One of our favourite places for lunch is Passignano, a town on Lake Trasimeno. It is an half hour, uncomfortable twisty drive over the hill at Gosperinni, but the journey is always worthwhile. The town is picturesque, facing the lake, with plentiful parking and many good restaurants serving a variety of great Italian food, many speciallising in sea and freshwater fish dishes. We have returned several times for a particular prawn and truffle cream spaghetti.

The statutory castle overlooks the town and has excellent views across the lake to Isola Maggiore, the second largest island in the lake. Ferries take you across to this island in 25 minutes as well as criss-crossing the lake to other towns nearby.

The town is geared to tourism with lake front hotels, ice cream parlours, restaurants, and beaches, but interestingly, before the Second Word War and for some years afterwards, it was also the location of an aircraft manufacturer, Società Aeronautica Italiana or S.A.I. established in 1922. The company went through several changes in ownership until it closed in the early 1950s. Surprisingly, bearing in mind that seaplanes were very popular in the 1920s and 1930s and the factory was located on the lake front, they mainly made small single engined landplanes. There are plaques commemorating the estabishment of a a seaplane pilot school in 1917 and another plaque by the lake for the students and instructors, who lost their lives. The main building still stands and has been in use, but the main factory buildings are in a very dilapidated state. The main building will be incorporated into a housing development.

Looking at the names on the plaque on the S.A.I. factory to commemorate the establishment of a seaplane pilot school earlier in 1917. I web searched the names mentioned on a whim and found that someone of the same name, Anselmo Cesaroni raced and hill-climbed a 1914 Mercedes relatively successfully in 1924 and 1925 including races in Perugia, which is close by. There is also a Strada Anselmo Cesaroni in the town of Magione, also in Umbria. I then found an Italian site for the Castiglione del Lago Flying Club, another town on the lake. Using Google Translate, it seems that he was a pioneer of Italian aviation establishing the first seaplane flying schools and that S.A.I.'s planes were test flown at the airfield. Finally, I found a reference to a Count Anselmo Cesaroni and wife Contessa Adriana Massaria, who owned a farm in Kenya, where Adriana died in 1966. There is something rather glamorous, but typical of a time where an Italian Count pioneers aviation as one of the first pilots and then later turns his hand to race cars, before leaving Mussolini's Italy for a new life in Africa...Perhaps these is a book in this story.