The Puntone and the Bust of Enrico Pea

The Puntone is the meeting point of the Serra torrent with the Vezza river, from which the Versilia river is born; the latter, after crossing the municipalities of Seravezza, Pietrasanta and Forte dei Marmi (which, together with the municipality of Stazzema, constitute the so-called Historic Versilia) flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea in the locality of Cinquale. The meeting point of these two waterways was located in the current Piazza Carducci, called Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II until 1927 but, due to the repeated floods that devastated the city center (during the nineteenth century those of 1824, 1845, 1885 are remembered), the course of the river was diverted and the Puntone was rebuilt in its current location. At the Puntone you can admire I Fiumi, a bronze work by the Swiss sculptor Cordelia von den Steinen, dedicated to the point of confluence of the two waterways, and the marble bust created in 1995 by Enzo Pasquini dedicated to Enrico Pea from Seravezza, writer, poet and theatre impresario.

Enrico Antonio Luigi Pea was born in Seravezza in 1881. It was the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, whom he met in Alexandria, Egypt, who convinced him to dedicate himself to writing by publishing his first work, Fole, a collection of prose and verse (1910). His homeland, the places of his childhood and local traditions frequently recur in Pea's works, particularly in Il Moscardino where he describes the popular life of Versilia with singular expressive force. Thanks to Pea, the ancient tradition of the oral singing of Maggio was also recovered, which consisted of rustic popular theatre shows with rhyming texts on a predominantly chivalric theme that were performed outdoors, in costume, with musical accompaniment.

On the opposite side of the road is the marble sculpture Serra e Vezza, by Gian Carlo Biagi, created in 1986 and dedicated to the point of confluence of the two waterways.