Tuesday 8 April: I visit the police in the rain

Rain today. During the day it was a light sprinkle, which I barely noticed. The Romans, of course, were bundled up in heavy coats under rain gear with umbrellas. The sky was a luminous blue-grey, which made the greenery and the many colors of the ever-present flowers even more vivid than they are in sunlight. After research at the AAR, I went to the police station. Italy requires all non-EU foreigners to register with the Polizia di Stato within eight days of arrival. If you stay in a hotel, they always do it for you (that’s why the hotel asks for your passport when you check in). Since I’m a tenant, I had to do it myself. I’ve heard many horror stories of the Italian bureaucracy, and dreaded the visit to the central office near Termini station. However, the friendly folks at the tourist information kiosk around the corner advised me to go to the local Trastevere office of the Questura, the state police, instead of the main headquarters. Since it was on my way back from the Academy, I stopped in to register. The police were friendly, laid back, and indulged me in my Italian. They made a copy of my passport, had me fill out a form, gave me a stamped copy, and bam! I’m now a straniero legittimo, a legal alien with permission to live in Italy until the date of my return flight. The whole process took five minutes. I’m glad I went to the local branch, also because I discovered a laundry right next door, with Internet access to surf while washing. This will come in handy, and soon. I got online and saw Gary’s pics of the kitties and our new screen door on Flickr. Make sure you see the one of Xander stoned on catnip! Spent the afternoon in a preliminary investigation of the epigraphic collection at the Museo Nazionale Romano Terme di Diocleziano, one of the world’s great collections of historical documents. Good thing the Romans liked to write on stone and bronze; it’s a lot more durable than paper. I will be back there a lot.

Monday 7 April: American Academy in Rome

Up early, shaved, showered, and dressed to present my credentials at the American Academy in Rome in order to get a reader’s card to use their library. I even wore a dress shirt, slacks, a jacket and tie, and hard shoes! Shirley would have been proud. The pants were a mistake though; try wearing slick gabardine on a plastic bus seat as you wind around the sharp turns going up the Gianicolo. I nearly ended up on the floor. The AAR is in a magnificent century-old palazzo designed in true Italian style by McKim, Mead and White. There’s a nice collection of ancient marble, including many Roman inscriptions set into the walls of the beautiful courtyard. I’ll have to get some pics later. The library was just renovated (it’s in the recent American Libraries) and is a gorgeous facility, and the collection of course is first-rate for my research. I immediately found some stuff that got me on a line of research about Augustus’ use of the symbols associated with the major colleges of official state priests, both to legitimize the imperial succession and to reinforce the social hierarchy (can you say “prosopographic sacerdotal iconography” three times, really fast?). I celebrated that evening with tiramisù, which was completely covered with roasted espresso beans. No wonder I didn’t sleep so well.

Sunday 6 April: Was it a block party? rave? political rally? demonstration? baptism? birthday?

I don’t know what it was, but it was a blast! Yesterday some people invited me to a party “at 13:00 (1 pm) in our neighborhood, south of the Colosseum.” I’m not sure how far south it was, but I walked/bussed/metro’d my way there, and had to take a train to get home. After passing what looked like some sort of huge, abandoned nineteenth-century factory that went on for blocks, I came to a big bank of high-rises. The festa was in a huge parking lot (I think), with at least hundreds of people eating, drinking, and dancing. It was lots of fun-all ages, nationalities, languages, and everyone laughing and partying. There was dueling music, with the euro-pop eventually winning over the hip-hop and bad metal. I never discovered the purpose of the event; maybe it was just a horde of folks having fun. I know I did! Vino and grappa flowed pretty freely, which I turned down, wanting eventually to make my way back to my apartment. I was told that if I didn’t drink, then I had to have gelato. If you ever get a chance to try ice cream made of fresh figs, go for it. I did manage to get home by dark. I even pressed my clothes for tomorrow!

Saturday

Beautiful day! Coffee, fruit, and yogurt at home (I’m trying to be good). Walked along the Tiber with all the sycamores putting out new leaves to Isola Tibertina, and crossed to the Augustan monuments at the foot of the Capitoline. The Theater of Marcellus, Augustus’ nephew, son-in-law, and probable heir had he not died young, has a Renaissance palace built into it. The Temple of Apollo, Augustus’ patron deity, and the Portico of Octavia, his sister, are all swamped with tourists today. Walked over to the Forum Boarium, the cattle market, to see the two Republican-era temples, Hercules Victor and Portunus. The Temple of Portunus is finally getting a cleaning, and is covered with scaffolding. Across the street at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, tourists have lined up to stick their hands in the Mouth of Truth. Another time. Instead, I walked along the Circus Maximus past the ruins of the imperial palace on the Palatine. The circus is amazing: It held probably a quarter of a million or more spectators, eight times as many people as the Colosseum. That’s more than twice as many as Beaver Stadium at full capacity. Metro to Stazione Piramide, so-called because of the pretentious tomb of an otherwise nobody Roman. I hopped on Tram 3 to Staz. Trastevere, and walked up Viale de Trastevere home. I was saddened to see that even Trastevere now has a Mickey D’s. Carry-out pizza (mortadella and buffalo-milk mozzarella) for dinner, and was invited by a group of people at a table to go to a club tomorrow for music. Home to write, and then bed.

Friday: Centro Storico

I walked all over the center of town today, what once was the Campus Martius. I crossed the Tiber at Ponte Sisto, about two blocks from my apartment, and walked to the Area Sacra de Largo Argentina. This is a fascinating place: four Republican-era temples, the location of Julius Caesar’s assassination (Pompey’s theater and curia were across the street), and the cat sanctuary for Rome’s hordes of kitties. Cloudy morning. I then went to the Pantheon, which looks amazing now that the restoration is complete, had un ‘cino e due cornetti in the piazza (which to my horror now hosts a Mickey D’s), and then on to Piazza Navona. A cellist was playing Beethoven sonatas to a taped accompaniment, and doing a decent job, too. Being a long-time Borromini freak, I went into Sant’Agnese in Agone, which is advertising concerts in the sacristy every Friday evening this spring. I’ll have to get a schedule. I decided to stay for lunch in Piazza Navona (spaghetti alla carbonara and Frascati).

The sun came out, and I spent the afternoon doing Augustan stuff. The Museo dell’Ara Pacis, newly designed by John Meier, is an excellent space. Lots of Romans hate it because it was designed by an American, but I think that it shows off to perfection what is, in my opinion, the single greatest monument of ancient Rome, the Ara pacis Augustae (Altar of Imperial Peace). I will be back here a lot. The museum in next to the Mausoleum of Augustus, which they appear to be restoring. It’s about time; the tomb’s condition is shameful. On the wall of the museum facing the Mausoleum is inscribed, in Latin, the complete Res gestae divi Augusti (The achievements of the divine Augustus), the emperor’s autobiography originally displayed on his tomb.

I crossed the river, took a wrong turn, and ended up in the Vatican. The line for the basilica was huge; the piazza was set up for some sort of papal event. I walked back to Trastevere, got online at Good, a nice caffè with great food and free Internet, and then went shopping: coffee, wine, water, fat-free yogurt, muesli, apples, and bananas. Pizza and supplì for dinner, gelato cioccolato in the piazza, and then home.

I live above a toy store

And I don’t mean Wii or Xbox, or even Transformers. I mean hand-carved wooden toys, like Pinocchio. My apartment is on the first floor, which means that I only have to go up three flights of steps to get to it. Nina, my landlady, gave me the three keys; including one big skeleton key that only fits in my pocket because I’m 6’3 (shorter folks must wear theirs in a sheath, like a sword). One room, three huge windows with flower boxes of plants, a platform futon, sofa bed, table and four chairs, and the kitchen in a closet (the only closet). The bathroom has a hand-held shower whose hose is, of course, too short for me, so I have to wash my hair and head standing bent over the tub before I get in to finish.

Trastevere is excellent, although an absolute zoo. The native trasteverini compete with boutique owners, left-over hippies, neopunks, shop keepers, and artists of all types to see who can put on the biggest spectacle. It’s relatively quiet from about 3:30-6 am; the rest of the time it's crazy. Across Via del Moro (meaning nine feet away) is a pizzeria with the most amazing display of pizza laid out like jewelry. There is a bar, caffè, pizzeria, restaurant, gelatoria, or other place to eat every twenty feet. In between are the shops, which alternate between the ever-present tobacco shops to exotic boutiques of all types. Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere is the local hangout. It’s one of my favorite churches in Rome, both for the amazing mosaics and for the historical interest (re-use of classical marble, and a nice epigraphic collection inset into the portico, like many churches have here).

Luckily my international roaming works well, just not cheaply. Talking and texting with Gary, who assures me that the library hasn’t burnt down.

Mercedes-Benz makes a nice cab!

Decent flight-I had two seats. The flick was The Golden Compass, which I love. I actually slept two hours. I can’t believe how Italians can fly wearing Gucci gabardine and linen with Gucci shoes, and walk off a nine-hour flight looking like they’re ready for the opera.

Alessandro, my cabbie, wanted to show off his new car, which I am sure was not a regulation taxi, being a late-model shiny black Mercedes-Benz limo. Even the passenger headrest had two different automatic adjustments. He drove like a madman through the alleys of Trastevere, correctly assuming that fruit vendors and caffè owners would wrench their wares out of the way before he ran them down. He did have to retract the rear-view mirrors on both sides of the car to squeeze past a delivery truck.