Villa Borghese

We did not really have much of a plan for today. We thought about going to Palatine Hill and joining the crowds looking at the ruins, but somehow I felt that after Ostia Antica it would be a disappointment. On a whim, we decided explore the Piazza del Populo, right by our local metro stop. We had walked by it for a couple days, and it only seemed right to check it out. It was a good decision.

The Piazza dei Populo was the northern entrance to the city of Rome, and as most of the important visitors to the city came from the north, it was their first glimpse of the city. For this reason, Rome’s papal rulers were determined to make it as impressive as possible. As you enter through the Porta dei Populi, grandly redone by Pope Alexander to welcome Christina of Sweden after he conversion to Catholicism, you see an obelisk of Rameses II and two twin churches. The churches appear to be identical, but this is actually an illusion created by Bernini, one of the architects brought in to finish the building of these churches. 

The most important church on the square, however, is just inside the city gate. This is Santa Maria dei Populi, and it was the church of the Augustinian canons. These friars apparently had outstanding taste in art, and the chapels inside contain outstanding work by the likes of Rafael, Bernini, and Pinturicchio. To me, the finest items there are two pictures by Caravaggio. I was particularly struck by his Conversion of Saint Paul.

We also loved the amount of funerary monuments in the church, the one below. Using skeletons like this in art was called the “momento mori” or “remembrance of death.” It was supposed to make the viewer recall how short life was and how they ought to be aware that perhaps final judgment was lurking around the corner. 

There are lots of people hawking things on the square as there are almost everywhere in Rome. John could not resist having his picture taken with these two guys even if it set him back 10€.

At the south end of the Piazza, three roads converge. We took the one in the middle, the Via del Corso. This is the longest straight street in the city of Rome. It was once used during Carnival for horse racing; now the racing is done by tourists running from shop to shop along the street. Most of the major chain stores like H & M have branches on the Via del Corso. Guess decided that nothing sells clothes like dead or almost dead Italians; perhaps an updated form of the momento mori.

There are also a number of churches on the street. The only interesting one, as far as we were concerned, was Saints Ambrose and Charles. This church belonged to the Duchy of Milan, and Ambrose and Charles Borromeo were the most famous bishops of Milan. The latter, a great leader of the Counter Reformation, has his heart on display in a reliquary behind the high altar.

The light seeming to emanate from the relic is really just a result of using the flash, but I thought it seemed sort of appropriate….

The far end of the Via del Corso is the monument to King Victor Emmanuel. Originally planned in the nineteenth century to commemorate the first king of a unified Italy, it was finished under Benito Mussolini. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that Italians often deride it, although it is a fairly popular place for them to get married. 

From this point we tried hard to find a way to get to the metro. The Italian authorities have been trying to build a third subway line for 20 years, but there are so many archeological sites in this part of the city that it may never be finished. We could not figure out exactly what bus or streetcar to take, so we finally just hailed a cab and headed towards the Villa Borghese. 

The Museo Borghese is considered probably the most important museum in Rome after the Vatican Museums. Tickets are not expensive, but they sell out days in advance and we had not been smart enough to order them online at home. So we had to get ours through a tour company. We had to pay five times the face value, but we also had an superb tour guide, Stephanie, an Canadian expatriate. She made it worth every penny. 

The Borghese admits only two hundred people four times a day. Once inside, you have only 1 hour and 50 minutes to look at the art. Although the museum is not large, the quality of the art is so phenomenal that even twice that amount of time is not really enough. Stephanie showed us only about a dozen of the pieces, but she provided excellent interpretive background. This is a marvelous neoclassical sculpture by Antonio Canova of Napoleon’s sister Pauline Buonaparte Borghese as Venus Victrix. It caused a scandal as important women in the nineteenth century did not pose nude!

Other great pieces include Bernini’s David

and his Apollo and Daphne.

We also looked at some masterpieces of painting including Pieter Paul Ruben’s Deposition of Christ.

It was pouring when we entered the museum - so far it has rain for part of the day every day we have been in Italy, usually quite heavily - and it was still sprinkling when we left with Stephanie to do a tour of the park. We ended up in the Pincian Hill overlook. The light was quite splendid and caught the colors of the umbrellas and raincoats just perfectly.

I could not have done that in Photoshop no matter how hard I tried!

Pincian Hill overlooks the Plaza del Populi. So, in a way, we ended up where we had begun.

We walked down the hill past the Villa Medici, now home to the Academie Nationale Française, toward the Spanish Steps. We view was exquisite.

We had our best meal of the trip at Gusto, a restaurant Stephanie had recommended. The pappardelle with prosciutto was superb, as  was the broccolini sautéed in olive oil and garlic. John had fun people watching. The woman behind us was somewhat sloshed and she and her friend seemed like they could have been on the Italian version of Absolutely Fabulous. iPhones are great for taking surreptitious pictures. 

We are making an early night tonight because tomorrow we head off toward the south! Arrivederci, Roma!

Outside the Walls

After jostling about with the crowds at the Vatican and the Spanish Steps, we were looking for something a little quieter today. We were also looking for something that we had not done before. Ostia Antica fit both of those criteria perfectly. It is located about an hour outside of Rome, but it is easily accessible by subway and city rail. With our host Bruno’s help, we figured out the connection and started our adventure. 

Ostia literally means “mouth” and it is where the Tiber enters the that part of the Mediterranean called the Tyrrhenian Sea. During the Republican and early Imperial periods, the city of Ostia was the harbor for the city of Rome. All the grain and other food needed to feed the people of Rome was imported through Ostia. As ships from around their world landed there, it was also one of the most cosmopolitan of Roman cities. Though the trade through Ostia made many Roman quite wealthy, the town itself was more working-class. By the end of the first century, silt had largely filled the harbor making it increasingly difficult to land ships there, so Emperor Claudius ordered the creation of a new harbor a little north, near was is now Fiumicino International Airport. This new harbor, called simple Portus or “Port” started the decline of Ostia. After repeated sackings by pirates and barbarians, Ostia was abandoned. 

Today it is not only one of the most important Roman archeological sites, but a surprisingly easy one to visit. Unlike the Roman ruins, protected by fences, visitors can wander freely through the ruins at Ostia. And pines seem to outnumber people there. 

With all the recent rains, the site was also overrun by wildflowers. This was a typical scene in the necropolis, or “city of the dead” that was the cemetery just outside of the town walls. 

Once inside what remains of the the town walls, we first passed the remains of dozens of warehouses. These were important, but not particularly interesting buildings even in their time. The first notable site was the remains of the Baths of Neptune. Like most Roman cities, Ostia had multiple baths. These were not merely places for cleaning, but were opportunities for Roman men to both work out and do business. John is standing on the west side of the baths, an enormous open area where boxers, wrestlers, and other athletes would have trained alongside ordinary Romans. 

The east side had hot and cold pools, like a sauna today, and pipes heated the mosaic floor in the winter. As both our audio guide and the excellent signage reminded us, it was a staggering amount of slave labor that made this possible.

Not surprisingly, John really came to live when he saw the theater. There was originally a wall behind the stage separating the theater from the commercial square behind it. Apparently they still stage Roman plays in the theater at times, and they use it for other special events. There seemed to be some kind of presentation going on the day we were there, but we could not quite figure out what was happening. There were just a lot of slightly overweight, middle-aged Italians talking, gesturing, and, of course, smoking. 

While the wealthy lived in beautiful, one story suburban villas, the urban poor were crammed into small apartments in ramshackle buildings sometimes ten stories high! They had no plumbing of any kind, nor were there cooking facilities. Many of these apartments were made of wood and often collapsed or burned. A few of the better ones were made of brick. We climbed to the top of the tallest one left, and looked over the remains of the residential neighborhood. It was perhaps in one of these buildings that Saint Monica, mother of Augustine of Hippo, died. 

There was another, larger bathhouse nearby. This is one of the few remnants of a Roman latrine. The Romans had no sense of privacy and even defecating was a social occasion. They had no toilet paper, either, and they cleaned themselves with a rag shoved on the end of a stick. The hole in the front is for what we might call anal access. I have no idea if they bothered to clean the rag between uses. 

After leaving we decided to go to Testaccio, a neighborhood not far from the old Jewish quarter. Like Trastevere, this area used to be working class, but has now become somewhat bohemian. It’s sort of the Echo Park of Rome. There is a famous farmer’s market there. It used to be located in an old building attached to a slaughterhouse, but has recently been moved to a somewhat antiseptic new facility. Our guidebook suggested this stall for some authentic Roman panini, and the sandwiches were quite good. And in Europe, who can argue with 3€ for a meal?

This was a stall, however, I do not think you would find in a California farmer’s market. Or if you did, there would certainly be protesters!

 Testaccio is also the home of the so-called Protestant Cemetery. The Roman cemeteries were all Roman Catholic and refused burial to people of other faiths. So a number of foreign embassies bought land so that people from their countries who died in Rome could be buried. So the cemetery really is not simply Protestant as there are many Jewish and Orthodox graves here as well. A number of famous people are buried here. We never did quite locate the grave of John Keats, and since we were having the almost inevitable afternoon thunderstorm at this point, we finally gave up looking. As Californians, we were delighted to find the grave of Richard Henry Dana, the author of Two Years Before the Mast, the best description of life in Alta California before the American conquest. 

We did discover the last resting place of Percy Shelley. John paid appropriate homage.

 Our next stop was Rome’s second most important church, Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls. This church was built on the spot where the apostle was thought to have met martyrdom at the hands of the Roman authorities. There has been a church here since the days of the emperor Constantine, but the basilica has been rebuilt several times. The last reconstruction occurred after a devastating fire in 1823. While contributions came from all over the world to rebuild the church, American Roman Catholics were particularly generous. 

The doors of the church commemorate the events in Paul’s life from his conversion on the road to Damascus to his beheading. His body is supposedly in a sarcophagus under the high altar. 

The interior of the church is incredibly vast. Double rows of columns line the nave. The clerestory windows let in a surprising amount of light, even on a cloudy day like today. 

Besides the body of the Saint, the other important relic in the church are the chains that supposedly bound Peter on his way to his crucifixion.

By the time we had finished our visit to Saint Paul’s, we were pretty tired. We decided to go back to our apartment in Flaminio for a little rest. Later, in the evening, we felt rested enough to deal with the tourist crowds. We went to the Plaza Berberini metro stop, which notes Fontana di Trevi as its local attraction. The fountain was not close by, however, and we wandered for about 30 minutes before we finally found it, even with the help of the iPhone maps app. Of course, like all great European attractions, it was closed for repairs when we arrived. We went on to the Piazza Navona where the Fountain of the Four Rivers was at least operational. 

 

We had our only bad cab ride of the trip when we caught a taxi from the Piazza Navona to the Coliseum area. I had read in guidebooks that some drivers will claim that you gave them a 5 euro note instead of a larger bill, and sure enough this is what our driver did. I angrily insisted that I had given him a 20, and he finally grunted and gave me a two euro coin instead of the three he owed me. I think I compensated by giving him an impolite gesture. 

 

 

It was a fun neighborhood for watching Italians and tourists alike, but we had a perfectly dreadful meal. The food in Rome is famously not that good. Italians will tell you that you really need to go to other places in Italy to get a decent meal for a reasonable price, and so far I think you get much better Italian food in Los Angeles. We will see how it is in other parts of Italy later. 

 

We rushed to catch the last subway back to our place. 

Crossing, yet not Swimming, the Tiber

We had made arrangements before we left home for a tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. Various tour companies have an agreement with the Vatican Museum to allow early entry and to avoid the long lines for tickets. As a money-making scheme for the Holy See this is probably not as bad as John Tetzel’s indulgences, and we decided it was worth the extra money to avoid so many people. You may think think, with some justification, that there is something odd about going to a spiritual place with something less than complete affection for the rest of humanity, but as I recall the the evangelists’ accounts, Jesus also fled the crowds at times, and that seems like precedent enough.

We found our tour group, curiously named “Dark Rome”, and after giving us pink sticker and a headset with more static than an AM radio station in Big Sur, we were escorted through the doors and into the Vatican Museum complex. Our guide was a young woman named Alexa who seemed to have a great deal of affection for both Renaissance art and her bottle of henna. She assured us repeatedly that she was a trained art historian. I have some doubts about that, but at least her English was quite good. She snapped a picture of John and me as we were waiting.

We were led from there to the Belvedere Courtyard. Built by Innocent VIII, who other accomplishments included murdering the Waldensians and establishing the Spanish Inquisition, the Belvedere did allow the Holy Father to enjoy some cool breezes during the summer as he prepared, one hopes, to enjoy the heat of hell in the afterlife. It is dominated today by two bronze pieces. The first is a first century Roman pine cone.

The second is a modern sculpture by the Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro called Sphere within a Sphere. The piece is massive, yet can be pushed easily.

Alexa moved us rather quickly through some of the many galleries in the museum. We saw an strange statue of Aphrodite as a fertility deity: the appendages in the middle of her torso apparently represent bull testicles. Perhaps an odd piece for celibate men to collect….

We continued on to a hallway covered by tapestries. We were taken by the one showing Herod slaughtering the children. Perhaps an odd choice for two teachers to notice….

We strolled down the long gallery of maps with its representations of the different regions in the Italian peninsula. It is rather astonishing how accurate these early Renaissance cartographers were with only the most basic instruments. This is the map of Venice showing the Grand Canal and the Lido. 

We continued from there to the Borgia Apartments. We sadly skipped, as most tours do, the frescoes of Pinturicchio, in a favor of a speedy trip through the Vatican’s insipid collection of modern religious art. 

At least we spent a much longer time in the Raphael Rooms. We went through the Constantine Room fairly quickly. In addition to the iconic, if deeply depressing, picture of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, I observed the enormous depiction of the Donation of Constantine. It seemed strange that Julius and Rafael would depict this many decades after Lorenzo Valla had proved that the document, purporting to give the popes control over the western Rome Empire, was a complete fraud. We then looked at the Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, a story apparently dear to the heart of Pope Julius II as it seemed to suggest that God’s highest aim was to keep his church as affluent as possible. In modern times, I suspect that if this story were not part of the deuterocanonical literature it might be much more widely used as a basis for sermons on stewardship. 

In the Room of the Signature, we spent a good deal of time discussing the iconic School of Athens painting.

Alexa pointed out how Rafael had included not only Michelangelo and Leonardo in the picture, but also included himself.

We took a more cursory glance at the Disputation of the Holy Sacrament on the opposite wall. 

From here we continued on into the Sistine Chapel. Before entering the chapel visitors are admonished that they must dress appropriately and cannot take pictures because it is such as holy place. It did not feel that way at all to me. The guards constantly demand that the visitors keep moving and stop looking at the frescos, apparently desiring to push as many paying customers through the space in the available time. At the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe the faithful are placed on a conveyor belt so that they do not spend too much time looking at the holy cloth - just enough time to toss down some money in front of it. I was surprised that the Vatican had not adapted the same system to the room of the papal conclave. As I could not take a photograph, even without a flash, here is the famous ceiling courtesy of Google images.

From the chapel we were hustled over to the Basilica. When I was first there I remember being astonished by the sheer space inside the building. Perhaps it was because there were so many thousands in it yesterday it did not seem to large to me. All the familiar art was there, of course, such as Michelangelo’s Pieta

and Bernini’s iconic baldachin soaring above the high altar.

Despite my admiration for Pope Francis and for the intellectual power of the Roman Catholic tradition, I walked out of Saint Peter’s feeling cooler to the Catholic Church than ever. I am hardly the first to wonder how we came from Jesus’ declaration of “Blessed are you who are poor … Woe to you who are rich” to this staggering display of power and wealth. It is true that these art works are part of the heritage of human accomplishment and should be preserved. But is that really the mission of the church? Did Jesus commission the leading artists of his time to commemorate his deeds in frescos and statues? On the Mount of Olives, before his ascension, did the Savior command us to go through the world and collect art in the name of the holy Trinity? Anglicans often speak of converting to Roman Catholicism as "swimming the Tiber.” I found myself on its bank without the slightest desire to stick my foot in that metaphorical water.

After picking up a backpack at the coat check, John and I had to decide what to do with the rest of our day. We decided to do something that neither of us had done before and to explore that Trastevere district on the west bank of the Tiber. When we had last been in Rome some 20 years ago, this was still considered a bit of a slum and few tourists ever bothered to visit. Today, like San Telmo in Buenos Aires, it being transformed from a bohemian enclave into one of the most fashionable neighborhoods in the city. We took a cab from the Vatican City south, and of course as we arrived, so did the thunderstorm. We found a dry spot in a restaurant where we had a mediocre but inexpensive lunch. As we finished, the rain let up and we decided to explore. We had downloaded some audio tours of Rome before we left Los Angeles, so we decided to try to the tour of Trastevere. 

We crossed the bridge to the east side of the river, not far from Palatine Hill. We looked at Rome’s Great Synagogue where John Paul II had made the first papal visit to a Jewish house of worship. It is only open for occasional guided tours, so we simply admired the outside.

We crossed over the small island in the river that marks the entrance to the Trastevere neighborhood. This, we learned from the audio tour, had once been the home to a temple to Asclepius, the Roman god of healing, and had been favored by Romans as an auspicious place for women to give birth. It now seemed like an auspicious place to buy gelato, but we decided to wait for later for that. One of the reasons for the recent popularity of the Trastevere neighborhood is that the Roman authorities had not thought the area important enough to warrant widening its streets. As a result, Trastevere is much easier to maneuver on foot, although pedestrians have to be careful of the Vespas as well as the cobblestones.

We stopped to book at the Church of Saint Cecilia, but it was closed. So we continued on, glancing through the windows of trendy new stores, to the Piazza Santa Maria, the central square of Trastevere. The church here is supposedly the first one in Christendom named after the mother of Jesus. 

The interior is not that interesting apart from a Byzantine mosaic in the apse behind the high altar. 

After looking in the church we stopped on the square and had some espresso and gelato. The scene could not have been more Italian. The storm had passed and the piazza was lit by the warm tones of the afternoon sun. People sat around the fountain in the central square. Some boys were kicking a soccer ball around. A man was playing an accordion while other man danced to the music. Bicycles loaded with groceries and Vespas with pairs of young lovers whizzed by. Had the whole scene been in a movie by Fellini I might have thought it contrived. But there we were, not only visiting Rome, but almost living in Roma. 

We walked back through the narrow streets. There really was laundry hanging out to dry between the Renaissance tenements. 

An occasional open door revealed a lovely interior courtyard.

As the siesta hours were over, we figured that the Church of Saint Cecilia might be open now, and so we went to look at it. Cecilia was supposedly a Roman noblewoman who became a Christian. She was betrothed to a Valerianus, a pagan man of an equally important family, and she confided in him on her wedding night that she wanted to remain a virgin. One might have thought that this would send him looking for a more available spouse, but supposedly he was so moved by her devotion that he became a Christian. The Roman authorities found out about this and promptly had him killed. According to legend, they found Cecilia harder to execute, first trying to suffocate her and then hitting her repeatedly with a sword. In later centuries Cecilia became the patron saint of musicians, though most people find the link between musicians and virginity somewhat tenuous. The church, supposedly built over the site of Cecilia’s house, was completely renovated in the eighteenth century and is not particularly interesting inside.

The most interesting part of the church is the preserved remains of the saint displayed under the high altar.

By this time both of us were tired and ready to return to Flaminio for a nap. But before we caught a cab back we had to catch another church. This one was on the right bank of the Tiber, opposite Trastevere. We noticed a long line there and realized that it was tourists who were waiting to get their picture taken with the same lion’s head made famous by Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. 

We decided to skip it, but did go down into the crypt to look at the simple tomb of Pope Adrian.

We caught a ride with a particularly surly cabbie back to the Villa Riccio. John napped for a bit and I edited photos. In the evening we decided to go out for a little bite to eat in the neighborhood. Almost on cue, the thunderstorms returned. Despite getting a little wet, we had a good meal. A fine ending to an occasionally dry day!

The Pines, Fountains, and Thunderstorms of Rome

Looking back, the flight to Rome was surprisingly easy. It did not always seem so at the time, particularly when we were stuck in miserable traffic at the airport or waiting in an endless line at Alitalia counter. But once were were on the plane, everything was better. They fed us an adequate meal when we were flying over Saint George, Utah; by the time we were over Bemidji, Minnesota John was fast asleep and I fell asleep a short time after. We woke up somewhere around Lyon, and by the time we had finished our breakfast it was time to land in Rome.

Although both us of have been to Rome before, it was the first time we had flown into the city. The airport is a distance from the the center of Rome, and we had made arrangements with our innkeeper to have a driver meet us there. The last thing we wanted to do was to figure out the intricacies of public transit with several pieces of luggage. We are staying at the Villa Riccio. It sounds quite grand, doesn’t it? It’s actually a spare bedroom that a man and his wife rent out to visitors. But it is located in a lovely old apartment complex in the fairly affluent Flaminio district of north Rome. 

There is a nice view from the room, and it has its own bathroom. And at 90 euros a day, it is a relative bargain. 

After we settled in an unpacked a few things, we decided to go for a walk. We had not gone far when the sky opened up. Ottorino Respighi celebrated the pine and fountains of Rome; but perhaps he should have made a trilogy by writing a piece about its thunderstorms. The last time I was here I was in a particularly violent one, but I had the good fortune to be able to be inside that time. We were walking towards the Piazza Populo when it started to pour. Hiding out in a bus shelter, we noticed a museum across the street and decided any place inside was good. Fortunately, this turned out to be a particularly interesting museum, the National Etruscan Museum at the Villa Guilia. 

Built by Pope Julius III in the middle of the sixteenth century, the villa is still a grand piece of Renaissance architecture on the outside, though its conversion into a museum has preserved little of the interior. There are dozens of galleries showing the development and the demise of the Etruscan civilization. The origins of the Etruscan people are unclear, and we most of the information we have about them comes from the pottery and other items found in tombs. There was a great deal of pottery on display, and while I want to find pottery fascinating, I think I need to know more about it. The bronze work, both weapons and domestic articles, was a little more interesting. But what was really fascinating was some of the late Etruscan work.

This is part of a temple frieze.

This head seemed unusually realistic for its period.

And this sarcophagus for a married couple is probably the most famous item in the collection.

Once the rain had subsided a bit, we explored the grounds of the Villa Guilia. 

There was a small mausoleum but I could not quite figure out who was buried there. Somewhere along the way it had been adorned with some Etruscan temple decorations. 

The fountains were the most famous feature of the original villa. They do not apparently create the same theater of water that they once did, but frankly I have seen enough water in Rome already and I have only been here one day!

After leaving the museum, we strolled through the Villa Borghese gardens. I think on most Sundays this park would have been packed, but after the rain it was virtually deserted. Walking through the old city walls, built in the third century by the Emperor Aurelian, we arrived on the Via Veneto, the affluent shopping district made famous by Fellini in La Dolce Vita. We did not feel like paying 8€ for a cup of espresso, so we kept moving. 

Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at the Spanish Steps. Other than the fine view of the city it commands, there is really little of interest here. The church at the top of the stairs was under scaffolding, and the fountain at the bottom was under reconstruction. So we just took a couple pictures and went off to find some supper.

We had a pleasant meal at a restaurant recommended in a guide book, and we grabbed a taxi back to our quiet, comfortable room.