Daniele & Arianna

In 1905, the Giro d'Italia hadn't started yet, the Tour de France was only two years old, gears were a rare commodity, and Daniele Tatta, a twenty-seven year old from Itri, a small village perched on the hills outside Rome, was definitely not a professional cyclist.

He was a tailor and a huge lover of opera, so much so that almost two decades later he would name his daughters after Wagner's Valkyrie, Siglinda and Brunilde, and Hamlet's heroine, Ofelia.

In 1905 a twenty-seven year old man should have been thinking about much more serious stuff than bikes: start a family, have a steady income, feed his children.

Not him. He was a poet, a pioneer, an eccentric, the original wanderlust.

Avid traveler, amateur cyclist, writer.

After leaving my native Genoa in 2010, I have lived and traveled in half of Europe, various countries in East Africa, the United States and Asia, moving a lot and staying a little.

Since I discovered Daniele's story, I felt his thirst for adventure, his love for travel, the strength to not necessarily do what others expect of you, as an integral part of me and of the impulse that made me leave time and again from places that I called home.

I need to feel my muscles burn, my lungs burst, sweat dripping down my back and drying in the wind. To understand who he was, and where I come from. Perhaps, also, to understand where to go and when to stop.