The View from Bertinoro, Italy

My trip to Italy last summer was centered on presenting at a scientific "summer school," a one week intensive course of lectures. This meeting was held in an old monastery turned conference center on the top of a steep hill, in the little town of Bertinoro --- the town being almost entirely confined to the sides of this steep hill. The town, however, is almost entirely invisible in the view from the window of my room in the monastery, hidden below the steepness of the hill, so that I just looked out across the rich plains of Northern Italy.