You join us at a very exciting moment.
We're about to cut the cheese.
So...
♪ ♪
Benvenuto e benvenuta,
it's the Italian Renaissance.
Gie her a Haggis!
This time, I drive at pace…
Bloody good.
…stuff my face…
I can see why it hasn't caught on.
…and stare off into space.
♪ ♪
Ah, buon giorno ai miei spettatori e spettatrici.
We are now in Tuscany,
which is wonderful, with its incredible landscape,
its ace selection of trees,
its 11th-century castle and so on.
And if you're not from agreeable, middle-class England,
you should know that this
is where agreeable middle-class English people come
to take a villa for the summer.
♪ ♪
But we're not going to do that.
We're going to look at…
a map.
Since I've not mentioned the boot yet,
Tuscany is situated right at the top at the front,
where you'd do your laces up.
As you can see,
this is a landscape of color,
one whose famous hills astonished the senses
of England's visiting romantic poets.
Here, too, are Shakespeare's sad cypresses,
ancient oaks, vast beech trees,
and a small, gray Fiat Panda.
I'm off to play a game.
It's called pallone col bracciale.
And it's very old.
It's one of those things that generally would be dismissed
as "traditional," i.e., nobody's really interested.
But that's not quite true,
because about five Tuscan villages still play it,
very competitively.
The arena for today's game,
which I've since been told is pronounced "bratch-iale,"
is the town of Monte San Savino,
a center of social, political and cultural importance...
if you'd lived here in the Middle Ages.
We are in the domain of the original Medici family,
which was roughly divided into four quarters.
Each quarter is represented by a town--
San Savino, in this case--
and those towns played each other in a variety of games.
Buon giorno.
Um, the most popular of which was bracciale,
which is what we're going to play today.
And I don't really know how you play it.
I know that there's no racket. It hasn't been invented yet.
You play with a sort of wooden sleeve,
and you use that to hit the ball, a bit like volleyball.
The ball is a big rubber thing,
and you have to play it against a high wall.
It's a sort of cross between squash and tennis.
So you do need a very old town with a large medieval wall in it.
Otherwise you can't play.
Oh, look at that.
"The presenter of Top Gear, The Grand Tour
and Our Man in Japan is arriving
for filming of his new show.
With James May, who will end up in the cemetery
after a game of pallone col bracciale.
Then we will set fire to him."
Hmm.
Ancient medieval bylaws state
that before anyone can be cremated here,
they have to meet a well-dressed local dignitary.
Hello.
- Buon giorno. - Buon giorno.
Can I just ask where you got that jacket, by the way?
'Cause that's tremendous.
- I think in Rome. - Excellent, right.
I don't know anything about this game.
This is an old Renaissance game.
It's played with a special handle.
So that is the racket.
Made of, uh, chestnut.
- That way, is it? - It's rather painful to hold.
It's a rough and tough game of, uh, Renaissance time,
- so be ready for it. - Okay.
- Does anybody turn out to watch it? - Yes.
He's not wrong.
Now, you wouldn't see this down your local football league.
The whole town is out,
including Oz Clarke.
And when it comes to playing medieval dress-up,
standards are high and low
and twizzled around a bit.
I quite like the shirt.
I've asked if I can keep it, and they've said yes.
Note my medieval trainers.
While the trumpets herald my descent of the town steps
in some half-trousers made from old office blinds,
I have but one concern...
- My trousers are an elevator.
That's normal?
And so, the game begins.
And, like with all sport...
That's me.
- No, it isn't. - ...I'm not very good.
The rules of bracciale are pretty simple, really...
...you thunk the ball across the court with your giant wooden bangle.
Off the wall. Beautiful.
If it goes outside the lines, it's out.
Oh, bollocks.
- And the best team wins...
...which, at this stage, is unlikely to be mine.
Can somebody attende i pantaloni?
However, after Director Tom has fiddled around with me a bit...
- How's that? - Much better.
...my performance improves.
- Yeah!
Ai ai bravo!
Yes!
The crowd seems mildly impressed,
or possibly relieved that my trousers are still up.
Apparently, the locals have opened a book
on whether or not I can move this arm tomorrow.
It hurts like hell in your elbow, when you hit it, and up here.
Remember that scene in Top Gun,
when Tom Cruise is playing volleyball on the beach
in * slow motion?
♪ ♪
Well, this is nothing like that,
but look at that shirt.
It's game over.
And to be honest, viewers,
I literally have no idea how it went.
Five game for the... for your team.
Four game, the other team.
- So we won? - Yes.
- Yes!
Oh, grazie. Grazie.
- Yes!
Beer! Beer!
Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer!
Sadly, after the game, my team had other things to do,
like put the losers in the stocks
and excommunicate whoever wrote that tune.
♪ ♪
Now, as I wend my way northwest,
it's time for double history.
Fortunately for the rest of the world,
Tuscany has given us more
than just stupid trousers and wooden pineapples.
This is Florence, Firenze.
We are right in the underpants of the Italian Renaissance,
so what I thought we'd do today is art class.
Many things that we take for granted today
owe their existence to the Italian Renaissance.
Paperback books, for example, the parachute
and the 33-barreled organ.
Also, something that stopped drawing being wrong.
I'm in my art scarf.
All I need now is an erudite Englishman with a beard called Toby,
who's contractually not allowed to speak for the next 30 seconds.
We're here to talk about perspective,
uh, which is a skill that emerged in the Renaissance in Italy,
specifically in Florence,
because it was here that Brunelleschi first codified it,
and it's all to do with the illusion of depth on a plane
which is essentially flat.
Firstly, some pre-Renaissance work without perspective.
Oh. Yes, that's wonky.
We are quite literally looking down on one part.
On the other hand, we're looking up at the other part,
- the dome itself. - It's basically wrong.
Then, in the 15th century,
some little-known artists adopted
what is called "the vanishing point."
So, James, this is by Leonardo da Vinci.
And essentially what we're looking at is a constructed space
using one-point perspective.
So any of these diagonal lines we can find,
follow them, whether it be the stairs, the lines of the floor...
they all will ultimately converge
- on this one, single point. - Yes.
It's there, is it? This is all fascinating.
But th-there is the rather intimidating presence of some easels here,
with blank paper and an extremely famous view,
which is the Ponte Vecchio,
possibly the most famous bridge in the world.
- And we're going to draw it. - Yes, we are.
I have to tell you that I can't draw.
What I think we should do to begin with, James,
is establish our horizon line
by holding your pencil out horizontally
about exactly as high as your eyes.
My-my eyes seem to be almost exactly on line with the foot level of the bridge.
Okay.
A light line. There you go.
I have begun my artwork.
I should probably should ask the string quartet in the cupboard
to play something arty about now.
♪ ♪
- That looks beautifully straight. - Right.
Now, the next thing we're gonna do is establish our vanishing point.
Holding my ruler to line up with certain architectural points
I wonder if the people in the farmacia know
- that they are a vanishing point.
They-they could disappear at any second.
The rubber's getting a lot of use.
- More use than the pencil.
And while I draw,
the bridge enthusiasts among you will correctly know
that the Ponte Vecchio, completed in 1345
by one Taddeo Gaddi,
is specifically a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmented arch bridge.
Something significant has happened.
I have an arch, and it looks roughly right.
And now for my pièce de Renaissance: some lines.
Looks really good.
I think, structurally and architecturally, it makes sense.
If you came out of the 11th century
and arrived here today,
that would still be quite marvelous,
because it gives the impression of everything receding into the distance.
So that would've amazed you.
It doesn't amaze you, but it would have amazed you
if you'd been here, then.
♪ ♪
Now I can draw art.
But to graduate to full Renaissance man, I must become art.
Another pillar of the Renaissance, aside from perspective,
is, of course, life drawing,
the refinement of our ideas about what the human body should look like.
Now, this is a bit more difficult for me,
because I can't hide behind my basic understanding of triangles.
So what I thought I'd do is arrange for some other artists
to do the art whilst I simply sit.
So now I'm going to go in here and take all my clothes off.
♪ ♪
This school is internationally renowned for its classical art classes.
Now, be warned, life drawing is rather uninhibited.
And, as promised, as soon as I arrived, I did take my clothes off.
But then they made me put some back on.
Something they found in a really old wardrobe.
So, today, I'm posing-- or sitting, I should say--
as one of the Medici, and I'm being painted
exactly as one of the Medici may have been, in oils,
naturally lit from above.
And the only difference between this
and what might have happened many, many hundreds of years ago
is that I'm going to be on my mobile telephone learning Italian.
All that's missing is another bearded English scholar.
Okay, so, James, today we're gonna set you up in a particular pose.
- Have I got to sit very still? - You do have to sit very still.
I am a natural twitcher and fidgeter.
Well, we'll try and give you the pole, then. See how you do with that.
Try that.
That only gives me one hand to play with my phone.
Do you need two hands to play with your phone?
- I'm not a teenager. Yes.
And, for the second time today, art begins.
Just practicing some useful Italian phrases.
Does my head look big in this?
Seems to have a normally proportioned head.
It's not too big.
Do you like my hat?
Yeah, uh...
I guess I'm surprised it fits.
Where should I go tonight?
Well, he's dressed as a Medici. I'm sure that there is, like, a...
torture dungeon someplace.
A little punishment.
Need to scratch my nose. Is that permissible?
I'm not sure what sort of pillock sits about all day
holding a long pole, but there we go.
I'm gonna start twitching in a minute, I can feel it.
You may have already noticed that we've been pixelating all the knobs
on grounds of taste and decency.
- Bollocks.
Two hours later,
and it's time for art scarf me to meet Medici me.
How have you done that?
I like that I look very slightly evil in that one.
So, I'm just looking at it closely
because, obviously, it's just marks on a board,
but it doesn't look like marks on a board, does it?
It looks... It's me.
Have you been... These are epic.
- This...
I like the way some of you have captured my tubbiness as well,
which wasn't there before I came to Italy, I just want to say that.
The school has generously said I can take
one of these masterpieces home with me.
I do have to say grazie mille, mille, mille, mille, mille.
That was incredibly difficult,
because I had to stand in front of the artists
and say whose picture I liked best,
which was a little bit awkward,
but I did choose one.
The one that I thought was not-not the best likeness of me, necessarily,
but the one that was most about me.
And I didn't say which one it was,
and then I asked the crew to do the same thing,
and weirdly everybody made the same selection.
And the crew, remember, do have to look and listen to me all day long,
which is why they're paid so much.
Anyway, here it is.
That is not simply a picture of me.
It's the essence of what I am.
That's what portraiture is all about,
and that's what makes this art.
I'm going to leave my essence in the car for now,
because it's time for a trip down Via Memory.
This is actually the first place I ever came in Italy,
back in 1986, to this covered market,
so let's have a wander around.
Despite the rise of veganism
and the world turning away from bovine-based paraphernalia,
the Italians still can't get enough of the stuff.
Back in 1986, I was obviously very young and very broke,
but I did rustle together enough lira, as it was then,
to buy myself a souvenir, and it was a little leather money purse
with a spring-loaded top that you squeezed together.
And, remarkably-- and I'm not making this up--
it's still in use today. There it is.
These days, it holds my ear buds and earphones,
and my-my little adapters for my smartphone,
and lots of things that hadn't been invented back then.
One of the things I've learned over the intervening 35 years,
during which this has been in constant use,
is that it's not actually leather.
It's vinyl.
And I think the bloke who sold it to me is over here,
so I'm gonna go and have a word with him. Oy.
The index-linked refund came to two euros fifty...
coincidentally, exactly enough for lunch.
Buon giorno.
Un piccolo lampredotto, per favore.
It's tripe.
It's a... it's a cow's stomach.
Cows have multiple stomachs,
and this is specifically the third one, I'm told.
This is a Florentine thing.
Well, since 1893, it says right here.
- It looks like a very old swimming cap.
Doesn't look very promising, but it's actually pretty good.
Mmm!
- Buono. - Buono.
Let's walk back to the covered market.
Excuse me. Talking with my mouth full.
Now we're alone, viewers,
and we're out of earshot of the vendor.
I can see why it hasn't caught on.
I binned it and bought the wallet back. Quite tasty.
♪ ♪
because I also came to this building on my left, the Museo Galileo,
which back then was known by the rather more snappy title, I think,
of the Museum of the History of Science of Florence.
It's shut.
Today, though, I have special permissions.
I can have the entire museum to myself,
just me and the ghost of Galileo.
Born in 1564,
Galileo Galilei was a figurehead in observing things.
He was called the father of astronomy, modern physics,
scientific method and modern science,
which, even by Renaissance standards, are odd names for your kids.
Galileo was later tried for heresy
because he dared to agree with the Copernican theory
that the Earth moved around the Sun,
and he spent his last ten years under house arrest.
He did not, however,
contrary to popular belief, do the fandango.
That is Galileo.
And it's funny to think that when he died,
he was buried in a pauper's grave
because he was considered dangerous.
It was only about a hundred years later that people started to realize,
"No, maybe Galileo was onto something."
Galileo was an early adopter of the telescope and even made his own.
This is a replica.
They wouldn't let me handle the real thing,
but this is what the telescope looked like in Galileo's day.
Just a very simple objective and whatever the other lens is called, I've forgotten.
So you would point the...
You can just edit 'round that bit.
It's made of real leather, you know?
Galileo's work helped to prove that Copernicus was right.
The armillary sphere shows the Earth in the middle of the universe,
whereas, in fact, it's just a planet going around the Sun.
And now, some marbles.
Here is a reproduction of an experiment that was devised by Galileo,
and it helped overthrow the ancient teachings of Aristotle
who said that things fell to earth at a constant rate
and in proportion to their weight,
so a cannonball would fall quicker than a pea, for example.
So what Galileo did was design this inclined plane.
There's a ball in it, which rolls down.
And with the addition of the bells, you can demonstrate
that the ball accelerates at a rate such that the distance it's gone
in a given unit of time is equal to that unit of time squared.
What it actually means...
You see how the bells are further apart.
They will ring regularly.
And... three, two, one.
The ball hasn't come back.
Seriously, this is like you've put 50p in Space Invaders and...
Hang on.
Has anybody got something like a coat hanger?
Anyway, it's time to stop playing Renaissance pinball
because the curator, Elena, wants to show me the finger.
- Oh, hello. - Hello.
Here it is. Galileo's finger.
- That is... - The middle.
- And this is...? - Index and thumb.
So, these were recovered after he was exhumed, about 100 years after his death,
and they dug him up and they moved him into the church.
And at that point, his finger was taken
- like holy relics. - Yeah.
See, I find that a bit odd,
because the church effectively condemned Galileo,
but yet, ironically, his finger and finger and thumb
are now preserved exactly in the way that the relics of a saint would be,
and they've gone back to being
objects of religious rather than scientific veneration.
So he was a revolutionary,
but his own revolution ultimately destroyed him.
Often the way.
Che Guevara, I suppose. Who else?
- Leon Trotsky. - Leon Trotsky.
The white gloves of Michael Jackson.
- The what?
No, you're right, actually. No.
No, because they are... they're on display somewhere.
Aren't they? They're in... they're in a box.
The... the white gloves of Michael Jackson.
♪ ♪
Right, that's the first part of science done.
Now to change into something more comfortable for chemistry.
This is the magnificent Santa Croce. Fabulous, isn't it?
And its attendant piazza is also fabulous.
There's a statue of Dante, look.
There are some frescos on the wall over there and little cafés.
It's all gorgeous. What's wrong with this scene?
I'm in it.
And despite my efforts to be Italian
with my new expensive Italian cardigan and T-shirt thing,
I'm still a bit of a mess, and that's only the beginning, really.
I don't smell that great, either, so let's see if we can do something about that.
♪ ♪
Wanting to smell nice is nothing new.
Ancient civilizations, from the Chinese to the Carthaginians,
all used perfumes of sorts.
The Egyptians, in fact, were the first people
to give bottles of perfume to their mummies.
For the last 700 years, however,
it's the Italians who have been elevating it to a fine art.
The name of this operation I'm now visiting is Aquaflor,
which is actually Latin, and it means, basically, flower water,
which is what the earliest perfumes were.
Now, we know that perfume has been made in Florence
since the early 13th century.
And this 14th-century building operates today
as a sort of top secret smells laboratory.
Aquaflor creates bespoke fragrances for the wealthy and respected,
but they're allowing me in today.
And I've booked a personal consultation.
It also smells like that floor of the department store
where men only go when they've been on a long business trip,
if you know what I mean.
Now, I'm searching for the scent of man.
Well, a man: me.
And for that, I need a virtuoso of noses,
an enchanter of aromas,
a wizard of whiffs to cast me a smell.
And here is one. His name is Caesis.
What a nice place to work.
The technical term for this olfactory emporium is... an olfactorium.
It contains thousands of raw perfume-making materials,
tinctures and extracts.
I've asked Caesis to concoct a cologne using my favorite smells:
lavender, freshly cut grass,
petrol, bicycle inner tubes and kebab.
The top notes, the ones that come out at the beginning,
will be some citrus with lavender.
Lavender actually does remind me of the UK.
And then for the kebab spices: pepper, cloves and nutmeg.
I haven't heard the bicycle inner tube yet.
- Is there any... - The bicycle will come out of the leather
with some styrax, which is, uh, a resin from a tree
that smells quite rubbery.
- Now, we talk about musk. - Mm-hmm.
And musk is a vital part of perfume,
and musk actually comes from the * gland or from the ass of...
Nether regions of the Himalayan deer, yes.
So when Tennyson writes, "the musk of the rose is blown,"
and this is supposed to be very romantic,
and so what-what he's actually saying is "the ass of the rose is blown."
- Okay. - So, don't worry.
- Asides. - In your perfume,
the musk is a synthetic musk.
It's not the deer's * inside there.
Okay, no deer's *.
Um, I'm very, very excited now to know what I smell like.
You smell like poo.
- Yes, thank you. - Brussels sprouts.
What's the weirdest smell you've ever been asked to...
...invoke or recreate?
Was once... a girl that asked me the smell of blood
in a barn.
- Blood in the barn? - Yeah.
In a barn, like with animals, the hay and everything,
and the smell of blood as well.
- Like murder? - That one freaked me out. Yeah.
Right.
Suddenly, I feel better about my kebab request.
And now, Caesis blends over 40 ingredients
to become the essence of me.
So, now it's diluted in alcohol.
And we're gonna bottle it.
That's the meaning of me going into that bottle,
and when it comes back out of the bottle,
I'm released and become present, like a genie or a spirit.
There you are. Ready.
We're gonna just try it now, but as I told you,
wait for at least a month before you try it again.
- Okay? - Okay.
- So it matures. - Yes.
Now it's gonna be a little bit rough.
- Feel the spray? - Yeah, I can feel it.
Yeah.
Well, it's definitely pleasant.
I would say that-that smells masculine.
- It smells slightly industrial but not offensively so. - Mm-hmm.
- You're seeing all the notes come out. - Yes, yes.
- Slowly revealing themselves. - It's changing
as I make this rather absurd gesture.
I mean, I have to think of a name for it.
What should we call the scent of me?
♪ ♪
Fiasco: Il grande odore dell'uomo.
♪ ♪
I'm now leaving the Italian Renaissance behind in Florence...
Well, I'm knackered now and I can't speak.
...to peddle up to the Italian present in Emilia-Romagna,
which is nearly 100 miles away?
- Um... - You haven't gone very far.
Well, look behind you. It's further than it looks.
Just having a small rest is what you do when you ride a bike.
Well, bugger that for a game of soldiers.
Ah, that's better.
Now, I'm sure most of you will be familiar with my fetishes by now:
exquisite Byzantine mosaics, for example,
or a well-turned walnut instrument.
Or this. This is a Ferrari.
And not even a scruffy presenter
in car enthusiast jeans could spoil this view.
If you had to draw
a triangle representing all of humankind's
ambitions and aspirations,
then somewhere near the top, if not at it,
would be a Ferrari.
A Ferrari is a car, of course, but it's also an objet d'art,
an object of desire.
It is the perfect synthesis
between the technological and the artistic.
I'm going to show you...
how it's made.
The first Ferrari rolled out of this factory in 1947.
The cars are called Ferrari after the company's founder,
who was called Ferrari.
Enzo Ferrari himself
supposedly said that when you buy a Ferrari,
you actually pay for the engine,
and the rest of the car is free.
The engine starts life here in the foundry.
And the foundry... This is the only European carmaker
that still has its own foundry.
This is a fabulous part of the process
because, yes, it's high-tech,
but it's also occult.
As someone who once worked in a foundry, I'm excited.
Very excited.
The foundry is where the big bits of the engine are cast.
It's where earth, fire and metal conspire like witches
over a cauldron to spawn the trembling heart
of the living machine.
Ooh, cores.
These are the cores. So, these are the bits
that form the cavities inside the casting.
So they're made of sand, but it's sand mixed with a resin that is then hardened,
so it's not gonna fall apart like a sandcastle when I touch it.
And the really weird thing about working in a foundry,
and especially if you make the molds,
is you have to think of everything in reverse.
That is something that isn't going to be there.
See what I mean?
To produce the bit
that actually is going to be there,
aluminium is hearted to over 800 degrees Celsius,
around the same temperature as the inside of Mount Etna,
forge of the gods.
This is a holding furnace. Molten aluminium
has been poured into here and then alloyed with copper
or one or two other things to make the aluminium alloy.
That's going to go in there,
and then it's going to go into this automatic casting machine,
and then we will see it go into the mold.
That is the beginning of the creation of the engine.
Here you are.
- If he drops it,
we have to run away very, very quickly because it spreads very quickly,
and it makes a terrible mess of your shoes.
This recipe for the perfect piping hot aluminium soup
represents centuries of metallurgical advancements,
but, at its core, it remains a rather ancient process.
It's also rather Promethean
because the whole thing is covered in flames,
and, of course, we are melting the core of the Earth
or remelting the core of the Earth, if you like.
The aluminium comes out of an ore.
It was solid. It becomes liquid.
Then it becomes solid again, but this time, it's a Ferrari.
Yes, yes, yes.
Squirt,
cylinder head, blam.
It's amazing.
Now the aluminum has cooled and solidified,
the sand can be bashed away to reveal...
It's magic.
...the casting.
You will have noticed a lot of robotic arms
and a lot of computer screens, but in the end, it's a foundry,
and quite a bit of it still relies
on the skill of the operators.
The first inspection is simply visual.
A man looks at it to say...
"Delicious casting."
Which brings me nicely to the next bit,
where I am allowed to do something delicious myself.
I'm going to make a core.
That is, create a bit of the not-there engine.
This is deburring, to take the sharp edges
off the core, which has been made in a mold of its own.
If you didn't knock these off, they'd be washed away
by the aluminum as it came in, and then they'd become
what's called an inclusion in the finished casting.
That's bad.
The core is made up of several pieces
that are then stuck together, so you get one core set
that simply drops into place in the mold.
Lesson in mold deburring done, now it's my turn.
So, start at this edge. Sì?
Very satisfying.
Good? Good.
Oh, there's a n-nasty bit there.
You see that edge there?
That's all got to be smoothed over.
Normally, when I do careful and skilled things like this,
the director shouts "Cut" and bodges it.
Okay, I have control.
But for once, they actually let me finish a job properly.
That went home, as they say in engineering.
Bravo.
Here are some the professionals made earlier.
I'm going to move on to another key job.
A tree of Ferrari key rings.
Sand is here, we got four minutes.
- Buon giorno. - Buon giorno.
♪ ♪
Now we've got about two and a half minutes left
before it goes completely hard.
And two and a half minutes later...
The other half of the mold is a simple lid,
which has in it the runners and risers.
That's where the aluminum goes in and then comes back out again.
We reassemble that.
We are then ready to pour.
Once the molds are made, the aluminum is poured
and left to cool, so let's cut to the unveiling.
It's so exciting, this bit, it's still slightly warm.
Who would like a Ferrari key ring?
There you are.
Ferrari key ring?
Sadly, I had to give that nice red coat back, which is a shame.
But there is one last perk of the job.
This is the hallowed tarmac of Ferrari's Fiorano test circuit,
and I've been given permission to go around it,
so let's do that.
Oh, only kidding.
Yes, all right, I'll go around in the Ferrari.
This is the rather appropriately-named Ferrari Roma.
Packing a whacking great 612 horsepower
and with a top speed of 199 MPH,
the Roma can do nought to 60 in just 3.4 seconds.
It'll also set you back a mere 170 grand.
This is a first-world observation, I appreciate that,
but driving around in a Ferrari does make you feel bloody good.
In some ways we've arrived at a little bit of a paradox here,
because the thing that makes the Ferrari so delicious
from here is, of course, the engine,
and that is the bit of it that is most anachronistic.
That's the bit that, supposedly, we're going to say goodbye to very soon.
But, to be honest, if this Ferrari ends up
being entirely electric, I'm not sure I'm going to mind.
So much of what makes it a wonderful thing will survive.
I'm ready for the new Ferrari.
The next day, now the proud owner of a new Ferrari... key ring,
mia Panda and I take a short jaunt up the road.
Well, I'm heading into the hills,
and I know I've said this several times already,
but this really is a spectacularly good-looking country.
The Italians are completely ruined.
I mean, it's not fair.
But I'm not here for the frankly incredible views.
I'm here to visit a boring-looking warehouse
that's actually a gold mine.
I am high in the hills of Emilia-Romagna,
the region that produces the world-famous Parmesan cheese.
Except of course, it's not actually called that.
It's correctly called Parmigiano Reggiano cheesiano.
And you will know, if you have been to a supermarket,
that it's incredibly expensive,
because it is an extremely valuable commodity,
so valuable in fact-- and I'm not making this up--
it has its own bank.
It's here. This is a cheese bank.
And I promise you, you will be astonished.
Now, since I've been wearing this jacket,
the crew have been saying how Italian I look.
I've no idea where they get that idea from.
It's like something from The Matrix, only with fewer men in dark glasses
and a bit more cheese.
Wow.
This is cheese.
Cheese, cheese, cheese.
I know you're probably struggling to see me,
so here's me talking to you in close-up.
Parmigiano Reggiano
is actually first and foremost a definition.
You can't just make cheese a bit like this and call it Parmigiano Reggiano.
It comes from the milk of cows that have fed
on the grass of this region,
and it is made purely with that milk, calves' rennet and salt.
And even once it's been made, it's not yet officially cheese.
Not Parmigiano Reggiano, anyway.
In order to qualify as Parmigiano Reggiano,
the cheese must mature for at least 12 months
and then pass an exam--
their cheese C.S.E.s, if you like-- to see if they've made the grade.
Here is some cheese that has passed.
Here is some cheese that has passed but is only considered second-rate.
And then, over here, there is some,
I'm very sorry to have to say, failed cheese.
This... Can you see how the-the rind
has been scraped away by the quality control people?
This is now Italian hard cheese.
Still nice, but frankly, not good enough.
Not for the cheese bank.
Cheese. Cheese.
Yep, it's cheese.
One wheel of Parmesan cheese like this
is worth between three and four hundred euros wholesale,
although please do remember that the value of your cheese
can go down as well as up.
The total value of the cheese in this bank
is around 70 million euros,
and for that reason, there are three levels
of very tight security on the building, because, unsurprisingly,
Italy does have its cheese bandits.
If you can hijack and steal an articulated lorry
full of cheese, you are rich.
When a cheese producer deposits their cheese
at the cheese bank, they get a loan of 70% of its value,
like selling cheese futures or visiting a cheese pawn shop.
But if it turns out your formaggio stinks,
then you can end up owing the bank quite a bit of cheddar.
Giacomo, Alessandro.
They are cheese testers, and they are feared,
because they have the final say,
"Is this proper Parmigiano Reggiano or is it not?"
And they find this out using, believe it or not, a hammer.
But not just any old hammer,
a Parmigiano Reggiano-certified cheese hammer.
The Truckle Brothers here
test over a thousand cheeses a day to ensure Parmesan perfection.
Can I just try...
- Yeah, sure. - ...tapping this? Thank you.
It does feel a bit like hitting some cheese with a hammer.
Doesn't it?
It also sounds like hitting cheese with a hammer,
but these highly-trained cheese whisperers can detect
even the slightest defect,
like an air bubble, which affects the density
and therefore quality.
- Does that sound good? - Yeah,
this one sound good.
- Can we put the stamp on? - Yeah, sure.
Excellent.
I've been desperate to cut the cheese ever since I arrived here, so...
I can't say that.
It's a really puerile eight-years-old's joke,
but when you say "I've cut the cheese..."
- ...it means "I've farted."
- What's the... - Peto.
- As soon as I arrived here this morning,
I thought, "I want to cut the cheese."
- Is that possible? - Yes, of course.
- Good.
- Okay, go ahead.
You join us at a very exciting moment.
We're about to cut the cheese.
I think the professionals should take over for a bit.
We cut the wheel exactly in the middle.
- What a responsibility. Here? - Yeah.
Oh, yes. It's gonna go, isn't it?
Yay.
Is that bit there about to fall off?
Oh, it fell off.
Oh, man in heaven, it is fantastic.
It's got that granular thing, but it's a bit creamy as well.
Mmm, yeah, it's really, really nice cheese.
I'll just show you a few shots of the cheese bank that you haven't seen yet,
and then I'll be on my way.
I'm now heading for the town of Barga,
which is quite unusual in Italy for having...
well, a number of things.
A Celtic supporters club
and a fish and chip shop.
But that's because Barga is actually Scottish.
Now, bear with me a bit on this one,
but in the mid-19th century, when Italy unified,
there was a bit of a problem with unemployment,
so a lot of Italians left the country to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Normal sort of thing.
Quite a lot of them went to Britain,
and quite a lot of those ended up in Scotland.
Now, about a hundred years later,
a lot of those Scottish Italians started coming back to Italy,
in particular, the town of Barga, where I'm headed now.
It is, reputedly, Italy's most Scottish town.
♪ ♪
Barga looks like any other pretty Italian hilltop town.
Almost.
But the whole place is riddled
with ambient cèilidh music.
- Buonasera. - How you doing, man?
Oh, I'm doing very well.
- Pleased to meet you. Marco.
They're very welcoming here, which makes me think
none of them have ever actually been to Glasgow.
Good evening, Mr. May.
- Good evening. - How are you?
Very well. How are you?
This is very odd.
Are you actually Scottish or Italian?
I'm Italian, but brought to Scotland at the age of one.
This is very Scottish, they've all started drinking
at about 4:00 p.m.
Most of Barga's residents have Scottish genes,
including the pub's owner Stefano,
although tonight they're wearing their kilts.
In Barga, in general,
people, uh, after the First World War
and even after the second one, they moved to-to Scotland.
We always say in Barga, everybody in the family has
at least one Scottish relative.
Without wishing to be insensitive, back in Britain,
the Scots have a reputation for hard drinking of beer.
Does that translate to the Scottish Italians?
We drink wine with the food, and then after, we like
to drink our beers, we like to come to the pub,
we like our whiskies.
But the idea of standing at a bar like this
and simply drinking beer and talking bollocks,
let's be honest, that's not particularly Italian,
- is it? - No, it's not.
That's why w-we are the most Scottish town in Italy.
- Salute. - Salute.
But normally, there could be, like, five, six hundred people
outside the front.
- In fact, Paolo... - 600?
- Yeah. Oh, easy. - Really?
Oh, easy. E-Even Paolo Nutini...
You... I don't know if you've heard of the singer?
- Paolo... - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
He's from here and he's-he's actually
- at the front every night here. - That right?
I should probably
line my stomach in the restaurant next door.
As is the way of people living far from home,
the townsfolk of Barga love to celebrate their ancient culture.
♪ Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low ♪
♪ Through the streets, in my kilt I'll go ♪
♪ And all the lassies shout "Hello!" ♪
♪ Donald, where's your trousers? ♪
This is fantastic.
"Zuppa porri e patate."
The potato soup, obviously.
"Rivestito da pasta sfoglia."
"Haggis."
Notice, there is no Italian word for "haggis."
Now, it's not actually Burns Night for another two months,
but hey, when in Barga....
This beastie here is called a haggis,
and traditionally in Scotland, uh,
the animal has to be murdered before eating it.
And, uh...
when we do that, we always recite a beautiful poem
written by Robert Burns.
And tonight, our guest of honor James May
is going to read that poem to us.
- Grazie mcmille.
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o' the Puddin-race.
His knife see Rustic-labour dight,
An' cut ye up wi' ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright...
- Hang on.
- There you can see, yeah.
But if ye wish her grateful prayer,
Gie her a Haggis!
Of all the places to look
for la dolce vita,
I wouldn't have chosen Scotland.
I said I wouldn't have chosen Scotland!
But I think these guys have found it.
Well, I hope this episode has been as enjoyable
to watch as it has been for us to make,
because it's been a proper Renaissance experience.
We've had natural history on the bike ride,
we've had art with drawing and painting,
a bit of cooking, a bit of science,
some music at the opera house,
and if it all gets a bit too much,
you can just come to Barga and round off your experience
by being Scottish in the rain, which is tremendous.
So, I'd just like to say arrivederci for now,
and buonanotte the noo.
Thank you for watching.
Oh, bollocks, I need a piss.
Now, the keen-eared among you
may have just heard me mention opera.
♪ ♪
Cheese.
Cheese. Cheese.
Cheese? Cheese.
Yep, it's cheese.
This is cheese.
Cheese. Cheese.
Cheese.
Really, really nice cheese.