Quantum Monte Carlo in the Apuan Alps
The workshop series brought together leading researchers in continuum QMC, electronic structure and quantum chemistry in a deliberately informal residential setting.
A 2006 workshop announcementThe predecessor
Not erased. Not tidied away.
Physicist guests were already visiting Vallico in 2004, and the Towler Institute formally opened in 2005. Its regular physics programme became known as the Apuan Alps Centre for Physics.
For more than a decade, the Institute hosted residential conferences, summer schools, small research meetings and individual visitors. The new Academy is broader in subject and ambition, but it inherits a great deal from those years: small groups, shared meals, concentrated mornings, unhurried discussion and the deliberate collision of intellectual work with the physical landscape.
This Archive is therefore not a mausoleum for an abandoned project. It is the documentary memory of the first version of the experiment.
A historical object
Science in the mountains.
The old publicity now looks like part advertisement, part family album and part field report. That mixture was fairly accurate.
The Institute was never a conventional conference centre. Visiting scientists stayed on site, ate together, worked in the same rooms and then dispersed into the mountains, caves, swimming pools and village restaurants.
The poster's central photograph of Vallico Sotto is still one of the best images of the village — and has become part of the visual identity of the new site as well.
Physics in the Apuan Alps
Mornings for QMC. Afternoons for everything else.
The recurring programme centred on quantum Monte Carlo: international workshops for researchers and intensive summer schools built around the CASINO code. A typical day placed lectures and practical scientific work in the morning, leaving the later day open for discussion, walking, climbing, caving and other excursions.
QMC and the CASINO program
The summer-school series taught young researchers both the theory and practical use of CASINO, with participants arriving from universities around the world.
The 2011 summer schoolA different conference rhythm
Science was taken seriously without pretending that intellectual life improved when everyone stayed indoors. The mountains and village became part of the social architecture of the meetings.
What visitors did when not doing physicsWhat visitors remembered
More than the lectures.
The old event pages contain long runs of unsolicited comments from participants. Again and again, visitors mention not only what they learned, but the people they met, the discussions, the excursions, the village and the unusual sense that scientific work and ordinary life had not been separated into different compartments.
That is probably the clearest continuity between Towler Institute and Vallico Academy. The subject matter can change completely; the conditions under which people think together need not.
Browse the historical visitor listStories from Vallico
The archive contains stories as well as schedules.
Between 2007 and 2010, Mike Towler wrote five local-interest pieces for Barga News. They are not institutional history in the normal sense. That is why they are useful.
First Post
The opening dispatch from the “News from the Towler Institute” blog.
Read the archived articleThe Palace of Ismeno
A nineteenth-century cave description, two ladders and the rediscovery of Magri's 1880 inscriptions.
Read the PDFBronze Hermaphrodites and the Fat Boy Filter
Cascaltendine archaeology, cave exploration and an approach to local history that is not especially solemn.
Read the PDFSammy and the Eagle
Sculpture, the Rocchetta and the first appearance in print of the secret-tunnel story.
Read the PDFTales from the Disaster Zone
A landslide cuts Vallico off from the outside world, with predictable consequences.
Read the PDFCollections inside the old site
The Institute accumulated its own little universe.
Books
The Antiquarian Library
Exploration, travel, philosophy, natural history, archaeology, astronomy, mountaineering and curious old guides to Italy.
PlaceLocal History
Translations, Cascaltendine, archaeology, old texts and the beginnings of the historical work now being expanded on the new site.
LifeThings to Do
An enormous period list of mountains, caves, football, restaurants, libraries, pools, telescopes and schemes for reviving the village.
BuildingThe old Institute
A period description of the house, church, libraries, collections and highly non-neutral decorative choices.
The archive grew sideways
Physics led into the village.
The old Institute website began as a practical site for scientific events. It gradually accumulated translations, maps, cave reports, local stories, photographs, explorations and increasingly elaborate attempts to understand Vallico itself.
That accidental expansion is now deliberate. The new History and Vallico sections take those strands seriously, while the Archive keeps their original form visible.
The original website
Enter 2005-era vallico.net.
The historical Towler Institute website has been preserved as an archive rather than redesigned into invisibility. Its frames, galleries, typography, odd jokes, conference pages and period web aesthetics are part of the record.
Behind the scenes, broken internal links and presentation defects have been repaired where possible while retaining the historical content and structure.
Historical site
THE TOWLER INSTITUTE
Original navigation · event pages · photographs · libraries · local history
ENTER THE RESTORED ORIGINAL SITE →Preservation principle
Curate above. Preserve below.
The modern site should help a new visitor understand what matters. It should not rewrite the past until only a tasteful summary remains.
So the Archive has two layers: this curated gateway, and the historical site underneath it. The first explains. The second remembers.