onte del Vegnuti: a stage for history

If you try writing vegnuti on your computer, you will realise that the mechanism’s “brain” will change this word to venuti. Fortuitous? Perhaps.

It is certain that unwittingly our computer knows that the origin of vegnuti is exactly from venuti: indeed the derivation goes back to the Latin verb “venire” which means, precisely, reach. Ponte del Vegnuti is therefore the bridge of those who have reached it? But why did this person reach it? Perhaps he was called? And who might have called him? The uncontrollable desire to explore? The strong sense of devotion to God? Or perhaps the mysterious spirit of this land?

How many wayfarers, merchants, knights, pilgrims and monks once met on this road… A road that weaves different ways: indeed through the Lunigiana, the Via Francigena intersects with the Via del Volto Santo di Lucca and with the path to Santiago di Compostela, bringing together many different pathways and stories on its routes. Therefore, the legends of the Charlemagne cycle, the Breton myth of King Arthur and even that of the Nibelungs come together in this land like a real and true theatre of peoples.

The “via” is an itinerary, a journey to be made through every stage: one must not speak of a departure: indeed “via” indicates everything that comes together from the start to the finish: the pathway.  It is exactly on this pathway that today we retain the traces of a time when kings  and princes, bishops and priests but also secret templars, rich and poor, scholars and ignoramuses, venivano (came/reached) here, thereby enriching this aura of mystery that our roads are permeated with today.

Every type of exchange whether of commercial, economic, artistic, religious or more tritely informative nature, is first and foremost a communicative exchange: that is, one shares one’s ideals, beliefs and one’s own history. Ponte del Vegnuti was the stage for a continuous cultural exchange and at the same time the privileged spectator of a reality in perpetual change. Just as in the past on this soil many traces of civilisations and of men coming from very different countries and driven by a great variety of research reasons were mixed, today you venite (come/reach) here. You venite (come/reach) here today, called by this fascinating land and cross that bridge which, besides linking one space to another, links the Lunigiana to the past, in which history, myth and  legend meet to blend ancient and modern, tradition and innovation in the evocative atmosphere of an unrepeatable site.