Shelton Bellew, creator of a series of walking-tour tapes, and Carmen Bertini,
a former research assistant, are seen in front of a duomo -- cathedral -- in Siena, Italy.
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In the shadow of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, the famous Gothic duomo at the heart of Florence, Italy,
a tour guide expounds on the beauty of this marble marvel which took 600 years to complete.
In perfect English, he addresses not only the history of Florence and its palazzos and squares, but he
also dispenses practical advice, such as where to find "a true Italian coffee" or a cheap pint of beer
and how to negotiate a lower price for the faux-Prada purses hawked by street vendors. If you didn't
catch what the guide said the first time, he's happy to repeat it again -- and again -- or at least until
the batteries in your Walkman die.
This eloquent tour-leader-on-tape is called "the cicerone," meaning "a guide who explains the antiquities,"
and he's the brainchild of Shelton Bellew, a 1995 graduate of the University of Georgia who lives in Italy.
Bellew, 30, hatched the idea for "The Cicerone: Walk With Me" tour tapes in August 1999 while he and his
mother, Atlanta real estate agent Virginia Bellew, were touring the Uffizi, a famous Florentine museum
housing works by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
"We were talking about the fact that on Sunday, everything's closed in Italy, and everyone goes home to
eat from 2 until 4," says Shelton Bellew, who was reared with an older brother and sister just outside of
Rome -- Georgia, that is. "You can't get a guide or get any help. We thought, wouldn't it be nice if there
were a way to visit the city on your own?"
Bellew, who lives beside the Arno River in a small town near Florence, began by creating an outline of
Florence's most notable monuments. He pored over guidebooks and Internet sites and sought input from
professors, scholars and family and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. His mother assisted in
editing the manuscript, while his father, Jim, a certified public accountant, helped him wrangle with
the business' financial conundrums.
By June 2000, "The Cicerone: Walk With Me Self Guided Audio Walking Tour of Florence" was in gift shops
and museum stores around Florence. Pisa/Lucca and Siena followed in January 2001, and tapes of Venice and
Rome should be ready this month. The tours are also available at www.bellewstours.com for $16.95 each.
Each tour tape package features a map of the city, a historic timeline and a photo of Bellew decked out
like a hip pilgrim in black jeans and a broad-brimmed hat. Like St. Christopher, the patron saint of
travelers, Bellew clutches a grapevine walking stick salvaged from a pergola behind his parents' east
Cobb County home.
This image of the iconic wanderer isn't far from reality for Bellew, who passed his sophomore year of
college in Lyon, France, and spent six months in Chile on a Coca-Cola internship. He came to Florence
in February 1999 when he found himself at a personal and professional crossroad. Bellew had recently
broken up with a serious girlfriend and had felt unfulfilled in a public relations job in Atlanta.
"A friend said, 'Why don't you head to a country you've never been to before and figure out what you want
to do,' " explains Bellew, whose deep, radio-ready voice has subtly adopted the lilting tones and
elongated vowels of Italian. "I thought, 'Well, if I do get serious about a job and have a family one
day, now's the time to go out and have this healthy adventure,' and Italy looked like fun."
Though Bellew was fluent in French and Spanish, he arrived in Florence without understanding a word of
Italian. But he quickly picked up the language -- and a job teaching English and French to the Antinoris,
a well-known family of winemakers. He had been in Florence six months and was ready to return home when
he had his epiphany at the Uffizi.
In between working on tours and tutoring, Bellew hosts a daily two-minute radio show called "The Cicerone
Break," giving out information about cultural events and exhibits. He plans eventually to offer his
Cicerone tapes in other languages and include cities like Paris, Barcelona and maybe even Washington.
He's also working with his old friend and professor, Scott Shamp, director of the New Media Institute at the
University of Georgia, to develop alternative methods of distributing the tours, such as MP3 files that
could be downloaded from the Internet and played on a hand-held computer or Pocket PC. And Bellew would
like to recruit college students, possibly from his alma mater, who are eager to have their artwork
featured on a Cicerone map or packaging.
"Shelton creates a tornado of activity and just drags people into the funnel," Virginia Bellew says with a
laugh. "He just blazes ahead, and he's always ready for the next adventure."
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