God Bless The Motorinos

I first started to think seriously about moving to Italy in March of 09 and as the notion percolated in my brain, the thought occurred that a motorcycle might be the ideal mode of transportation for the venture. Now this may not seem like that novel of a concept but you have to realize that at the time I think I had sat on a moving motorcycle twice in my life. Once, on the back of Bruce Farkas’ cruiser as we shuttled from one Cleveland bar to another and again on the back of a co-workers bike when he gave me a ride to pick up my car at the local tire center. (I probably shouldn’t even count the second time as it was one of those mammoth touring mothers with seats so big and roomy, you could host a talk show on one.) Still, a motorcycle seemed like a sensible notion. I figured they were relatively inexpensive (I actually had no idea how much a motorcycle cost), would alleviate any dependence on public transport, and perfect for the solo nature of the trip.
There was, of course, another aspect to the plan, the romantic notion of careening through the Italian countryside, leaning into turns on the winding Tuscan roads, rumbling up to some country cathedral just in time to hear the monks chant vespers and then motoring away. Pretty much your basic “Then Came Bronsoni.” Not altogether steeped in reality but not totally out of the realm of possibilities either.
I actually took a reasoned approach to this pipedream. I enrolled in a motorcycle safety course at a local community college (I was the only novice rider in the class…and it showed), got my license, and bought a reasonable “starter” bike, a 1987 Yamaha Virago 535. I took it out with some regularity and got reasonably proficient on it, although I never did work up the nerve to take in the interstate. It’s not a very big bike and I had visions of being bounced like a tumbleweed by the first semi that blew by me. I didn’t intend to ship the bike over here (here and back would cost more than the bike itself) but figured I’d pick up a used one with a little more heft if the price was right.
I landed in Rome on Wednesday and an old high school friend picked me up at the airport and took me to my apartment. I took a nap for a few hours and ventured out to walk the streets of my new hometown. By dinner I had arrived at a conclusion-“Not on your tintype.”

There aren’t all that many motorcycles over here but the streets are full of scooters. They call them Motorinos. You can pull up to a light and be sitting there, idling away, minding your own business, and as you wait for the light to change, you slowly but surely become surrounded by these things. It’s not unlike that scene in Hitchcock’s The Birds where the crows slowly fill up the Jungle Jim outside the school.
Car traffic may be insane over here but motorino traffic is an entirely different kind of crazy. In the states, motorcycles and such have to pretty much follow the same rules as cars, not so over here. At a light they weave their way around the standing cars and fill up the space between them. Motorinos act like cars when it suits them and pedestrians when that’s to their benefit. Yesterday I was showing some friends around the town and was headed over to Largo Argentina, where Caesar met up with his assassins. We turned a corner and just about joined him when a woman came barreling through on her little white Vespa. There was no acknowledgement that the sidewalk might not be the best place for her to be riding. Her logic was clear; it was a one way street and it would be absurd to expect her to go all the way around the block. (In her defense, she was impeccably dressed.)
Pedestrians seem to be on the lowest rung of the ladder over here, transport wise. (Bicyclists, subjected to scorn by motorists and walkers alike while having their fillings rattled loose by the cobblestones aren’t even on the ladder. There aren’t many of them.) While pedestrians do have the right of way at crosswalks, the actual crossing is an act of faith. I find it helpful to make eye-contact with the oncoming driver (It’s very disconcerting to be smack in the middle of the street when you realize that the oncoming driver is scanning the area for street signs or monuments but totally unaware of what or who is directly in front.)
Even with a connection with the driver and a slow but deliberate move into the crosswalk, there’s still a reasonable chance that some motorino rider is going to figure that the crosswalk rule doesn’t pertain to him or her and will swing ride to get around whatever the holdup is. Walkers quickly get used to feeling the wind of a passing scooter in their face or on their backside as some rider couldn’t be bothered to come to a stop. It doesn’t increase any sense of safety to realize that the guy barreling through the crosswalk is smoking a cigarette, which has to be tough on the eyebrows, and talking on the cell phone wedged into his helmet. (I assume this is an accessory but it could just be duct tape and chewing gum, either way the Bluetooth earpiece hasn’t made it over here.)

This jumping out of one’s lane to keep from stopping is a regular feature of motorino driving and, as a result, there’s a fair amount of fender benders that involve the scooters. But they’re just scooters and even a fender bender can have some pretty nasty consequences when you’re basically unprotected other than your helmet. It often seems that, at any given time, if you listen hard enough, you can hear a siren wailing in the distance. Now, it’s a little confusing because all the sirens sound identical but I suspect the majority are ambulances going to scoop up another fallen motorino rider, and every now and then, when the idea of 2 wheeled conveyances starts to sound good, I invariably round a corner and come across a motorino lying on its side with nobody else around. That can’t be a good sign.
So I’ll stick with my feet. That’s adventure enough. There’s a certain sense of satisfaction in bringing a metro bus to a complete halt although I’m careful about playing chicken with the cabbies. I’m pretty sure they would run me right over.
But the truth of the matter is it’s more than that. I love walking around this city and while I, in no way, shape, or form, see myself becoming an ex-pat and staying here past next summer, there are times, and a fair number of them at that, when I realize it will be hard to leave this place. It happened a couple of nights ago. I had done two tours and was bone tired. It’s getting dark early now and the evenings are chilly. I had headed into centro for a cup of hot chocolate (Italian hot chocolate, when it’s made right is a thing of beauty. This, alas, came out of a packet and wasn’t, but that’s another story.) Anyway, between me and home was Piazza Venezia, which is basically one really big and rowdy traffic circle.
It was rush hour and nobody was moving much. The cars were inching through the crosswalks while the motorinos were lurching and swerving through some Frogger game of their own design. I began to pick my way through the mess, armed with the knowledge that I had the right of way and the realization that didn’t necessarily protect me much but in the middle of the street I took a deep breath of the cold night air and had that elusive sense that I was where I was supposed to be. It’s a frantic, noisy, crowded city where most of the natives watch out for their own interests first and love to blow their horns, but it works, often beautifully.

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This is the previously mentioned Bernini adorned fountain that sits in a small piazza on the edge of the Jewish ghetto. He added the turtles which he alledgedly saw as an apt metaphor for the Jews.  Tough, determined, and carrying their homes on their backs.

 I also included a shot of the "sunken boat" at the base of the Spanish Steps.  The story goes that after the water receded following one of the Tiber's more extreme floodings, a small boat was "beached" in the Piazza di Spagna. (Years later and a continent away, John Hartford wrote a novel based on a similar event involving a cornfield and a paddlewheeler on, I think, the Ohio River.  No pictures of that.  Don't even ask.) 

B is for Borromini

I always tend to root for the underdog. So while this entry could just as easily gone to Bernini, the other and better known Baroque architect, or just been devoted to Baroque in general, thereby avoiding the whole rivalry thing entirely, I’m going to go ahead and give it to Borominni.

Why? Because he seems to be stuck in Bernini’s shadow or, more accurately, lost in the glare of the other’s genius. Bernini is all over Rome with a profile only exceeded by Michelangelo. Around the Vatican he’s credited with the baldichino over the altar at St Peter’s Basilica (more on that later), the angels standing sentry across the Ponte St. Angelo, and the mammoth colonnade of St Peter’s Square. As a sculptor, his masterpieces include Apollo & Daphne , Pluto & Persephone (both at the Borghese Gallery, where they don’t allow cameras) and St. Teresa in Ecstacy, a stunning work with a swooning Teresa and a very smug angel, looking like he knows exactly what changes he has put her through. His fountains alone include the 4 River’s Fountain in Piazza Navonna, the Sunken Boat at the base of the Spanish Steps and everybody’s favorite, that little fountain with the turtles on the edge of the old Jewish Ghetto.

After my second trip to Rome (there’s really no point in talking about my first trip. It was back in the 70’s and mostly I remember that we did see the Vatican and the Forum but mostly drank a lot of red wine and stayed at a pensione run by Mama Germana a tiny and aged Italian nonna whose knowledge of the English language began and ended with “Hey, sonuvabitcha.”) where was I, oh yeah, after my second trip to Rome I was well aware of Bernini. I don’t think I heard Boromini’s name until my third or, more likely, my fourth. He was a stonecutter’s son, born in the north of Italy and originally worked as a decorative sculptor, adding rosettes and cherub faces to larger works. He eventually made his way to Rome where his uncle got him a job working for the latter’s father-in-law, the architect Carlos Maderno, who was finishing up St. Peter’s Basilica.

Maderno was up in years and in poor health. His fingers were painfully swollen from gout and he suffered terribly from kidney stones. Borromini quickly became Maderno’s right hand man and in the process made the transition from sculptor to architect. When Maderno passed, Borromini was certain that he would be appointed chief architect of St Peter’s. Instead, Pope Urban VIII appointed a young and talented sculptor whose career the newly elected Pope had taken an interest in shepharding toward architecture, Bernini.

While both were serious, uncompromising artisans, the two were a study in contrasts. Bernini was poised, commercially and professionally astute (to a fault), and socially adept. It was said that the pope was so taken by his conversational gifts, that Bernini had permission to visit Urban whenever he pleased. The two would talk late into the night, usually until the Pope fell asleep, leaving Bernini to lock up and let himself out. Boromini on the other hand was morose and prickly, focused entirely on work and a loner. He was known to dress entirely in black with a dash of red piping in his shoes.

While Boromini was disheartened by the slight, he stayed on, in part due to Bernini’s entreaties to do so. In spite of his success as a sculptor, the latter was fairly new to the art and craft of architecture. The first joint work was the previously mentioned baldichino over the main altar in the basilica. While the initial design was Bernini’s, his plan for the top was deemed unworkable because it was simply too heavy. The work as it is seen today bears a lighter more graceful canopy that is generally accepted by art historians as being the work of Boromini but still, as at the time of its completion, the piece is described as Bernini’s baldichino. Bernini never acknowledged the contributions of the other, not the first or last time in his career that such a charge was leveled. Boromini was said to have commented that he didn’t begrudge Bernini taking the fee in its entirety but he could not forgive him taking all the honor. Either way, Boromini left the basilica.

Enough with the history, what’s the appeal? Well, Borromini’s buildings are beautiful. Graceful and flowing and all the things that granite and concrete aren’t. San Carlo of Quatro Fontana is a prime example. This tiny church (it’s been dubbed San Carlito by the locals) was one of his first commissions and one that he tinkered with throughout his life. Somebody somewhere referred to architecture as “frozen music” and this building demonstrates how apt that metaphor is. Even covered with soot, the façade is a marvel of curves and scallops. The small cloister inside appears simple enough. The fact that the square is really an octagon is almost lost in its quietness. The church itself has no side aisles, nave, or transept; just a simple ellipse. The domed ceiling is coffered to suggest a honeycomb, a subtle nod to the bees that dominate the family crest of Pope Urban VIII. The dominant color is white with occasional accents. The Bernini church down the street is similar in shape but its extensive use of gold paint makes it look almost cheesy by comparison.

Besides the artistry, there is something satisfying about the fact that you have to go looking to find these churches, sometimes realizing that you’ve been walking past them for weeks without realizing they were there. I mentioned in my last entry that this was the case with San Carlito. Its narrow marble sidewalk coupled with a busy intersection kept my attention everywhere but up until one time I happened to be walking on the other side of the street, looked over and…there it was. Similarly, the steeple to St Ivo’s rises above the Pantheon neighborhood, it’s spiral design mimicking a bumblebee’s flight, but you won’t notice it if you don’t look up.
That’s one of the marvels of Rome. There is so much within a relatively small city. Any block or alley seems to hold something of interest, whether it’s an old and weathered wall fountain, a marble foot about the size of a Cooper Mini, or a mammoth Gothic cathedral where, when nobodies looking, you can lay your hands on a Michelangelo (I am not suggesting that anyone do that. I’m just saying…). The city, like the artist, has an amazing ability to surprise but you’ve got to keep your eyes open and look other ways besides straight ahead.

(Not all of Borromini’s works were small and out of the way. He was commissioned to do extensive work at San Giovanni Laterano, one of the Vatican basilicas. Likewise, the church of Sant’Agnese in Angone is a prominent feature of the Piazza Navonn

a where it sits across from Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain. Some tour guides point out that the figure in the fountain recoiling from Borromini’s church in either terror of disgust is another indication of the rivalry between the two but the church was actually started three years after the fountain was finished. (OK, in all honesty I’ve never heard a tour guide tell the apocryphal story as true. We just bring up the false story so that we can dispute it with the truth. Makes us look smart.)

Lastly, there is something ironic and tragic in the fact that Borromini was able to find in the typically unyielding materials of his craft what he was unable to find in his own life and relationships. While his buildings are almost immediately recognizable by their graceful curves and gentle prods to look closer, his personality was anything but gentle and graceful. Resentful, stubborn, and brittle, by the end of his life he had distanced almost anyone who had come close to being a friend. He had also managed to get himself fired from almost every job he was working on. In August 1 1667, he propped a sword against his bed and threw himself upon it. He lingered for a day and died. He’s buried at San Giovanni, in the tomb of his mentor Carlos Maderno. There’s no grave marker, just a small plaque...and a blog entry here.