I wonder how many free-standing Christian crosses are spread around our comune. I don’t think a strict census of them has ever been made. Several of the crosses, sometimes made of wood but more often of iron, are quite elaborate and include the symbols of the Passion.

These symbols are as follows:

The “titulus Crucis” the inscription, reported by the four canonical Gospels, which would have been affixed to the cross of Jesus when he was crucified to indicate the reason for the sentence.

The jug that was used by Pontius Pilate for washing his hands.

The chalice of the Last Supper used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ during the crucifixion.

The dice of the soldiers used for winning Christ’s red robe.

The crown of thorns placed on the head of the King of the Jews.

The whips of sorghum used to strike Jesus.

The shroud with the face of the Lord as taken by Veronica.

 The spear of the centurion who pierced the body of Jesus.

 The hammer used to strike the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet.

 The pincer used to remove the cross’s nails.

 The piece of sponge soaked in vinegar to make Jesus drink.

 The red cloak which was the object of the soldiers’ winning the dice game.

 The three nails used for the crucifixion.

The hammer used to drive in the nails and pincer to remove them at the deposition.

The chains or ropes that encircled Jesus during his night in prison.

 The hand or glove that struck Jesus’ face when he was mocked.

 The reed used as Jesus’ sceptre.

The ladder used for the deposition of Jesus’ body from the cross.

The rooster that crowed to remind one of St Peter’s denial of Jesus three times.

The lantern or torches used by the soldiers who arrested Jesus in the garden of olives.

Swords and sticks

The pieces of silver given to Judas as payment for his betrayal of Jesus

The Sun and Moon, representing the eclipse that occurred during the Passion of Christ.

The shroud used to wrap the body of Jesus when he was placed in the rock tomb.

You can spot most of the Passion symbols on this example drawn from our valley:

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(Somewhat mistakenly in a walks guidebook to our part of the world there’s a mention of one of these Passion crosses as bearing agricultural symbols!)

Some of the crosses are at the crossing of footpaths and are traditionally meant to protect travellers and shepherds on their journey and as religious signposts.

Other crosses commemorate missions (or what evangelists like Billy Graham would call ‘crusades’.)

The entrance to Longoio is heralded by what recently was just the pedestal of such a mission cross. The cross seemed to have disappeared for some time. Recently, however, it has been found buried nearby. Perhaps the cross must have broken off and left with a view to replacing it back on its stand. This, however, never occurred and the weather and the accumulation of earth on it made vanish. In this respect the situation is like a local re-run of the famous finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena, a story majestically frescoed by Piero Della Francesca at Arezzo.

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The Longoio cross was restored to its pedestal last week and very lovely it now looks, especially when a pot of flowers has been placed before it.

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As you can see it is not as elaborate as many Passion crosses are but is still rather beautiful with the foliation at the end of its arms and the twin spears framing its sides.

I think it was a very worthy action for a group of local villagers to have restored this cross. Apart from its simple charm the cross is a reminder of ‘our rude forefathers’ at a time when Faith was rather stronger than it is now.

Longoio now has three free-standing crosses; the second one is found on the side of our chiesina or little church. It bears the inscripion (I quote from my wife’s comment):

“The saying nearby to our little romitorio or chapel is the Passionist Fathers Prayer “Ai piedi di questa Croce prometto o mio Gesu con il cuore e con la voce
di non peccar mai piu” (“At the foot of this Cross I promise my Jesus with my heart and voice never to sin again”)”

The third cross is at the top of Monte Calvario which lies within the boundary of our village.

The Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, a male religious order the members of which are called Passionists and who erected the two crosses in Longoio was founded in 1720 by St. Paul of the Cross with their first convent founded on Mount Argentario. The rule of the order, approved by Pope Benedict XIV on May 15, 1741, obliges the Passionists, with a fourth vow, to propagate devotion to the Passion of Jesus through missions and other sacred ministries. The Passionists wear a black cassock, tied at the waist by a leather belt, and on the chest a badge with the effigy of the Sacred Heart surmounted by a white cross with the inscription ‘Jesu XPI Passio’.

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They used to have a monastery near us called Convento dell’Angelo, a lovely white neo-classical building designed by the great architect Nottolini. Every year before this damned pandemic hit the world we used to go there twice a year to hear Easter and Christmas Masses sung by the singers of the Montegral music academy which now occupies the monastery but whose services are always celebrated by a Passionist father.  

Midnight Mass at Montegral

May these lovely occasions return soon. Perhaps the return of our Longoio cross is a hopeful harbinger.

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If one has a spot of big cash then here are a few ideas for home improvements.

Perhaps replace that staircase with a square one (Bernini)?

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Or an oval one (Borromini)?j

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Require a make-over for your private chapel? There’s a nice idea for one here.

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Does that empty ceiling in your ballroom oppress you? Then why not call on someone to paint it up. (Pietro da Cortona)?

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Bored? Why not wile away time with an elephant automaton!

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Wife a feminist? Then the ideal anniversary present could be a painting of Judith hacking off Holophernes’ head. (Caravaggio).

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Lots of possibilities are there! Especially if you are a busy bee and your surname is Barberini… (and you were born into that family’s city palace in sixteenth century Rome).

Here are a few extra snippets from the Barberini’s private gallery (recognize the Raphael, the Murillo and the stunning portrait or Beatrice Cenci – yes she of Shelley’s drama – by Guido Reni?).

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PS. Why does this post have the title I have given it?

People from Rome would vent their grievances through Pasquino, the most famous talking statue in Rome, denouncing injustices and bullying both of the Roman curia and the patrician families. Among the various “pasquinades” of the seventeenth century there was a satirical phrase, addressed to Pope Urban VIII Barberini and to the members of his family for the building havoc they caused.

By virtue of their power the Barberini damaged the city more than what could have been caused by a barbarian invasion. In one of the most sadly famous episodes Pope Urban VIII in 1625 had the bronze beams of the Pantheon pronaos removed and melted, to build the baldachin of Saint Peter’s main altar and also the cannons for Castel Sant’Angelo.

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Here are some pictures I took of perhaps Ancient Rome’s most iconic building during my recent visit there:

The origin of the saying was also ascribed to the construction of Palazzo Barberini with materials taken from the Colosseum.

“Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt Barberini”.

(“What the Barbarians did not do, the Barberini did”).

Located in the Renaissance heart of Rome, between Piazza Navona and Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Palazzo Braschi was designed by Cosimo Morelli (1732-1812) on behalf of Pope Pius VI (1775 – 1799) who wanted to donate it to his nephew, Luigi Braschi Onesti. The Palazzo in its opulence is one of the last testimonies of papal nepotism before the political and cultural transformations influenced by the French Revolution.

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The entrance is graced by an aristocratic eighteenth century coach.

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From the palace there’s a marvellous view of Piazza Navona with its Bernini statue of the four rivers.

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The inner courtyard was filled with scaffolding during my visit with spectacular effect.

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The Palazzo houses the Museum of Rome, dedicated to the history of the Eternal City. This year it’s the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of Rome as Italy’s capital (before then Turin and then Florence, had been the capital) and there’s a fascinating exhibition illustrating the making of the city, and its transformation from being the centre of the Papal States to becoming the capital of the new kingdom of Italy.

The physical transformation of Rome after 1870 was immense and shows in the city’s streets, squares, villas and public buildings. In the exhibition, which covers the period from 1870 to the outbreak of the First World War (which for Italy was 1915), three themes are unfolded.

• The city’s urban transformation. This took place as a result of ‘piani regolatori’, or town-planning schemes. Where these were developed on unbuilt land such as the area north of the Vatican City and the area just south of the main railway station they may be excused today. However, when they involved the ‘improvement’ of pre-existing built-up areas, especially in the historic heart of Rome, then it will be problematic to modern eyes. Grand avenues like the Via Nazionale swept away much that would be thought highly picturesque today but was deemed unsanitary in the nineteenth century.

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• The symbolic transformation. Rome was now capital of a nation in addition to being the centre of Roman Catholicism. The uneasy co-existence of church and state was only resolved under Mussolini with his Lateran pacts of 1929 which founded the Vatican City as an independent state. Meanwhile the high altar of Saint Peter’s basilica now obtained a rival in the wedding-cake ‘altar of the nation’ designed by Sacconi. Statues commemorating kings and statesmen that helped to unite Italy were also erected throughout the city.

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• The transformation of the river Tiber. Before 1870 Rome was poorly protected from flooding by its river. The construction of embankment walls saved the city from further floods but also radically changed its relationship to the river, now almost segregated from the urban fabric.

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I was impressed by the exhibition and the way it interweaved various aspects of life in Rome as experienced by the aristocracy and by poorer folk, the city’s influence on artistic movements, especially historical narrative and futurist painting, and the impact of the changes onto the nation as a whole. The amount of material illustrating the exhibition ranging from maps, paintings, photographs and even early moving pictures was impressive. I was really glad I managed to see it before it ends this September.

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The Torlonia marbles described in my post at https://longoio3.com/2021/06/16/a-prince-s-private-collection/

are clearly not the only reason to visit the Capitoline museums.  The museums themselves are a treasure trove of marvellous things. But if one can’t be there in person the web site at http://www.museicapitolini.org/en is a very adequate alternative.

The Capitoline Museums constitute the main municipal civic (and, therefore, not national) museum of Rome. Indeed, the two main museum buildings are separated by Rome’s city hall proudly flying the three flags of Rome City, Italy and the EU.

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Opened to the public in 1734, under Pope Clement XII, they are considered to be the first public museums in the world; places where art could be enjoyed by everyone and not just by the owners. They are known as museum in the plural as the original collection of ancient sculptures was added to by Pope Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century with a picture gallery consisting mainly of renaissance works illustrating largely Roman subjects.

What grabbed my attention most in the Musei Capitolini?

First, the large glass hall by the architect Carlo Aymonino (who died in 2010) which opened in 2005 and where we find the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, formerly in Piazza del Campidoglio and now sheltered from the weather after its restoration.

The hall also includes the newly restored tufa foundations of the temple of Jupiter Capitoline, perhaps the oldest of all Roman temples.

I was standing on the spot where the great empire was founded, the ‘Campidoglio’.  It was on this hill that an encampment of shepherds grew into a village, a town and into one the most iconic cities in the world. There were excellent explanations of this earliest testimony.

And then I saw the captive she-wolf, the symbol of Rome. The story relates that a vestal virgin, Rhea Silvia, was fertilized by the god Mars and gave birth to twins, Romulus and Remus. Their grandfather, Numitor, was expelled from the throne of Alba Longa by his brother Amulius and to prevent the grandchildren, when they became adults, from claiming the usurped throne, Amulius ordered the twins to be thrown into the Tiber in a basket. This basket ran aground on the river at the foot of a hill, where the twins were found by a she-wolf who took care of them until they were found by a shepherd called Faustulus. The she-wolf’s cave is the legendary lupercal on the Palatine hill.

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This wolf which dates from Etruscan times looks truly to be a friendly mum and clearly the twins imbibed the strength and boldness which would turn their descendants into the rulers of perhaps the most powerful and greatest empire the world has known.

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I though also of all the wolves I had come across in the world: those in London’s Regent’s park and Rome’s Villa Borghese zoos among them: the wolf, which increasingly populates the Apennines around my little house in Tuscany and which can only be big and bad to the local shepherds and their flocks of sheep and goats.

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The classical sculpture section of the museum has such wonders as the Capitoline Venus.

However, I was particularly moved by the agonised expression of the Roman copy of the dying Galatian. The original was a bronze sculpture attributed to Epigones datable to 230-220 BC and probably part of the Donarium (section of a temple where votive offerings are made) of Attalus in the city of Pergamum (which we visited way back in 1991 when reaching Turkey on our Morris Traveller).

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Such a lovely Greek horse and ready to gallop away as it has wanted to do ever since the 5th century BC when it was created in bronze by Egea, master of Phidias.

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The Pinacoteca (picture gallery) is rich in paintings from the baroque period and it is not difficult to find among them so many familiar pictures.

A passage below the Campidoglio square leads one across to the other palace housing the museum.

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Giant piranesiesque vaults reminded me that the palace has been built on the remains of ancient temples.

Looking out from these vast passages I obtained an overwhelming view of the Roman Forum.

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As civic museums go I think it would be difficult to find anything to beat the Capitoline Museums. In the area they occupy one can find the origins of Rome, the elegant city planning designs of Michelangelo, the cream of classical sculpture, some of the finest baroque paintings and an unbeatable view of the Forum. What more can one ask of life I wonder?

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I had meant to conclude the second day of my visit to Rome with a visit to the Galleria Borghese and its marvellous arts collection but instead finished up at the zoo and what’s more almost spent the night there!

My way into Rome’s own version of Paris’ Bois de Boulogne, the Villa Borghese, was via the entrance past the church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti at the top of the Spanish Steps and the Villa Medici, the place where the winners of the Prix de Rome stayed.

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In music alone such famous names as Bizet and Debussy were prize-winners.  (The prix was discontinued after the 1968 riots by the then culture minister Andre Malraux. Thank you very much Andre!)

The villa, a word which in Italian also means the grounds in which the villa is situated, is an enticing mixture of Italian formal avenues and English landscape paths.

The galleria is housed in the fine Villa Borghese Pinciana.

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However, my hopes of visiting the collection were dashed as all tickets for that day had been sold and had to be pre-booked anyway. (Also covid protocol means that numbers of visitors are very limited).

I thought of going to the Villa Giulia with its marvellous Etruscan collection but never got there as I came across this portal designed by Armando Brasini.

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It’s the entrance to what was once called ‘Giardini Zoologici’ but is now transformed into the ‘Bioparco’ of Rome. It’s the oldest zoological garden in Italy and currently houses over a thousand animals with over two hundred different species.

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In 1994 the zoo began to be transformed into a bio park – a structure that conserves animals at risk of extinction, and carries out scientific research with greater respect for animal rights and with environmental education activities.

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Here are some of the fauna I saw. Spot the Komodo dragon, the meerkats, Rome’s emblematic wolves, anaconda, Bactrian camels penguins and more.

I was also able to observe Roman families enjoying themselves on an afternoon out in one of the city’s most attractive lungs – on a day which was increasingly and uncomfortably humid.

An announcement warned visitors that the zoo was closing but when I reached the exit it was already locked! I noticed some people outside that had managed to get out and shouted to them ‘Please let me out. I’m not a lion (although I’m born under the sign of Leo…)’. Fortunately I managed to escape via the bio park’s offices which were still open. Actually I wouldn’t have minded spending the night in Rome’s zoo and listen to the serenading of wolves and the squawking of peacocks…provided, of course, that I was not fed to the crocodiles for breakfast!

I returned to my pensione near Campo dei Fiori down the Rome’s own Park Lane, Via Veneto, lined with some of the city’s most luxurious hotels and full of cinematic memories

Rome’s bio park is clearly not the main reason why one would plan a visit to the eternal city. However, it is very well organized and laid out and proves that, in at least one respect, modern inhabitants of the city have evolved from the times when they would gleefully watch savage felines devouring christian martyrs or fighting with gladiators in the Colosseum.

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Life is full of illusions. So full, in fact, that life itself may be an illusion. Why is it that some years in our earthly existence seem so much longer than others? Why is it that some people see life as a gloriously positive experience and others bemoan the lugubriousness of reality? Why is that the smallest problems seem huge and the largest ones mere specks?

Happiness is the biggest illusion, of course, and my life has been somewhat tortured to say the least. I never found my beloved or experienced pure joy. I did not have the suave manners and erotic attractions of my contemporary Bernini. I envied him his seductive behaviour and his indubitable talent. However, I am one thing which Gian Lorenzo is not: an architect. He is a sculptor who became a part-time architect while I was born and remain an architect. He based his design on the human body while I worked mine out using geometrical forms. On one thing, however, we did collaborate closely and that was the baldachin that covers the high altar of Saint Peters. At least we did agree on that one. I just wish we could have done more friendly collaborations as so much was happening to add to the golden baroque splendour of my seventeenth century Rome.

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I also managed to participate with Bernini in the staircases we built for Cardinal Barberini’s palace. Here is my rival’s effort:

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But I think my own solution is rather more adventurous:

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Tantalisingly at other times I had my commissions taken over. That was the case with my church of Sant’ Agnese in Agone in Piazza Navona

and so many of my original designs such as Sant’ Andrea della Fratte and San Filippo Neri were maliciously altered. These spurnings and rejections added to my gloomy attitude and even made me think that everyone was against me. Unfortunately, too, my temper often got the better of me: on one occasion, for instance, I almost kicked to death a labourer working on one of my projects because I thought he was spoiling my building material.

My big problem was what would be described in your age as ‘chronic depression’. In ours it was called ‘melancholia’ and we had no Valium pills to take then. Combined with my irascible temper it ruined my life and, indeed, almost got me to take it. I was obsessed by suicide to the point when on a particularly hot summer’s night, unable to sleep and with mosquitos attacking me, I found a sword and fell upon it. Unsuccessfully, however. A neighbour found me in a pool of blood and called the doctor in the nick of time.

There were spells when, feeling threatened by an exterminating angel, I felt unable to step outside my house for weeks. My old servant was so worried that I would starve myself to death; I was apprehensive that they might steal my architectural designs and so one evening I burnt them all.

I never recovered from my sword wound and died not long afterwards. Miraculously, as if God had finally taken pity on me I regained my lucidity of mind, asked forgiveness from the Almighty Father and received my last sacraments. I requested to be buried anonymously in the grave of my teacher and friend, Maderno who was instrumental in changing the design of St Peter’s Basilica from a Greek to a Latin cross.

Anyway, as I already said, it looks to me that life is one big illusion. Not a ‘con’ mind you but a supernatural illusion – a sempiternal cosmic joke if you like where one is led astray by preconceived hallucinations and habitual visions. I placed my own illusions – sometimes they could be better described as disillusions – in my buildings; making smallness become greatness, as in my church San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (now you wouldn’t think that this grand little church could fit into one of the central piers of Saint Peter’s basilica would you?)

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or by emulating academic mathematicians at their own game as in my church of Sant’ Ivo built for la Sapienza, Rome’s university and based on measurements derived from the then new branch of Calculus.

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Like that English architect, Sir Christopher Wren, I was often challenged by the most awkward sites. How to fit in a building on these sites and make them look full of presence was my constant puzzling delight.

One of the most fun things I did is that galleria you have seen today at the palazzo originally designed by Bartolomeo Baronino but which I modified to the latest taste for Cardinal Bernardino Spada.

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You pass into the palace’s courtyard and on your left you see the gallery with a perspective that makes you feel you are going into next door’s garden. Or are you? Of course not! It’s just an illusion.

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You’d think that the arcade is around thirty metres long, while in reality it is less than nine. With the help of my mathematician friend Father Giovanni Maria da Bitonto I created a deception where planes converge into a single vanishing point; while the ceiling descends from top to bottom, the mosaic floor rises. At its end there is a statue of a warrior from the Roman era. The sculpture seems full size but is only a yard high and, as for the width of the arch before it – well I’ll get you to work it out with your pocket calculator!

The gallery is also the result of the Cardinal’s interest in games of perspective. Spada clearly attributed to this gallery the meaning of moral deception and the illusion of earthly magnitude. We think we are so powerful and almighty but we are mere puny mortals. Our greatness is a mere illusion just like that statue at the end of my gallery.

By the way, if you are film-lovers (your own contemporary creators of illusions) Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning film ‘La Grande Bellezza’ has the magnificent Borrominian perspective set in one of its scenes.

PS Don’t forget to visit the lovely collection of paintings in the Palace’s first floor.

They include masterpieces by that once rare phenomenon, a female artist, Artemisia Gentileschi who I had the delight of meeting but was never able to capture the love I had wished from her.

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I am so glad that the lovely golden tables I remember in the palazzo are being restored too. One has already been finished – two months’ work – and the other is on its way to regaining its original lustre.

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Don’t worry about the profusion of carabinieri, grey suited men and large black saloon cars around the Palazzo. Cardinal Spada’s city mansion does, in fact, house Italy’s supreme administrative and judicial body the ‘Consiglio di Stato’ (the state council) which has jurisdiction on acts of all administrative authorities and consists of the President, eighteen section presidents and ninety two councillors of State. I think the cardinal would be delighted to know how important his elegant palazzo has become. I just hope that the council’s policies and results won’t be counted as other illusions to be set along with my little-large galleria…

PS Don’t feel sorry for me: I know I’m now getting my due in architectural history by the academic writers at long last…

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What is the most wonderful thing about Rome? Of course, there is her richness of mementoes from past ages: from Etruscan shepherds’ encampment on the Capitol hill to early virtuous Republican times, through dark gothic ages of plagues and invasions and into the golden light of Renaissance and the Baroque when Rome once again reinvented itself and became transformed into majestic splendour.

For me, however, there are two features of this truly eternal city that mean so much.

First, Rome is not a high-rise city. Just look at the archetypal views of the city from the Pincio, from the Spanish steps, indeed from anywhere in the heart of the city. Church spires and domes stand out among domestic buildings. There are no skyscrapers such as one finds in London’s centre disfiguring the cityscape and demolishing the once famous view of the metropolis as painted by Canaletto where Wren’s city church spires rose and stood out from the rest of the buildings and where Saint Paul’s cupola crowned the urban scene.

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It’s so unlike today where one is often hard put to get a unobstructed photograph of the Dome – so hemmed is it by recent high rise office blocks (which will soon empty as work-places because of the increase in teleworking). High-rise capitals are sadly proliferating throughout the world making a capital in India look increasingly the same as a capital in Saudi Arabia or Thailand or China or Japan or the USA……. It would be difficult to apply those lines from Wordsworth’s sonnet written on London’s Westminster bridge today:

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

Rather it would have to be re-written as something like this:

Shard, cheese-grater, gherkin, walkie-talkie

Tomb-like stand despotic and so pawky

But Rome is unique: it stands out exactly because it is low-rise. May it ever remain like that!

London capital city:

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The second feature I love so much about Rome is that one can still walk streets in its heart which have retained their age-old characteristics. These are the areas which escaped that misplaced attempt to give ‘regularity’ and ‘formality’ to the city’s maze of old alleys and streets. After Rome became capital of a united Italy in 1870 there were ‘piani regolatori’ (town planning schemes) put into operation which caused the ploughing of grand boulevards through Rome. Such roads as the Via Nazionale and the Via dei Fori Imperiali are the most prominent examples of this totalitarianistic town-planning. The new Italian rulers wanted to make Rome look like any other big European capital such as Vienna or Paris. Fortunately, much has remained unspoilt and untouched by the ogre of speculative new building such as has regrettably occurred to so much of London (and so many other cities).

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People do still live in the centre of Rome! The streets are still cobbled with those square lava stones called San Pietrini (so attractive but so tough if the right shoes aren’t worn). The lanes are shaded from the often torrid summer sun by their narrowness. Rome could, indeed, be described not only as the Eternal City but also as the archetypal Global Village.

Maggior Di Roma non c’e’…

So many of of us have our little collections of curios. They could be vintage 1960’s clothes or models of London omnibuses or old vinyl records, for example.

If one is a little richer then collections might include nineteenth century paintings and other art works. If one is very rich then collections could extend to old masters and fine arts. If one is filthy rich then one can make a collection of other people’s collections.

This was certainly the case with Alessandro Torlonia, Prince of Fucino (where he did much good work in improving the peasant’s lot). In addition to his aristocratic inheritance the Prince made a fortune in banking and was able to indulge in his favourite hobby of collecting ancient classical statuary, much of which derived from previous famous collections including those of renaissance nobles and clerics. In his sumptuous Palazzo Albani-Torlonia (not to be confused with the Villa Torlonia, Mussolini’s favourite residence) the prince built up perhaps the world’s greatest private collection of Roman (and some Greek) sculpture: Venuses, sarcophagi, fauns, gods, mythical heroes, vases and urns are all included. The collection is so vast that it accounts for one third of all Rome’s ancient sculptural heritage and is seven times larger than the national museum’s Palazzo Altemps collection.

The Prince’s collection of over six hundred items was visitable (only to academics) upon invitation until around eighty years ago. Then it disappeared from view and legal wrangling with the Italian government’s arts and heritage ministry subsequently started, the latest Prince of Fucino converting one of his palaces into abusive self catering apartments and stuffing the priceless collection higgledy-piggledy in the basement. That is, until now when in the beautifully designed new exhibition space of the Capitoline museum, the adjoining villa Caffarelli, this unique collection may be viewed again, courtesy of Bulgari and other sponsors, until the end of this month.

Around ninety statues have been selected for the show. That’s just a sixth of Torlonia’s collection, but they are all of astounding quality.

Some caveats, however. First, several of the statues have been thoroughly restored, perhaps too thoroughly, as used to be the practice once. Second, the statues are wash-day clean and shining white (apart from some including porphyry and other previous stone) unlike what they would have looked like when originally sculpted in ancient Rome and Africa when they would have been painted in bright, often garish, colours.

The Caffarelli villa has an enviable situation on Rome’s founding hill, the Capitoline, and the views from its terraces are reason enough to visit it.

As for the collection…it’s exquisite and a true thing of beauty. Judge for yourselves from the pictures I took of it yesterday. Do not despair, however, if you have been locked down from it: items from the collection may well go on a world tour in future less infectious times.

There was a time when, according to concert programmes, music began to be played on ‘authentic instruments’. It made one wonder what instruments were used previously; violins made of vinyl, pre-recorded cassettes for clarinets or perhaps balsawood bassoons? ‘Authentic’ has since been superseded by a truly HIPP term: ‘Historically Informed Performance Practise’,

So many of the concerts we have for some time been listening to have, regrettably not even been ‘authentic’. Instead, they have been ‘virtual’. At least, that was something.

For too long this has been the case with that Salzburg musical equivalent south of the Alps, Lucca. Last week, however, I was able to attend a brilliant rendition of Stravinsky’s ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ conducted by Jonathan Brandani, now an internationally respected conductor and someone who was raised in the Lucchesia. Brandani’s youthful performances of Mozart’s da Ponte operas were a highlight at the Montecarlo theatre in 2013 and were covered in my posts at:

Phenomenal Figaro

“It’s more Fun in Hell” says Don

Tutti Non Fan Così con Così Fan Tutte

The Stravinsky concert was held in the ample space of Lucca’s church of San Francesco. Originally the centrepiece of a large convent, which had been reduced to a military depository in the nineteenth century it is now beautifully restored as one of the city’s finest venues, higher education institutes and conference centres.

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The inauguration of San Francesco and its transformation into one of Lucca’s major cultural centres is described in my post at:

Magisterial Monastery

It was refreshing to be able to attend a truly authentic concert in Lucca instead of those ‘live streams’ which, although lucky to have the technology, are clearly no way near the real thing in terms of atmosphere and acoustics.

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Stravinsky’s ‘Soldier’s Tale’, a variant of the Faustian story where a soldier trades his fiddle to the devil in return for unlimited wealth, is set in that dismal year which ended the First World War and saw the Spanish Flu pandemic sweep the world and kill even more millions than the machine-guns, barbed wire, trenches and mud. With its sparse band of seven (socially distanced) instruments, speaker and dancer parts the piece seemed strangely appropriate for our times when another cataclysmic world event drags on….and on.

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Immaculately performed under Brandani’s direction the event was an excellent way of stating that the arts will never be put down no matter whatever age can infict upon creativity and hope.

In this respect it is great that Giacomo Brunini, the new director of our own local music school at Borgo a Mozzano (and half of the Brunini-Atzori guitar duo), has announced the following concerts as part of the ‘I Luoghi del Bello e della Cultura’ series which aim to bring visitors to the attention of beautiful and historic locations in our area. (More information on the programmes, performers and times of performances will follow, I am informed:)

27 June – Chiesa di San Francesco a Borgo a Mozzano

1 July – Chiesa di S. Maria Assunta – Rocca

13 July- Chiesa di San Francesco a Borgo a Mozzano

29 July- Chiesa di San Romano

5 August- Piazza della Chiesa di S. Giovanni Battista – Cerreto

Let summer return with a glorious vengeance! Already temperatures here are hitting above thirty degrees centigrade and beaches, mountain footpaths and cool streams are showing increasing signs of bipedal activity (and I don’t mean just ducks, eagles and swallows!)