Trastevere, late night, iPhone

Once not long ago, Trastevere was the rougher and seamier side of the Tiber (not long ago in the Roman sense, meaning in 3rd century). It was later the center of a large Jewish quarter, and a much later ghetto of artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and now a student stamping-clubbing-drinking and -vomiting ground.

As we soldiered up the steep and darkened hills from the frantic frat bacchanal, the homes grew more genteel, the trees thicker, the air sweeter. And then, utterly lost and now in a serious jet-lag haze, we stumbled across this. It rears up cream-colored and luminous out of the pitch black, like the enormous altarpiece of yet another venal Medici pope’s tomb. Such was my spaciness, I failed to identify it. It will remain l'incognito until I stumble across it again.

First day, redux.

Okay, technically day two, \240but the first day of lucidity after our 30-hour commute. We downed our triple espresso and jetted out the door, tossing buon’ giornos’ like confetti to unresponsive locals. You would think that after \2403000 years, the grumpy ol’ Romani would be used to us touristi.

We drifted towards the Piazza Navona, taking our time to re-orient ourselves to this section of the city, having stayed in the Parioli last time and closer to the Villa Borghese.

Pantheon pandemonium.

One of my favorite buildings of all time, the big P is also my second least-favorite site to visit. The word throng seems inadequate. Maybe ravening hordes? \240Nah, still too lame. Luckily, there are soldiers with AK47’s present. I surmise that they are there to thin the herds on alternative Wednesdays (unless there is a strike, of course.)

The Pantheon is a former Roman temple, now a church, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). It was completed by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated about 126 AD. Its date of construction is uncertain, because Hadrian chose not to inscribe the new temple but rather to retain the inscription of Agrippa's older temple, which had burned down. Hadrian was notoriously cheap except when it came to building defensive walls in cold climes and, of course, his little hideaway at Tivoli.

On the way, I practiced my stealth photography which was not easy to do since I was wearing coral-colored jeans. I did manage to capture the lounging Lothario below.

Hey, presto, two shots of the Pantheon without people. The second photo is from a photography exhibit, more of which I will cover later.

Meanwhile, nearby, is The Patient Pachyderm (see text way, way below. Hey, quit griping about the sequencing of shots. Remember, jet lag?)

And below, across the way in the courtyard of Galleria Spada, we zoom in on Harradina Lividia Caustica (from what is now known as Spain), who waits in the anteroom of famed iiurus justica, Venalus Stabo Corrupticus, to press her case of malpractice against the Greek charlartan who promised her a nose like Cleopatra.

Footnote: she ended up losing the case and eventually married said Greek charlaran. \240She spent the next two decades enacting her revenge and died tragically of food poisoning, an all-too-common occurrence in the upper classes who just loved their mushrooms to death. The relationship between Greek cuisine and mortality rates in Ancient Rome’s aristocracy is a growing area of scholarly excitement.

The Greek migrated to Syracusa where he opened a successful chain of brothels, Melina’s Meretricious Meretrixii, referred to by the vulgar as Whores in a Box. (Reverse the word order for an alternate translation.)

Fast forward thirteen centuries.

Historical whiplash is a common experience in Rome. A block from the courtyard of Galleria Spada, one vaults into sublimity where nothing succeeds like excess.

San Luigi dei Francesi is the 16th century titular and French national church \240at Piazza di San Luigi de' Francesi \240in the rione Sant'Eustachio. The following witty and wonky description from the Churches of Rome wiki is included for history geeks like me. My commentary is in parentheses.

“French nationalism has been effective in subordinating historical realities to its mythopoetic fantasies, and this has influenced the design of some artworks in the church of San Luigi. Basically, the French have liked to pretend that their polity is the lineal descendent of the Frankish Kingdom and its successor, the Carolingian Empire. However, the Holy Roman Empire had a better claim to this political pedigree - and the Franks were Germanic speakers, anyway. (So, there.)

Pope Leo X commissioned his relative Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later Pope Clement VII, to lay the foundation stone for the new church in 1518. He also gave the Confraternity permission to sell any ancient masonry and statuary that they found when excavating the foundations - a very useful concession financially.  (There has been unsupported speculation that the Italian-owned recycling and garbage firms so prevalent in the US took their inspiration from this innovative 16th c. arrangement and adopted their motto, Decidit Plaustrum, roughly translated as “it fell off the back of a truck.”)

Jean de Chenevière was appointed as architect. If you look at the plan of the church now, you will see that it is almost a perfect square. This seems to be because he originally planned a round church similar to (but much bigger) than the Tempietto di Bramante at San Pietro in Montorio, newly completed and proving an architectural sensation. (Geometry was his Jean’s weakest subject while in Lyceum.)

However, building was halted when Rome was sacked in 1527. The expatriate community was seriously reduced in numbers, and also impoverished financially, as a result of the Sack. (Origin of the term ‘sad sack’?)

Progress only resumed after King Henry II of France put up a contribution in the middle of the century, together with his wife Catherine de' Medici. It is unclear who the architect was in this period, but the proposal was changed to a conventional plan with a nave, side aisles and external chapels.

Giacomo della Porta designed the façade in 1581, but it was finally completed in 1589 by Domenico Fontana and consecrated in that year. The work had taken 111 years from the first purchase of the land (a construction speed record that remains unbeaten in Italy.)

One unusual concession that Pope Leo X had made was to make the church an extra-territorial parish for all French expatriates. Thus, any French person living in the Diocese of Rome had this as his parish church, not his local territorial one. The immediate effect of this on the church fabric was a multiplication of funerary monuments. French expatriates as parishioners had the right to burial here -they did not have to seek (or pay for) the privilege. (It also made local foie gras vendors very wealthy.)

The Diocese has been rightly wary of extra-territorial parishes ever since, and there are very few other examples. The one here has been suppressed. (foie gras being considered inferior to feggatto gresso.)

The interior was spectacularly restored by Antoine Dérizet in the period between 1749 and 1756. Many funerary monuments were thrown out, but were then taken to the courtyard of the Palazzo where they still are. (quelle surprise.)

The French have had the sense to leave the church mostly alone since, except for repairs and maintenance, and there are not many 19th and 20th century interventions.”

Obelisk and Elephant

Elephant and Obelisk is the base of the smallest obelisk of Rome, with a height of 5.47 meters: there are other 12 ancient obelisks present in Rome nowadays. (They seemed to have littered Rome like giant cigarette butts and have lasted just as long as gaspers will.)

The statue is a sculpture designed by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The elephant was probably executed by his assistant Ercole Ferrata; the Egyptian obelisk was uncovered during nearby excavations.

It was unveiled in February 1667 in the Piazza della Minerva in Rome, adjacent to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where it stands today.

(This sculpture is not to be confused with St. Francis with the infant Jesus in the church across from the elephant, below. Scholars have frequently \240noted that Baby Jesus seems to sporting a really loaded diaper. Thus, it’s an easy mistake, i.e., pachyderm vs. packapoo.)

Food.

How many photos and musings about food can I stand creating? Plenty, you betcha. \240The next two photos are from the front of Sto Bene, our first food find. Tiny, tasty, tremendously friendly, Sto seems to be a frontrunner in the local dine-and-dash lunch crowd. Their panini are perfetto and the counter boys pretty tasty, too.

I am feeling Bajajish.

By midday, I felt crucified by the heat and humidity (with no disrespect intended). We ducked into a handy church to cool off. Nothing like dismembered saint porn to put your own petty woes in perspective.

Mid-day White Heat, below. Even the Virgin is barely hanging on, too limp to notice that Baby needs changing. (At the risk of being too scatological, Baby Jesus’ diaper routine has been sorely neglected by biblical historians. After all, his 250,000 bones scattered across Europe get plenty of attention and veneration..)

The accompanying putti, made of sterner stuff - in this case marble - makes his disapproval of such maternal laxity quite obvious. He remains silent, however. It would not do to dis the Boss’s mum.

Mercifully, night falls again and we ooze over to Trastevere where the vampires are beginning to emerge.

You think I jest? It’s a slippery slope between vaping and vampirism. Luckily, these gals seem to be choosing a healthier path - hand-rolled joints, as does this alert lad below.

Dr. Weed will see you now.

Day one is done (okay, okay, a day two) and the walk home is in a trance. Not so stuporous as to not take a few last shots.

Anarchists are so picky. If they continue in correcting the spelling of the bourgeios, they will never overturn the world order.

Please follow the raised flag as we begin our tour. \240Please forgive my informal dress. It has been unusually hot this year.

Room for a view.

My favorite photograph in the exhibit.

Piazza Navona, courtesy of Michael Kors, shot from the 3rd floor. I fled there to escape the guard playing video games - loudly - on the second floor. Bruta figura.

19th c. metrosexual

Belle Époque.

Brass lenses! And I whine about carrying my 100-400 mm telephoto.

Piazza San Pietro at its sepia finest.

In Roma, not everything is black and white. Sometimes it’s just plain negative.

Have you seen this man? Last seen fiddling while Roma burned.

Can you hear me now?

Let’s just see Leggo beat this!

Finally, Achilles found his niche after too many years of being considered just a heel.

The ultimate in glute-tightening technology.

While Walter nosed about in the gift shop, I plopped down and, inspired by the contemporary photographers we had just seen, I took some surreptitious shots inside the museo’s courtyard and in the piazza which graces the exterior.

Pensioni

Our last stop before crashing home for a siesta was Sant Andreas delle Valle, my personal mecca of the Baroque. This terse entry from Wikipedia condemns this masterpiece to the banal.

“Sant'Andrea della Valle is a minor basilica in the rione of Sant'Eustachio of the city of Rome, Italy. The basilica is the general seat for the religious order of the Theatines. It is located at Piazza Vidoni, 6 at the intersection of Corso Vittorio Emanuele (facing facade) and Corso Rinascimento.”

It’s anything but banal.

Let’s do the macarena.

We had reached the point of critical aesthetic overload, amplified by jet lag, and \240compounded with the heat and humidity.

All of which justified our decision to rest and stay in, noshing on sublime local bread and cheese, accompanied by a bottle of Puglian white, the latter of which proved that the Italians can make dreadful wine.

Walter had seriously contused his leg right before we left the US so I am insisting that tomorrow, we defer our march to Pizza del Populo and spend the hot morning resting. He has extensive bruising that looks like one of those dismembered saints.

Lights out.

We next played one of my favorite games in Roma: name that via. Sounds simple until you recall that street names change about every 500 yards in the old quarter. Even when you are on a roll, the piccolo piazzi, odd pocket garden, and church square throw you off stride. The offline map is useless at this level of detail, hence the name game.

Our destination was dinner; our destiny was divine. \240Holy food, as in a miracle of culinary genius, not the cardboard hosts served up at Mass. Barbieri 23 is a slender and sub-fusc eatery overseen by chef George Baldari. His pedigree is persuasive:

“Inserted in the top 50 of the magazine Travel and Leisure treasures a gastronomic experience that goes from the Creole to the fusion passing through the soul food to the Caribbean.

A lover of history, he began a study on Spanish and Moorish influences in Italy, collaborating with Rafael Anson, president of the Real Academy of la cocina, which he Espanola in various events.

Great supporter of traceability and sustainability (it is part of the cooks of “Terra Madre” and “Chefs of the Alliance” of Slowfood) but also of the origin of the ingredients and dishes.

An absolutely eclectic and highly creative character, he has a sacred respect for the traditions and extreme attention to the quality of the ingredients but at the same time, he knows new cooking techniques, conservation and regeneration of the IV and V gamma dishes. For this reason, he was also chosen as a consultant by “Giovanni Rana” to coordinate the gastronomic line of restaurants.”

The proof was in the plates, however. We spent a referent two hours dining and chatting with George who is amiable and very willing to share cooking tips,like how to make his mind-blowing pickled green peach and porcini appetizer.

In addition to the ultra food, we drank a bottle of the famed Falenghina white wine, revered by the ancient gastronomes as Falerian. Fans included Livy the Elder, Julius Caesar, and my favorite Roman PI, Marcus Didius Falco.

George kindly consented to have his picture taken and promised me a signed recipe when we return. Me, a groupie at my age!

The following photos barely capture the experience, soon to be repeated. Until then, I’ll have George’s picture by my bed.

The maestro.

Sated, we walked in the light rain back through the piazzi, none of which looked familiar at night, stopped for a gelato and staggered up our five flights of stairs. A perfect day.

Annibale Caracci’s Portrait of a Boy. Talk about come hither looks!

Mannerism technically preceded the full-blown Baroque but it’s use of frenetic action, elongated form, and melodrama laid the foundation for the later extravagances.

Good thing this surly chappie is behind bars.

And it’s still ticking!

The last (g)asp. The death of Cleopatra. Her handmaiden, however, is more concerned about the run she just discovered in her stocking.

The famous optical illusion.

Home is where the globe is.

Detail from The Taking of Christ, by Frenchman Tromphime Bigot, known as the master of candlelight.

You paid what for those shoes??

Christ from the same Bigot painting. The Dude abides.

Someday, a woman will wear the beretta, this I swear.

I know a Greek doctor who can fix that hair lip.

Hair Club for putti.

Squisito!

By noon, the heat and humidity had become truly oppressive so we scurried back to the domus, closed the shutters, and napped.

We elected to spend the evening drifting with no purpose. It has only taken us four days to achieve such sublime aimlessness. This was, in essence, why we chose to stay a month in Roma - to be just two more pensioni, taking the City at their leisure. Bello!

A bit of pizza washed down with an excellent Montepulciano d’Abruzzo at a hip osteria served as the evening meal. Maybe it was the vino, maybe it was the company of Gualtero, but suddenly Roma was utterly magical. Every darkened alley ended in a slice of a lit Renaissance facade, each casual turn brought us to a piccolo piazza with its genus loci, a magnificent fig tree. The sheer theatricality of the City breeds a sense of giddiness, like the moment before the curtain rises on a favorite opera. It is the opposite of the Stendahl effect.

We ambled for hours until we realized it was actually midnight. Other than long flights, I cannot recall the last time we were up at a mezzanotte. Much of the time was spent window shopping in the tony Via Guila and via del Corso, each haut designer atelier vying for visual ascendancy. The following snaps barely do the spectacle justice.

Despite the glitzy allure of the shops, it is the midnight bones of the City that I love best, all chiaroscuro and chance. Thus ended another day.

The walk back through the Trastevere was made remarkable by the fabulous light and the welcome scarcity of people. Rome is like that: sudden, evanescent lulls as if the City is holding its breath.

Our evening concluded with an absurd meal at the ludicrously-named Queen Bee osteria where we endured the most inept service on the planet and an unwanted floor show.

Three couples sat at the table next to us, all dressed in black and tattoos - aging rockers, film people, Pilate instructors? The women were startlingly voluptuous - such breasts and lips \240do not exist in nature - and the men sported man buns, suspiciously black hair, and the tight miens of the well-Botoxed. They were also well-lubricated as their increasingly-public ardor clearly demonstrated. \240It was shockingly un-Roman and more than a little queasy-making, like we had stumbled upon a soft porn television channel for Sicilians.

Service was “provided” by a truly witless server who drifted back and forth like a supernumerary in a Beckett production; it took twenty minutes and four requests to secure a glass of the house plonk. \240Needless to say, we were two unamused Queen Bees and the proprietor voluntarily knocked 25% of the tab and offered a two for one drinks coupon. I accepted it with suitable thanks and left it on the table outside. Hey, at least I didn’t spit on it.

Back at the domus, a crowd of male American businessmen at Restarante Regola across from our building whom we had left two hours ago were now in advanced stages of terminal jollilty. Flat midwestern laughter rang and rang until midnight when the patient proprietor shut off the lights. Within moments, all was quiet and the magic had returned.

I am hopelessly in love with Roma.

Chiesa dei Santi Luca e Martina

Roman version of the Sharks and the Jets

What do the simple folk do? View from the terraces of the Villa.

And in another direction...

We had an interminible trip back to Roma, lots of unexplained delays. We luckily were able to grab a train directly back to Termini station and as the sun set, we walked back across P. Quirinale and down through the throngs to our domus. A most satisfying day.

It’s a funny thing about Roman men. They can be breathtaking at 19 and they can be dazzling at 60. It all seems to depend on whether they smoke. It’s unmistakable when they do - the sallow skin that becomes more noticeably yellow as their carefully-nurtured summer tans begin to fade. For those blessed with the classic Roman profile and who don’t smoke, the leanness of age yield facial planes that make me long for the courage to ask to take their photos. They are impossibly handsome.

And every once in a while, you see a face that is pure archaic, with the Etruscan pointed chin, the almond-shaped eyes, and ironic mouths. Switch out the black hair with red, blue eyes for brown, and pale skin for brown and you have pure Celt, a phenotype I see repeated throughout our travels in Europe. It’s interesting to see what features persist.

We spent most of the big day mooching about the Quirinale neighborhood and we lingered for some hours at the ancient Baths of Diocletian. The scale of the former complex is staggering, some 33 acres of libraries, gymnasia, and baths. A Catholic Charterhouse, or cloister, was built 800 years later on the site, quite lovely in its proportions, as seen in the next several photos.

The museum is part of the multi-site Museo de Nazionale di Roma and they have done a lovely job making the complex history of the site imaginable.

And then the surprise...

My internal clock seems to go off every three days and I must have a fix of green. And today, the prize was the largest garden in Rome, the Villa Doria Pamphili. It sprawls over 450 acres and the grounds are sadly dissolute when compared to its heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries. More importantly, it is free of cars and motorcycles, offering real spot of tranquility amidst the endlessly surging, pushing City.

The afternoon seemed be suspended in perfect light and a welcome breeze filled the air with the fragrance of hot umbrella pines. Another perfect point in time in Roma Caput Meum.

We descended slowly back down the Janiculum into Trastevere where the neighborhood was beginning to rev its engines and our own were in need of a nap before we headed out for dinner sat Madame Gu, a trendy Japanese restaurant. After two weeks of typical Roman fare, we were ready for something different. The walk to the restaurant (so cool with its use of severe white leather seating, clever lighting and endless trance music that one could be forgiven for mistaking it for a high end hair salon in West Hollywood) was a bit of a scrum though the parked cars and whizzing motorcyles. When we arrived, it was to learn that the sushi was merely okay but was very reasonably priced and the service was haplessly disorganized, but chic. I began to long for the traditional ristorante with men in black trousers, white aprons and shirts serving the unpretentious and glorious food of Lazio.

Hadrian’s Mausoleum, known as the Castel Sant’ Angelo, seems an unlikely location for an exhibition of 20th century lapidary extravagance. \240Amidst the armaments and the amphora are artful arrangements of the adamantine, such as any number of the necklaces owned by Elizabeth Taylor and any number of the wives of the Aga Khan. As dazzling as the Bulgari exhibit is, a more intriguing photographic subject was the couture fashion that accompanied the display cases. Fellini would have rejoiced in the sumptuous combination of color and light and alternately surreal and silly displays. La Dolce Vita does make an appearance in video clips and immense black and white stills from the iconic moments of the film.

After scaling the heights of fashion, I scaled Despot Heights, whose owners stretch from Hadrian to any number of Popes and finally to the State. The views from the Mausoleum are hard to surpass, however every viewpoint is crowded with the berserkers from the aggressive and growing Selfii tribe. I have painfully learned to keep a low profile and NOT get between a Selfii, her device and her target.

In the flash moment between onslaughts, I dash in and take the odd snap.

We said our lingering farewells to the emeralds and drifted back to Vittorio Emanuele for a glass of wine on the rooftop terrace of a friend’s B&B. As you can see, it’s good to have friends with such lofty notions.