Lingua inglese

Pag. 1/2 Sessione ordinaria 2006

Seconda prova scritta

M079 - Esame di Stato di istituto professionale

Corso di ordinamento

Indirizzo: tecnico dei servizi turistici

Tema di: lingua inglese

(comprensione e produzione in lingua straniera)

Campania: this southern region is one of Italy’s best-kept secrets.

Goethe must have had quite a shock in 1787 when, after travelling on mud roads through herds of buffalo, he came upon the newly built 1,200-room royal palace at Caserta. Even today, the scale of this Versailles-inspired Bourbon conceit seems gargantuan. “People like myself cannot feel at ease in its immense empty rooms,” he wrote of the then unfinished palace. Yet the Reggia’s commanding position over the surrounding countryside and its spectacular landscaped gardens filled him with enthusiasm.

I agree: the Vanvitelli-designed giardino all’Italiana really is breathtaking. It extends straight out behind the palace into the mountain as far as the eye can see, an aquatic folly that rerouted an important river to power its descending cascades. In one dominated by marble sculptures of Diana and Actaeon, trout pool, swam in numbers abundant enough to sate the Bourbon king’s voracious appetite.

Modern Caserta - a short train ride from Naples - is one of the lesser-known jewels in the Campania region, which stretches down past Vesuvius, the Amalfi coast and Paestum to the Cilento. The areas inland from this famous coastline have remained relatively undiscovered and they offer an authentic taste of provincial life in southern Italy. If you want to see more than the town centre, hire a car.

A short drive from Caserta is one of Italy’s most fascinating experiments in industrial utopianism. The village of San Leucio is a baroque silkworks built in 1789 by Ferdinand IV. “The king’s idea was of a community in which workers and their superiors would live in equal-sized houses, joined by a common goal to manufacture the world’s most exquisite silks - a radical proposal in any period,” explains Massimo Alois, whose family have been making courtly silks at San Leucio since the 18th century - including for the Vatican and the White House.

The stunning complex seems closer to a stately home than a factory, with a museum now housed in the high, majestic workrooms.

The Bourbons’ passion for the finer things in life included wines. If the legendary model vineyard they planted in the shape of a fan, “la vigna del ventaglio”, alas no longer exists, drawings of it do: they list or Pallagrello - among the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies’ 10 favourite grape varieties.

Piedimonte