In the footsteps of the Hornets' Nest boys, part 2: Localita La Nera

In the Footsteps of the Hornets' Nest Boys, part 2: La Nera, Monticello

by Lakambini (Bing) Sitoy

The morning of August 24, our taxi arrived a few minutes before 10. Our driver was a man in his 30s called Roberto who spoke to us in Italian, with a few gestures, to confirm that we were to drive over to a place in the commune of Monticello (Gazzola) southwest of Piacenza, stay for a few minutes, and then come back. Roberto apologized for what he said was his bad English, though it was perfectly fine for communication purposes.

In the opening sequence of the movie Hornets' Nest, the early morning peace of a little village amid the Apennines is rudely shattered by a convoy of German trucks, disgorging soldiers who herd the villagers into a row to one side of a dusty lane. Opposite them, beside a pond, the soldiers position themselves, evenly spaced, their weapons at ready. The viewer glimpses a squat stone church, vegetable gardens, weathered stone facades, a house with a second story porch and an image of the Virgin Mary, a pleasant three-story house with manicured shrubbery, an elderly man in a cassock and biretta, middle-aged men in white undershirts, terrified elderly women in black, two young mothers nursing their babies.
High up on a slope, a row of boys peers through stalks of grain at the scene below. They look to be between the ages of 10 and 16. Behind them are distant white cliffs, a suggestion of limitless mountains.

In the village, the German commander demands to know where the partisans are hiding. The partisans are, in fact, not too far away, watching the scene through a screen of trees. The villagers refuse to reveal their position. When they realize what will happen next, they begin to wail. At a shouted command, the soldiers open fire…

Our destination on this morning was where these scenes were filmed -- Localita La Nera in Monticello, Gazzola, the province of Piacenza. (For those who haven't followed my previous posts: I saw Hornets' Nest when I was 11; my sister and I started writing stories about the characters, integrating them into a massive imaginary world we built from movies and books; for my juvenile writing the film was a watershed.)

In just a couple of minutes we had left the old center of Piacenza and were driving past the old city wall, through a series of roundabouts, and then onto the highway. There were none of the tall cypresses and olive trees that were common down south. The trees had a broadleaf/deciduous look. The light was the same sort of light in the movie, which was filmed from July to September, 1969.

There was a line of blue hills in the distance. About 20 minutes out of Piacenza, the change in the terrain began – gentle rolling valleys, now to our left, now to our right, plowed land, farm buildings. Then the grade increased and the road began to wind around the hills, trees flanking the road on either side. It was at this point that I began to feel an incredible heart-pounding excitement – not the apprehension you feel as your plane taxies down the runway for take-off, but a teenage sort of anticipation, as a girl might feel walking into a classroom where she knows her crush is present.

I could see on the GPS that we were soon to take the road down into La Nera, and I told Roberto (who I’d given a bit of background as to Monticello as the filming location) to drive on just a bit. Just a bit, just a bit, until we were several hundred feet down the road, by a spot where the white rock of the Apennines showed through the scrub grass – worn down from decades of people parking here or using it as a turn-around spot. This was the place that I’d decided, by consulting Google Street View and Google Earth satellite view and examining the mountain behind the boys, that the filming crew had been located as they filmed the scene where Aldo and his gang crouch in the grain field, looking towards the distant village. Roberto turned the car around, and I raised my head and allowed myself … to look.

I couldn’t breathe at first. It was there, all there … the little village a few hundred meters down the grassy slope, the jade green of the duck pond, the blue mountains in the distance, the expanse of field and sky. It had an aura of unreality as it shimmered in the summer light. And it was all around me, bigger than the movie screens of my childhood. As I got out of the car, my knees went weak and I stumbled a few steps in the direction of the slope. Cicadas were chirping in the grass. It seemed as though I stood before an invisible wall that went as high as the heavens – the Fourth Wall, actually, which my imagination would penetrate time and again when I was a child. The whole scene seemed to vibrate. What I must have been experiencing was the physical effect of the /blʌd/ rushing in my veins as my heart pounded with excitement and joy.

The area around La Nera has changed somewhat from when the production crew turned it into the village of Reanoto. There are more trees down the slope and along the private road to the hamlet, and a house sits halfway down, before the bend in the road. There are lots of electric wires overhead. Three rows of electrical posts lead down to the hamlet.

In the film, huge pylons can be glimpsed in the background of some scenes -- rows of them helping to power the Trebbia valley, I suppose. I didn’t really notice them when I saw the film as a kid. Nor could I have possibly noticed the telephone or electric poles at two different spots during the opening sequence, blending in nicely among the trees. I wonder whether, in 1944 when the opening sequence was set, Reanoto was supposed to have electricity.

Roberto suggested that we go down and see if there was anyone in the hamlet. He thought it was okay to give it a try --- the worst would be that we would be sent away, told off for trespassing. We could just tell them we wanted to look at some fine old buildings, he said.

As we moved down the road, gravel crunching beneath the wheels, the hybrid engine almost soundless, I noticed the brick structure in the field, which I had used to determine the location of the boys relative to Reanoto. I’d puzzled over it – a small shed? But now I think it was a shrine. Some of those, according to Google, are found in fields and slopes around Italy.

The first four houses seen in Hornet's Nest are now all gone. They were built -- weathered stone and all -- for the film. Instead, there was just grass and some trees. We drew abreast of the pond and stopped at the house before it. There were two men sitting on a bench. In the movie this is the big house shaded by trees that the priest is forced out of, along with several women. There is a little shrine on a plinth next to it – it was there in 1969 and it is there to this day.

One of the men came forward. This was Gianmaria Conti, middle-aged, a little younger than me. Roberto explained our errand, and I got out of the car and told them the name of the film in Italian. At the words “I Lupi Attacano in Branco,” the older man -- his father -- became quite excited, as though a switch had been flicked on.

Suddenly, the three Italians were talking animatedly, Roberto translating from time to time. Then the older Mr. Conti started talking directly to me, drawing me away to, for example, show me something about the walls of a stone storage building/loft. I couldn’t make out a single word that he was saying, unfortunately, but I knew that in the film this building had been bricked up, and explosives mounted at strategic points on the walls.

We learned that about a year before the filming began, construction started on four new houses along the road, to the north of the Conti residence. The duck pond became the center of the village. It’s incredible that these houses were just facades, because they match, in architecture, the actual buildings of La Nera, though weathered and decrepit. By contrast, the Conti house looks much better kept – the part of the village where the fine people lived. In the film, quick edits conceal the fact that the house is on the same row as the constructed set and the church, and that indeed the Reanoto sequences were all filmed on a stretch of lane only 150 meters long.

One of the nursing babies was three months old and came from a place called Nibian, the elder Mr. Conti said, indicating the mountain areas to the west. I heard it as Nevia or Nevio, but discovered through Google that it was Nibbiano, a commune which a few years ago was merged with three others to form Alta Val Tidone. Nibian is the name in the Piacentine dialect. I hadn’t realized at the time that the older man was likely speaking this dialect, which differs from Italian, having some features of French. (More about the baby, and the special effects behind the opening sequence, in the comments to the photos).

They took us inside the building with the cross on top. This, they explained, had once been a barn or stables, before becoming a church. It was no longer such. But in 1969, the elderly man in cassock and biretta had been the actual parish priest. There were tools on the wall on the left side, and several long tables covered in coated plastic cloth with benches and condiment trays. This, Gianmaria explained, was where residents of the surrounding area would meet – a community center. On the wall, among various family photos from years back, was an autographed photo of Rock Hudson in the role of Captain Turner. Gianmaria brought it out into the light of the door and showed me the now faded autograph in the lower-right hand corner. The Conti family had hosted Rock Hudson for dinner during the filming, and most likely other members of the production. I asked if Gianmaria and his father could pose with the photo.

The elder Mr. Conti had been part of the movie, too, wearing (he gestured) the uniform of a "Tedesco," a German soldier. I think he was one of those in the firing squad line, because he pointed to the ground where he stood, which was where the row of soldiers had been. In the space between an annex to the Conti home and a building that currently serves as a hayloft/storage space, was where two costume-and-makeup trailers had been parked. I wonder who else in the family, and among the other residents of La Nera, had been in the film, or rather, which ones they were. There are six buildings in the locality, and even today, some 50 people reside there.

When I told them Hornets’ Nest had been my favorite movie as a child, the old man expressed disbelief. That morning, I looked younger than my actual age, and more feminine than I really am inside. But I could not explain to him the experience of seeing this film at age 11 (with my parents, of course) on the big screen, the shock and intriguing discomfort of seeing boys only a little older than myself in such violent situations, the archetypal fantasy of orphanhood (only appealing because it is a fantasy), my attraction-repulsion to those 15 grimy faces that were young but not cute in the commercial Hollywood way. My desire to break the film down into its constituent pieces, trace all its players, understand its special effects, is perhaps rooted in the deep unease that the film’s resolution – Carlo, Silvio – and the violence of its opening sequence created in me, and which I actually still feel even though, on my computer, I have gone over these scenes frame by frame, hundreds of times.
(More to follow)

In the footsteps of the Hornets' Nest boys, part 1: Piacenza

 In the last week of August, we flew to Italy, landing at Milan Malpensa and then taking the train from Milano to Piacenza.  It was here that the cast and crew were based during the three to four months (June to September) that Hornets' Nest was filmed.

There was a very nice young man (Italian, from Piacenza) on the train who helped my husband carry his suitcase down and to the stairs. At the same time there was a nice young man (black African) who helped me carry mine! As soon as we were out of the station, the thing that struck me was the heat. Bright and dry. Heat that seared the skin. It was 33-34 degrees C.

We decided to drag our suitcases from the station to our hotel – it was just 1.1 kilometers according to the map and would take only 16 minutes. We skirted the park that is just beyond the station (sticking to the concrete sidewalk to avoid the gravel paths). We passed a group of people who were speaking one of the Philippine languages – Tagalog or Cebuano, I don’t remember. There was a young woman in very high heels, a very pregnant woman in bicycle shorts, another woman carrying a baby of about one year old, a youngish man about the same height as the women. They looked like they could have come from any town park in that country (my country – I have dual citizenship), in their sun-faded clothing and tank tops.

As we continued dragging the suitcases we were overtaken by a young family, the woman holding a child (perhaps a trio from the group we had earlier seen in the plaza?). Filipino as well. Over the next 24 hours I would note the presence of a good many black Africans, south Asians and a few other Filipinos as well. Residents, not tourists, just going about their business.

We found the Grande Albergo Roma after half an hour. It was on a corner just a narrow street away from the main square, the Piazza del Cavalli. It had a very unprepossessing entrance – glass doors a few steps up, the name on a vertical sign down the side. It could have been the entrance to a little bank. There were modern paintings in primary colors set up in the lobby, and the following morning we took a leisurely breakfast at the seventh floor restaurant, with a well-appointed buffet, everything clean and subdued and very deserving of its four-star ratings.

The man and the woman at the front desk were nice, but neither of them had heard of Hornet’s Nest. They had already arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 10 am on Saturday to take us to Monticello, stay for about an hour, and take us right back. The man was from Piacenza and was a small kid in 1969.  He had never heard of it from anyone. They had to ask when the filming took place, and when I told them that the cast and crew had stayed in this very hotel from July to September 1969, they were surprised but not excited. The film is clearly not part of the legacy or legend of the place (I had been hoping for some evidence, photos of Rock Hudson in the restaurant… but the hotel is too internationally four-stars, too much like a modern airport, for that). When they Googled the name of the film after I had supplied it in Italian (I Lupi attaccano in branco, rather than Il Vespaio, which is no longer used), the cast name that they recognized seemed to be Jacomo Rossi Stewart, who has a small part in the film.

A friend of ours from Sweden has described Piacenza as a boring town. It does seem like the ordinary industrial town that Dan Keller remembered it as, but there were little pockets of beauty, perhaps the way the sun shone on the red-tiled roofs, or lit up a wall, leaving the sides in blue shadow. There was a view of the back of buildings from our window – just a regular view, but there was some joy in knowing they were the back of the buildings facing the Piazza del Cavalli. I investigated the horse sculptures flanking the piazza that evening, and the following day. It was exciting to see Italian horses on our trip – in actuality and in art. Living in Denmark I have sort of grown accustomed to the presence of horses, but in Italy they are somewhat different -- powerful, contorted, and quite sexy. In Denmark they are utilitarian, heavy and straight – draft horses rather than steeds and mounts. The Danish riders I see don’t gallop, they plod sedately along bridle paths or roadsides. By Monticello there are stables too, less than a kilometer from La Nera. (I didn’t get to look them up, though – there were other things to do). Behind the front desk of the hotel there was a giant rearing image of one of the horses in the Piazza del Cavalli. We tried the horse burgers at a little café the following day, so I got my equine fix, all right.

We stayed in a regular room on the fifth floor, where there were two suites, named after Italian composers. On the floor above was the biggest suite in the hotel. Looking at the pictures I sent via email, Dan confirmed that the Albergo Roma has been renovated since most of the cast and crew of Hornet’s Nest stayed here 1969 – it was smaller and cozier, less (he agreed) like a modern airport. Back in the day it was still called the Albergo Roma.  I learned from him that the film’s two stars, Rock Hudson and Silva Koscina, lived in fancy rented houses the duration of the shoot.  

My husband and I didn’t wander so far from the hotel, having a light dinner of pasta at a café, sitting outdoors, off the Piazza del Cavalli. The piazza was virtually deserted, even if it was a Friday night. Maybe it was too early, though we sat there from around 7:30 to nearly 9 pm. Opposite us was an arcade that seemed ancient, where a younger clientele had gathered, eating Italian chips (I don’t know what they are called but they are served in a basket) and nursing drinks, though it was, by Danish standards, the dinner hour. There were no vespas. I had read somewhere that they were banned in the old centers of Italy fairly recently … I’m not sure if that is correct, though. So although vespas figure heavily in keychains and magnets, they were very nearly absent to the ordinary tourist’s eye. In their place were the equally hazardous delivery riders on all-too swift, heavy-tired bicycles, with their cumbersome boxes. I exaggerate (as happens when you blithely cross a cobble-stoned path and are nearly mown down by one – this happened to me a few days later in Verona). But there were a lot more bicycles than Vespas overall, and I noticed little children mounted on handlebars as their fathers pumped away.

And somehow what we saw seemed to be the cleaner, older, more rarefied model for life in small-town Philippines. Not so weird when you consider how Philippine towns were originally laid out along the lines of Spanish towns, back in the 19^th century or so, and the configuration has not changed all these years, and resembles the layout of Italian "towns" to some extent, with a Catholic church, a municipal building and a school around a central square (piazza or plaza); there may be other, smaller squares or a landscaped green park as well. The difference is, among others, in the building materials and the facades.

I took photos of the square by night, too. I reasoned that the young boys in the cast must have done a lot of exploring on their own, after filming was done for the day. I was thinking of how it must have been all those years ago -- did they ride vespas too? Some of the older boys would have been the right age. Some might have had girlfriends by then, left behind in Rome or Naples. I didn’t see any young people at all around the square – only tourists or Italians about 25-years old and up. Where do the teenagers, the courting couples, hang out today? Or am I so ancient and unsophisticated I still believe “courting couples” are a thing? They must all be on their phones.

There would have been a lot of smoking going on back in 1969 – that is evident in the film. Drinking too? Was there a chaperone, sort of like a camp counsellor, to make sure everyone behaved? (Today, we would say “for the safety of the children.”) Their parents might have come up, pair by pair, to see how they were doing, just as Dan’s parents did, paid for by the production. Translators? How did the boys communicate with each other? I get the notion that towards the end of filming, the boys from Naples began to hang around each other, while the boys from Rome or with an English-speaking background, formed another group. I don’t think the directors told them (in group shots) where to stand, and I see these two groupings in both the behind-the-scenes pictures and in the film itself.  It’s very natural behavior.  (Which Dan confirmed too – that they “self-segregated” according to language and other commonalities).

 The following day we took the taxi we had booked, heading southwest to La Nera in Monticello – and what a breath-taking experience that was. More to follow. (And more images below).

A trip to Piacenza

Castello di Monticello (my own practice painting)

PLANS, plans, plans. Bing is going to northern Italy, to visit some of the locations where the movie Hornets’ Nest (1969) was filmed.

I have booked a stay at the Grande Albergo Roma in Piacenza. It's a four-star hotel where the cast and crew were billeted during the filming, which took place from July to early September 1969. 

The plan is to hire a car that will head southwest to Monticello commune, specifically to a group of centuries-old buildings (houses, a pond and a chapel), where the Reanoto scenes were filmed. 

I suppose you might wonder why, having found the place on Google Streetview and getting some good screenshots of it (as well as stumbling upon photos uploaded by various folks on the net, for the sake of the beauty of the place and totally independent of its having been a film location: the movie is largely forgotten today) I still have this insane need to visit the site for myself.

The same reason I’m staying a night at the Grande Albergo Roma and another night at a hotel in Salsomaggiore Terme (so that I can devote the better part of the following day in the vicinity of the Torrente Stirrone). I want to walk in the footsteps of the film crew 55 years ago, to be “where it all began.”

I don’t know whether this is an act of destruction (end of the magic!) or of analysis, of finding or of letting go. Maybe all of these.

I have Daniel Keller to thank for the filming location of that crucial scene in the middle of the movie, where Aldo (Mark Colleano) and his gang bargain with Capt. Turner (Rock Hudson) to exact revenge on the Nazis occupying their village of Reanoto. I know that for many people Hornet’s Nest is just another war flick, and a pretty bad one at that, but I can’t help interpreting it as a coming-of-age film. The boys who played the members of the gang were mostly between the ages of 14 and 15. Those scenes by the side of the creek (irrigation ditch in the novelization; the Torrente Stirone in reality) dramatize the moment when young people realize that, in actuality, they are agents and actors as crucial to the outcome of a mission as any adult. It’s the moment that Aldo and his gang assert their agency. 

The summer I saw the movie, I was 11, and also beginning, in increments, to assert myself and think independently of my over-protective parents. Through those experimental excursions (or incursions, actually) into the world of fantasy, where they could not follow me, I carried my rebellion out. It wasn’t the first time I had written stories about people in books or films, nor the first time I had incorporated myself and others from my reality into these stories. The difference was that I was inventing stuff about a film that amused my father but repulsed my mother. Everything about Hornet’s Nest was wrong in her book – the violence, the molestation of the doctor (and subsequent violation and chastisement by the Rock Hudson character!), the children bearing weapons, the death of two of the young characters. It didn’t matter that the anti-war message was plain to see by the end.  My mother detested that movie.

I say “I” but I mean “we” – because my sister was my co-author, co-artist and co-conspirator.

The film culminated in the demolition of the “Dela Norte dam” – with the Diga di Mignano near Lugagnano Val d’Arda representing that massive concrete structure. Although it would have been possible to visit, or just look at, Diga di Mignano from the surrounding hills, I decided to leave it out of the itinerary. Possibly because I’d always been more interested in the boys (especially the smaller ones, as well as brave, doomed Silvio who at the time was the most romantically handsome young man I had ever seen) than Turner’s mission. For them, the breathtakingly violent raid on Reanoto (oh, the enthusiasm with which they greeted the destruction of their own village!) was the climax – the fulfillment of revenge.  

The hamlet in Monticello  is mentioned by several sources online, as is the Castello di Rivalta. The banks of the Torrente Stirone I only know from the location at the top of a call sheet that Dan Keller, or his parents, preserved. I was very lucky to find this on his website.

There is one other filming location that I wish I could visit, but sadly, I have absolutely no idea where it is. It is a cluster of buildings, with a low wall, a flagpole, a square tower and a belfry, that represents another village, where the benevolent Captain von Hecht (Sergio Fantoni) has set up his headquarters. At first I thought this was the Borgo di Rivalta/ Castello di Rivalta southeast of the city of Piacenza, another location associated with the film, but after studying various scenes from the movie, I concluded it was not. Neither is it the hamlet in Monticello (the back buildings, that is).  It is apparently a small village set in a valley (as one can see houses on a ridge at one point, and the diagonal line of mountains in another scene).  In my desperation, I went to an Italian website that listed all the castelli and churches in the Piacenza region, one page per – and Piacenza has a lot of castles and churches. I did not find it. I went to Google Earth and viewed every cluster of buildings in the area around Piacenza, looking for a footprint that would reflect the configuration of buildings in this sequence. This was, literally, looking for a needle in a haystack. Houses in Italy tend to look similar, with their red tiled roofs, though they may have been built centuries apart. It may not have been in Piacenza at all. The foothills of the Appenines are a big place. No, the only way I’ll be able to find it is to gain possession of a name -- a clue, the key.

Sadly, all the adults who were connected to the production have no doubt passed away. There will be others who might hold the key, though. The boys. All 15 were at this location. Some of them are on Facebook, actually, the Italians as well as the English speakers, but I haven’t had the nerve to approach them all. 

But I am overthinking things again, as usual. The truth is, I am still in Denmark, and will be here for some time. But I will post about my quest and my journey, when, hopefully, all is behind me. Wish me luck.

Bing Sitoy: Vandringer

01.05.24 - 31.05.24

Månedens kunst i Kulturhus Måløv

Måløv-kunstneren Bing Sitoy præsenterer “Vandringer”: en udstilling med malerier og tegninger 

Malerierne viser Bing Sitoys fascination af landskaberne omkring Måløv, som hun møder på sine hyppige vandringer – bronzealdergravhøjene, den århundredgamle kirke, moserne, der afspejler himlen, som de gamle så som et overgangssted mellem den jordiske og den åndelige verden. 

Ved siden af disse billeder, der i høj grad er forankret et bestemt sted, er der havlandskaber, hvor hun præsenterer landet og havet som noget tidløst og nærmest abstrakt. 

Billederne er inspireret af Bings barndoms tropiske vandlandskaber og hendes rejser til eksotiske steder. 

Vand findes ofte i hendes malerier, hvad enten det er en dams stille, glasagtige overflade eller det glitrende hav.

Udstillingen rummer også portrætter af kunstnerens familiemedlemmer og venner, udført i en realistisk stil.

"Jeg stræber efter at fange stemningen i øjeblikket, uanset om det er glæden ved en baby, der oplever havet for første gang, eller en ung pige, som er fortabt i sin mobiltelefons verden," fortæller Bing. 

"Jeg er primært en historiefortæller, og hvert maleri føles som et øjeblik i en novelle eller roman. Det menneskelige ansigt er som en bog, hvis vi gider læse den."

Udstillingen består primært af olie- og akrylmalerier og af tegninger i pastelkridt.  

Om Bing Sitoy

Måløv har været Bings hjem siden 2008. 

Hun arbejder som engelsklærer på Studieskolen i København og maler i sin fritid. Inden hun flyttede til Danmark, var hun journalist og litteraturlærer i Filippinerne. 

Hun har udgivet to novellesamlinger og romanen Sweet Haven, som er oversat til dansk med titlen Sweethaven-sagen, oversat af Vagn Plenge, samt børnebogen Nataberne, illustreret af Lilian Brøgger.  

1.-31. maj i den betjente åbningstid

Kulturhus Måløv

Gratis – bare mød op

https://bib.ballerup.dk/arrangementer/godt-og-blandet/bing-sitoy-vandringer

Malacañang Museum Independence Day feature, III (1996)

by Lakambini Sitoy

Photos by Willie Avila

This feature appeared in the Independence Day edition of The Evening Paper (June 12, 1996). I have not been to the Malacañang Palace Museum since. Doubtless it is much changed.  

Third of three parts

The Ferdinand E. Marcos room contains a portrait of the late president as a young man; he stands on a mountain of some sort, one foot confidently up on a rock, as he holds a couple of stone tablets, sort of Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. Above the portrait hangs the seal of the President of the Republic of the Philippines, which no one else but Marcos used. Instead of the traditional merlion, which stood for ultra mares, Spanish dominion over all the seas of the world, is an eagle, Marcos’s personal symbol. 

Marcos was elected to office in 1965, imposed martial law on September 21, 1972, and was deposed in a bloodless coup d'etat on February 1986. His unpopularity in many quarters here and abroad has not been stressed, however. The display is as neutral as those of the other presidents. One thing of interest though, is a blackboard standing in a corner of the room, in approximately the place where the jubilant crowd that burst into Malacañang after the Marcos’s departure found it. Drawn on the blackboard is a map of EDSA, Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame. It was drawn, says Mae Gaffud, by generals loyal to President Marcos shortly before the departure of the president and his aides in February of 1986. When President Ramos takes his guests around personally, he explains how the figures on one side of the board, 300 men in Aguinaldo, 500 in Crame, two tanks, one light anti-aircraft gun, etcetera, were a bloated estimate of the number of personnel and weapons under his command. 

The Macapagal Room is comparatively bare, containing some old photographs, and the portrait of Diosdado Macapagal, fifth president of the Third Philippine Republic, his term running from 1961 to 1965. It is supposed to be a music room; there is a gramophone and an old piano. This was one-half of the bedroom of Ferdinand Marcos. On the ceiling is a circle containing several triangles made out of pieces of wood. Marcuos allegedly believed that the pyramid was a symbol of power and would restore one's health. This room reportedly contains a secret panel hiding the staircase that leads to the back of Kalayaan Hall. 

“Mrs. Evangeline Macapagal is in the process of sending us her husband's memorabilia,” Gaffud says, by way of explaining the sparseness of the Macapagal display. “Her husband wants to have a hand in the selection of each piece.” 

One goes past elevators that lead to the basement, which the Marcos couple used. The elevators are no longer in service. The next room is the President Fidel V. Ramos room, not devoted to memorabilia but displaying gifts from the leaders of various nations, including a pilot's helmet and goggles given to Ramos, in acknowledgement of his role in piloting the nation towards Philippines 2000. The room does not seem to have been designed around any theme. The Foundation plans to put in exhibits that would reflect the programs that Ramos initiated and is spearheading.

The Corazon C. Aquino Room is a welcome relief from all that narra paneling. Its walls are painted white, and before entering it, one goes through a sitting room, also in white, with two contemporary chairs positioned by a lamp shade. On the walls of this room are imposing images from the February 1986 EDSA revolution, which resulted in the overthrow of the Marcoses and Aquino’s assumption of the presidency. The images crackle with life: in one of them, riot police hose down demonstrators at a barricade, in another, then-presidential candidate Aquino is mobbed by supporters as she travels down the street in an open vehicle. Entering the room itself, the first thing one sees is the painting of the EDSA Revolution, mural-like, entitled Inang Bayan and done by Nemi Miranda. On the wall is a bank of framed international magazine covers, all with President Aquino on the cover. The furniture is in tasteful beige. Another object of interest is a sheet of uncut paper money, 500 peso bills bearing the image of Senator Benigno Aquino, her husband, once a possible candidate for the presidency before his assassination in 1983. Mrs. Aquino has personally affixed her signature to each one. 

The Museum ends at the changing exhibit gallery, which overlooks the Atrium. The displays here are personally decided by President Fidel Ramos. The latest exhibits relate to the events that led to the Philippine Revolution in 1898. The last display featured the Philippine flag, the various designs that preceded the current one, and the groups that used them. When foreign dignitaries come to visit, Gaffud explained, the exhibits are changed to reflect the Philippines relations with their home country. 

Beyond the gallery are more halls, but these are used for official business and hence closed to the public. The sounds of an ongoing press conference may reach visitors through the woodwork, tantalizing one with the prospect of running into President Ramos in person, but this possibility is nil. The armed security men who guard this exit seat to that. 

THE MUSEUM is scheduled to reopen following month-long renovations that help to protect the displays from the onslaught of the rains and the annual rising of the Pasig River. Apart from the ravages of nature, the exhibits must be protected from the intrusions of curious viewers. The items are all in the process of being insured. Mae Gaffud stresses that it is not people's money that goes into the repairs, or even into the museum itself. The Malacañang Heritage Foundation is a private, nonprofit organization. On the board of trustees is First Lady Angelita Ramos (Honorary Chairperson), Mr. Cesar N. Sarino (Chairman), Honorable Robert de Ocampo (Vice chairman), Dr. Jaime Laya (Treasurer), National Artist Napoleon Abueva, Dr. David Barradas and Mr. Cid Reyes (Trustees). 

The Foundation is supported by donations from Land Bank of the Philippines, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, Philippine National Bank, Department of Tourism, San Miguel Corporation and others. 

The bulk of its income, however, comes from the guided tours: guides ferry from 1000 to 2000 people a day through the Museum during peak season, which is October to February. These are mostly school children and tourists, Japanese, American and European. Gaffud notes that some Filipino adults have gone in completely blind, knowing next to nothing of their country's leaders. The Malacañang Palace Museum has been criticized for the spareness of its display, and perhaps its detractors are correct. But as donations and memorabilia come in, these voices may go silent. At the moment, it seems to appeal most to the very young, particularly the school children who come in droves from all over the country, as far down South as Davao and Cotabato. Hopefully they will carry the images of the museum with them to adulthood. Perhaps the connection between this nation's people and its history and leaders, severed for many generations, is on its way toward renewal.

***

 copyright 1996, 2024  Lakambini Sitoy

Malacañang Museum Independence Day feature, II (1996)

 

by Lakambini Sitoy

Photos by Willie Avila

This feature appeared in the Independence Day edition of The Evening Paper (June 12, 1996). I have not been to the Malacañang Palace Museum since. Doubtless it is much changed.  

CONTINUED from February 17 2024 post.

SERGIO Osmeña’s room, the sitting room, contains more copies of old furniture, upholstered in charming red and ivory brocade. There is a Viennese chandelier on the ceiling and an ornate carved mirror next to some framed newspaper clippings. One of these depicts the famous Leyte Landing, General Douglas MacArthur slogging through waves to reach the beach and Osmeña on his right. Osmeña became the second President of the Commonwealth Government. He was elected Vice President of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935 and went on exile with Quezon at the outbreak of World War II. He assumed the Presidency at Quezon’s death, holding office until 1946. One of his most significant contributions to history was the signing of the Hare-Hawes Cutting Law, which promised the country's future independence from the United States. 

Apart from the Leyte Landing clipping (the Foundation is trying to procure the original negative of this photograph from the archives of Time magazine) there seems to be little of historical interest in the Osmeña Room. and the museum is still awaiting more memorabilia from his family. 

The wooden panels of the Osmeña Room are painted off-white and the floor, like in the other rooms before it, is of parquet. At first glance, the ceiling seems to be of basket work. But a closer look reveals it to be of pieces of split narra woven together, a time consuming but attractive piece of work. The rooms previously visited are decorated in this fashion. These had been the private quarters of the three Marcos children, Imee, Irene and Ferdinand Jr.

The next room is far more opulent, an effect created by the narra panelling, the great crystal chandelier from Vienna (the largest in the collection), and the leather-bound books that line the wall. This room is the Laurel library, housing the memorabilia of Jose P. Laurel, who was president for a brief period (1943-1944) during the Japanese occupation. The books in this room are part of the Palace collection and seem to be quite recent. Some are paperback, and there are a few that seem to be downright pulpy. In a row upon a counter that runs flush against the wall of books are framed quotes from Laurel’s speeches and writings. On a tabletop are editions of some of the books that Laurel penned. One gets the impression that Laurel was far more literary than the other presidents, but this could be because his memorabilia has been organized to complement the purported function of the room. There are more black and white photographs from Laurel’s term arranged along a free-standing board. 

Arranging numerous images from each administration has its downsides, as well as its pluses. On the positive end, the numerous uncaptioned photos add to the effect that the Malacañang Heritage Foundation, no doubt was aiming for, a museum that would resemble the apartments of a well-to-do family. A series of elegantly furnished rooms, each with its own function. The memorabilia would be an almost incidental bonus then, and captions on photographs in incredibly poor taste. But the museum is not a private home. The Foundation has a mission: to give life to the collective Philippine past for the benefit of the great majority of Filipinos who are now estranged from it, and a tour guide can only do so much with her memorized spiel. Here, at least for the moment, are photographs without a context and consequently, a dozen presidents without much of a history. President Ramos's words on the Malacañang Heritage Foundation brochure ring with irony. “Our heritage is our strength. It is our link with the past. It mirrors our national soul and our aspirations. It is the embodiment of everything that is essentially Filipino.” The situation is not irremediable. Memorabilia is trickling in, according to Mae Gaffud. It comes from the National Library, the foundations of the respective presidents, from their surviving relatives. The museum is not a bad job at all for something that had to be built from air. 

A MAGNIFICENTLY carved archway over the door leading from the Laurel Room to the Aguinaldo room is a foretaste of what lies ahead: the presidential rooms that used to be the private suites of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. The Aguinaldo room, panelled in narra, used to be the palace chapel, and is dark and simple. Running almost its entire length is a heavy table of wood, supported by four ornately-carved legs. This is a genuine piece of goods: a conference table believed to have been the one on which the Malolos Constitution was signed. It is on long-term loan from the Central Bank, and is so heavy that it had to be transported in five pieces and reassembled in the room. 

Mounted on a desk at one end is a sabre in its velvet-lined case, a replica of a weapon that belonged to Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, President of the Philippine Revolutionary Government and President of the First Philippine Republic. Above it is one of the original battle flags used by his men in the Philippine Revolution. The flag was discovered in 1982 in the basement of the town hall of West Hartford, Connecticut. After Aguinaldo was captured by Gen. Arthur MacArthur, the American soldiers looted the countryside with impunity, and the Malacañang Heritage Foundation believes that the flag was taken to the States as one of the spoils of war. This flag resembles the contemporary Philippine flag in design. The red side has faded to a sepia tint and the blue half is now slate grey. Water stains do not quite hide the three stars and the sun. 

Over at the other end of the room are more old photographs, including one of Aguinaldo leading the parade that took place before the Malolos Convention started, as well as one of the convention delegates. 

The Aguinaldo chamber opens into an anteroom devoted to the First Ladies of Malacañang. Five ternos are on display here; they belonged to Mrs. Pacencia Laurel, Mrs. Luz Banzon-Magsaysay, Ms. Vicky Quirino, the second wife of President Aguinaldo, and Mrs. Imelda Marcos. None of these, sadly, were worn at (any) president's inauguration. The (actual) inaugural gowns are now the property of Mr. Adoy Escudero and are on display at Villa Escudero, a resort in Quezon Province. 

Vicky Quirino became the First Lady to her widower father at age sixteen; at age eighteen, she married and wore the gown now on display. It has a long satin train and a tiny waist. Imelda Marcos’s gown is deceptively subdued, but it is made of pina fiber and is purely of callado work. Callado’d fabric is punctured in many places, the loose ends of thread tied meticulously around each opening to seal it. The result looks like delicate netting. It takes days of skilled labor to produce a gown with this feature. 

Following this room is what used to be a walk-in closet large enough to hold a table and four chairs and a mirrored cabinet, with ample room to spare. This is a changing exhibit gallery. The latest display was devoted to the Dalagang Filipina and there were daguerrotypes of pure Filipino, Chinese-Filipino and Spanish-Filipino young women on the wall. In general, the exhibits chronicle life in turn-of-the-century Philippines, a period of our history that is much dwelt on, even romanticized. 

When the viewer steps into the Quirino room, he cannot help but draw breath. The vaulted ceiling is carved of narra; rococo cherubs, birds and butterflies compete for the viewer's attention. And roses seem to be everywhere, spilling out of vases, creeping up the ceiling, forming a dense border around the lower edge of the vault. A huge chandelier carved of the same hardwood seems to drip from the middle of the dome. The carvings look as rich and delicate as chocolate. Skilled carvers from Betis, Pampanga, directed by master carver Juan Flores, took 180 days to decorate the whole ceiling. 

This huge confection, of course, is part of the bedroom of former First Lady Imelda Marcos. It comes as a shock to discover that behind some narra panels put up by the Foundation is another room just like it, chandelier, roses and all. This is the second half of Mrs. Marcos’s bedroom; it now houses her late husband's memorabilia. 

The rooms give one a claustrophobic feeling, perhaps because they are so dark and air-tight. There are absolutely no windows. The narra panelling, according to Mae Gaffud, was stripped of the deep brown veneer that dated back to the Marcos administration, to allow the natural wood coloring to show through. Even so, the room resembles a chocolate tomb. 

President Elpidio Quirino’s memorabilia are quite engulfed by the decor. A painting by Fernando Amorsolo, who also did the portrait of Manuel A. Roxas, has been donated by the Quirino family, and there is a bust of the president done by the National  Artist for Sculpture Guillermo Tolentino. The antique bed from Vigan that stands on the platform where Mrs. Marcos's bed used to be, is just a Malacañang Heritage Foundation acquisition. The photographs of Quirino abroad, on some of his official trips, are more authentic. Quirino succeeded Roxas, becoming 2nd President of the Third Philippine Republic. 

(continued in the next post)

Malacañang Museum Independence Day feature (1996)

by Lakambini Sitoy

Photos by Willie Avila

This feature appeared in the Independence Day edition of The Evening Paper (June 12, 1996). I have not been to the Malacañang Palace Museum since. Doubtless it is much changed.  


FOR SIX years after the Edsa Revolution of 1986 the public associated the words “Malacañang Palace Museum” with the personal effects of deposed president Ferdinand E. Marcos and his family. Visitors came to gawk at the array of Imelda R. Marcos's possessions and the opulence of her private quarters. They ventured up the Grand Staircase with its red carpet and  basketwork wood panelling, into rooms that had been off limits to most of the public for 20 years. They streamed into the palace out of curiosity, perhaps also in an attempt to demystify the administration that had changed the fortunes of an entire country. 

Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Corazon C. Aquino had decided not to live or hold office in the palace, opening the Marcos family quarters as a museum that would be a testament to how the former chief executive had lived and worked. When Fidel V. Ramos was elected to the presidency in 1992, his administration decided to retain the museum, but focused instead on the eleven presidents who had preceded him: Emilio F. Aguinaldo (1898-1901), Manuel L. Quezon (1934-1944), Sergio Osmeña Sr. (1944-1946), Jose P. Laurel Sr. (1943-1944), Manuel A. Roxas (1946-1948), Elpidio R. Quirino (1948-1953), Ramon F. Magsaysay (1953-1957), Carlos P. Garcia (1957-1961), Diosdado P. Macapagal (1961-1965), Marcos (1965-1986) and Aquino (1986-1992).

The change was motivated not so much by the desire to bury the spectre of the Marcos administration, but by the need to call forth other ghosts, those of the past presidents who had been consigned to dormant history and revived only in the few months every year that their names are repeated in grade school. In June 1992, President Ramos closed the Malacañang Palace Museum to viewers while it underwent major reformatting. The 11 presidents were assigned a room each, the order, determined by lot and not chronology. Portraits, furniture and memorabilia from different sources were installed. The museum reopened in February 1993.

A guided tour of the Museum takes one first to the Atrium on the ground floor, one of the rooms constructed during the 1978-1979 reconfiguration of Malacañang Palace, which the Marcoses ordered in time for their silver wedding anniversary. The vaulted glass roof allows natural light to fall on a fountain, on groupings of tropical plants and, in between the foliage, carved wooden statues. There is a carabao, the figure of a young woman, a fertility god. The hallway that encloses the Atrium on all sides is lined with carvings from Paete, Laguna, which are based on a mural by Carlos "Botong" Francisco. They depict scenes from Philippine history. From the edge of the atrium, one can see the 2nd floor exhibit gallery, which looks down on the sunlit room. Museum tour groups go up the red carpeted staircase, which used to be lined with portraits of European explorers done by unknown 19th century Spanish artists. These paintings have been in the Palace since the time of the Governors General. Like many of the other pieces of furniture and memorabilia, the exact date and manner of their acquisition are unknown, since records have been lost. Now, however, the paintings have been moved to one of the upstairs rooms excluded in the museum tour and only the staircase and its two sentries standing at attention, in dress uniforms patterned after those worn in the Philippine Revolution, greet the viewer.

The first president in the tour is Ramon Magsaysay. The Magsaysay room contains a portrait above a cabinet, a carved wooden bench of Philippine origin, and a round table. It is strangely bare. The row of five vintage photographs above the bench is uncaptioned. In an anteroom are more photographs and a stand, and a barong tagalog that belonged to the former president. Visitors learn from the guide that Magsaysay ordered the barong tagalog to be de rigeur at all official functions. Oddly, none of his photographs show Magsaysay in this garment.

A shoe mounted in a glass case in the same anteroom is quite disconcerting. It is a two-tone shoe with an upper of canvas and black leather at the heal and toe, a style that is back in fashion. The grommets which hold the laces are ripped. This was a shoe that Magsaysay was wearing when he died in a plane crash in 1957. It was the only item of his clothing recovered from the wreckage.

“People can relate most to the shoe,” says Mae Gaffud, manager of the Malacañang Heritage Foundation, which put together the current museum display. Things like his barong tagalog and that photograph astride his favorite horse Victory make him more of a real person to visitors.” The Foundation hopes to stock the museum with similarly personal items in the hope of reconstructing the former presidents as flesh and blood entities, not just dour personages in history text. At present it is arranging with the president's son, Senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr, to procure the president's riding boots and saddle. These will no doubt increase the interest value of a display that fascinates visitors as it is; Magsaysay, says Gaffud, is the most well-known of the presidents who preceded Marcos and Aquino.

Separated from the Magsaysay display by a stretch of corridor is a chamber dedicated to Carlos P. Garcia who succeeded Magsaysay, flying home from Australia to be sworn in shortly after his predecessor’s death. Garcia was a sportsman and so the foundation designed this Chamber as a game room. The first thing that greets the eye is the monumental billiard table, carved of narra and donated rather appropriately, by Vice-President Joseph Estrada. It looks antique, but isn't; it was donated in 1996. Almost all the pieces of furniture in the museum were fashioned by Filipino craftsmen and patterned after vintage pieces. The chess sets, about seven of them, actually belonged to the former president, who was an avid player. They never fail to catch people's attention, Gaffud says. In this era of video entertainment, chess is regarded as a rather stodgy business. The sets remind the younger set of what recreation was like in Garcia's time, the late 1950s.

In addition, the game room displays a set of golf clubs. There's also a board hewn out of stone for playing sungka, a traditional Filipino game. Visitors retrace their steps to the Magsaysay room and from there walk down a corridor whose walls contain colorized photographs and engravings of Malacañang Palace, spanning two centuries from the time it was a stone house in the country with a bathhouse for those who wanted a leisurely dip in the Pasig River, up to the present day. Nothing of the original structure remains. In fact, the wing of the Palace which houses the Museum is less than 20 years old. The 1978-1979 renovations actually resulted in entirely new structures, of which the wing is one.

This corridor leads to the Quezon room. Off it is another corridor leading to the study, which has been devoted to the memorabilia of Manuel A. Roxas, the last President of the Commonwealth Government and the 1st President of the Third Philippine Republic. The Roxas portrait that hangs on the wall was done by Fernando Amorsolo. Two flags flank the portrait. One is the Philippine standard, the other the flag of the Philippine Commonwealth. The Museum foundation is making arrangements to have both of them framed.

A glass-doored case houses old books, some of them dating back to the 16th century and bound in what looks like vellum. In front of the Roxas portrait is a bank of black and white photographs. A remarkable shot shows Roxas striding confidently toward the camera, Manuel L. Quezon to his left and Sergio Osmeña to his right. They are wearing lightweight summer suits (americanas these were called) and hats, and are apparently in good humor. The photograph has no date. None of the photographs have dates. Another photo is just a blurred black and white shot of a crowd massed around two flags. This is a memento of the transfer of sovereignty from the United States to the Philippines on July 4, 1946. The Philippine flag is going up, the American coming down. It takes a good eye to spot this photo though, and to pinpoint its historical significance.

The furniture in this room was procured only last year. Still, the long conference table and polished mahogany desk exude a quaint charm in the glow of the Viennese chandelier. The chairs are varnished in black with bronze trimmings. An atmosphere of wealth and quiet dignity pervades this room, as it does with most of the first half dozen rooms in the museum. The Malacañang Heritage Foundation is to be commended for achieving this look from scratch.

When the foundation took over the museum in 1992, they inherited the furniture put there by Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Most of these were of foreign origin, and some were quite opulent, showy. Obviously, these ran counter to the Foundation's intentions: to assemble a look for each room that would reflect the furniture and decor that a particular president would have lived with. The Marcos furniture is now in storage along with Mrs. Marcos's personal positions, including her infamous collection of shoes. 

THE anteroom devoted to the memorabilia of Manuel L. Quezon was once the private sitting room of Imee and Irene Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos’s daughters. Quezon became the 1st President of the Commonwealth Government, holding office from 1935 to 1944, and holds the added distinction of being the first Filipino president to reside in Malacañang Palace. During World War Two, he moved the seat of government from Bataan to Corregidor to Australia and finally to Washington, DC. He died of tuberculosis while in exile in New York. The Quezon Room was funded by the San Miguel Corporation, which is co-owned by the Soriano family. Don Andres Soriano was the Secretary of Finance in the Quezon war cabinet; a photo of him hangs above a sculpture by Graciano Nepomuceno entitled Inang Bayan, which symbolizes the Philippines as ravaged by the Second World War. The sculpture depicts a dead woman with an infant trying to suckle at her breast.

Two items from this display actually date back to Quezon’s term and were used in the palace by the president himself. One is a console, the other a cabinet to the right of the Quezon portrait painted by Leon Burton. They are attributed to the inmates of the Iwahig Penal colony and are impressed with the seal of the Commonwealth government. The set of chairs in the center of the room, which are of wood and rattan, are old as well, but not as old as the first two pieces.

Unlike most of the other presidents’ memorabilia, the Garcia golf clubs, for instance, these pieces of furniture were not procured by the Malacañang Heritage Foundation, but were and still are part of the Palace collection. The official portraits of the different presidents have the same status. Visitors may wonder at this point why so little of the original palace furniture remains. No one can say exactly when the furniture, the official china and the silverware began to vanish, but sources say they were given away during the Marcos administration at about the time of the 1978 to 1979 renovations. They have reputedly been distributed among private individuals. This gradual erasure of so much of the palace legacy is responsible for the bareness of most of the rooms today, and the resemblance to empty stage sets. 

(The feature article continues in my next blog post)

Sunday Inquirer, May 23, 1999: "The Latest Palanca Award winners: a literary feast."

 

Blast from the past. Me in the Sunday Inquirer magazine with other Philippine/Manila literati, May 23, 1999: "The Latest Palanca Award winners: a literary feast."