flowers in its garden and freshly cut grass. And then the bars - from which drifts the aroma of espresso, typical of Italian bars - and the older the barista, the further back in time that scent carries you. The many buildings, at that hour, see their occupants stepping out to reach their destinations. Peeking inside, you glimpse damp courtyards, well-kept gardens, car parks. Or heaps of useless clutter, mixed with mould and weeds. Bicycles - oh, so many of them - everywhere. And each one emits its own perfume, its own smell. As people reach their destinations, these places come alive, and from their freshly reopened doors comes the scent of that building's era: the ancient ones smell of damp, almost of mould - but a precious, ancient mould. The merely old ones carry the typical smell of their era. For someone like me who has already lived through a few decades, these scents are somehow linked to memories of my own life, lived in buildings of that period. The modern ones, by contrast, smell of newness, of the future. Perhaps a little sterile, but clean.
Arriving in the main square, the distance between the buildings frees the air, and you breathe in history, antiquity. The many university students, sitting at tables talking about their insurmountable problems - love affairs, exams, accommodation - carry the mind forward, connecting past to future. Speaking of the present. And the scent is tied to whichever drink is fashionable at the moment, always surrounded by the unmistakable aroma of cappuccino. I'm not a cappuccino lover, but that scent takes me back to my university years. Then as now, in Bologna, I liked walking to lectures. Three and a half kilometres through the city centre, crossing streets full of bars, trattorias, hotels, hostels. Flats of young students stumbling out of their doors, still half-asleep, their faces still bearing the marks of the long night before. Like the nights I spent with my flatmates - sometimes until four in the morning - sitting on chairs, laughing, joking, chatting, talking about everything and nothing. Dreaming of the life we - hoped - we would have.
But the scent that envelops Ferrara in the morning is mainly one: bread. The coppietta, but not only. Every kind of bread, expertly prepared by artisans or bakeries that still contribute to the beauty of the landscape with an unmistakable, unique perfume. Bread that I remember, as a child, on my aunt's table. She wasn't from Ferrara, but she loved that kind of bread all the same. I liked it, yes, but it was... how to put it... exotic. It was the scent of the trip to my aunt and uncle's house, which I loved so much. Also because my uncle had a PC - which I didn't yet understand, except that the files I could run were the ones marked .com, .bat, or .exe - and it looked so professional!
Then, as the hours pass, the scents shift to the residential streets, which, with windows open, enrich the air with the aroma of ragù - each one different, mind you! - prepared by the person who lives in those places, following the ancient recipe of their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, in a ritual that remains unchanged despite the passing of time. Just as my grandmother used to do. Just as my mother does. As I do myself.
When evening falls, the scents change. The aroma of cappuccino transforms into spritz. That of bread becomes pizza. That of ragù turns into roast. Even Marfisa d'Este changes its scent, because the open windows and the coming and going of people have altered its atmosphere. And when people return to their homes, they imbue the buildings with a different aroma. All day long, they will have turned on air conditioners, opened windows, set out fragrances. But, all at once, they return to silence. And the silence, in the night, will restore their dignity and their original character. Because people, with time, come and go. They appear and they vanish. But the scent of the city - that remains.