Italy iv--Belforte Tower, Vernazza.

Estimates vary. Some claim its origins are in the 11th century, some say 12th, some say 13th. It did require and receive rehabilitation a couple decades ago, but the Belforte Tower remains an icon, a symbol of Vernazza's charm and beauty on the very spot it was created a thousand years ago. 

That it's military fortification goes without question. If you follow the winding steps up to the tower, the view is extraordinary, although magnificent views of the villages of the Cinque Terra are--I'm not lying--a dime a dozen. Five villages--plus a tiny suburb or two--cling so precariously to the mountains they inhabit that you can't help but wonder what mad man, a thousand years ago, determined the area inhabitable and, more than that, worth defending.

The Cinque Terra are so picturesque that they've become their own national park. You could arm a cloud of seagulls with Instamatics, set those little cameras danging from their feet, then loose those gulls above the coastline, and an hour later collect tens of thousands of picture postcards. Even in clouds, the Cinque Terra is can't miss photography.

So I'm up there when a young couple, one of many, is there too. Just now, around Belforte Tower, there's some fencing, keeping people off; and the girl is wondering about that, about whether sometime you could actually climb right up to the very top of the tower and watch for pirate enemies. 

"I imagine," her significant other said. "Right now, it's under construction."

I couldn't help giggling, not at him but at the odd word choice, the idea of that age-old fortification being "under construction." It's a thousand years old. 

Then he told her he wanted to take her picture. Soon enough, she was posing, as thousands do every day in Italy--at the St. Peter's Square, The Uffizi, the Vatican Museums. On any one day in Italy, a million or more pictures are taken, a number that vastly exceeds the number shot in the first hundred years of photographic history.

And all those smart-phone portraits have made people fancy pose-rs. By sheer repetition, young women have learned how to stand. On bridges over Venetian canals, a dozen at a time look straight out of Vogue. 

So did she, this young woman, an American--right here at the wall around the tower, nothing but sea for background.

The wind was blowing just enough to toss her hair a bit and reveal what I hadn't noticed before: a bit of a baby bump. She stood there posing, clearly and proudly with child. 

The weather was maybe a touch on the dreary side that day, cloudy and overcast with intermittent drizzle that did little more than wet the stones. But somehow, posed there beneath a tower constructed, stone by stone, a thousand years ago, the image of brand new life a'comin seemed to me to be worth a thousand words. I wish I'd have caught it.

I'm sure he did.