02 - Via Zongo

Sir Thomas Jackson is horrified upon his arrival at the inn that hosts him, the Albergo Zongo, in the street of the same name. The Gothic tones sharpen: “They made us get off at a door that seemed to lead into a cave: our inn, they told us.

By the light of a single lamp hidden behind the corner, we entered a large, vaulted, ground-floor hovel that smelled of wine and was cluttered with barrels. Careful where we put our feet, since the structure had disappeared of straw and manure, we reached the base of an immense staircase, worthy of a giant’s castle, which we climbed with some difficulty because we came across two peasant women who were carrying the innkeeper in their arms. (…)

The rooms, like the staircase, were also of disproportionate size. The room where I stayed with my wife was square, forty-five feet on each side, and the single candle that illuminated it cast our giant shadows on the very high vault. It was like sleeping under the dome of St. Paul's."

In short, Jackson arrives in a kind of bed and breakfast, one of the few in Pesaro; it is never registered as a hotel, but always as a house with three shops, which were on the ground floor.

But perhaps it had not escaped the traveler that the street had already been famous for a crime story, the assassination of the Marquis Vincenzo Baviera, which occurred on October 13, 1760. In the Pesaro chronicle by Domenico Bonamini it was written: "To the horror of the entire city, the barbarity of the mortal wound inflicted on the Marquis Vincenzo Baviera by leaving the same knife in his stomach, near the door of the Zongo house at two o'clock in the morning by an unknown hand, was heard, which despite all the diligence the Government has made has never been discovered. This gentleman died mourned by all, leaving it to everyone to guess every year, at his own discretion, the cause of his unhappy fate".

Equally interesting and a little mysterious is the story of the Zongo family. They were related to the noble Hondedei family that had settled in Pesaro since the fourteenth century and had given rise to three branches: Hondedei, Zongo and Zerbini.

Among its members was Giuseppe Zongo Hondedei (1597-1674) who became bishop of distant Frejus, in France, in close contact with the infamous Cardinal Mazarin, the eminence grise of the king of France, whom he met while he was a theology student in Rome and of whom he became a friend and secretary.

The latter wanted him with him in France (1646) and entrusted him with important diplomatic tasks in Portugal, Spain and Germany and various affairs that the crown of France had in Italy. Then the “kingdom” of Mazarin was shattered: on February 2, 1651 the Duke of Orleans, uncle of the twelve-year-old King Louis XIV, made public his break with Cardinal Mazarin who fled Paris and took refuge with the Prince Elector of Cologne.

After the death of Mazarin, of whom Zongo was the executor, the Sun King preferred to remove Zongo from court, appointing him bishop of the ancient but very peripheral diocese of Frejus-Toulon, where he died in 1674. The chronicles report various curiosities about the life of our aspiring prelate.

In 1615, when Giuseppe Zongo was eighteen, he alternated the study of sacred texts with fun and parties, of which a city like Bologna, where he studied, was not lacking: he kept the friends he left behind informed of the beautiful things he had seen, who reciprocated with news of the Della Rovere court of Pesaro, where the love for theatrical performances was also very much alive.

When Zongo then moved to Rome, well integrated into the Papal Curia, he continued to frequent the local nobility and its sumptuous parties, which he describes in his letters with great attention to detail.

A young Zongo, instead, the countess Teresa Ondedei Zongo, made Monaldo Leopardi fall in love, who was tied to Pesaro because of his grandmother, who was a member of the Mosca family.