An Italian archaeological find of immense importance, something dubbed a maritime Pompeii, occurred in 1998 when, while digging the foundations for a new railway control centre in Pisa’s San Rossore area, the unbelievably unspoiled remains of over thirty ancient Roman ships and boats were uncovered. Miraculously preserved by the oxygen-lacking peaty soil of what was in olden times the Pisan shoreline (the sea has since receded a good ten miles) it’s taken twenty years of painstaking research and restoration to conclusively display to the public these glorious witnesses of the Roman Empire’s vast maritime trading empire.
The Museo delle Navy Antiche di Pisa opened earlier this year and is stunningly laid out in the city’s old naval arsenal. Divided into two sections, the museum makes excellent use of such features as the old cavalry stalls and the superb interior arcades.
The first section contains Pisa’s archaeological museum. Here one can wander from early Etruscan settlements, to the glory that was Rome’s major port, to the arrival of the Goths. Note the precursor to the surveyor’s theodolite and the Mithraic reference in the Phrygian cap wearing bas-relief…
The second section houses some of the most spectacular finds of everyday ancient Roman life since the uncovering of Pompeii in the eighteenth century. The ships hidden under the natural protection of the Pisan marshes reveal an all-encompassing typology of classical vessels from fluvial boats, precursors of the Venetian gondola, the canal long-boat and the Cambridge punt, to river cable-hauled ferries and sea-going cargo boats which sailed as far as Colchester, the Black Sea and the straits of Gibraltar. Never before has a glossary of floating craft been revealed in such detail and completeness before. I’m truly glad to be alive to admire this parade of maritime craft dating back to over two thousand years ago.
The museum’s ships display such features as interior handrails, cargo storage methods, double-skin hull construction, gang-planks, massive anchors, variety of sheet (sail) arrangements, seating arrangements (especially for passenger ships), oar propulsion and much, much more.
What are even more fascinating are the intimate insights into the lives of the average Roman sailor and his crew:
On-board games:
Fishing tackle:
Clothes (leather water-proof greased jackets) and footwear:
Maritime navigation aids and the mariner’s personal on-board possessions box (with lock):
Astonishingly well-preserved basketware:
There is even evidence of a ship’s cat!
There’s a wall chart showing the typology of amphorae storage pots extending over four hundred years showing the increase and decrease of trade and reflecting the rise and fall of the Roman empire…so insightful of other empires including the British whose trade is now in danger of emasculation thanks to the cancer of brexitisis.
For me there was a particularly poignant exhibit: the recovery of the skeletons of a sailor and his dog (a beagle) crushed when a ship’s mast fell on them.
Our vibrant journey through Roman port life was accompanied by one of the archaeologists who assisted in the recovery of this astounding discovery: his knowledge and enthusiasm was clearly conveyed to us and our little group of five who had booked a guided tour.
We emerged from past centuries into the present times which themselves are redolent of a birth which occurred when many of these sailors plied their wares between peoples of different shores but united in a common pursuit of commercial and cultural exchange: a European Union two thousand years before its time, a union whose collapse under barbarian forces took years to rebuild into the present coming together of twenty seven nations once, alas, twenty eight…
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
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.
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.
***
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?
***
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.
***
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:
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.
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.
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 –
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.
(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.
(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:
Surely Bagni di Lucca’s own bather is inspired by her.
(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
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:
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Castel Sant’Angelo once formed part of the Pope’s military defence system. If the supreme pontiff needed to get out of the Vatican quickly into a safe place (such as occurred during the sack of Rome in 1527) then he accessed the walled passage (passetto di Borgo) which still exists today between the basilica and the castle.
The ‘castle of Saint Angel’ is named after Pope Gregory saw a vision of the archangel Michael stopping the plague which was afflicting the city in 590 AD. It’s a fascinating palimpsest of architectural styles, ranging from ancient Roman to more recent times.
Built around 135 AD as the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian and his wife Vibia Sabina, the structure originally looked like this:
It was transformed into a castle with the addition of outer bastions after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Now it looks like this:
Castel Sant’Angelo was also used as a prison and place of execution, somewhat like the Tower of London. Anyone who has read Cellini’s autobiography will remember the account of how he escaped from grim confinement with just a broken leg. The castle is also famous for being the mis-en-scene of the last act of Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ which ends with the heroine throwing herself off its walls to her death. (See Zeffirelli’s film of ‘Tosca’ set in these very same locations.)
The imposing structure contains forbidding cells:
Some opulent state rooms:
A picture gallery:
In its centre is the treasure room which once was the place where the Emperor’s body was placed:
There’s a delightful rooftop bar
An interesting armoury:
And the most wonderful views of Rome from the topmost terrace complete with the angel himself and and some smaller winged visitors too.
I managed to escape from the Castel Sant’Angelo via the original helicoidal ramp of Hadrian’s mausoleum.
I then made my way to the roof-top gardens of the Atlante star hotel, conveniently situated half-way between the castle and my accommodation. Here a very convivial gathering was taking place. I met the Provost of King’s, Professor Michael Proctor, together with his charming wife, Dr Julia Proctor. I also chanced upon several College non-resident members who were living in Rome. We discovered, not too surprisingly, that several of us had the same type of job: English language teachers and directors of English language schools. There was thus plenty to talk about!
During our evening a dramatic thunderstorm struck Rome. It was absolutely stunning to see a lightning flash over St Peter’s basilica.
Evidently Roman weather is highly unpredictable; I was glad that I’d brought my umbrella with me as I wended my way back to my little pensione in Via Boezio after a very pleasant evening spent in such cordial company.
There was still one further morning to my stay in Rome. Which places would entice me to visit them, I wondered…
King’s College choir was due to sing at High Mass in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica on the following afternoon. I decided I’d spend the morning visiting the area around Porta San Paolo, the southernmost of the gates that punctuate the Aurelian wall still surrounding the heart of the city.
The pyramid built as a tomb for Gaius Cestius, a magistrate, around 10 BC strikes an exotic note in the city. However, it was built at a time when things Egyptian were all the rage, especially as the battle of Actium, where a Mark Anthony seduced by Cleopatra was defeated by the future Emperor Augustus, was fought less than twenty years earlier.
The pyramid is only open by appointment. Luckily I managed to squeeze into a pre-booked group as one member hadn’t turned up. As explained by the well-versed young guide the pyramid is rather different from the archetypal pyramids near Cairo. It’s not just that it is much smaller – 36 metres high as against Cheops’ 139 metres – but that its angles are more acute that Cheops’s flatter outline. In fact, the Cestius pyramid has proportions more similar to those found at Meroe in the lower Sudan. Furthermore, the pyramid is merely rubble covered with marble instead of being built with the huge blocks that characterise classic Egyptian pyramids.
The interior chamber is a little disappointing. It was largely despoiled by looters as seen in the tunnels dug into it and the frescoes are rapidly fading away. But at least I got into it, adding to my list of pyramid entrances – already three in Egypt and a couple in Mexico.
What is particularly and so poignantly captivating is the ‘Cimitero Acattolico’ nearby. This is Rome’s cemetery for all those who are not of Roman Catholic faith. My mother, who went to university in Rome, remembered it as an overgrown and neglected place with many broken tombstones – but then it was wartime and there was no preservation society such as exists today, excellently managed by Amanda Thursfield.
The cemetery is quite enchanting and beautifully kept and many of the tombs have been well-restored. The cemetery’s cats are also well-looked after and appreciated:
My first stop was at Shelley’s tomb which contains what was left of him when his body was washed ashore after his yacht went down in a great storm off the coast near Viareggio. (For more on this tragic story see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/loves-philosophy/ ).
The tomb’s inscription is Cor cordium (“heart of hearts”), followed by a quotation from the tempest:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change,
Into something rich and strange.
Next to his tomb is that of Edward Trelawney, friend and adventurer, who managed to snatch Shelley’s heart from his body which had to be burnt according to quarantine rules, and which now lies in St Peter’s churchyard in Bournemouth. (See my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/cor-cordium/ ).
The other unmissable grave is that of John Keats who died in Rome of TB one year before Shelley was drowned. Strangely his name is not mentioned on the tombstone and the somewhat bitter inscription states that “This grave contains all that was mortal, of a young English poet, who on his death bed, in the bitterness of his heart, at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraven on his tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
To the right of Keats’ grave is that of Joseph Severn, the friend and painter who lovingly cared for the poet in his dying days.
The cemetery remains open for inhumations and among more recent inmates are American poet Gregory Corso and Dario Bellezza, the Italian poet and playwright.
It was now time to find my way to St Peter’s for King’s College choir’s second appearance in the eternal city.
There was absolutely no way of avoiding the queues – not even if I showed my King’s College member’s pass! There is strong electronic security one has to pass through. But I still managed to get to the church on time.
The choir was positioned to the left of that gigantic Berninian fantasy, Saint Peter’s throne, and was fortunately in a good acoustical spot well away from the resounding cupola.
For the ordinary of the Mass the choir largely chose pieces from Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli and some of the lovely English renaissance music they’d sung at the previous evening’s concert in Santa Maria Maggiore. Everything went very smoothly indeed. There was a little amusement at that part of the Mass where handshakes are given all round by the congregation as a sign of peace. The choirboys, in particular, made quite a feast of this bit!
The singing, as always, was superb and was an example of what anyone coming to Mass at Saint Peter’s deserves to hear rather than the abysmally low standards generally displayed there.
At the end of the service it was time for photograph taking but there was a slightly awkward moment when a grand old lady insisted on being included in every photograph of the choir. Thankfully a compromise was reached.
It was quite amazing to see King’s college choir transported from the austere gothic perpendicularity of their Cambridge chapel to the curvaceous theatricality of Saint Peter’s and I felt that their sound, too, had changed a little to a more Mediterranean tinge with louder than usual tenors. But perhaps it was just the acoustics. Here are some excerpts I recorded for your judgement:
My next stop after the heart of Roman Catholicism was to the heart of the old defence system and metamorphosed mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. The basilica and the Castel Sant’Angelo are, in fact, connected by a passage on a wall and, unsurprisingly, my thoughts turned to another English connection with a wall built by the same emperor to keep out the barbarian Picts.
Rome’s Piazza del Popolo must surely be one of the most effective entrances to the historic centre of any world capital city. Its ovoid shape, reminiscent of saint Peter’s square, its combination of urban landscape and the Pincio hill, its treasure house of a church, Santa Maria del Popolo with Raphael and Caravaggio among the artists who contributed to its beautification, the two smaller domed Santa Maria churches dividing the three main straight roads into the heart of Rome, the obelisk in the piazza’s centre and the now-traffic-free area makes the piazza del Popolo (named, incidentally from poplar trees and not necessarily from ‘people’.) absolutely unforgettable.
The three streets leading off the piazza are Via di Ripetta which leads to the majestic altar of Augustus I’ve described in my post at https://longoio3.com/?s=ara+pacis, the Corso, Rome’s high street, which once was used for horse racing during the carnival so vividly musically depicted in Berlioz’ piece from his opera ‘Benvenuto Cellini’, and the Via del Babuino which leads to the Spanish steps. (Why Spanish? It’s because they lead to the Spanish embassy to the Holy See).
Again, we are at another supremely iconic Roman piazza. Here is where Peck took a blossoming Hepburn on a Vespa (without crash helmet…). Here is the centre of the ‘foreign quarter’, especially of the English, as Babington’s tea rooms proclaim. Here is the last view John Keats sadly ever saw in his life from the house which is now an immaculately kept memorial both to England’s most sensuous poet and to its most lyrical – Shelley.
The Spanish steps are a poignant mixture of joy and sadness and are always full of the youth from the four corners of the world. But beware of using these steps for doing anything else than photographing and embracing each other. Rome has now (rightly) a strong policy against eating and drinking on its many delightful steps.
Last time I was at the Spanish steps I tripped over and twisted my ankle descending them. This time round I climbed up this gorgeous ascent to be greeted by another of the eternal city’s timeless views bathed in brilliant late sunshine.
From the pretty church on top there’s the start of a fourth street running inexorably rectilinearly, despite the presence of one of Rome’s legendary hills (the Quirinal) in its centre – so it’s almost a roller-coaster ride. (PS Rome’s seven hills are the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal, and Viminal but NOT the Janiculum).
The via Sistina leads into the Via delle quattro fontane with, at its crossing with the via del Quirinale (the home of Italy’s president and whose exquisite gardens are only open once a year – must try to be there at least once in my life), the genially eccentric baroque architect Borromini’s miniature masterpiece San Carlo alle quattro fontane (AKA San Carlino). The quattro fontane are delightful. Two represent the Tiber and its tributary the Anio. Two represent the goddesses Diana and Juno. Unfortunately, San Carlino was closed so I must leave its mathematically complex interior to another time.
Where did the Via delle Quattro fontane take me? Why, to one of Rome’s four great basilicas (and, in my opinion, the most beautiful), Santa Maria Maggiore! Outside the basilica seems a later baroque masterpiece but all those scrolls and pediments are used to enclose a casket of exquisite beauty – a rare example of what a fifth century early Christian church looks like.
And why should I reach the basilica by 8 pm in a quickly falling Roman dusk. And why should there be around so many ‘top’ (as the Italians call VIPs), including ambassadors and Rome’s mayor? Why of course: to hear my old university’s choir of King’s College Cambridge sing in a concert as part of the sixteenth international festival of music and sacred art.
This was the programme the choir sang:
It would be superfluous to say that it sang excellently. In particular, the English pieces were superlatively resonant in the astonishingly good acoustics of Santa Maria Maggiore.
As an encore the choir sang (unsurprisingly, particularly since we are in Rome) Allegri’s Miserere in a somewhat abbreviated version, but still including the stratospheric soprano ‘volatura’ (which some say was added later).
I was stunned by the setting. Used to hearing this archetypal Anglican tradition choir in the choir stalls of their usual regal setting I was amazed at how effective the sound was in the setting of an ancient Christian basilica with wonderful mosaics in the apse. Perhaps it was also due to the fact that both King’s College Chapel and Santa Maria Maggiore have a strong rectangular shape. Kings chapel is 289 feet long, 39 feet wide and 80 feet tall and Santa Maria Maggiore is 302 feet long, 98 feet wide (but this includes the aisles, lacking in King’s) and the height of its magnificent coffered ceiling is not much less than that of Kings.
In all their finery the crema della crema of Roman society was there. They seemed quite dumbfounded by the incredibly high standards of English church singing as distinct from their own and the choir received a standing ovation before it finally filed out as normally as ever.
Unfortunately it was strictly forbidden to record or take pictures but I managed towards the end to slip these in without flash of course. Undoubtedly, however, there will be many official photographs readily available.
I regret to say that not much has happened to make the average basilican church choirs of Rome rise much higher than the remark I heard from a BBC radio 3 producer of an excellent series in the 1980’s called the ‘Octave of the nativity’ when he was unable to use as an example of the Mass as it might have been conducted in the Sistine Chapel, Rome, in 1613 the present Sistine chapel choir since it was considered ‘unworthy of being recorded. That was 31 December 1984 and not much seems to have changed in that direction.
Of course, period instrumental interpretation of Italian music by Italians like Fabio Biondi and our own Carlo Ipata has all but superseded many tamer English versions of such a repertoire but I can think of very few decent Italian church choirs, although nearby Lucca Cathedral’s Coro delle cappella di Santa Cecilia directed by Luca Bacci and smaller specialist groups such as the highly versatile ‘Stereotipi’ based in our valley of the Serchio are excellent – to say nothing of Egisto Matteucci’s outstanding ‘Polifonica Lucchese’.
If, however, you want to hear Palestrina as he should be heard you’ll have a much better impression in King’s College Chapel rather than the Sistine chapel itself – unless, of course you were lucky enough to be at Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome on the 15th of September this year!
I knew when I had reached my destination without even having to look at the station‘s name.
An invitation to come to ‘la città eterna’ was not to be resisted. Rome has been part of my heart ever since I first visited it as a schoolkid and this city of cities has recurred constantly in my life ever since. The last time I was in Rome was when our Ghivizzano choir sang there in 2014 (see my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/our-choir-sings-at-romes-and-the-worlds-greatest-church/ ).
This time the choir of Cambridge’s King’s College Chapel (my old university) was to sing in a concert at one of the four great Roman basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore (in my opinion the most beautiful) and also assist at High Mass in Saint Peter’s basilica the following day.
I truly believe that music can unite the world and the possibility of experiencing the vocal fusion of two such different religio-cultural worlds: that of the Counter Reformation’s high baroque lushness of the centre of Roman Catholicism with that of the Anglican limpidness of one of the greatest of all late gothic buildings was just too irresistible.
My BnB was strategically situated just between St Peter’s and the Castle of Sant’Angelo in a characteristic 19th century block of flats built around a courtyard. I received a great welcome and my accommodation was neat, clean and simple, just as I like it.
I itched again to tread on the sanpietrini – those little lava paving cubes so characteristic of this wondrous city but which play havoc to anyone not wearing well-soled and padded shoes and cause big blisters after just two days.
My trainers were good enough and I headed to see the most beautiful example of ancient Roman sculpture – the emperor Augustus’ Ara Pacis – the altar of peace. In his wisdom Augustus proclaimed a new goddess of Peace which would unite the empire into a dawn of harmony and beauty. The historian Gibbon described this era as perhaps’ that time during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous”.
The altar of peace once formed part of a great ritual area in ancient Rome which also included Augustus’ own mausoleum, now being finally restored.
Through the centuries the altar was torn apart, bits broken off and sold to collectors and all but lost to the world. (I sadly regret that this barbarity has continued today with a middle-eastern terrorist state, now hopefully in its last throes, but not before having destroyed so much beauty, and so much of it from the Roman era…)
Eventually, by the end of the nineteenth century archaeologists discovered that the scattered fragments did constitute part of a great altar and, eventually, the Ara was pieced together in a somewhat hurried fashion in time to celebrate the emperor Augustus’s two thousand’s anniversary which occurred during the fascist era.
The building which housed the reconstructed altar was not satisfactory and many will argue that the new one by Meier, and inaugurated in 2006, is equally unsatisfactory. I did not find it so. I loved the natural light the controversial building plays on the exquisite floral and human figures of this most delicate, most moving example of ancient Roman art at its best. I missed out on the evening show which must be quite spectacular as the monument is displayed with lights showing its originally vividly coloured marble statues. (All classical statues were painted once – as, indeed, mediaeval tombs were).
‘Una vita non basta’ – one lifetime is not enough to see Rome as the saying goes. Apart from espousing reincarnation, which is a risky business (unless you are born a cat with nine lives) what else can one do?
I had a check-list of must-sees and the cats (Rome remains famous for its feline colonies) was one of them together with the lush splendour of the Palazzo Barberini. How lucky to be a cat living in Rome’s most splendid palace! I was glad to see that the cats of Rome, after a period of being described as vermin, are now being well-looked after and loved again.
If a house without cats is lifeless how more so is Rome! (Incidentally my BnB hostess kept eleven of them – not where I stayed, I hasten to add but in her other place at Ciampino).
