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Ponte St Angelo

Capri

Colosseo

Neptune Fountain (Piazza Navonna)

Paestum

El Campo (The night BEFORE the Palio)

Pantheon Dome

Mangia Tower (Siena)

Cinque Terra

Sorrento

                                                               Vernazza

They Call It The Palio (This is a long one. Feel free to bail at any time.)

Siena is one of the many well-preserved medieval hill towns that dot Tuscany. It’s known for its sloping Piazza de Campo spreading like a fan beneath the Mangia Tower, the tallest secular tower in Italy. Surrounding the Campo, the ancient streets wind and narrow up and down the hills that make up the town. The skies seemed perpetually filled with swifts and swallows. The air is scented with oregano, fennel and roasting meat. Eavesdrop on the local’s conversations and you’ll hear Italian spoken in its most pure and lyrical form. At just about any time of year, it’s worth a trip for its charm and grace. Then, there’s the Palio.
The Palio is a frantic bare-backed horse race that runs three times around the Campo. It’s held twice each summer (July 2 and August 16). It takes a little over a minute but carries centuries of tradition, neighborhood pride, rivalry and pageantry. Ask a native and they’ll tell you that the Palio is the heart and soul of Siena. Like the cloth that gives it is name, it is woven intricately into the lives and history of the town’s residents. It affects all sorts of major life decisions, like marriages, vocations, and housing.
A little history or, at least, the way I got the story… Siena was once a major world power and a rival to Florence in both politics and finance. In the late 13th century , its 60,000 residents made it a larger city than Paris. It was hit hard by the Plague and never regained its status but has always savored the hurt it put on Florence at Montaperte in 1260. It was deemed fitting to offer thanks and honor to the Virgin Mary for that victory by holding a contest in her honor. The contestants were to represent the contradas, or districts, in and around the city. (There are currently 17 but there were close to 60 at one time.) The prize was a decorated cloth, a Palio.
The contest has taken many forms over the years. Originally it was a riderless running of horses from one of the town gates to the Duomo, the main cathedral in the center of town. It has been also been a race run on bull or ox back (…and some think the current race is dangerous) as well as a multi-sided fistfight (Interesting concept there-“In praise of the Blessed Mother I will bust you in the nose.” That particular version was abandoned when people started throwing rocks and in subsequent years smuggled in clubs and knives.) Even today, the saying goes “The Palio is war.”
The race is dangerous and for safety’s sake the number of participating contradas in each race has been dropped to 10. Still, accidents happen. The turns are tight and the track slopes. A large granite arch juts out a few meters after a sharp downhill turn. Riding bareback, the jockeys regularly go down. (They also are allowed and, in fact, expected to smack each other with the narrow canes they use as whips.) On one hand, they are paid king’s ransom wages and riding in the Palio is prestigious. On the other hand, post race concern usually centers on the condition of the horses. The general response to questions of a jockey’s health is “Who cares? He was paid enough.” Mishaps on the track are typically attributed to the jockey’s “stupidity.”
The horse is the real athlete here. The jockey is a helpful but unnecessary accessory. If he tumbles off during the course of the race, the horse can still win. On race day each horse and jockey are taken to the contrada’s chapel. Prayers are said and holy water is sprinkled over both but the priest turns to the horse alone and says “Vai e torna vincitore” (Go, and return victorious). While the horses are assigned by lottery, there is intense devotion and affection for them. The jockeys, on the other hand are seen as hired guns, mercenaries with no allegiance other than to cash. In Siena the expression is “as faithless as a jockey.”
OK, one last bit of background. To say that the Sienese are proud of their contradas is an understatement. It goes way beyond that. You are literally baptized into your contrada is a yearly profane baptism that cannot be undone. You can move across town or across the country, marry outside your contrada, whatever; you remain a member of that contrada.
There are intense rivalries and allegiances between contradas, some of which have been in place for centuries. Every contrada but one has at least one arch-rival. (The Drago (Dragon) contrada had a rivalry going with the Bruco (Caterpillar) contrada but Bruco, the smallest contrada with the least resources, went so long without winning that they called a truce. Drago has other problems though. The creator of this year’s Palio banner chose a St George and the dragon motif. Imagine Drago’s chagrin in seeing their symbol lying slain on the race’s prize.). Each contrada’s goal is, of course, to win the race but equally important is seeing your rival come in second, the most heartbreaking position. Deals are struck in the weeks and minutes before the race (just like Survivor), and part of the jockey’s huge wages are expected to be put to use greasing the appropriate palms. However, few if any Sienese would say that the race is fixed. Palio politics is just part of the game.
OK, enough history. I arrived in Siena on Tuesday night with the race scheduled for Friday. I was staying at an agroturismo (working farm/B & B) a few miles outside of town. (Frances Lodge, a nice place. They grow olives for oil, a number of fruits for jellies, and crocuses from which they harvest saffron). I walked into Due Ponti a small town at the bottom of the hill around 7:30 for dinner and got a seat at the first restaurant I came to. 7:30 is ungodly early for an Italian to eat dinner so I had the place to myself. I ordered (pasta and chiangalle, boar, a Tuscan specialty) and looked around. The TV was playing something that looked suspiciously like the Palio.
Turns out there are six test races prior to the real thing, which makes sense considering the track is the town square and otherwise engaged most of the time. None of the tests run the full three laps and few are at full speed. The first I saw was barely more than the start but those in attendance seemed satisfied, leaping over the infield rail to escort the horse and rider out of the square. As the camera panned the crowd, everyone was wearing his game face. The Palio is a male dominated event although women regularly serve as contrada captains, the chief strategist.
Breakfast service the next morning was interrupted at 9 for television coverage of the next test. The Lodge is run by Franco and Franca. He is Sienese while she comes from Florence. He lives for the Palio and she seems happy to indulge that. All of the guests were returnees who: 1) had come for the Palio, and 2) knew about Franco’s passion for it. We were happier to watch and hear him analyze the test than to enjoy a perfectly good breakfast (Franca does make a great fig preserves). Regarding the test, Franco was not impressed. All of the horses looked slow. (By the by, Franco is of the Torre (Tower) contrada. Torre has won the Palio twice in his lifetime. For the second win, Torre spent one million Euros. Both wins came under female captains, mother and daughter, in fact.)
After breakfast, I headed into town. There’s a fair amount to see in Siena. (By the way, most of the old buildings are of a brown brick color that was duplicated in those Burnt Siena Crayola crayons.) The Duomo is a mammoth structure with bas reliefs on the floor, a library of illuminated manuscripts, a Bernini chapel (closed for remodeling), and a small Michelangelo (St Paul, about the size of Jerry Mahoney.) The town has two basilicas, San Francisco (cavernous, but oddly everything is in the transept, the nave is, well, empty) and San Dominico (Where you can see the head and thumb of Catherine of Siena. Apparently she tiny had little hands). My favorite sight though was that bench under the shade tree where there was a bit of a breeze blowing. The Tuscan sun can be brutal.
The test was scheduled for 7:45 so I sauntered over to the Campo around 5, planning to stake out a good spot. The crowd was still pretty sparse and, thankfully, shadows had begun to creep across the bricks. I was able to grab some space that was in the shade and along the rail about 20 meters from the starting point. The method of start is one of many oddities about this race and can take a while. Here’s how it works. You take a rope about the thickness of your arm and stretch it across the track. Nine horses line up along that rope. About 15 meters behind that, you get another similar rope and, with the help of a little saw horse type thing, you stretch it about 9/10ths of the way across the track. The 10th rider hangs out behind that rope and acts as both contestant and starter. When he feels that the other horses are lined up properly (and these are thoroughbreds, they are not big on just standing there) and that he can get by, he takes off. When he crosses the back rope, stewards drop the front rope and the Palio is on… theoretically. In reality, the 10th rider tends to milk the start, frustrating and lulling the other riders and looking for a moment when a rival horse is in an awkward position or napping. While he’s doing that, the other jockeys are trying to keep their horses in line and not nipping or kicking each other. Last year the start took 1 ½ hours and the race got off at just about the last possible minute. Any more of a delay, the race would have been called due to darkness and postponed a day.
Where was I, oh yeah, I got a spot at the rail. Things started to fill up. The first thing that happened was that school children from the various competing contradas come in loudly singing their contrada song. Anyone who’s been to the Palio knows the song I’m talking about. The melody is the same for every contrada and there aren’t many moments when you can’t hear some group singing it. The lyrics change from district to district and year to year (if not day to day) but the jest is “We’re great. You suck. And that’s why we’re going to win.” It sounded cute coming from the kids as they were seated on the bleachers in front of the town hall. When the adults came in, escorting their horse, there was nothing cute about it. It was a competition and the testosterone level ramped up considerably.
Around this time about a dozen high school girls showed up near me. (OK, maybe it wasn’t just the testosterone level that was ramped up.) One walked up to me and asked me to move. I told her there wasn’t any room but she responded that she wanted my place. A little surprised, I laughingly said no. Then she let me in on a secret about the Palio. “You are tourist,” she said, “I am Siena.” The Palio is for the locals. Actually I already had an idea of this. I had met Franco on a previous trip to Siena and he told me then that they didn’t like locals coming into town telling them that the Palio is crazy. “We already know we are crazy.” For that matter, just a little while before, when I asked someone near me in the crowd if the school kids get those great seats on race day, he responded that all seats were for the citizens of Siena. This isn’t for tourists. Tourists will be tolerated. Just don’t get in the way.
Well, I had been standing there for a couple hours by then and I wasn’t about to give up my spot. There were a couple of women from Turin who felt similarly so the three of us ignored them, or tried to. Teens in a pack can be bold and the area quickly degenerated into a mosh pit but we didn’t move. The horses came out. It was hard to pay too much attention with all the pushing but I managed to wedge my knee between the rails and anchor myself. The Turin ladies were sheltered beside me but the occasional punch on the back or shoulder still came our way. Anyway, the horses broke and the mortar fired (Did I mention there was a mortar?), followed by two successive blasts. False start. Damn, I was ready for this to be over. They brought the horses back and gavea it another go. A second start and mortar blast and this one was good. They went around about twice and called it. The Istrice (Porcupine) contrada won, which unfortunately was the girl’s contrada. They went scampering over the railing and were never seen again but I now had someone to cheer against. ( I did think about grabbing one of their sneakers as they went but decided that might cause an incident). One of the ladies form Turin shook my hand and thanked me, adding that all Italians aren’t like that. I told her I knew that. Still I may have had enough Palio.
I grabbed a quick dinner (Pasta and rabbit. Tuscany is big in meat and game.) and decided to walk back to the Lodge. It’s a long walk but mostly downhill. On my way through town I walked through a couple of contrada dinners. Huge seatings, 500 to 1000, set up in a piazza or right out in the street. Everyone was laughing and singing (that song again) under the deepening Tuscan sky. Charming as hell. Okay, maybe I hadn’t had enough Palio.
The next day was much the same. Breakfast with a break for the test. Bus ride into town. Wandering about looking for shady spots. I gave the Palio another go but set up across the Campo by the dreaded downhill turn. The crowd was pleasant and I struck up a lengthy conversation with a British women who was there with her Italian husband. They had been to more than a few of these and gave me the inside skinny. The smart money was on Nicchio, the Seashell contrada. They had the horse and the jockey and were spreading money around. She also said she always leaves the actual race to the Sienese and suggested I do the same. Everybody was nothing but nice.
There were a few more preliminaries this time around. A couple hours before the race, drummers and flag bearers wearing medieval garb (which must have been real hot) enter contrada by contrada and take a lap around the crowded track (people are still milling about). Then came the singing school kids, followed by the men escorting the horses. The song is sung over and over. Then police, military, and trash men take a slow lap sweeping people and trash from the track. A contingent of mounted military in full dress entered from another alley. This was new. Riding white stallions they trotted a lap, then, drawing their swords, they broke into a gallop, their speed increasing as they leveled their weapons. They flew around the track and shot out through the alley from which they had come, the last rider careening slightly off the wooden support.
As the crowd started to settle, the horses came out and lined up. The start took a while and when the mortar fired no one seemed to be going too fast. My British friend said that something was wrong and wondered if it was a false start. Bad start or no, it held although I forget who won that one. Regardless, the crowd stormed the track, people sang the song and I cleared out.
Our hosts had gotten us passes to the Bruco contrada dinner. Halfway down a steep street heading out of town, we were ushered through a door, through the small contrada “museum” and out into a walled garden that must have covered a couple of acres. (This is the poor contrada? Everyone else was eating out in the street . I think Bruco is holding out on the rest of town. By the way, in spite of their poor cousin status, Bruco did win the whole thing a couple years ago.) A sea of fifty foot tables were set out in a phalanx. A dozen or so mammoth grills were blazing, each with a kerchiefed steward at the ready. High school aged children swarmed around, acting as servers. We were led to a table that had been reserved for the English speakers. (Comparing notes, we all had heard the rumor that Nicchio had bought the race.)
The air was festive and convivial. The only low point was the contrada mayor’s rather lengthy speech late in the evening. The jockey, seated at his right and clearly drunk, had a difficult time staying awake. When asked if he had any words for his supporters, he muttered “No.” The servers passed around dessert, and we trundled home.
Race day began, as usual, with Franco’s commentary on the final test. There was a lot of talking amongst the jockeys as they brought the horses to the line. More last minute politics. I headed to town, where the horses were each taken to the appropriate chapel to be blessed. I saw the blessing of the horse from the Selva, (Forest, their mascot is a rhino) contrata, a dappled grey mare with a reputation for skittishness but also a past winner. Tones dropped to a whisper as she was led in and as many of us as possible followed into the church. As soon as the holy water was sprinkled she got a little antsy and immediately we were frantically (but quietly) waved out.
Around town each contrata had assembled a medieval color guard, some in full armor, and a parade of sorts through the teeming streets of the town had begun. One of the key stops was the Bank of Sienna, a centuries old institute and the main fiscal power behind the Palio. The march in the Campo was scheduled for 5:30 and all motion headed in that direction. Except me, I went off to scope out a public TV and maybe a little shade.
Eventually the tower bell started to toll, the signal that the march had begun. The various contrada color guards line and slowly revolve around the Campo. The main feature is the handling and throwing of the contrada flags. Each contrada has a pair of flag bearers with an elaborate routine based on the ancient use of flags on the battlefield. The throwing has been added for flourish and they toss them a good 30 meters into the air. (OK, so I didn’t wander that far and was watching what I could see through a break at one of the entrances.) All the while, the bell continues to toll. One lone town member at the top of tower had the task of swinging the clapper back and forth for about two hours. He never broke rhythm.
Now, I had told myself that I wasn’t going to attend the final race and everyone I talked to said that was a smart plan. “Leave it to the Sienese.” was the basic response but, well, I was in Siena, I was a couple hundred yards away from the Palio. What was I going to do? After a couple of minutes of waffling, I plunged into the stream of people flowing into the Campo. There was a moment there when I was lost in the current and my only concern was staying upright but once I got into the center, things were fine. There was plenty of room. If I had a hula-hoop I could have hula-hooped, if I knew how to hula-hoop.
The march went on for a little while longer and the final spectator entryway was closed. From another alley (there are something like nine entrances to the Campo) came the war cart. About 15 town elders displayed the Palio from this wheeled wooden cart being drawn by two pair of white oxen. (I had never actually seen oxen before. Oxen are huge. They look as if they’ve been warped in from another era and that their horns got knocked all out of whack in the process. They are imperturbable.) The town elders unloaded the Palio and took their seats amongst the other costumed participants on the bleachers (no school kids for the real thing). The flagbearers came out for one last flourish and throw and so ended the preliminaries.
The jockeys emerged and the crowd went nuts. During the tests, the jockeys had worn the traditional garb of their contrada which resembled, well, really colorful pajamas. They had also worn flop brimmed hats, some accompanied by a feather. When riding at any speed, the brim tended to fly up, making them all resemble either Hunts Hall from the Bowery Boys or that guitarist from Cheap Trick, depending on your generation. On race day, though, they wore helmets. The reason being the previously mentioned canes they all have. As they brought their horses out, most brandished said cane to their supporters as if to say “I’m going to kick me some Sienese butt with this.”
Bedlam reigned, but only for a minute. As the horses approached the starting area, the crowd grew positively silent, shushing the clueless newcomers who didn’t know that the all-important order of the horses was about to be announced. A venerable voice read the order by contrada and the crowd responded with stifled cheers, sighs and curses. “La Madonna e una puttana” (Our Lady is a whore) my personal favorite seemed appropriately devotional.
The start took about 20 minutes. Nine of the riders brought their horses to the line and vainly tried to settle them while the tenth rider, Torre, appeared to be just chatting with some ladies in the crowd. Three or four times, all of the horses were pulled away from the line and reset. During each of these resets, there was a lot of chatter amongst the jockeys, more “strategery”. The crowd was getting restless (although I’ve since been told that twenty minutes is a quick start) and then, suddenly, Torre took off, the crowd let out a gasp that turned into a roar, and it was a race.
Even having watched five tests, I was stunned by how fast they moved. The excitement was surprising which made the whole thing more exciting. Onda (The Wave) jumped out to a quick start (The Wave? Where the hell did they come from?) and held it for the first lap. I realized I was surrounded by Onda and they were delirious, until the Selva mare started to make a move. A third horse, moving rapidly, was riderless. Selva passed Onda midway through the second lap but Nicchio seemed to be moving forward from back in the pack. The riderless horse glanced against the wall on the third lap and two more horses tumbled, causing NIcchio to go wide. Forest crossed first with NIcchio a couple lengths behind in the heartbreak position. Beyond that it didn’t matter. Immediately the track was flooded with spectators while the Forest color guard ran down to the church of Madonna Di Provenzano to shout the Te Deum in thanks.
Other than watching Phil Bradley leg out an inside the park home run, it was the most exciting sporting moment I’ve ever witnessed. Looking around the Campo, I saw people laughing, crying, hugging, clapping, singing, and positively inconsolable. It took about a half hour for the infield to clear enough for the trash trucks to move in. Already, the pizzerias and trattorias that line the square were setting up tables on the track. I fell in with some of the folks from the lodge that had paid money for bleacher seats and we grabbed the first available table.
We ordered and watched the transformation of the Campo. The sky darkened to a rich cobalt blue and torches were lit atop the Mangia Tower and the bank building. Already the Forest flag was lining the Campo. As we ate, the sound of drumming could be heard as the Selva contrata began their celebratory march around town. They encircled the Campo, waving their flags and drumming. Many had glow-in-the-dark pacifiers in their mouths. (When you win the Palio, you are reborn.) Traditionally the winning contrada parades for a week which means they are still at it as I type. God bless ‘em.
One last note. At breakfast the next morning we asked Franco his take on the race. He was unhappy because of the number of horses that went down, blaming that on the Leocorno (Unicorn) jockey who fell, apparently for no good reason, in the second lap. He brightened when the newsman reported that all of the horses were fine. As expected, there was no word on the jockeys. In spite of his concern for the horses the previous night, he did manage to stop by the Montone (Ram) contrata where they were having a big blowout. This was puzzling news as Montone didn’t even run in the race but he explained “It’s true they didn’t race, but they are Nicchio’s rival.”

In the Key of B-flat

The walk home has been different the past couple of weeks. I first noticed it two Mondays ago. Piazza Navonna, usually a beehive of activity, was quiet, well, relatively. A dozen African drummers and dancers were taking a spirited lap around the oval but had only gathered a handful of followers. The usual gang of living manikins and other “performers” were all standing around, a collective expression of “What the F&#@?” on their painted faces.
A few blocks over, the Pantheon square was even quieter. The bad mime had gone home and that woman in the evening gown was playing her synthesized accordion for the sparsely filled late night diner’s tables.
I didn’t give it much thought at the time. Nothing particularly odd about a quiet Monday night . Maybe it was just one of those chaos theory things. I just kept walking but as I was entering the home stretch , an unfamiliar nose started to fill the evening air. Actually, it wasn’t altogether unfamiliar. It sounded like a swarm of bees or, more accurately, the constant droning of the 17 year locusts. But, locusts? In Rome? Then I turned the corner and realized that what I was hearing was the sound of thirty thousand or so vuvuzelas blaring from a couple of flat screen TVs hung outside of Druid’s Rock, a British pub a block or so from the backside of Santa Maria . Gathered around those screens were a couple of hundred British soccer fans (or were they fans of British soccer. Whatever they were, they were certainly getting their World Cup on.
I’ve never followed soccer, well, at least not since my godson graduated to peewee lacrosse, and that was a much different game. (As I recall, everybody but the goalie, and sometime him too, would swarm to the ball, occasionally kicking it towards whatever direction had the most open sky). Todasy, I can’t say that I understand the game but I over the past few weeks I have come to admire the devotion that the game is awarded over here.
I’m not just talking Italians either. Druid’s Rock seems to be a soccer Mecca in town, regardless who’s playing. Monday it might be Brits and Tuesday the Cameroons. Last night Argentineans held sway. The strongest showing has far and away been the South Koreans who showed up with drums and organized chants. Their cheers were constant. A simple successful kick from one player to another was met with barely controlled bedlam. When the ball got within 20 meters of the goal, it got absolutely scary. I wandered off, only to collide with scores of young Koreans running down to the bar. It looked like something out of an old Chef Boy-Ar-Dee commercial (except it was dark and they were Korean).
Everybody is following this, walk down the street and every radio is tuned in. Walk down the street and the televised green pitch glows through the door of a café, the window of a hotel lobby or the curtains of an apartment. (Hey, I’m starting to sound like a Peeping Tom here.) One night I did hear some guy rocking out to Eat A Peach but I think he was quickly deported. Besides the great viewer ratings, the number of kids playing soccer in the parks seemed triple. My Italian is still pretty meager but it seemed that it was all anybody was talking about.
And then…the dream ended. Italy, the defending champs, failed to make it out of the first round, they were defeated by Slovakia. One friend, who had watched the game in a bar with a couple of her Slovakian friends, said that the scene got ugly, Italian men were trying to trip the Slovak girls on their way out the door. Still, there wasn’t the violence that would accompany a similar loss in the states. Mostly people just looked sad, a little wistful (I imagine it didn’t help that the US was still in it, clearly an indication of the end of days. Of course, that curiosity has since been righted.) The next morning while walking to work, I passed through a park to see a couple of kids tossing around a soccer ball, with their hands. Clearly the actions of the broken hearted.
By the next day, however, things were getting back to normal. Crowds were still gathering around the TVs. I don’t know if it’s because the town is filled with tourists , or if, for the Italians, any kind of soccer beats no soccer. Either way, the fever is still high. I hear that they have set up a Jumbotron at Villa Borghese which continues to draw a solid crowd. The Germans were whooping up their win over England yesterday. Even the kids were back in the park this morning, and using their feet.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Pantheon

I don’t know much about architecture. I suppose I enjoy a good looking building as much as the next guy but certainly can’t intelligently identify its appeal, let alone discuss form, structure, etc. So I’m a little surprised by how attracted I am to this building. St. Peter’s Basilica is more imposing, the enormity of the Colosseum is more mindboggling, and any number of the baroque churches may be more graceful, but this building seems to me to be, well, perfect.
OK, maybe it’s not perfect on the outside but I think that works as a handy bit of a misdirection. It’s a fairly simple structure: a drum shaped rotunda with a dome on top (more on the dome later), introduced by a rectangular portico topped by a triangular roof. The building has suffered the wear and tear of the millennia. Most of its marble covering has long been pried off, leaving a surface that is about as pockmarked as your average adolescent. The building itself is half covered by scaffolding and even through that it’s clear that the pieces don’t quite add up. The portico is about 4 feet too short. That wouldn’t be so bad except you can see on the rotunda where the portico’s peak is supposed to fit and the actual roof line well below that. There are a number of theories on this but it’s generally believed that when the columns arrived from Egypt they were a little smaller than the work order called for. (Cut it off twice and it’s still too short). The inscription across the top attributing the building to Marcus Agrippa isn’t accurate either. The Agrippa built structure burned down shortly after it was built and the replacement was struck by lightning and likewise burned. Hadrian (or maybe Trajean) had this one built and with uncharacteristic humility (you should the mausoleum he built for himself) gave the credit back to Agrippa.
So there are issues with the outside. Granted. But step inside and it’s another story. Truth be told, I was underwhelmed by the building when I first saw it. I didn’t know enough to get it. Part of the problem is that the building is so well preserved that it doesn’t look like it’s 1900 years old. All that broken stuff around over at the forum? That stuff looks old. Not this. Most say that it survived numerous sackings and the Dark Ages because it had been converted to a church. I like to think that when the Visigoths and Normans came through and wrecked the joint, they took one look at the Pantheon and said “Uh, this is really nice. We better leave this one alone.”
The marble floor is in a pattern of squares and circles of four colors representing the reaches of the empire (Egypt, Gaul, Asia Minor, and Carthage. There’s some green from Greece in the walls as well). There’s a slight angle to the floor as you move towards the wall to allow any water that comes in to drain away. It is a pantheon so the walls have a number of niches for tombs and memorials to some key historical and artistic figures. (The Agrippa built version was intended as a tribute to his friend and father-in-law Caesar Augustus but he declined the honor (Romans and their false modesty again) so it was mostly devoted to the deified Julius with statues of Augustus and Agrippa on the outside . Some think that Agrippa’s hubris was the source of the bad ju-ju that brought on those fires.)
The walls and floors are nice but the real attraction is the dome. The diameter of the rotunda is 43.3 meters and from floor to extrapolated ceiling it’s 43.3 meters. In other words, if you had a 43.3 meter ball and needed to put it someplace, this would be your best bet. The domed ceiling is made of chunks of stone and pottery and Roman concrete. (When I first arrived, I got so wonked out on this building that I actually e-mailed the author of a book on Roman concrete because I had some question. Amazingly he wrote back and not with any threat of a restraining order.) The dome has stood for 1900 years without any internal support. No rebar, no chicken wire, no nothing. Never been repeated. Never.
Finally (I know I’m going on a bit here), If you’re wondering why I referred to the ceiling as extrapolated a few lines ago, it’s because the ceiling is topped (or not topped) by the oculus, an opening which provides the only light in the building. If it’s a rainy day, it rains into the building. There are drains in the central tiles and as I said before there is a slight incline to the floor to send excess water to the sides where (I think) there are some additional drains. A friend of mine tells me that if you’re lucky and catch the building during a sun shower, you may be rewarded with a faint rainbow within the building.
As anyone who has spent any time here can tell you, Rome is a beautiful and frustrating city. For example, last week the power company came by the new apartment and shut off the power because the previous tenants hadn’t paid their bill. It took them two minutes to turn it off and two days to turn it back on. On top of that, there were other annoyances which, frankly, I can’t recall at the moment, but I finally decide the only reasonable thing to do was to go to the Pantheon. It was fairly packed, but I was able to find a seat on one of the handful of pews up by the altar and I sat…for a while and looked at the dome. It calmed me down. I suspect that if Goffin and King would have grown up in Rome, this would be their rooftop. Then the darnedest thing happened. A seagull drifted down through the oculus (That’ll send a shiver through your Catholic upbringing.) and started to fly laps around the dome. For about five minutes it just flew in circles. Then it slowly drifted back up towards the opening and was gone. Guess it was having a tough day too.

Walking home from school

A couple of weeks ago I decided to face the obvious and sign up for Italian classes. It wasn’t a tough decision. I had been hitting Rosetta Stone for months before departing but: 1) I hadn’t been hitting it hard enough, 2) from my experience, Rosetta Stone is helpful for building vocabulary but not so helpful for understanding the rules of grammar, and 3) Rosetta Stone doesn’t come close to preparing one for the speed at which Italians speak their language. I knew I was in trouble when I stopped into a pizza joint in Baltimore a couple of weeks before leaving with the intention of deciphering the banter of the counter guys. I couldn’t recognize a single word.

My current class is an immersion class and is almost entirely in Italian. I am clueless about 60% of the time. My insegnante rattles off a bunch of syllables and first, I have to try to figure out how they break down into words and, only then, try to pull some meaning from it. It’s frustrating and difficult and brings back strong memories of sitting in Mrs. DeCaro’s French class back at St Pete’s (Sts Peter and Paul Warren, Ohio).
But I don’t want to talk about Italian class. I want to talk about the walk home. Class is slightly up a hill that runs behind the Vatican and I live all the way across town, about halfway between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Colosseum. There are convenient Metro (read subway) stops and I imagine there is a straight shot bus, but for now I like to walk it (I may feel differently when August rolls around). While Rome is one of the great cities of the world, it isn’t that big and is very manageable on foot. Besides, in the course of an hour walk, any lingering gelato guilt tends to melt away.
Anyway, the walk starts with an easy jaunt down the hill with my class mate, a young French woman working in Rome for the summer that, much to my chagrin, seems to be able to understand what our insegnante is saying. (I figure it’s an EU thing.) At the bottom of the hill she peels off to catch her bus and I take a left that leads me to and through St. Peter’s Square. St Peter’s Square isn’t a square; it’s an oval. A huge oval, flanked by Bernini’s cleverly arranged columns, and, during the day, filled with people and summer sun. When I hit it, though, the sun has been down for twenty minutes or so, the sky has settled into muted shades, and the crowds have thinned to just a few stragglers. It’s lovely (and I don’t think I use that word very often). I tend to linger here for a bit, let any post-class frustration drift away, and experience a moment or two of bliss.  I question my move to Rome from time to time but never while standing in that square.
From there, it’s down the street past the Castle Saint Angelo (originally built as Hadrian’s mausoleum, now a museum, also the locale of the final scene of Tosca) and across the Ponte Saint Angelo with it’s Bernini designed angels holding various symbols of the crucifixion (nails, crown of thorns, etc.). Once across the bridge I have a choice. I can take an oblique angle followed by a straight shot up Via dei Coronari or I can stay on Via di Panino ( literally the way of the roll) into a jumble of streets that meander through a neighborhood that historically was filled with craftsmen of various stripes (marble cutters, woodworkers, and bakers-hence that panino business). Today it’s home to a wide assortment of trattorias, pizzerias and the like). The route decision is based on how long ago lunch was and time. The latter choice involves usually involves dinner but also getting lost (that’s partially the point and I never the leave the apartment without my frayed and trusty street map.)
Either way, I eventually find myself at the Piazza Navonna. This was originally an amphitheater and race track built shortly after the Colosseum but now, lined with restaurants and dotted with fountains, is a popular place for milling about. I usually keep moving here, but like to notice the play of light reflected of the surging waters of the massive Fountain of the Four Rivers (Bernini again, he is all over this town). From there it’s three short blocks to the Piazza di Rotunda. It’s a similar but thinner crowd than Navonna but the rotunda in question is the Pantheon. Closed at this hour and half shrouded in scaffolding, it’s still impressive and I always stop to just look at it. Simple elegance: a square, a triangle, a cylinder, a globe and just about perfect. Perhaps the original “often imitated but never duplicated.”
Eventually I pull myself away and cut down a side alley. A dozen or so blocks, a few lefts and rights and I’m at the bottom of the Quirinale hill (one of the seven). Looking to the left I can catch the edge of the Trevi Fountain and, if the mood strikes, I can wander down and take in that scene (a similar but thicker crowd than Navonna) but usually I head up the hill and then the steps to the Piazza de Quirinale outside the palace of the same name. I stop for a few minutes to admire the view (OK, I’m actually catching my breath but this is a great spot to take in the city’s horizontal scape. No building is taller than St. Peter’s.)
Breathing normally again and almost home, I head down Via del Quirinale and take a right at the four fountains (Rome is full of fountains and, in most cases, the water still comes in from the aqueducts. It’s cold and tastes great but these four fountains, sitting right on the street, are encrusted with a layer of grime that I imagine in 85% car exhaust. I wouldn’t touch ‘em). From her it’s a short walk to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, around the circle and down my street. I usually hit my door as the basilica’s bells are tolling 9:45.
On a typical night, it takes an hour and 15 minutes and there’s usually a slice of pizza in there someplace. A few nights ago, my insegnante asked me which bus I took to get home. When I told her I walked, she shook her head, saying it was too far. I suppose if you live here for a while, you get inured to the sights but that hasn’t happened yet. Sometimes it’s the high point of the day. Beats the walk home from St. Pete’s…uh, the other St. Pete’s.

"Flexibility is the cornerstone of mental health." Aimee-Sawyer Philpott-Greenspon
I used to work in the mental health field and one of the staff psychiatrists, upon hearing of my plan to move to Rome, gave me two pieces of advice: 1) (and this was very important) Have a plan; and 2) (even more important) Be flexible, especially if you're plan involves moving to Italy. It sounded a wee bit contradictory but also like good advice. I had no idea.
There's apparently a law on the Italian books forbidding a landlord from kicking someone out of an apartment, whether they're paying the rent or not, so when the previous tenants of my apartment-to-be hadn't got around to vacating just yet, it fell on me (my flatmate actually) to find a new spot. Now this new apartment is actually quite nice. High ceilings, well appointed living room, even a washer and dryer (in one, more on that later), but it's a couple blocks from train station and, well, it's noisy as hell. Sometimes it's a group of African drummers in the park across the street (at 11 pm), or the nightly dumpster clearing truck run, maybe that accordion player squeezing out The Final Countdown, or just some expressed Italian emotion. Ok it's loud, it's not ideal, but what is. Last night, at around 2:30 the neighborhood fell silent. Not for any particular reason and not for long, but it woke me up and it took me a moment or two to remember where I was. Oh, yeah, I'm in Rome, and then, as if to punctuate the realization, a scooter whined by the window, then some laughter and, I don't know, maybe a broken bottle and everything was back to normal. My neighborhood is noisy, I can live with that.
Rome has a lot of potential for frustration. There's lots of great art to be seen for free in the churches but most of them close in the afternoon. Some at 12:30, some at 1:00 and they re-open some time later, 3:30 or 4, or maybe not. I waited outside of San Luigi de Francesca for about 40 minutes yesterday, along with 25 or 30 other folks. San Luigi is the home of Carravaggio's trio of St. Matthew paintings, a must see, and they close until four every afternoon. Every afternoon, it turns out, except Thursday, which it was. On Thursdays they close up around noon and that's it. Disappointing, yes. Particularly for people who have a morning plane or train out of town. On the other hand, A block to the East is another Carravaggio at St Agostino and a couple of blocks south of that is a nifty bit of Boromini architecture. In other words, there's always something else to see.
One last bit on flexibility. On a typical sunny day Rome, there are hundreds of guys, middle-eastern mostly, selling sunglasses and an odd assortment of children's toys but, as soon as a few drops of rain come down (and it seems that can happen at any moment), those sunglasses and bubble blowing space guns disappear and, God knows from where, they are all suddenly hawking umbrellas. Now I know from experience that the umbrellas suck. One good wind and your holding a stick with a hunk of fabric flapping from some spoke on the top, but give the guys some credit for flexibility and a plan.

May 5, 2010

This is, uh, a little out of character for me. I tend to be a rather cautious guy and if you had told me, say, five years ago that I would, at the tender age of 55, quit my job (two jobs actually...two jobs I liked) and move to Rome, where I knew next to no one and didn't really speak the language (Who am I kidding? I don't speak the language at all, especially not the Roman version.), well, I would have figured you had the wrong number. Yet, here I am.
So, how do these things begin. For me, it starts with saying things out loud. I don't know about you, but I come up with all sorts of plans and notions and as long as they stay in the internal musing stage then I'm safe. But as soon as I say it out loud, then I have to do something about it. Once the words are hanging in the air, I can't ignore them. So, when I started to think about leaving my adopted home of Baltimore and heading back to the Midwest, that was no big deal. And when the thought occured that, as long as I was pulling up stakes, this might be a great time to move abroad for a while, well, that kind of thought comes and goes all the time. But, then I said it to someone, I think it was my brother, and, with that, it was out there. A potential reality. Interestingly, he thought it was a good idea. His wife, a clear-eyed realist if ever there was one, thought it was a great idea. Of course, she's Italian and has marinara running through her veins, but the fact is that everyone I told thought it was a great idea...and I told a lot of people. The truth is that I thought it sounded like a great idea too (although certainly not in a sensible life plan and probably not financially sound-and we can take the word probably right out of that sentence) but I doubted that I would go through with it, so crafty soul that I am, my plan was to tell as many people as possible because I knew that the more people I told, the harder it would be to back out of it. I could say that I would rather regret something I'd done rather than something I hadn't done and all, but the truth is I was involved in one big game of chicken with myself. The saving logic was, What was the worst that could happen? Things don't work out (there is potential employment in this story but more on that later), I just come home early (we'll ignore the fact that the economy sucks and that jobs aren't exactly being given out like starlight mints these days.)
So last November I was standing in line at the local Barnes & Noble and my eyes alit on one of those literary refrigerator magnets, this one sporting a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, admonishing the reader to "do one thing every day that scares you". Well, I figured traipsing off to Rome qualified, so I went home and booked the ticket.
A couple of months ago I was visiting that brother again. I had by then given notice at both jobs, suitable replacements were found and I had just begun what was to have been a brief period of prepatory unemployment when I had one of those middle age health issues crop up which caused me to postpone my departure from March to May (more on that later...maybe). Anyway, I was visiting said brother and we were in the car, running some errand or other, and there was a lull in the conversation and he quietly said "You know, I think this is a great idea and I hope you do it, but don't feel that you need to do it just cause everybody else thinks it's a great idea." Then he added "It's kinda like back in grade school and your friends are saying 'Go on over and punch that bully in the nose. We'll hold your coat." I appreciated the permission to back out but I came anyway. I'm shooting for at least a year. What could go wrong? And if something does, I'm going over to Eleanor Roosevelt's house and punch her in the nose. I'll just need somebody to hold my coat.