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.