Monthly Archives: December 2018

Happy New Year!

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OUR CHRONICLE FOR 2018

A chronicle for 2018? A year to remember or a year to forget?

It would be possible for me to sift through posts in my blog at https://longoio3.com/ . I won’t, however, and, instead, just recollect some things that stand out; for any year that one lives through to the end must, by definition, be a year to remember.

Nevertheless, looking through post stats, the ten receiving most hits were the following:

https://longoio3.com/2018/10/12/looking-for-the-tuscan-house-of-your-dreams/

About a beautiful property near Barga which, sadly the owner has to sell.

https://longoio3.com/2018/08/02/10215/

About a delightful concert in the grounds of Bagni di Lucca’s Villa Webb on the night of the red moon.

https://longoio3.com/2018/05/17/adieu-dear-sam/

About friend and Boccaccio scholar Samuel Stych died just short of his 102nd birthday. It was a privilege for Bagni di Lucca to have had Sam with us for such a long time.

https://longoio3.com/2018/08/08/a-wonderfully-unusual-combination-in-luc

About a great concert in Lucca’s conservatoire.

https://longoio3.com/2018/02/12/rip-rolando-simi-of-longoio/

Deaths in our village of Longoio are all the more felt especially as less than seventy persons live here.

https://longoio3.com/2018/02/13/james-taylor-at-the-lucca-summer-festival/

Lucca’s quite unmissable summer festival. I went for James Taylor but many loved the equally sensational Bonnie Raitt.

https://longoio3.com/2018/03/17/il-boccherini-di-lucca-si-fa-sentire-nella-casa-della-regina-a-londra/

This concert in London woke me up to the sensational sound of the double base when played in expert hands. You’ll notice the post is written in Italian. I’ve decided to write in Italian when talking about London and the UK, and in English when I’m in Italy in order to capture different audiences.

https://longoio3.com/2018/07/18/lucca-italys-protestant-haven/

Some posts have me researching history and some extraordinary facts arose out of this investigation.

https://longoio3.com/2018/01/26/bagni-di-luccas-concentration-camp/

A sad reminder that not even the slaughter of millions in WW1 which ended one hundred years ago could not prevent a second massacre started by racialist maniacs. War’s only victor is death.

https://longoio3.com/2018/12/29/the-secrets-of-villa-ada/

A plea that some of Bagni di Lucca’s most spectacular buildings must be saved before it is too late.

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2018 has for us been marked by three main themes.

The first is the most important one: that of friendship. It was long-term friendship that took Sandra and me to Clifton, Bristol to spend the day with my still young-in-spirit English literature schoolmaster. It was, equally, the chance of meeting old (now, increasingly in both senses of that word) friends that took me to Florence and Bologna, to Vicenza and to Rome. Perfect days!

One can always tell what a true friendship is. It’s when you meet up with friends you may not have seen since school or university days and conviviality and conversation continues (with a certain amount of reminiscence now thrown in) from where you left off last time (which may have even dated back to Jimi Hendrix’s last UK concert in one case…)

The second is health and this year I have visited the UK more often than in other years not only for my own health but also because my wife’s mum is ninety-seven and, although, still mobile and often aware, is suffering more and more from that disease which bears the same initials as that which can afflict those of rather younger age incautious about their amorous encounters.

The third theme is one which is affecting all those with ties or affection for the United Kingdom. Never in the field of politics in my lifetime has one six-letter word divided so many people, communities, families and friends. I need not tell you that word except that an anagram of it is found in the name of a hamlet on the western side of Shetland Islands mainland; an enchanted place we visited last century during a Scottish conservation working holiday:

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We had some sorrows this year – our two ducks both lost their lives (and their friendship has been just as valuable to us as any other biped) but we had joys in equal measure. There were no dramatic holidays to the Far East or narrow escapes in Apennine tunnels as in 2017 but, instead, some great times exploring. visiting, walking (we both did the long route in the Lucca Villas marathon, so we must still be reasonably fit) and, above all, enjoying the start of a new decade in our lives, Yes, we are now both seventy so we should be grateful that, at least we have reached this stage of our forty-plus years of marriage together. Very grateful in fact!

 

May we take this opportunity of wishing you, our friends, our relatives and our post readers a very happy and prosperous New Year trusting that 2019 will make at least some of your dreams come true, that 2019 will be kind to you both in spirit and in health and that 2019 will still have you discover many more wonders in our still wonderful planet which now, more than ever before, urgently needs our love and care before it truly becomes too late to do anything

Alexandra and Francis

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The Secrets of Villa Ada

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Every year a ‘luogo del cuore’ (place in one’s heart) campaign is launched  by FAI, the Italian conservation body, in which people vote for a building or place worthy of protection from the ravages of time.

A friend had recently been campaigning hard to save Bagni di Lucca’s magnificent Villa Ada in the old part of the town on the hill.

Originally a late Renaissance structure owned by the De Nobili Lucchese family, the Villa Ada was completely renovated in the nineteenth century, by Sir MacBean British consul at Livorno, when the two tall hexagonal towers were built giving the villa its present characteristic appearance. The building is surrounded by a large English-style park, enriched by artificial limestone caves, wrought iron railings in the shape of intertwined branches, and other elements of garden furniture typical of the period.

A path, starting from the terrace near the villa, leads to a pergola and continues towards an artificial cave.

 

The villa, purchased in 1975 by the Municipality of Bagni di Lucca, was used as a spa treatment establishment. Today, however, the villa is abandoned, with obvious structural problems due to poor maintenance.

Regretfully the citizens of Bagni di Lucca, through lack of interest, couldn’t muster sufficient votes needed for a building to qualify for preservation and appropiate funding for its restoration.

Yesterday, on a beautifully serene winter afternoon such as we have been blessed for some days now at Bagni di Lucca, I decided with two friends to venture into urban exploration of the interior of the Villa Ada. (Clearly, we will not divulge how we entered as we do not wish to encourage further vandalism).

What we experienced was a scene of sad dilapidation, of melancholic abandonment, of rapid deterioration extending to the beginning of the collapse of part of the ceiling of the top floor.

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We also saw the site where at least two marvellous marble eighteenth century fireplaces had been ripped out and were now lost in a sordid international black market.

Before the theft of a fireplace in 2013:

Where the fireplace was, now:

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We were, however, relieved to note that the magnificently carved wooden balustrade of the grand staircase spanning three floors was still in relatively complete state, although several of its corner finials had either been removed or were partially complete.

 

We were also thankful that the opulent marble floors of many rooms were still intact and that the herring-bone terracotta floor of one grand salon was complete.

What struck me most in our exploration of the forlornly decrepit majesty of Villa Ada was its sheer size and the impressiveness of its state rooms despite the fact that there was little evidence of the decoration that once must have adorned its walls and nothing of the furnishings remained.

What stately occasions must have taken place in the Villa Ada’s belle-époque heyday! What elegance of powdered and perfumed ladies, trailing their chiffon and silk skirts down the monumental staircase. What waltzes, quadrilles and polkas danced to the mellifluous sounds of a salon orchestra? What grand banquets, what delicious spreads of canapés, what excellences of wines. What gossips and courtesies, what merriments, what intrigues, what secret flirtations, what words of love or censure, what plots hatched, what dreams realised and what hopes dashed in this havishamesque cobweb of an age  passed away into the sands of time?

 

Surely, surely there must come one fine day for a knight in shining armour  (or a Russian oligarch or Chinese Trillionaire) to awaken the sleeping beauty of  Villa Ada before it is finally enveloped in the mists of time, the strangling brambles of its garden and the evanescence of faithless memory…

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How did you spend your Christmas?

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Christmas Eve promised fine weather for the important date to follow:

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And, indeed, Christmas morning opened with gently warm rays of sunshine which continued throughout the day. No bleak mid-winter here!

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I’d accepted an invitation for Christmas lunch in Lucca.

First I made sure my cats got their festal breakfast. Carlotta seemed particularly pleased.

I then made my way to Bagni di Lucca’s railway station. Happily, in Italy most trains still run on time, even on December 25th!

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The Serchio River below the Ponte Della Maddalena (I don’t like to call it ‘il Ponte Del Diavolo’) still shows how little rainfall we’ve had this autumn, despite the recent rainy days.

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It was lovely to be in Lucca and the Christmas lunch prepared by my hostess was wonderfully traditional and included turkey, sprouts, roast potatoes and yorkshire pudding. We couldn’t find any cranberry sauce in the city but the American apple butter made an excellent replacement!

We were also joined by four sweet mutts – my hostess was dog-sitting for two of them.

Dessert was my hostess’s cheesecake and my Madeira, which I’d baked at home that morning.

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We pulled our Christmas crackers, read their characteristically lousy jokes (e. g. ‘Why did the golfer wear two pairs of trousers? In case he got a hole in one!!!’), wore our paper crowns and exchanged presents (which included chocolates, biscuits and a beautiful little crystal angel).

I could not have wished for more excellent company and more delicious fayre. For an afternoon I felt there was a corner of Italian Lucca that had become a lovely old-style English Christmas…

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Of Christmas Trees and Christmas Cribs

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The Italian politician Giorgia Meloni recently issued a video in which she proclaims herself a ‘presepista’ (a Christmas crib supporter) rather than an ‘alberista’ (or Christmas tree supporter). Giorgia goes on to say that there should be no excuses for multi-ethnic schools banning Christmas cribs on the ground that they might ‘offend’ those pupils who have not been brought up in the Roman Catholic tradition.

Although I have absolutely no sympathy with Meloni’s political views – she is a founder member of the very right-wing ‘Fratelli d’Italia’ – I do agree with her on this point. Italy is a culture built upon two thousand years of Christian, specifically Catholic, tradition. Whether one believes in the Virgin birth or not is quite irrelevant. To outlaw the Christmas crib in schools is like defying values, customs, credence, mores, and the fabric of western civilization itself which have made Italy what it is today, for better or worse.

In the largely Protestant north, where the making of a Christmas crib is not nearly as prevalent as in the Catholic south of Europe, such a ban would be tantamount to prohibiting Nativity plays.

Fanatics could extend this further and consider excluding performances of ‘The Messiah’ because not all choir members and audiences are practising Christians or indeed, the presentation of any of the great sung Masses by the likes of Palestrina, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

The fact is that all these traditions, art-works, performances, presentations, rituals form an essential, often unconsciously practised, part of our way of life where we live on this beautiful, but sadly abused, blue planet.

I am reminded of the uproar caused by the renaming of Christmas time as ‘Winterval’ by Birmingham council some years ago. In the community college I taught at as a lecturer the principal decided that the presence of the Christmas tree should be abolished from the foyer as it might offend people of other cultures. Ironically, the first person to complain about this ban at my college was the receptionist who was Indian-Hindu and the Christmas tree was soon returned to its rightful place!

Integration in today’s world means respect for each community’s positive traditions. Indeed, it is these positive traditions which show us the light to guide us the way to a more tolerant, free and open-minded world.

So it was two thousand years ago when a great star led the Wise Men to the birth of a baby in a manger in a town which, so sadly today, needs tolerance, love and hope.

BTW If you still haven’t been to a Christmas crib in our area, whether living or even mechanical, there’s still a chance. For more details check out the ‘Valley of the Christmas Cribs’ FB page at:

https://www.facebook.com/valledeipresepi/

PS I believe, at home, in both the Christmas tree and the Christmas crib. Carlotta agrees!

Home movie follows:

Finally, may we take this opportunity to wish you wherever you are, however you are, whatever you believe in…

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

 

 

 

 

The World’s First Shopping Mall?

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Shopping malls or, as they are known in Italy, ‘centri commerciali’ are often accused of closing down the individual shops which traditionally dominated our high streets. With their car-parks, protection from inclement weather, their one-stop shopping possibilities and their faciities such as bars, restaurants and movie theatres it is small wonder that the ‘centri commerciali’ have taken so much trade away from old-style street-lining shops. I’ve discussed the very serious problem that is afflicting Bagni di Lucca’s shop-keepers in my post at https://longoio3.com/2018/10/04/whats-eating-bagni-di-lucca/ .

Let’s not blame America for the rapid proliferation of shopping centres in Europe and Italy. London’s Brent Cross, Westfield and Dartford’s Bluewater all have European origins. Bluewater’s architecture, in particular, I found stunning enough to merit a poem :

BLUEWATER

Blue water lap me under zodiac’s dome,

enring me within the sphere of my sign

encompass eyes below crests of whitest cliffs;

inside your silvered pavilions cover

my being with bright tellurian riches,

join me in dances on coralline floors,

interpret inscriptions on the vast frieze

raising hearts to thoughts greater than they know,

breathe the argentine trellis of roses,

run your fingers down deep eastern forests

while pacific pines shade estuary suns;

make me forget this is just another

bloody shopping mall, stuck in a quarry

and I cannot pay off my MasterCard…

(Bluewater Shopping Centre, Dartford Kent)

Before the modern malls there were the Victorian covered markets. No visit to London would be complete without a window-shopping stroll down Burlington arcade

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or Leadenhall market, and there’s nothing to beat Milan’s extraordinary example of architectural eclecticism, its stunning Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II, otherwise known as the ‘Salotto’, or salon, of Milanese society. Here is the galleria on my visit to it in 2009.

But let us go further back in time and enter a shopping mall that was built almost two thousand years ago and which still has its shops intact, though now no longer a functioning ‘Centro Commerciale’ but a magnificent example of Imperial Roman architecture at its most imposing.

Trajan’s semi-circular market is just part of the grandest of all the imperial fora. Funny things may have happened on the way to the old Roman forum but, with the passing away of republican Rome and the heralding of the age of the imperial city, the old forum became, frankly, too small.

(The original Roman Forum)

Successive emperors build new fora, not only to add to public meeting spaces but to mark their place in history, Of these the most distinctive are those of Caesar, Augustus, Nerva and, most superlative and extensive of all, Trajan’s Forum, designed by Apollodorus of Damascus around 100 A.D. and celebrating the emperor’s conquest of Dacia, modern day Romania,

In its glory days the forum looked something like this:

The complex comprised a public square, a basilica, a temple to the deified emperor, the famous column with spiralling reliefs of the conquest of the Dacians and the world’s first ‘Centro Commerciale’ or shopping mall.

The market museum (opened in 2007 and beautifully set out) gives one of the best ideas of what everyday life in imperial Rome must have been like. Trajan’s mall would have made a welcome change from the narrow canyon-like streets that characterised most of ancient Rome and exist to this day:

The new market would also have provided easier access for the delivery of goods and foodstuffs.

There’s so much to take one’s breath away here: from marble floors, to amazing concrete and brick vaulting, the library and a balcony from which one can enjoy some of the best views of Rome. All I missed were the ancient Roman themselves and the multifarious smells of market goods. What a wonderful place to, at the very least, have held a Christmas market. After all, this beautiful shopping mall was built during the birth of a new religion, Christianity.

But let my photos show something of the atmosphere of this Roman ‘Brent-Cross’ shopping centre:

 

Who knows? On-line shopping could clearly make even the shopping mall a relic of the past, After all, why even bother to lift yourself from the comfort of your armchair when you can peruse all your big shops and compare prices at the drop of a digit.

Meanwhile……

 

Merry Christmas – Buon Natale!

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My Nine and a Half (So Far) Visits to Rome

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If Italy is written in my heart then Rome is inscribed in my soul. They say all roads lead to Rome and certainly all roads in my life lead there. Rome, for me, led to an awakening at a critical age in my existence, an awakening which shall never be erased from my consciousness as long as I live.

***

My first visit to Rome was as an eight-year old in the company of my Italian grandparents. They impressed upon me the sacred nature of the Campidoglio; I was overwhelmed by the Colosseum, so much larger does it seem to a little lad than when one grows up. I have vague recollections of Saint Peter’s Rome but many other visual memories have faded. Later, I thought I might have been too young to have appreciated Rome at that age but I was assured that I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit to the eternal city.

***

My second visit to Rome was at the age of fourteen. My mother (born in Milan, Rome University student and  naturalised British through her marriage with my English father) had arranged for me to stay with a family who lived in Rome but were  spending their summer in their seaside apartment at Ostia. Most days I would board the train at Ostia and alight at stazione Ostiense with a Blue Guide and tackle different parts of the city to visit. In January of that year I’d broken my leg in an accident on ice at school. The bone had not set properly, had to be re-broken and re-set, this time with a metal rod which was never removed. During my month at King’s College hospital I’d received visits from my class mates and, what with getting books from them and listening to the hospital radio, my being was opened up to the extraordinary world of music, painting and architecture.  A present of Bannister Fletcher’s ‘Architecture on the comparative method’ from a doctor friend was my constant reading and I was mesmerised by the plans of Imperial Roman forums, the great gothic cathedrals, through renaissance palaces to the start of the modern age of buildings.

 

 

So, for this second visit to Rome, which lasted weeks rather than days, I was rather better prepared than my first. Indeed, never, in any subsequent visit to Rome have I seen so much and walked so extensively. I remember calling in on a convent on the Appian Way when my several blisters had burst and having my feet bandaged by a nun. Another time I was offered peaches and Frascati wine as a lunch snack in a friary near the catacombs under San Lorenzo fuori le mura – and returned to Ostia and my host, who was amused by my first somewhat tipsy state. At the baths of Caracalla, so beloved by Shelley and where he was inspired to write his greatest work ‘Prometheus Unbound’, I witnessed my first opera, ‘Aida’ complete (naturally) with elephants. No photos but several guide books from this visit.

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***

Years passed before I returned to Rome a third time and then, rather like Goethe’s second visit, (his’ Italian Journey’ describing his first visit remains one of my favourite books) I found disappointment in the city. It was winter and I remember eating in a trattoria by Saint Peter’s square but never actually wanting to enter into the great basilica itself. The façade was near, closing the wonderful key-hole shaped Bernini colonnade but my feet refused to climb the stairs into the centre of western Christianity. It was a strange time in my life when I’d decided to escape from the comfortable world of academia and become a labourer in England, working on a motorway building project. No pictures, again, from this visit.

***

When did I visit Rome, for the fourth time? It was in 2006 when I decided I would base myself in our little house in Longoio. It was an organised coach trip to see a Manet exhibition at the Vittoriale and where I also managed to see another on eighteenth century Roman art at the palazzo Venezia. I remember a strong, cold wind blowing all the time, a view from a little park where children were playing football in sight of the Colosseum, a walk past the Theatre of Marcellus and the placing of my hand in the Bocca della Verità, or mouth of truth. Fortunately my hand was not bitten off!

 

 

***

The fifth time was in 2008 in the company of an old uni friend who had bought a house in Anticoli Corrado, a village famed for the beauty of its women who are used as painters’ models.  This was a great walking tour starting from the Piazza del Popolo going down the Corso and then stepping up to the Janiculum past Bramante’s tenpietto and walking the length of the hill which offers the finest views of Rome. Spot the Pantheon, Trastevere, the Anglican church and Keats’ house below?

 

 

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The sixth visit took place in 2011 when my wife and I met up with ex-school-mates and their wives. We joined them at the Piazza dell’Esedra after taking in a very comprehensive view of the national museum in the baths of Diocletian.

 

 

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Should I include a fleeting visit changing trains on my way to Rome airport to catch a plane to Vietnam? My post on that is at:

A Solution to Miserable Weather

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Then in 2014 our local choir of Ghivizzano was invited to sing in Saint Peters. Details of this seventh visit are described in my posts at

Our Choir Sings at Rome’s (and the World’s) Greatest Church

From Peter to Paul

Two Kinds of Song

Remembering Goethe, Tasso and Anita Garibaldi in Rome

***

Last year the choir of my old Cambridge College, King’s, sang in Saint Peter’s and, of course, I was there for my eighth visit. (See my posts at

Caput Mundi

Towards Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore

King’s College Choir Arrives at Saint Peter’s Basilica

Castling in Rome

***

This year I could not miss yet again meeting up with another ex-school-mate, now living in the USA with his American wife and whose visits to Italy and Europe I had avidly been following on facebook.

Some posts of this latest visit are at:

Happy Cats in Rome

Beware the Ides of March.

Terminal Infection for the Greatest City in the World

The World’s First Shopping Mall?

That makes nine visits (and a half?) so far to Rome, each one quite different from the other. But as they say ‘Roma, una vita non basta’. (A lifetime is not enough to visit Rome). I would undoubtedly add that I’d need nine lifetimes to visit Rome rather than nine visits but then I do not have the advantage of being a cat.

 

Terminal Infection for the Greatest City in the World

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Exiting from Rome’s Stazione Termini – itself one of Rome’s iconic buildings and the mis-en-scene of Vittorio de Sica’s heartrending 1953 film ‘Stazione Termini’, AKA in a bad US cut version as ‘Indiscretions of an American wife’, starring Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift –

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one enters the city’s largest square the Piazza dei Cinquecento (incidentally, named cinquecento, ‘500’, in memory of the Italian soldiers who died in the 1887 battle of Dogali against the Ethiopian empire. I would have preferred Piazza Termini or even Terme….imperialism is somewhat out of fashion now!)

(Battle of Dogali – Italy’s late bid for an Empire…)

The square has, beyond the seemingly interminable bus stands, the ruins of the greatest Roman baths of the city, Diocletian’s, which date back to 300 AD.

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(From Bannister Fletcher’s plan of the baths)

These baths, besides comprising the Michelangelo-designed Santa Maria degli Angeli, contain the main part of Rome’s (and perhaps the world’s) finest museum of classical antiquities.

The National Roman Museum was founded in 1889 with the intention of being one of the main “Centres of historical and artistic culture of re-united Italy”.

The museum has been reorganized into four separate divisions, each in a different location:

These are:

  • The National Museum of Rome in Diocletian’s baths (visited in 2011).
  • The Palazzo Altemps (which I visited in 2017)
  • The Palazzo Massimo (visited in 2011 and again this year)
  • The Crypta Balbi (not yet visited).

The palazzo Massimo is conveniently placed near the Stazione Termini and on the morning of my departure from Rome I was able to visit it in the company of my two friends, John and Carol.

The palazzo itself is a massive nineteenth-century neo-Renaissance style building with great views over the ‘cinquecento’ square,

It houses one of the most important ancient art collections in the world: sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, coins and goldsmiths’ work document the evolution of Roman artistic culture.

Here is the plan of the Museo di Palazzo Massimo:

We wisely started on the second floor where frescoes, stuccoes and mosaics document the decoration of prestigious Roman residences. Here I was particularly struck by the evocative frescoes of the pomegranate gardens of the Emperor Augustus’s wife, Livia Drusilla’s villa, recomposed from its original location at Prima Porta, and the Farnesina villa.

Isn’t it easy for any ornithologist or botanist to recognize the life in these pictures, even after two thousand years? Spot the hoopoe (Upupa in Italian).

The mosaics and intarsia are equally astounding.

Suddenly I felt a déjà vue. Of course, I have been here before! It was in 2011, with my wife Sandra on a visit to meet school friends John Wagstaff and Martin Cardwell at Piazza dell’Esedra.. Such is the richness of the Imperial city however, that I saw these wonders with new eyes.

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(Me and old school-mates with consorts at fountain in piazza dell’Esedra, 2011)

The first floor is dedicated to the development of sculpture and portraiture. Here is the girl from Anzio and Roman copies of celebrated Greek statues: the discus thrower, the crouching Aphrodite:

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Surely Bagni di Lucca’s own bather is inspired by her.

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(Statue in foyer of Bagni di Lucca’s town hall)

Then there’s the discus thrower, and the gender-bending sleeping hermaphrodite.

I was particularly taken by the bronze sculptures which are all that remain of Caligula’s ceremonial ships dredged from the lake of Nemi in 1930’s after centuries of futile effort in recovering them.

Sadly, the hulks were the victims of the last war. The description in the museum states they were destroyed by arson in 1944. My HM government pamphlet on destruction of monuments in Italy in WW2 issued in 1945 states that they were set alight in a revenge attack by retreating German troops. A more recent report describes the situation thus:

“At that time, Allied forces were pursuing the retreating German army northward through the Alban Hills toward Rome. On May 28, a German artillery post was established within 400 feet (120 m) of the museum … An official report filed in Rome later that year described the tragedy as a wilful act on the part of the German soldiers. A German editorial blamed the destruction on American artillery fire. The true story of what happened that night will probably never be known”

What will also never be known is what happened to ‘Project Diana’ of 2004 to rebuild these ships in their original size (sufficient drawings exist for this to be achievable – the Nemi museum now only houses copies built to one fifth the original size). Anyway, let us be grateful that at least these impressive bronze pieces have survived from what must have been hugely impressive galleys. But if only they’d waited to dredge them after that war!

Also to wonder at on this floor is the Portonaccio sarcophagus: a virtuoso piece of sculpture describing battles fought by one of Marcus Aurelius’ generals.

Isn’t the lighting in this museum superb!

The ground floor houses stunning original Greek sculpture found in Rome: the Boxer, the Hellenistic Prince and the Niobe from the Sallustian gardens, and culminating in the statue of the emperor Augustus, Pontiff Maximum.

Time was now no longer on my side and, besides, there is only so much one can take in, even if it is the finest collection of Roman antiquities in the world.

A surprisingly good lunch was followed by a heart-felt goodbye to my dear friends

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and a hasty departure to catch my train to Pisa and thence to Bagni di Lucca, homeward bound to Longoio.

It was a journey of a little over six hours on the coast railway which always gives splendid views and is somewhat cheaper than going on the TAV to Florence (which actually doesn’t cut the journey time very much especially when one considers it takes longer to get from Bagni di Lucca to Florence than from Florence to Rome!)

Goodbye beautiful Eternal City. See you soon again!

PS As I approached Lucca I thought of the words of the magnificent ‘Inno a Roma’ composed by that city’s most famous son, Giacomo Puccini. Here it is conducted by acquaintance Andrea Colombini in Vienna’s Musikverein. (yes we were there!!!!!). See words below with my translation,

PPS Here are my return train tickets:

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In case you didn’t work it out, it cost me £22.59 to travel 237 miles without any rubbish pre-booking – just on the spot.  Check that out with a typical UK train fare….

Inno a Roma

Roma divina, a te sul Campidoglio
dove eterno verdeggia il sacro alloro,
a te, nostra fortezza e nostro orgoglio,
ascende il coro.

 Salve, Dea Roma! Ti sfavilla in fronte
il sol che nasce sulla nuova Storia.
Fulgida in arme, all’ultimo orizzonte,
sta la Vittoria.

 Sole che sorgi libero e giocondo,
sul Colle nostro i tuoi cavalli doma:
tu non vedrai nessuna cosa al mondo
maggior di Roma.

 Per tutto il cielo è un volo di bandiere
e la pace del mondo oggi è latina.
Il tricolore canta sul cantiere,
su l’officina.

 Madre di messi e di lanosi armenti;
d’opere schiette e di pensose scuole,
tornano alle tue case i reggimenti
e sorge il sole.

 Sole che sorgi libero e giocondo…

 

(My translation:

Hymn to Rome

Divine Rome, our choir’s voices soar towards you

on the Capitoline hill

where the sacred laurel is eternally green;

our choir rises to you, our fortress and our pride,

Hail, Goddess Rome! the sun, born in a new chapter of history,

shines before you.

Victory strides

resplendent in arms, upon the new horizon,

.

The sun, rising free and jubilantly,

tames the horses on our hill:

you will not see anything in the world

greater than Rome.

Throughout the sky flags are flying

and today the world’s peace is Latinate.

The tricolour flag sings on the construction site

and on the factory.

Mother of harvests and woolly flocks,

of honest work and diligent schools,

our regiments return to your homes

and the sun rises.

A sun that rises free and joyous …)

PS The basement of Palazzo Massimo displays a large numismatic collection and the sceptres of the Imperial Insignia, in addition to the jewels coming from sumptuous funerary furnishings such as that of the girl from Grottarossa. Another reason to return and see what jewels the girl was wearing when she died so young…

Beware the Ides of March.

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The friend I met up with in my recent visit to Rome described the city most accurately as a palimpsest. In case you are not sure what a palimpsest is, the word derives from Greek,  Palin ‘again’ psēstos ‘rubbed smooth’ and refers to a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on rubbed out earlier writing.

The word is now also applied to something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form; a large number of Rome’s historic buildings are built upon or modified from previous structures.

Notable examples include the Roman theatre of Marcellus which became the fortress palace of the Orsini family and still remains in private hands.

(Walking past the Teatro di Marcello on my recent visit to Rome)

Similarly, baroque churches are built upon Romanesque structures which in turn arise from early Christian buildings which often have been modified from Roman temples.

A typical example is the minor basilica of San Clemente which has no less than four layers:

  • The current mediaeval twelfth century church
  • The fourth century basilica converted from a Roman nobleman’s house
  • Those parts of the nobleman’s house which had been converted in a Mithraeum
  • The foundations of the house built upon a republican era villa destroyed in the famous fire accompanied by Nero on his fiddle (a fiddle on history if there ever was one as violins had not yet been invented).

In a similar fashion a contemporary art gallery two doors away from where I stayed in Rome in the Via Chiavàri (the street of the key cutters and locksmiths – be careful of the accent – it’s not to be confused with the seaside city of Chiàvari near where I stayed in a teacher exchange in 1995. It’s also important not to mispronounce the word as chiavàre, slang for ‘to screw’ and with the two similar meanings in English i.e. ‘to swindle’ and ‘to have sexual intercourse’).

MUSIA is a new space for contemporary art conceived by collector and entrepreneur Ovidio Jacorossi.

Ovidio-Jacorossi-photo-R.-De-Antonis

MUSIA was inaugurated last year and contains a thousand square metres of gallery space with multifunctional uses – everything from the visual arts to food and wine. The space was restructured by architect Carlo Iacoponi who used Rome’s palimpsest stratification of architectural elements from different periods – from the Roman age to the Renaissance – to considerable effect.

There’s one room dedicated to the Jacorossi Collection of twentieth century Roman art.

There’s another for the exhibition and sale of works of art, photography and graphics, design objects and applied arts. Among these are works by Paola Gandolfi, ceramic jewels by Rita Miranda and creations by designer Alessandra Calvani.

There’s the kitchen – with chef Ben Hirst – and with food and wine sourced from the surrounding Lazio region.

For me, however, the most extraordinary part of MUSIA and one which brilliantly displays the multi-stratification of Rome is the striking space of the Sale Pompeo, located within the ruins of the ancient Roman Theatre of Pompey. It was in this room that I experienced an engrossing installation drama themed on the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March – that fateful event which took place on the 15th of March 44 BC and one which has been imprinted on my mind ever since I read Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ in the first form of my secondary school, Dulwich College…..incidentally in the same class as the school mate I’d come to meet in Rome!

Within rooms of bare brick, breathing history and an atmosphere that immediately evokes ancient Roman times, the drama of Caesar’s murder develops.

Musia-Roma-4

 

Suddenly a storm takes away the golden light, wind moves the curtains on which a cold and livid night falls. light returns, but the atmosphere has changed. Beyond the curtains, one notices the gestures of a conspiracy, and soon fear spreads everywhere. Caesar, now defenceless, falls under the blows of merciless daggers. “Et tu Brute?”

A world ends and dissolves in the flames at the end of an epoch. Only the lyre continues to sound the endless and ageless story.

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Time for a meal in a characteristic Roman trattoria after all this bloody history on the spot where it happened; a little lucullan banquet with such convivial company!

(Recognize the ‘saltimbocca alla Romana and Roscioli’s bakery?’)

The MUSIA gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 12 am to 11 pm and on from Sundays from 10 am to 4 pm.

Zeffirelli’s ‘Inferno’ Re-Created in Florence

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I’ve mentioned Franco Zeffirelli’s foundation and museum in Florence in my post at https://longoio3.com/2018/05/06/an-invitation-from-franco-zeffirelli/

Last October we made a return visit to Florence as we hadn’t yet seen the museum.

Where to start with Franco’s achievements? In operatic scenography (Callas in ‘Tosca’)? In theatrical productions (‘Taming of the Shrew’ with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton)? In films (‘Tea with Mussolini’ with Judi Dench)?

I have my favourites (‘Jesus of Nazareth’, whose film sets we stumbled upon during our Tunisian honeymoon forty years ago),

‘Filumena Marturano’, a West End production with Joan Plowright, Larry Olivier’s widow, and the rehearsals of which we witnessed personally at the Italian Institute with the master himself, my father-in-law’s (the institute’s secretary-general from its inception) good friend, and, particularly, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, which had me transfixed as a teenager.

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There’s an excellent web site for Franco’s museum at

https://www.fondazionefrancozeffirelli.com/en/the-museum/

The immense achievement in theatre, opera and cinema of this genius, who was born in Vinci and is a direct descendant of Leonardo himself, is fully displayed in the fascinating museum which occupies the San Firenze baroque complex formerly occupied by the city’s tribunal. Here is a selection of costumes, photographs and posters showing the breadth of the master’s achievements.

The palazzo’s setting is spectacular and there is a very convivial bar and a cortile to relax in after your visit.

For me the most fascinating section was that dealing with the unfinished 1972 project  of making a film of Dante’s ‘Inferno’. Sandra was involved in typing the scripts and the maestro’s scenic directions. But why was the project abandoned? Zeffirelli needed special effects which, although, today, are common place in any US type blockbuster, were then not yet available. The digital revolution was in its infancy and the master’s imagination could then not be realised in cinematographic form.

These are the preparatory sketches for the imagined masterpiece.

There are so many artists in history whose vision is far ahead of any technology that could achieve it. Zeffirelli is one of them. And this is the astounding re-creation of these sketches in the film which climaxes this very special museum. Of course, you have to see it in its full size in the splendid room which displays it, to fully appreciate the unrealised masterpiece.

 

 

 

Happy Cats in Rome

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Where would Rome be without its cats? Ancient fallen columns and pediments would not be the same without  the eternal city’s felines sunning themselves among the ruins of imperial temples and fora. Yet there was a move by the authorities not too long ago to cull moggies as it was thought that they lowered the tone of the city!

Fortunately, there are many more cat lovers than cat loathers and protests took place. Volunteers came forwards to help protect the eternal city’s felines, inoculate them against FIV, feed , clean, sterilize them to keep their numbers under control, re-house and find them suitable adoptions. (It’s even possible to distance-adopt a Roman cat!).

One of the most characteristic places to enjoy Roman cats is among the ancient ruins of Largo di Torre Argentina. This is an area in the heart of the city which was part of a major slum clearance project in the 1920’s. By chance,  (as usually happens in Rome if anyone starts digging – most famously tunnelling that new metro line…) ancient temples were uncovered belonging to pre-imperial Rome together with part of Pompey’s theatre which, you may remember, was where Julius Caesar was murdered by Brutus, Cassius and their conspirators.

Stray cats were glad to have found a new open space through the generosity of archaeologists and began convening there in such large numbers than in 1929 volunteers decided to set up a cat-shelter.

It’s been often touch and go for the shelter’s survival. Happily, when I visited it on my recent visit to Rome I found it to be a thriving and cheerful place.

I think I would like to be a Roman cat in my next incarnation! Imagine getting free board and lodging among the splendid classical ruins of perhaps the world’s most beautiful city and receiving all the love I needed from devoted volunteers and generous visitors, one of whom will always be remembered for she was none other than that greatest of Italian actors, Anna Magnani who always visited Largo Argentina to feed her beloved cats between film shots.

PS If you can’t be in Rome do at least visit the cat sanctuary web site at https://www.gattidiroma.net/web/en/  

Even if you are not a cat-lover the site has lots of invaluable historical and archaeological information.