No, you’re not dreaming! The lonesome cowboy riding his trusty horse through the desert isn’t a thing of the past. And they’re not restricted to the Wild West, either. In Italy, the butteri, the cowboys of the Maremma marshes, have refused to lay down their arms in the face of mechanisation. This dwindling band of horsemen in the heart of Tuscany carry on and even boast that they’re more skilled in the saddle than John Wayne’s compatriots. And on what do they base this claim? The fact that they beat Buffalo Bill’s cowboys when he visited Rome in 1890. A buttero is a man, a region of Italy and a horse.
When Italian tradition shows us Europe in a new light…