Vespa Tunes V - Azzurro, Adriano Celentano, 1968

Every year, seemingly out of nowhere, there is an evening when a light jacket is no longer required on the Vespa, and as dusk falls the still warm air brings a wave of oleander and jasmine. If these were artificial scents they would be too pungent and too sweet, but as it is they are perfect. And that’s the moment when I realise, all of a sudden, that summer is here. I remember this year’s moment of realisation precisely, but when was it? Two weeks ago? Three? A month? I honestly have no idea. The chilly drizzle of early spring, umbrellas, and emergency spare socks feel as far away as the moon. And once summer starts that’s it, for perhaps three months. I come from London; I’m never going to stop finding that reliable summer relentlessly exotic.

Azzurro. Campidoglio. 12 June 2022

I couldn’t tell you the last day temperatures were below 30c, but showers, water, shutters closed against the sun, and shade are the answer. If visiting archeological sites go at either end of the day (no one needs to see the Forum at two o’clock in the afternoon) and take a bottle to fill at the cool fountains. In the city it’s too hot to eat outside at lunchtime at the moment, save that for the evening. May I recommend you find a cool dining room with elegantly unhurried waiters and crisp linen instead (Al Pompiere is just such a place which I adore), and then take a nap in cool darkness before venturing out again after five. There’s a reason Romans don’t sit down to dinner until nine, follow their example and enjoy the evening breezes.

The Fountain of Rometta under an endlessly blue sky. Villa d’Este, Tivoli. 16 June 2022.

There are as many Italian songs about the endless torrid days of summer as there are Scots words for rain, but the one which always comes to mind with that first whiff of warm oleander is Azzurro. It was written by Vito Pallavicini (who incidentally had co-written Io che non vivo (senza te) for San Remo in 1965, where Dusty Springfield heard it and sang an English version the following year), and by the inestimable Paolo Conte. The first recording of Azzurro was by Adriano Celetano in 1968, here demonstrating all of his lugubrious appeal.

Azzurro is, I feel, an untranslatable colour; it is much more than just “blue”. Despite blue not featuring on the Italian flag, it’s the colour of the national sports teams who are all called gli Azzurri; when Italy hosted the World Cup in 1990 (the first I ever followed, aged 12), the official song contained the refrain “under the sky of an Italian summer”.

This 1935 painting, called “Meriggio” by Emanuele Cavalli of the Scuola Romana, is I think particularly evocative of the heat of summer, though it is without a hint of blue. The heightened spareness of shadowless forms are rendered abstract beneath the heat of a torrid summer afternoon; the air is heavy with a palpable torpor; even the blueness has wilted.

Meriggio, Emanuele Cavalli, 1935. From the permanent collection of paintings and sculptures by the Scuola Romana at Villa Torlonia.

In the summer of 2001, when I had just begun taking tours and had no say over my schedule, I spent mid-August alone in Rome. Things have changed a great deal in two decades, but then not even my neighbourhood coffee shop in Trastevere was open. Tumbleweed rolled across much of Rome and, as per the song, there was “not even a priest to talk to”. Celentano’s languid delivery, and the enigmatic nostalgia of the melancholic lyrics are redolent of the endless, enervating, torrid, impossible International Klein Blueness of Italian summer days. Azzurro is, in my opinion, quite simply one of the best Italian pop songs ever written.

Cerco l'estate tutto l'anno
E all'improvviso eccola qua
Lei è partita per le spiagge
E sono solo quassù in città
Sento fischiare sopra i tetti
Un aeroplano che se ne va

I spend all year waiting for the summer

And all of a sudden here it is

She has gone to the beach

And I’m alone up here in the city

Over the rooftops I hear

An aeroplane taking off

Azzurro
Il pomeriggio è troppo azzurro
E lungo per me
Mi accorgo
Di non avere più risorse
Senza di te
E allora
Io quasi quasi prendo il treno
E vengo, vengo da te
Il treno dei desideri
Nei miei pensieri all'incontrario va

Azzurro

The afternoon is too blue

And too long for me

I realise

I can’t manage without you any more

And so

I might just take the train

And come to you

But the train of wishes

In my mind is going backwards

Sembra quand'ero all'oratorio
Con tanto sole, tanti anni fa
Quelle domeniche da solo
In un cortile, a passeggiar
Ora mi annoio più di allora
Neanche un prete per chiacchierar

It reminds me of being in the oratorio¹

With so much sun, many years ago

Those Sundays spent alone

In a courtyard, walking

Now I’m even more bored than then

There’s not even a priest to talk too.

Azzurro
Il pomeriggio è troppo azzurro
E lungo per me
Mi accorgo
Di non avere più risorse
Senza di te
E allora
Io quasi quasi prendo il treno
E vengo, vengo da te
Il treno dei desideri
Nei miei pensieri all'incontrario va

Azzurro

The afternoon is too blue

And too long for me

I realise

I can’t manage without you any more

And so

I might just take the train

And come to you

But in my thoughts the train of wishes

Is going backwards

Cerco un po' d'Africa in giardino
Tra l'oleandro e il baobab
Come facevo da bambino
Ma qui c'è gente, non si può più
Stanno innaffiando le tue rose
Non c'è il leone, chissà dov'è

I look for a bit of Africa in the garden

Between the oleander and the baobab

As I did when I was a child

But there are people here, I can’t bear it any more

They are watering your roses

The lion isn’t here, who knows where he’s gone.

Azzurro
Il pomeriggio è troppo azzurro
E lungo per me
Mi accorgo
Di non avere più risorse
Senza di te
E allora
Io quasi quasi prendo il treno
E vengo, vengo da te
Ma il treno dei desideri
Nei miei pensieri all'incontrario va

Azzurro

The afternoon is too blue

And too long for me

I realise

I can’t manage without you any more

And so

I might just take the train

And come to you

But in my thoughts the train of wishes

Is going backwards

1. the sports fields, table tennis tables, etc attached to a church in Italy, for the use of the children and teenagers of a particular parish.