Ferrari, Pavarotti and Armani and some of the finest pasta dishes in the world. Our reporter JAMES RUDDY travels to Modena to delve into it all
James with the 200mph Ferrari he drove in ModenaLONG after you return home from a few days in Italy’s aptly-named Motor Valley, your memory will be sending you glowing images of the food, music, fashion and, most of all, the supercars you have admired.
After my brief journey there, my senses are still recalling the body-pulling acceleration of the 200-miles-an-hour Ferrari 488 Challenge I drove round a twisting racetrack (at around 122 miles and hour!).
And then there was the long-lingering taste of that tortellini in 36-month-old parmesan sauce served up by three Michelin Star chef Massimo Bottura.
And, if all that wasn’t enough, there was that memory of the sheer joy of being shown round the home of the late great classical singer Luciano Pavarotti by his lovely widow, Nicoletta.
Little wonder that for a few days every year, more than 70,000 visitors descend on this unique epicentre of artisan craftsmanship, based on the pretty medieval city of Modena, and they have the time of their lives.
Many of the visitors to the annual Motor Valley Festival (next year’s is from May 22-25) are outright car enthusiasts, but many more are just fascinated by a place where design, engineering, cuisine and the aura of human excellence fill the air.
You can spend a few days in Motor Valley at any time of year and tour the factories, museums and racetracks in a region where, they claim quite rightly, ‘speed was born’.
In just a few days, I found myself – someone who has never had much interest in cars – captivated by the beauty and history of the Ferrari Factory and Museum (including the house where, Enzo himself, the great engineer, was born in 1898 ) as well as centres devoted to showing the life and works of two other dream car makers, Pagani and Lamborghini.
In fact, in this beautifully sculpted green stretch of the Po Valley, there are more than 13 automotive museums and a dozen private sports car collections as well as several other factories, including Maserati and Ducati, the iconic motor cycle builders.
Classic Ferrari car line-up in ModenaBut, not only that, the region of Emilia Romagna as a whole (tucked neatly between Milan and Florence) has plenty of non-motoring nearby attractions, from the Verdi opera, parmesan cheese and sumptuous ham of Parma to the red roofs, soaring buildings and designer shops of the regional capital, Bologna, where, at the glittering Galleria Cavour, you will find the likes of Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Armani, as well as, occasionally, such celebrity shoppers as Pep Guardiola and Erling Haaland of Manchester City fame.
The leaning tower of BolognaIt was to the latter city that I flew from Manchester and checked in at the Hotel Majestic, where I sampled the classical local dish (that earned the city the nickname ‘The Fat’) cotoletta alla Bolognese – made with veal fried in lard, doused in meat stock and garnished with prosciutto, parmesan cheese and tomato sauce. Gorgeous, but don’t tell your cardiac consultant!
A guided tour revealed a city packed with historic and ecclesiastical treasures (like its worryingly leaning tower – not unlike that at Pisa), the quirkiest being the three arrows stuck in the ceiling of corte isolani, where legend tells of three bygone brigands, who were about to kill a local tycoon, but got distracted by a naked girl at a window and fired their arrows into the roof.
But it was to Modena that I travelled and spent the most time, absorbing the motoring delights of a place that – since Ferrari’s first days – seems to have drawn in countless car-building wizards like bees to a honeypot.
The buzz (literally) of countless petrolheads, young and old, is noticeable even outside festival time. But this lovely historic city is a treat in itself with its medieval UNESCO World Heritage status buildings, including its Romanesque cathedral and its 17th century ducal palace.
With a university established as far back as 1175 – one of the oldest in Italy – the city boasts over 20,000 students who bring a lively vibe to its bars and trattorias.
Alice Parilla shows off the finest Modena balsamic vinegar at the Opera 02 restaurantAnd in the surrounding countryside, you can find small redbrick towns and villages in a land of rolling hills, backed by mountains and the flat green Po Valley plains, lined with pine tree avenues.
There you will find ‘pinch yourself’ dreamy restaurants like Opera 02, with terraces and an open-air pool looking out over the vineyards and hamlets of Levizzano Rangone, filled with white-walled houses bristling with red tiled roofs. The cuisine is as sensational as the position.
Opera 02 restaurant with a stunning viewFood-wise, the peak point of my trip came when I met up with three Michelin-starred chef Massimo Bottura, Modena-born, at his beautifully restored farmhouse and restaurant, Casa Maria Luigia, where we toured his supercar and motor cycle collection before tucking in to the world’s finest Tortellino in Crema Di Parmigiano. A taste explosion!
Naturally, you can’t visit Modena without studying its balsamic vinegar, which abounds throughout the area. It’s clear that almost everyone who is born locally has an attic which contains the necessary barrels which are used to produce the finest vinegar in a transferring and ageing process that can last up to 25 years.
In fact, the first steps to create that fine vinegar often starts with the arrival of a baby in a family. The father obtains the barrels, boils down the grape ‘must’ and spends the next 10, 15 or 25 years drawing and topping up the precious liquid from barrel to barrel until it is ready to become a dowry presented when the child, male or female, grows up and is married.
That end product is heavily protected by EU regulations, unlike the cheaper balsamic vinegar we might buy at our local supermarket which has been blended with white wine vinegar,
Glorious architecture in downtown BolognaFascinating as all that was, the high point of my visit had to be the couple of hours I spent chatting with Nicoletta Mantovani, the widow of another ‘local boy’ Luciano Pavarotti, who died in 2007.
Remarried four years ago to a local financial adviser, she lives in Bologna, where her and Luciano’s daughter, Alice, is studying and working, and returns to Modena regularly to show visitors, like me, round the house she shared with the world-famous tenor and their family – now a museum packed with so much that he loved and witnessed in his sparkling career.
Their huge bed (he was normally around 25 stones), countless photographs with the great and good, letters from Princess Diana, the weighing scales in the ensuite bathroom that have been known to flicker, untouched, to his normal weight and then fall back to zero – as if he is contacting the woman he loved deeply and was married to for 15 years.
Their house was a treasure trove of fascination. He sang My Way with Sinatra, who told him: “My Way will be Our Way from now on.” He sang with Tom Jones and Lionel Ritchie and created a refugee school with Bono in Bosnia, as well as others in Guatemala and a charity foundation for children.
The museum, she tells me, is her way of keeping his legacy burning brightly and it certainly paints the clear picture of a man who, like his home town, was bursting with love of life, and music, and food and people. And fabulous cars of course! Try it for yourself.
James with Pavarotti's widow Nicoletta Mantovani, outside the Modena house museumPANEL OUT
For more information on Motor Valley as well as Bologna and Modena generally, her are the best links:
https://www.motorvalley.it/en/ and https://emiliaromagnaturismo.it/en
For the Hotel Majestic in Bologna, go to : https://grandhotelmajestic.duetorrihotels.com/ and for the comfortable and central Milano Palace in Modena, it’s https://www.vittoriahotels.it/milanopalacehotel/
Where to eat:
Osteria Bottega: https://www.osteriabottega.it/
Ristorante Cavallino: https://www.ferrari.com/it-IT/ristorante-cavallino
Opera O2: https://www.opera02.it/
Osteria Rubbiara: https://www.acetaiapedroni.it/en/
For prices and other details, go to: https://www.visitmodena.it/en and https://galleriacavour.it/experiences/
Looking for airport parking, hotels and lounges? Holiday Extras offer major savings compared to prices on the gate. Go to https://www.holidayextras.com/ or call 0800 316 5678.
For further information go to
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