A last item

As a farewell to Rome, here is a little movie shot from behind the head of the driver of the 116 bus, a small electric bus that finds its way through the centre of Rome. The buildings between which the bus drives are built mainly from the 1400s to the 1800s. Writing this now in Seattle, on the way home, I am somehow lost for words to describe what seems from here another world, scarcely perceptible through the film, though for us it carries great memories.... my writing here is dull, we are in mourning...

That's a photo of these buses.

Short, square, with wheels on the corner, quick acceleration and low speed, you will see its qualities shine in the movie.

Soundtrack Vasco Rossi's Siamo Soli 

Note added 2016

Alas that bus route has been suspended. But here's what you can do on foot!

I had enormous difficulty back then, trying on foot to work out the route, but more recently with the google map and street view, I have worked out that that movie runs (I think) from St Eustachio (where Michelle Obama was taken for gelato) down to S.M. sopra Minerva with the wonderful elephant obelisk, then Via del Pie di Marmo, Via del Collegio Romano (also see this) round through the wonderful Piazza Sant'Ignazio, hastening through the Piazza di Pietra without any courteous nod towards Hadrian's Temple then coming to a halt in via dei Bergamaschi at an entrance to Piazza Colonna (also see this). Though this bus route no longer runs, this remains a wonderful walk.... or rather, is indicative of the quality of walks through any number of streets in the centre of Rome.

Some photos from pages linked above

Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk in front of the Basilica Santa Maria sopra Minerva

The Piazza di Sant'Ignazio, from the steps of the church of St Ignatius
"The buildings at the time of [the designer of the piazza] Raguzzini
were working class and craft-makers' apartments
and not the usual aristocratic town palaces that one finds on such piazzas"

Piazza Colonna, seat of the Italian Government.
"The column [colonna] was built and dedicated to Marcus Aurelius after the emperor's death in 180 AD.
In 1589 Pope Sixtus V restored the column and freed it from any pagan significance
 ("ab omnia impietatem expurgatam") by placing a statue of St. Paul on its top."

art around abounds

There seems an instinct to race from museum to museum in Rome, but there is breathtaking beauty and art everywhere, which we are pleased to slow down and see. You will also see in these photos our affection for the city, the romance of the city. You will understand why Helen in particular does not want to leave... (alas bloggerisation robs photos of some quality)

(I note as we prepare for travel to Rome again in 2018 that the imprint of Rome on us is undiminished)

Here is a glorious ornament on a bridge

and here is another glorious ornament, same bridge

and here is a view of the bank below, 

tree shade and cobblestones

— the river racing after rains

here is glorious lunchtime use of the steps 

of the Chiesa Nuova (New Church), 

in the piazza at our bus stop.

The church was new when it replaced the old church in 1575

Here is part of the  very short walk from the Chiesa Nuova to home

Here is an anonymous wall such as one passes often

Not far from home, 
a small shop window contained these objects, 

rendered more mysterious with reflections

Here was the wall we faced 

when having coffee in Trastevere the other day

Here is the notice of a restaurant, in Cerveteri, 
that its weekly rest day is Tuesday

not only does she not want to leave 
she becomes a becoming part of the landscape

updating

We have not maintained this blog well. The purpose of life has been away from blogging. Rome has been seductive, as has been an end to travelling and weeks of staying in one place. The combination of the two seductions is very powerful indeed.


There is much to do, much to experience, in trips in the city, as with previously posted visit to EUR. Also the discovery that from 200 metres away, we can catch the 116, a small electric powered bus which travels through the centre of Rome in a giddying whirl through very narrow streets, to emerge in the Villa Borghese - and return home via the Spanish Steps and, if we don't get off at our door, be carried on to the Janiculine Hill. Having the monthly bus pass means we tend often enough to get off Bus A and get on the next arriving Bus X, to go places ordinary people go in their ordinary lives in this remarkable place.

The little 116 electric bus weaves through springtime 
Saturday afternoon in the Villa Borghese.

It is licensed to seat 12 and have 22 standing, plus a wheelchair. 

We counted more than 20 standing, no wheelchair, on this afternoon, 

and happy it was, with folk in the middle having only each other to hold on to. 

In the Field of Mars the bus has millimetres to spare on many corners.

We have also made more extensive day trips. Friday 2.5 hours on the Pescara train through the mountains of central Italy towards the east coast, to get off at Goriano Sicoli. Helen had said "we must take a train" and in researching I looked at the stops trains took. Goriano Sicoli is a strange place for an express train to stop; a perfect place for us to visit.


From the station we set out down the hill a little more than a kilometre to the town. M C Escher had visited the town and been inspired; his first lithograph, made there, shows how the reality of the town (see Helen's photo following) may have contributed to Escher's work.

You will see that he etched as he saw, hence printed in reverse. 

The technical people also note that he made it very hard to print 

by working all the way to the edge of the stone. 

Helen's photo from a position slightly to the right...

The way of small places: Going down the hill into town, we fell into conversation with a woman called Wanda [Varhnduh], whose mother as a child came from Croatia with her family, as had Wanda Newby, wife of Eric Newby, come with her family from Slovenia, in the great transmigration program imposed by Mussolini.


Then we fell into conversation with Roberto, who proceeded to put us into his car and give us a tour of the edge of town before taking us to meet Donato [Don], an Australian returned in the 1980s from Adelaide, born same year, same school as Robert, who has established a pizzeria - BandB in Goriano... and who asks we send all his friends there... which without hesitation we do!

Helen and Robert, in front of the Appenines just south of the Gran Sasso d'Italia.

Don in his restaurant.

===

Yesterday we went by semi-suburban train to Anguillara Sabazzia, on Lake Bracciano, north of Rome. And got caught in a hail storm. But enjoyed ourselves. Helen has become increasingly enamoured of photography and, indeed, made her first film yesterday.


And where next? — see below these pics from Anguillara.

and yes, this is a photo of the film being made

We are wanting to go, later this week when the skies clear, to the Alban hills [Colli Albani], a 30 minute train ride to Frascati, south of Rome. Many of the towns destroyed after the Anzio landings in WWII; not for the first time. Frascati (or then, Tusculum) took the wrong side, against Rome, in 1190, and was obliterated. We do our research. We wanted to know if we could find any ruins of the great country houses such as of of Cicero and Lucullus. Beware, when you research these places in Italy. Like the Anzio beachhead (pardon the comparison that sprang to mind, no disrespect to the thousands and thousands who died there in 1943-44) you can get bogged down. Here follows a Memory and Pronunciation Test from something just read this morning. More than anything else, revel in the expression "...it is well known..." in the last sentence:

"... From the tenth century onwards the Counts of Tusculum exercised a preponderant influence over the Government of Rome and the papacy itself. Theophylactus, Senator of the Romans and founder of the family, was the husband of Theodora, who under Sergius III was absolute mistress of Rome, and whose daughter Marozia married Alberic I, Margrave of Camerino and Duke of Spoleto, father of Alberic II, who from 932 to 954 ruled Rome under the title of Patrician and Senator, and obtained from the Romans the assurance that after his death his son Octavian should be made pope (John XII). When John XII was deposed (963), the Counts of Tusculum yielded for a time to the Crescenzi, but their power was soon restored to them. From 1012 to 1044 three popes of the great Tusculan family succeeded one another: Benedict VIII, his brother John XIX, and their nephew Benedict IX. The Tusculan domination, it is well known, was far from creditable to the Roman Church..."

http://www.world66.com/europe/italy/lazio/tusculum accessed  29 March 2011, emphasis added

War in Libya

I have placed in my personal blog text of my comment on an editorial in the New York Times about the new war in Libya. Here is a link to that.

Saturday to the Villa Borghese

Blissfully unaware that international war had been added to civil war in the next country to the south, we joined families in the Villa Borghese on Saturday...

It was also to be dog-photo-day, beginning with this extraordinary dog-man hand-holding relationship in Piazza Barberini. Bernini's Triton fountain in the background. They held hands long enough for me to get out the camera and take the shot from crowded bus...

It is spring and in the Villa Borghese the grass is green and tiny daisies in bloom, 

this photo from knee height.

An exceptionally lovely morning by the lake

Lots of families in leg-powered vehicles, also a few of these up-market travellers

This photo of boy and dog perhaps captures best the atmosphere of freedom and fresh air

while these photos of an old man (older than I am) seems to call for a novella to be written;

there were in fact quite a number of older single men, in suits or jackets, 

airing themselves alone, 

 within their lifetimes the world has undergone so many upheavals and revolutions

EUR

Mussolini planned an "Espozizione Universale a Roma" [EUR] for 1942, but World War 2 got in the way. Wikipedia has some history.

The beginnings of the site, part of it later developed further for the 1960s, is the core of the present centre of EUR, a satellite city southwest of the centre of Rome. It is distinguished by extraordinary architecture of the art-nouveau/Fascist era, but also by some remarkable modern architecture from the post-war period. Two photos of major statuary at EUR are in the preceding blog entry featuring Helen and naked men, here are some more photos taken in EUR Friday.

The inscription at the top of this focal building expresses ideals which were tragically tainted by the violence of the Fascist regime and violence imposed on its opponents. The inscription reads:

A people of poets of artists of heroes

of saints of thinkers of scientist

of navigators and migrants

This is the scale of this extraordinary building

This an astounding figure in the median strip of Via Cristoforo Colombo

... to see the scale of the above, see the bird in the detail below...

and this is a fraction of a postwar architectural marvel

Get thee away from us, dressed redhead

and a tragic anniversary...

This is the 33rd anniversary of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the Italian Prime Minister, who was on the point of achieving a major shift towards potential political stability in Italy, bringing in the communist party to a government with his own Christian Democratic Party. His subsequent death fractured Italian politics, at the end of a violent decade.

There continues to be speculation about who, apart from or in encouragement of the Red Brigades, may have been involved. The film Il Divo explores the right wing of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) through the life of Giulio Andreotti, many times prime minister and still at the top when the CDP disintegrated under the weight of corruption and disaffection, in the early 1990s, when Andreotti acted (one matter of lasting consequence) in ways that enables Silvio Berlusconi to secure dominance of the media in Italy, a situation which today means only one newspaper group and the public radio-tv network RAI carry reports on the legal cases facing Berlusconi.

The Italian Communist Party also dissolved in the wake of the collapse of Eastern European communism, at about the same time as the CDP. The search for sane political balance continues. The party principally heir to the PCI is the Democratic Party (PD) and other left wing parties. The old balance of the 1960s had been that the PCI had nationally 30% of the vote, the Christian Democrats 40%... the Christian Democrats, unlike the DLP in Australia, being a party whose members had a complete range of political views from right to left, though the Vatican has always tugged towards the right.

The PCI previously governed a number of Italy's regions, especially in the centre of the country (Florence, Bologna). This page shows which provinces are controlled by the PD. Polling this month showed, in opinion of how to secure succession to Berlusconi, that no more than 12% wanted a coalition of the centre or the centre-right, over 20% favoured a centre left coalition led by the PD. Near 60% either were undecided or not wishing to vote. The problem at the heart is that such a high proportion of political process is ego driven and reluctant to come to terms with practical things needing to be done to sustain government. Berlusconi stays there because he has $10 billion personal wealth and the money keeps pouring in; because he favours the kind of regionalism desired by parts of the north and wealthier groups generally, that want to keep money where it is; because there has never been a government able to bring more than 40% of business out of the black economy; and because he leads the kind of louche lifestyle many Italians dream of having.... while the other half is heavily unionised and has through political process secured many public assets we dream of, including good public transport. Italy alone of large western European countries remains nuclear power free.

to be noted also that there is a great force for balance in the political system, a restraint on Berlusconi in President Giorgio Napolitano, a member of the PCI till its dissolution, demonstrating in a speech this evening at the 150th anniversary ceremony a wonderfully clear capacity to argue for inclusion and universal community values, withut notes, at age 85.

The Ides of March

Today being the Ides of March...

...we will proceed to the bus stop outside the Senate, 100 metres from the site of Pompey's theatre (ironically sort of under the present parliament's lower house which is desperately seeking new leadership) where Caesar was murdered on this day, take the bus to the station and the train to Tivoli.

Here, another historical note, is a photo panorama from the Janiculine Hill, where the Roman Republic of 1849 held out for months against French forces invited by the Pope to reclaim the city. Yesterday someone was holding a press conference at Garibaldi's feet to claim some political mileage.

Big things tomorrow to celebrate 150 years from the completion of Savoy's occupation of Italy and beginning of the Italian kingdom.

Glorious statue of Anita Garibaldi (dark weather yesterday)

'Conferenza Stampa' - press conference - at the feet of Garibaldi yesterday

and panorama - St Peters out of sight to the left, this view first over Trastevere (trans-Tiber) then the Tiber (Tevere) - a line of wintering trees, then largely of the Field of Mars - Campo Marzo, where we have our apartment, with Rome's original seven hills beyond (not as far away as this stitched image from iPhone pictures suggests)

Rome - our bar (cafe), our street, our place

We have settled into a little routine. It's nice to have a place where we become regulars and are treated with warmth on return. 'Cantina e Cucina' is the name of the bar.

The price of this mid-morning delight: for two Illy coffees, minimal water, wonderful coffee, Helen's small croissant with chocolate [cornettino con cioccolato], Dennis's 'girella' - and served with complimentary mineral water.

Coffee 80c x2
Eats: 60 and 70
Total; Euros 2.90, say $Aust 4.40.

Down below also photo of our street, coming from that direction, last night. There is a wildly busy (Friday night especially) section of the street coming from Piazza Navona, then 50 metres before our place, quiet.

Then photos of our entrance. Andrea Marchi, our bright young landlord, has made two delightful little apartments from two old workshops*** inside the courtyard of this 'palazzo'. (A palazzo is not a grand thing, just a big building. This one maybe 600 years old.)

*** I later realised we were in the stalle – the stables – of the old offices of the government of Rome, before it moved out, in 1755, just 180 years after they built the Chiesa Nuova - the new church, around the corner, main big door just along the street a bit. And behind Borromini's Oratorio, it's a crowded place. 

the constant queue is outside the Baffetta pizzeria, which must get a mention in the Rough Guide, etc

entrance photo below: separated garbage, compost, recycling collected every day