We had lingered a thousand times on that pebble beach in Portonovo. We used to reach it late in the afternoon to have a beer at sunset, which, in reality, isn’t quite a sunset over the Adriatic. We caught glimpses of the Torre de Bosis beyond the pines, but we had never really noticed it. The construction dates back to 1716 when Pope Clement XI had it erected for defensive purposes against Turkish pirates. We discovered by chance that the tower was partly a guesthouse two summers ago, but it was only last year that we managed to book a room and uncover the history it held within its walls. The poet Adolfo de Bosis bought the Tower at the end of the nineteenth century. The Tower became the headquarters of the literary magazine Convito, which the poet curated, involving well-known writers from Rome, such as D’Annunzio, Pascoli, Carducci, Scarfoglio, Venturi, and Panzacchi. The first issue was printed in 1895, the last in 1907, although the magazine was originally intended to run for only 12 months. Benedetto Croce called it “the most solemn collective manifestation of aestheticism.” Adolfo de Bosis died in 1924 in Ancona. With his American wife, Lilian Vernon, he had six children, including Virginia, Percy, and Lauro— a writer, poet, and anti-fascist who died in 1931 after falling from an airplane on which he had boarded to drop anti-fascist flyers over Rome. Valente died during a flight action in the Great War. Pascoli dedicated the poem “The Hammerless Gun” (I Canti di Castelvecchio – 1907) to Adolfo, Valente, and Percy.
Torre de Bosis is an embrace of centuries-old stones, the coolness that slips under the shirt, the chant of the waves on the rocks, the scent of saltiness deposited among the pages of books, a staircase that ascends toward the sky— a window onto that dancing blue that saw us grow. It is a surprising morning chat with Alessandro Cortese de Bosis, grandson of the poet, writer, and distinguished diplomat (with assignments from Moscow to New York, where he was appointed Consul General and established the first Italian school in the United States, the Guglielmo Marconi High School). Torre de Bosis is a history lesson, a literature lesson, a lesson in humility, a lesson in life.
To all the De Bosis, and for different reasons, our most sincere gratitude.
Words and images Meraviglia Paper.
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