Adventures and such

I talk a lot about the Pantheon because I’m slightly obsessed.  Even Jessie says that if it had a bathtub, it would be her idea of a perfect structure.  But once you’ve seen it, you think If I could only see the Pantheon while it is raining…

My good friend and confidant, Marietta, says this every time I mention the Pantheon.  Jessie and I were speculating that after having seen the rain reverently falling through the oculus, now we are forced to think If I could only see the Pantheon while it is snowing…

Jessie and I had a little joke that whatever you may be doing in Rome, you’d just drop it and run to the Pantheon if it started snowing. 

It’s been raining lots and hard.  I was happy to have my rainboots and two coats, one for me and one for Jess.  I was making breakfast and had the shutters open and Jessie said,

" It sure is raining hard."

I looked up.

" That’s not rain, that’s snow. Fuck me sideways, it is snowing in Rome!"

I do not generally condone leaving dishes in the sink (I bet you thought I was going to say that I do not generally condone swearing).  But there are some things that are just such occasions that they warrant immediate action.  I quickly threw on five layers of clothing and we rushed out into the fresh white world. 

 

New snow in a city is always pretty.  It’s like that in NY and Boston as well.  Fresh powder falls softly, dusting Fiat 500s, the Italian stone pines, Renaissance porticoes and Baroque flourishes.  Ours were some of the first footprints in the snow.  The uneven streets of Rome are often difficult even without snow sticking to our boots.  The undulation of the cobblestones was evident at first as it made a geometric pattern of snowfall.  But after a few minutes of the heavy stuff, slipping in the street would be quite an easy feat.  So hurried as we wished to be, we carefully made our way down to the tram stop. 

 

[Em]

  

[Jess]

A small child, approximately two years old and of indeterminate sex due to the overzealous bundling by the parent, shouted at us in delight. 

"Regazze!" and lobbed a snowball at Jessie.  

It was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen.

In a frustrating manner that was not at all surprising, the tram never arrived.  I’m sure there was a reason.  Like the driver wanted to stay home and play in the snow with his children.  Or it could have simply been that Rome does not operate in the snow.  We waited at the stop, agonizing over the minutes ticking by.  More and more people began to accumulate and I realized that the situation was only worsening.  We decided to hoof it.

Walking as quickly as we could, given the conditions, it still took about an hour to get up to the Pantheon. 

The snow had subsided. 

We stood, cold and disappointed on the marble floor, wondering what to do next. 

Suddenly, I didn’t care.  I elbowed Jessie, "Do you realize that we just saw it snow in Rome?!"

 

 [Unknown Dome]

It probably won’t snow again while I’m here.  It only does every decade or so.  And there hasn't been accumulation since 1986... 

But another time my visit will coincide with snowfall and I’ll be sure to blog about it then.

 

Just to prove a point, the day after the snow, Jessie and I went on a picnic.  You see, we are weird…and so is the weather.  We have been planning routes, itineraries, and must-sees for our parents who will be coming to visit next month.  Jessie says that her top three things in Rome are: the Pantheon, seeing Rome from the basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican (this involves countless stairs, even SHE can’t remember how many), and ‘looking through the keyhole.’ 

We decided to walk up the Aventine Hill to the keyhole because walking there is something we’ve never done before.  It was a gorgeous day.  I happened to bring sandwiches (but only for food) and we crossed the Tiber, past Santa Maria de Cosmedin (which houses the Bocca della Verita) and started up the hill.  On the left was a splendid view of the Palatine.  There were two churches with small gardens on the Aventine and so we stopped for a view of Trastevere and a sandwich.  I swear, a sandwich of rough Italian bread, from a loaf as big as my head, with nothing but butter and prosciutto, is the best sandwich ever.  There were quite a few orange trees in the garden but all the oranges within the range of the average arm’s reach had been already plucked. 

 

I know lots of anecdotal bits of history but I am not a great student.  I know names like Borromini and Bernini and have vague ideas about their contribution to the Arts.  Piranesi was a name I knew in theory but I was surprised to discover that he was not an architect.  Then why on earth do I know his name?

Giovanni Battista Piranesi contributed much to the body of architectural history in his etchings.  Famous for his 18^th century etchings of landmarks such as the Pyramid of Cestius and the Arch of Trajan, he was known for realizing the ‘potential’ of ancient ruins, recreating it at times.  He has only left us one architectural work.  You can find it at the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.  

This Piazza is home to what is officially known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta but for everyday purposes it is called the Sovereign Military Order of Malta or Knights of Malta.  SMOM has been caring for the poor and less-fortunate for almost a thousand years and after the First Crusade, it became officially Catholic.  It once had sovereign territory in Malta but Napoleon retook the land. The SMOM now resides on the Aventine Hill.   The main difference between such non-Italian entities operating within Italy as the SMOM and the Vatican, I can best explain as similar to the United Nations since they both are exempt from Italian laws.  Both the Vatican and the SMOM have their own stamps but the Vatican is a country and has its own domain name (.va) whereas the SMOM does not, nor does it actually claim soil since it is an extraterritoriality.  I thought that extraterritoriality was a really awesome word.

The reason why people care about going there, besides Piranesi, is to look through the keyhole.  I had already done it.  But I went to do it again because it is WITHOUT A DOUBT one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced.  

The keyhole at the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta was no less stunning the second time around.  The concept is just so crazy.  A military tank stands on permanent guard (it feels very strange) in an otherwise quietly beautiful and somewhat ornate piazza of white marble by this aforementioned Piranesi fellow who also remodeled the interior church, Santa Maria del Priorato, sadly off limits without special appointment (and who also happens to be entombed there).

 

[via www.imageandnarrative.be]

You stand, with your feet solidly on Roman soil.  You cup your hand around the brass keyhole in a green gate.  And through this tiny porthole, you see a tunnel of foliage, this greenery is in the Sovereign State of the Knights of Malta.  But through that tunnel of green, you see the perfectly framed dome of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, itself a city-state.  Three countries are represented in this one peculiar and spectacular experience.  It reminds me that Italian has a better command of language since this is the exact moment where it isn’t ‘seeing’ the view but rather experiencing the elements that make this view so extraordinary.  Seeing, yes, there is a beautiful vista.  But there is also the fact that you are looking through a literal keyhole, that you are standing outside, looking inside, and looking through...and that you are looking across theoretical edges, boundaries, and distinctions.  Italians would use the verb ‘to sense’ rather than ‘to see.’  I concur.

 [The Grand Tour, 2007 (that's Em in Blue)]

 

 [Whit 2007]

  

[Marietta 2007]

 

 [Jess 2007]

SPOILER ALERT: this is the view 

I’ve searched my books on Rome in the hopes of finding some great literary gem that describes the absolute fantasy and wonder of this spot.  The best thing I found was a paper written by a PhD candidate at Yale.

Like the tombs along the Via Appia, the piazza sets a place apart from the city and designates it as a symbolic locale. The piazza lies within the city, but it conjures up this city selectively, through recourse to representation, reference, and allusion. The result is a pictorialism by which architecture invokes existing artifacts through images of them, a process allegorized in the entrance screen's famous keyhole, through which one views a perfectly-framed, but disproportionately large image of S. Pietro's, itself an out-sized icon of Rome. Just as this image is mediated through the architectural frame, so the piazza mediates the site's history through visual emblems that call its own past to mind. With the piazza, however, the citation is not direct: the historical artifact is passed through representation before it is returned to material form. The piazza is thus a historical mise-en-scéne  in which " Rome " is neither wholly imaginary not wholly real. The piazza frames, in short, an idea of Rome.

Small, I. Polarités. Piranesi's Shape of Time. Image [&] Narrative [e-journal], 18 (2007).

The Aventine is quiet.  It is residential.  There are churches, little schools, and houses.  But there is quite a nice hotel, The San Anselmo, away from the bustle and just steps from the Knights of Malta.  I’m wondered what it would be like to stay there.  Being outside of the City Center has its merits and one can always take a taxi into town, or walk down the hill to the subway station.  Being able to look through that keyhole every morning would be worth something. 

The piazza really is quite lovely and deserves lots of photos.  But just off the square, something caught my eye.  It completely captivated me.  Though it was nice to finally read and learn about Piranesi, I didn’t much care for his flourishes or white marble.  What I saw was just a turquoise door and a Madonna.  But it was an exercise in quiet simplicity that I hope I never forget.