The ‘bagno’ might offend Northern European sensibilities – but the beach club is a great social leveller
The 19th-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt described a particular type of northern visitor to the Italian peninsula as believing the land and its riches were theirs “by right of admiration”. As in most possessive relationships, this admiration often takes the form of critique. How, cry those from the frigid north, can the country of Virgil, Michelangelo and spaghetti alle vongole also be the one of Berlusconi, calciopoli and the ubiquitous bagno? Well, the first two have ceased to be, and the latter is under threat too. Up and down the Bel Paese, activists are campaigning against the provision of tenders to run bagni – private beach clubs that charge admission in return for a deckchair, umbrella and, sometimes, waterside table service – arguing that they are undemocratic, corrupt, even an offence to aesthetics. But while disgruntled natives are at least righteous in their bagno-turismo, those snooty outsiders who believe that there is some incongruity between the Sistine Chapel and a sea of a thousand umbrellas are mistaken.
Bagni are not the vulgar symptoms of a corrupt modern capitalism that has flourished on Italian shores. They are civilising spaces, springing as they do from a particular native fastidiousness when it comes to comfort and cleanliness, combined with a recognition that, in the land of sprezzatura and bella figura, life is in large part a performance for which you need an audience, preferably a captive one with somewhere comfortable to lie down. Unlike repressed northerners with their plentiful barren space and obsession with privacy, most Italians live in crowded apartment buildings and so are comfortable with physical proximity. They do not need to imbibe hectolitres of grog to become voluble or lose their inhibition to casual touch.
And yet, my imaginary northern interlocutor screams back, no doubt pink in the face, that the experience of bathing on an empty beach is so much nicer than in a bagno. To which I reply, is it really? Anyone whose formative beach experiences were spent squirming atop uneven pebbles or shivering behind nylon windbreakers can appreciate the quiet luxury of a towel, table and deckchair of one’s own. And if you can’t understand the physical pleasure then surely you can acknowledge the collegiality. Italians don’t really have the private members’ clubs or hobbyist societies that northern Europeans do. But they do have the bagno, where people of all ages and social groups can rub sun-creamed shoulders together for a relatively modest fee – and theirs is a more egalitarian society for it. Swimming trunks are the great leveller. As Shirley Hazzard, a more receptive visitor than most, wrote: “Italy, which harbours mysteries and arouses imagination, does not supply solutions.” The sentiment is beautiful but only half-true. For surely the solution to having nowhere comfortable and shaded to sit on the beach is to visit a bagno.
Self is Monocle’s foreign editor. For more Med-based musings and sunny essays, pick up a copy of Monocle’s new ‘Mediterraneo’ newspaper today.
