The Real Story of Pinocchio Tells No Lies | Travel

The town of Collodi, Italy, about 45 miles west of Florence, is set on a slope behind a fabulous 17th-century villa. The garden, built as a kind of fantasy pleasure park for the Garzoni family and their noble guests, offers terraces, flower beds, grand staircases, splashing fountains and antique marble statues surrounding the Baroque villa. Walk through the tunnel under the villa and follow the path up the hill, and the stone houses of Collodi speak to a very different reality. Ascending its precipitously steep cobblestone main street, you come to a small piazza with communal sinks for laundry. The town is older than the villa and was probably originally built on the hilltop for purposes of strategic defense. It is where the working-class people lived, the ones who tended the nobility’s villa and gardens. It’s hard to know what these laborers were thinking as they trudged back up the hill after a long day of working at the villa. It is probably fair to say they were tired.

In the first half of the 19th century, a young boy named Carlo Lorenzini, originally from Florence, spent stretches of his childhood living here with relatives, and later, when he became a writer, he took Carlo Collodi as his pen name. He wrote political essays and satire for adults, and then, in his 50s, turned his attention to children. The Story of a Puppet first appeared in serial form, starting in 1881, in Giornale per i bambini, the Children’s Newspaper. Its opening paragraph was meant to undermine the traditional idea of a fairy tale—and also to send a political message:

Once upon a time there was…
“A king!” my little readers will no doubt say in a flash.
“No, kids. You got it wrong. Once upon a time there was…a piece of wood.”

That piece of wood, of course, became Pinocchio, and the story became the first internationally known work of Italian children’s literature. The Adventures of Pinocchio has been adapted for film 18 times,…