Saturday 29 October 2011

Another gorgeous day!  Not only was the sky nearly cloudless, but also it hit 80 degrees.  I’m told there was snow at home. I thought I’d spend a lot of time outside enjoying the weather today.  I decided to start at the north end of the city and work my way back to my apartment in Trastevere.  I took the tram to Stazione Trastevere, from there took a local train to Termini, and caught the metro to Piazza di Spagna. The Spanish Steps are always a fun place to hang out, with the row of palm trees and Bernini’s fountain in the piazza. I love this fountain. The water pressure is low, so Bernini designed it to look like a leaky little boat spouting water.  I climbed the Spanish Steps for the great view of the city from the top.  The sky was clear and I could see across the rooftops of the city: terra cotta tiles, roof gardens with geraniums and roses still in bloom, and the domes of Roma’s many churches, including the gigantic mass of St. Peter’s across the river.  The steps themselves were covered with people as they usually are. A group of school children were running up and down the stairs, chased by a pair of nuns in long dark habits. The poor sisters were about as successful in rounding up the kids as they would have been trying to herd cats. 

From Piazza di Spagna I headed south, not really going by any particular route but wandering around through the little side streets and alleys that run off the few straight main streets in the city.  The area around Spagna is good for shopping if you’re looking for fashion or house wares. Since I didn’t need any Prada or Fendi, and already have a couple of espresso machines, I bypassed these for bookstores, looking for stuff to acquire for the library.  Since it was Saturday and the weather was good there were many street musicians playing in the piazzas and crossroads.  A trio of violin, accordion and double bass was particularly good, playing transcriptions of Italian works from Vivaldi and Corelli as well as medleys of popular music.  Like most Italian street musicians they threw in the theme from The Godfather for good measure.  Near Piazza Reppublica I heard small brass ensemble play a strange swing version of the Star Wars soundtrack.  The trombonist had on a Darth Vader helmet, minus the face mask.  And at Piazza Venezia a steel band performed as a group of fairly inebriated American students listened and danced on the steps of the Victor Emmanuel monument. They had figured out that in Italy open containers are permitted, the legal age is apparently six, and you can buy alcohol pretty much anywhere at nearly any time of day. I hope they didn’t also discover that the carabinieri would bust you for hurling on a national monument. At least a friend held her hair for her while she noisily lost her pasta and Peroni.

I returned to Trastevere in the afternoon by way of Tiber Island, home to the Temple of Asclepius and the corpse of the Apostle Bartholomew (by way of Jerusalem and Sicily; his arm is in Canterbury, UK).  Dinner was insalatone (a huge salad) with mixed greens, water-buffalo mozzarella, pickled vegetables and prosciutto.  Since I had walked so much today I decided to indulge in a little gelato. I had Gary’s favorite, stracciatella.  This is the Italian version of chocolate chip but much better.  They make it by drizzling a stream of melted dark chocolate onto the gelato as it’s being churned. The chocolate hardens on contact with the cold gelato and shatters, and little shards of chocolate end up in every bite.  Notes and reading, and then bed.

Friday 28 October 2011

Since it was once again warm and sunny I decided to walk around town as I checked out a couple of bookstores for library acquisitions and also hit a few sites for my research. I crossed the Ponte Sisto and walked up to the morning open-air market at Campo dei’ Fiori. I love this square; in the morning it is filled with the stalls of vendors selling fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, herbs and spices, flowers, house wares, and other goods. There is always a flurry of activity and it’s fun to watch.  From Campo I headed to Piazza Navona, one of the other great open spaces in downtown Roma. Navona is shaped like a long oval because it was originally the site of the emperor Domitian’s racetrack.  Now the space is famous for its three fountains, with Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in the center, in front of Borromini’s church Sant’ Agnese in Agone.  Piazza Navona is a favorite place for artists to set up shop, and I strolled around for a few minutes to see the pastels, watercolors, and sketches for sale.

One of my favorite restaurants in Roma besides Tony’s is in Piazza Navona: Tucci, right across from Bernini’s fountain. Since it was lunchtime, I decided to stop for traditional Roman pasta: spaghetti alle vongole, with the sweet little clams from the Tyrrhenian Sea.  Quite tasty!  When I was preparing to leave, the waiter thanked me and told me that I was bello e grasso, come un vescovo (handsome and fat, like a bishop).  I was pretty sure this was a compliment so I thanked him and left an extra euro.

From Piazza Navona I walked northwest to the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Imperial Peace. The Senate dedicated this monument to Augustus to commemorate the end of a century of civil war throughout the Roman world.  The Ara Pacis is one of my favorite monuments in Roma, beautifully decorated with bas-relief of the imperial family, the leaders of the Senate, and scenes from Roma’s mythical past.  This monument is a major source of iconography for my research so I spent a while there taking notes and photos. 

I returned to Trastevere in the evening and made a salad for dinner, which I ate on the steps of the fountain in the piazza. The last thing I did that day was tag a bunch of photos to upload.  I have some online now at http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielcmack/collections/72157628004994184/ if you’d like to take a look.

Thursday 27 October 2011

The weather this morning was perfect: 70s, sunny, with a light breeze. I decided to go back to the heart of ancient Roma: the Forum Romanun, the Coliseum, and the Imperial Forums.  The water from last week’s flash flood storm had finally drained so I was able to do some closer examination of some sites.  The city wasn’t too crowded for once, one of the nice things about this time of year (the tourists swarm Roma in May and June).  Outside Julius Caesar’s forum a clarinet player was performing next to the Temple of Venus Genetrix. He asked me what I wanted to hear.  I told him Mozart’s clarinet concerto, and to my surprise he started in on the first movement!  I gave him two euro. 

The area around the Coliseum was packed as usual.  There are always guys dressed as gladiators and centurions around the amphitheater who will pose with you (for a fee) for photos.  My quest is always to sneak a picture of someone in costume doing something anachronistic like smoking, talking on a cell phone, or ogling a passing woman (that’s actually not anachronistic).  This time I was able to get a couple of pics of a centurion who was so lazy that he didn’t remove his hoodie before putting on his breastplate. The hood was pushed back over his armor and cloak and looked pretty funny. 

I decided to head north a little, so I went to the Coliseo metro stop and rode the subway a couple of stops.  I got out and wandered around, finally climbing the Quirinal Hill to the old royal palace, now the official home of the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano (not to be confused with the Prime Minister, the notorious and soon-to-be-booted-out Silvio Berlusconi).  This is at the top of the highest of the seven hills of Roma (the Vatican and Janiculum Hills across the river don’t count) and the view was spectacular.  It was also time to eat, so I wandered down the hill to find someplace to have lunch.  On the way I passed the Trevi Fountain, so of course I stopped and threw my coin in, thus ensuring my eventual return to the Eternal City.  I threw one in for Gary, too. 

I strolled a few blocks away from the fountain to find lunch (never eat within three blocks of a major tourist attraction) and settled on an outdoor table in the shade.  The waiter said that they had just finished baking cannellini stuffed with veal and ricotta, which was as good as it sounds.  I finished this with caffe freddo, sweetened cold espresso, so I’d have the necessary caffeine jolt to complete my walk around town.  Since I was in the area I stopped at two of the great baroque churches in the area, San Ignazio and il Gesu.  These are both Jesuit churches, and both are opulently decorated with polychromatic marbles, gilt bronze, and priceless works of sculpture and painting.  Both of these churches have astonishingly impressive frescoes covering their vaulted ceilings. I no longer try to take photos of church ceilings because they are just too big and too high unless you have the right lenses and a tripod.  The priests usually won’t let you set up a tripod anyway.  I overheard a couple of American college students in il Gesu debating, only half joking, whether they should go to confession to confess what they did the night before.  I wish that I could have overheard what exactly it was that they needed to confess so badly. 

Eventually I made my way to Largo Argentina, where I caught the tram back to Trastevere and went back to my apartment to write up some notes before dinner.  That evening I video-chatted with my parents on Skype for a while (hi, Mom and Dad!) and read some more before going to bed.  I meant to get to bed halfway early and made it by midnight (in Roma that is early), since tomorrow is supposed to bring more sunshine and I want to get up early.  Gary tells me that it’s cold and wet at home so I intend to make the most of the good weather here.

A note on photos

I haven't uploaded pics yet because my wifi is slow (about 90 seconds per pic!).  I promise to upload some this weekend.  I'll keep you posted.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

I woke up early, about 5 am, and it was pouring rain.  We’ve had good weather since I arrived (having missed the flash flooding).  I spend most of the morning writing up notes from my research.  Since I was in the apartment for a while, I starting inventorying some of the things in this place. I had stayed in this same flat last year, when it was nicely furnished (nearly all IKEA) but there wasn’t a lot of “stuff” around.  Since then, someone has obviously moved a bunch of personal belongings into this apartment.  Here’s an inventory of some of the new contents:

·       A white piano

·       A baroque cello with rosewood pegs and fingerboard

·       A 70s-era coffee table book of Liza Minnelli paper dolls

·       Eleven ashtrays

·       Two wide-screen televisions, neither of which I have turned on

·       Over 400 DVDs of opera and European-language theater

·       A doll house

·       A huge abstract painting that takes up one wall of the living room

·       A cotton candy machine

·       An ironing board (my desk; I set it up in the living room by the window overlooking the piazza)

·       A cool wooden bar cart

·       Two little-kid-sized chairs

·       A brass rhinoceros

·       A dying (I think) olive tree

·       A Gone With the Wind poster in the bathroom over the bidet

I was also surprised to find that some things I left here a year ago are still here:

·       A half-full bottle of Listerine

·       A blue rubber bath mat (I like to travel with one since I nearly broke my neck once in a shower in Venice)

·       A half-full bottle of body wash

·       Three business cards (my own)

·       A pair of socks that I’m pretty sure are mine because they’re size 13 and I’ve never met an Italian with feet that big

About 11 am the rain let up, and by noon it was sunny and warm again. I left to do some research for the afternoon.  The weather stayed very pleasant, so for dinner I bought a porchetta (panino stuffed with roast pork and mozzarella) and a salad and ate on the steps of the fountain in the piazza.  I returned to my apartment to read before bed. I love reading books on my iPad because I don’t need a light and I can bump the font up enough that I can read without my glasses.  When I noticed that it was nearly 1 am I decided it was time for bed.

Tuesday 25 October 2011

I got up this morning and got ready to shave, only to discover that I had no hot water. Showering was not a problem because I take cool showers rather that hot showers every morning anyway.  But have you ever tried to shave in cold water? If I had been more patient I would have boiled water to shave, but instead I did the dreaded cold-water face-scrape.  When I was done I looked sort of like my rare ginormous steak from Sunday’s dinner.  Before leaving to do research I emailed my landlady to let her know that I needed hot water.

I went to a couple of museums near Termini, the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme and the Terme di Diocleziano.  Palazzo Massimo has an incredible collection, including a bunch of statuary from the reign of Augustus and his dynasty, which I surveyed for religious iconography.  This museum also houses beautiful frescoes from the villa of Augustus’ wife Livia, as well as tons of other great art. This is one of the best museums in Roma, it’s right near the main bus/train/metro station, and there’s never a line to get in.  If you’re in Roma, go!  Just a block away is another museum, the Terme di Diocleziano, partially built from the ruins of the emperor Diocletian’s immense public bathhouse. This bathhouse, or rather its huge and impressive vaulting, was a major inspiration for St. Peter’s basilica.  Now the ruins house one of the world’s greatest epigraphy collections: tens of thousands of inscriptions on stone and other media, attesting to nearly a thousand years of Roman civilization.  One of the great things about an inscription is that it is both a text and an artifact: you are looking at not just a copy, but also the original text, that the ancient Romans read.

I had lunch at Campo dei’ Fiore, one of the great public spaces in the centro storico.  Deciding on pizza, I had the traditional Roman pizza capricciosa, a very thin crust with prosciutto, artichoke hearts, olives, mushrooms, and fried egg.  Molt bene!  A very loud and fairly drunk party of Canadian tourists took up several tables nearby.  Amusingly, the over-50 folks in their party could barely walk and were constantly reprimanded by the college-age kids with them to shut up.  They didn’t know what anything on the menu was, so they asked me to translate.  I told them that I didn’t speak Canadian. Once they realized that I was kidding them, I told them that I did speak Wisconsinian, and that was close enough.  When they finished the youngsters couldn’t get a couple of their seniors to walk straight and they ended up calling a small fleet of taxis to take them away.

Returning home I found a note on my door from the water company saying that my water was going to be shut off. Luckily I had heard from my landlady by then, who said that the water issue was being fixed.  My doorbell rang (a first), and two workmen came in to fix the miniscule hot water heater.  I won’t have to butcher my face tomorrow morning!

Monday 24 October 2011

I spent this morning doing research for a couple of different projects.  I continued my walk through the city, exploring the topography of Roma in various periods as I gathered additional information for research.  One of my favorite things about Roma is the jumble of different time periods here.  Much has been lost over the centuries, but much also remains.  Temples and monuments from the Roman Republic and Empire, medieval churches, Renaissance palaces, baroque sculpture and architecture, and buildings from the last few centuries all vie for your attention as you wander the streets. At the height of the Roman Empire, Roma was the largest, richest, most populous city on earth, with a million or more inhabitants crowding into the sprawling metropolis. After the fall of the Empire, the population dwindled, and in the Middle Ages, only a few thousand people were left, most of them associated with the Pope and his court at the Lateran.  The city revived in the Renaissance and again became a great center of scholarship and art. Michelangelo, Raphael, and other artists embellished the church and palaces of the city.  Roma was transformed during the Baroque period, when artists and architects like Maderno, Borromini, and most of all Bernini filled the city with their work.

One fascinating area in Roma is right downtown, the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina.  When the Metro was first being constructed a century ago they uncovered a series of temples, some of them dating back to the Republic in the second and third centuries BC.  This metro stop was never built. Instead, you can look down into the excavated area and see the ruins of the temples. Nearby, now under shops and other buildings, are the ruins of the Theater of Pompey the Great, where Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March 44 BC.  Largo Argentina is also the home of the famous cat sanctuary, which I visit every time I come to Roma.  The city is home to a huge community of feral cats.  Many of these used to live in the Coliseum but have been mostly chased out of the amphitheater.  Some now live in the cat sanctuary.  Here cats are fixed, fed, and treated if they are injured. There is a small hospice for cats unable to survive on their own.  Many of the cats spend their time in the ruins of the old temples. I love looking down into the excavations and seeing dozens of cats frolicking among the columns, altars and temple foundations.  You can visit i gatti di Roma online at http://www.romancats.com/index_eng.php.

I returned to my apartment in the afternoon and wrote up some notes from the day’s research, then went out for dinner of pizza and salad.  Actually, it was salad on a pizza, which seems strange to Americans but is very common here.  A slice of pizza with cheese and maybe tomato is topped with arugula, spinach, or other greens. I supplemented this with a couple of arancini, and ended with a little gelato (pistachio and zambaglione).  In Italy you pay for ice cream by the size of cup or cone, not by the number of flavors.  The Romans think there’s something wrong with you if you only order one flavor. I’ve seen folks cram ten different flavors onto a three-euro cone.  I ended the evening with a stroll around Trastevere, a little reading and bed.

Sunday 23 October 2011

Today I got up and took a morning walk along the Tiber. Roma in autumn is fantastic.  The weather is warm, and it’s been mostly sunny so far.  The sycamores along the Tiber are barely starting to change from green to yellow, and the palms and umbrella pines are always green. There are flowers still blooming everywhere: roses and geraniums, and some locals swear to me that the azaleas often bloom a second time in October. 

I skipped breakfast because I had plans for lunch: Sunday dinner at Tony’s for their famous bistecca grande, an enormous 2-kilo (4 ½ pound!) t-bone steak.  I like Sunday dinner in Rome; it’s the one time that people gather for a big meal during daylight. Most Italians eat dinner late: 9 or 10 pm, or even later. But on Sundays families and friends gather, often at restaurants, for a midday meal.  I arrived at Tony’s around 1 pm and was greeted with the usual double-cheek kiss and given a table outside, where I could watch the activity on the street. The street is narrow, cobbled and winding, and to see it you would never guess that it’s actually on a bus route.  Cars aren’t allowed except for police and taxis, but the #125 bus comes by every 20 minutes or so. Sometimes the fit is so tight that diners have to move their tables to let the bus pass!  It’s funny to see the reaction of tourists eating at an outdoor trattoria on what looks like an alley in a little Mediterranean village when they suddenly see the #125 come running past.  Admittedly it’s not a big bus, but still.

It would be heresy to eat a steak without an appetizer, so I order antipasto di mare: marinated clams, mussels, squid, octopus, celery, and carrots in oil.  I love it when I get extra tentacles with my cephalopods!  This would have been enough for lunch, but it was only the beginning.  My ginormous steak arrived as I had ordered it: molto crudo, sanguinissimo (extra rare, very bloody).  I have had this several times before, and I’m always amazed at the size of the thing when they finally bring it to the table. It looks like a mastodon steak from the Flintstones.  I ate half and took half home with me.

Two American students, young women studying in Germany and visiting Rome for a few days were sitting at the next table.  I talked to them for a while and we compared favorite gelato flavors (my current favorite is zabaglione, flavored with sweet wine and egg yolks).  They had arrived on the day of the huge storm and told me that the rain was so hard that it soaked through their suitcases and drenched their clothes inside.  At my urging they ordered a giant t-bone to share between them.  As they were eating it, one of the students remarked, “I guess I’m not much of a vegetarian.” This struck me as pretty amusing, considering that she was carving up a huge piece of cow as she said it.

Tony would not let me leave Sunday dinner without dessert, so I had panna cotta (baked custard) with chocolate sauce.  After all of this food I needed to digest, so I walked to nearby Piazza Trilussa where I had stayed during my sabbatical a few years ago, across the footbridge Ponte Sisto, and into the centro storico.  There was an afternoon recital at one of the churches, a very good string quartet.  They played works by Beethoven and Bartok, both of whom I like very much.  Live music is everywhere in Roma, and most of it is good, so I like to take advantage of it when I can.  Afterward I walked back across the Tiber to Trastevere, made some research notes, and went to bed. 

Saturday 22 October 2011

I got up this morning and made my usual breakfast in Roma: low-fat granola with fat-free yogurt and 4 espressos.  After consulting some notes I headed for the centro storico, the historic center of town, to spend the day examining various sites. I’m giving a paper that deals with topography of the ancient city so I wanted to walk around some of the places that I’ll be covering.

The central part of Rome in the bend of the Tiber is now completely full of shops, restaurants, cafes, and businesses. In ancient times, this was the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars, dedicated to Rome’s war god.  In the Roman Republic it really was a field, where soldiers could drill and where some of the elections for high-ranking magistrates were held.  Augustus turned the Campus Martius into a park with monuments supporting his regime and family, including the Ara Pacis Augustae (the Altar of Imperial Peace), the original Pantheon which was rebuilt a century later into the magnificent structure that still exists, and the Solarium Augusti. The Solarium was a gigantic sundial so big that the pointer was a huge obelisk brought from Egypt.  This cast a shadow on a park-sized pavement of marble and not only told the time, but pointed out Augustus’ birthday.  Later emperors continued building in the area. Domitian built a racetrack that eventually became Piazza Navona (hence the shape).  In later ages the entire area was taken over by shops and housing until it reached its present crowded state. Many of the main sites in Roma are in the centro storico, including Campo dei’ Fiori, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, and a zillion medieval, renaissance and baroque churches.

After spending the day in the centro storico, I crossed the Ponte Sisto, a fifteenth-century footbridge across the Tiber joining the centro to Trastevere.  For dinner I bought some of my favorite Roman street food: suppli and arancini.  These are balls of risotto with various fillings (meat, mozzarella, tomato) that are then deep-fried. I stopped at the market and bought a handful of fresh mixed greens for a salad, and sat on the steps of the fountain in Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere to eat.  A woman was playing cello in the piazza. She had recorded piano accompaniment, and played works by Schubert, Saint-Saens, and Mendelssohn.  The cellist was extremely good, and I sat in the late afternoon light for a long time listening to her.  One thing I love about Roma is the (usually high) quality of the street musicians. 

After the impromptu concert I returned to my apartment, did some reading and writing, made some calls and went to bed.

Friday 21 October 2011

Friday 21 October 2011

Sorry for the late posting; I had some blog accessibility issues.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning, while I was flying to Rome, the city had one of its worst thunderstorms in years.  Low parts of the city flooded, including the Coliseum, Forum and Circus Maximus (the Romans had built these in valleys between the hills and installed extensive drainage systems, which were apparently more effective than the modern storm drains).  People were canoeing in the Circus Maximus!  Some low-lying parts of the highway from the airport at Fiumicino into town were under water, which is why it took almost an hour and a half for me to get to my apartment on Thursday.  You can read about the flooding here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8841553/Severe-flooding-shuts-Colosseum.html .  I finally got into town, unpacked, went shopping for some necessities, had a salad at Good (one of my favorite cafés) and went to bed early.

Friday morning I went into the center of town to see what was going on.  The water was everywhere, and the Coliseum and Forum were both closed because they were still flooded.  I could still look down into the Forum Romanum and the Imperial Fora, where there were huge pools of standing water everywhere.  I walked through town, around the Vittoriano, and up to Piazza Navona. It was also somewhat waterlogged, but not closed.  I saw an advertisement for a string quartet recital in on of the area churches for the next evening, and I added that to my agenda.

The day was sunny and warm, about 70 degrees. I was wearing light chinos and a short-sleeved polo shirt, which meant that I was sweating. The Romans, of course, were all wearing coats, hats and scarves.  Several folks had on hats, and a few had scarves with hoods pulled up.  The flooding did not prevent the women of Rome from wearing their usual stylish shoes on the wet and slippery cobbled streets.  I have figured out how Roman women can walk on cobblestones in high heels: the cracks between the cobbles are all filled with cigarette butts and wine corks.

I came back to my apartment in Trastevere, made some notes for the paper I’m presenting at the conference, and made a couple of phone calls (free-I love Skype!).  Early evening was setting in with a clear sky and warm sun, so I went for a stroll around Trastevere before dinner.  I stopped at the Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the great ancient churches of the city right around the corner from my apartment.  Some of the most beautiful medieval mosaics in the city are in this church, and the columns of the main nave are re-used from ancient Roman temples and palaces. 

I ended my walk with dinner at Tony’s.  This is my favorite place to eat in all of Rome, maybe in the entire world.  I’ve been going there for years now, and dine there every time I’m in Rome.  As I approached, Tony and a couple of the staff whom I know came running up to give me the Italian hug and double-cheek kiss and welcome me back to Rome and Trastevere.  A new waiter, whom I hadn’t seen before, brought a menu over, but Tony waved him away, saying that he knew what I wanted already and would bring me dinner.  First came a big antipasto misto with grilled eggplant and zucchini, marinated beans, a slice of corn frittata, bruschetta with tomatoes, prosciutto, and mozzarella.  The main course was spaghetti alla carbonara, one of Rome’s traditional pastas, and one of my favorites.  Tony came and talked to me for a while, giving me news of the neighborhood and telling me about the huge storm that I had just missed. 

I decided to skip the offered dessert and ambled over to Piazza di Santa Maria, where I had a little gelato (lemon and mango) sitting on the fountain in front of the basilica.  It was dark, so I headed home, made some notes, and went to bed.

Oggi sono ancora trasteverino!

I've arrived in Roma safely (after failure of several forms of transportation).  Getting settled and then going out.  More tomorrow probably; I haven't slept in over 36 hours.

Off to Roma!

I'm leaving soon! Will post tomorrow after I get settled. Ciao!

Getting ready to go to Rome

I leave for Rome in a couple of days! Why is it that I only blog when I'm going to Italy?