Finding My Corner

Sometimes I enjoy "getting lost".  Of course, sometimes it's part of finding my way.  But the pleasure comes in unexpected pleasures experienced along the way.  It might be an interesting building or landscape feature I hadn't seen before, or simply a new sensory experience or insight about something.  Other times, it's nice just to have the freedom to not travel in a perfect linear path.

I have to admit, though, that even when I'm riding for pleasure, it can get frustrating to find myself looping back to the same place three or four times.  New York has a grid pattern, even if it breaks down in places, so it's possible to go only so far astray.  Paris's streets are mostly straight, but they usually begin and end in some sort of circle or square place.  Also, because there are only a couple of really tall buildings in the City of Light, it's easy to use them to orient myself.

Now, here in Rome, they didn't have a Baron Haussmann who tried to make straight lines out of their ancient winding roads.  And, although it shares Paris' preponderance of low to mid-level buildings, the tallest or highest-standing structures (like the Vatican) don't always stand out because the city is hilly.  (Paris is mostly flat.)  In this sense, it's a lot like Prague, where I cycled a few years ago.  

I was completely unfamiliar with the geography of the Czech capital before I started riding it, so it didn't frustrate me when I found myself circling about, or simply ending up in a completely different part of town from where I intended to go.  On the other hand, I thought I still had some knowledge of this city, though I must say that I didn't cycle the last time I was here.  Turns out, I remembered some specific spots more than I could recall what's between them.  I tried, at times, to follow parts of the route on which Roberto took me, and later marked on a map.  Of course, I was trying to find my way without his knowledge of this city--and with my navigational skills, which rival those of a guy who thought he was headed to the land of the Punjabs but instead landed somewhere near Port au Prince.

Finally, after I found myself at the intersection of via XX Settembre, Corso d'Italia and via Nomentana for the fifth time, I gave up all hope of going to any of the sites I thought I just have to see before this trip is over. For one thing, I reminded myself that, for all the time I've lived in New York and spent in Paris--and for all the bike trips I took in France--I haven't even come close to seeing everything that's worth seeing.  And, I reminded myself, even if I miss the Trevi Fountain this time, it can't be a whole lot different from how it was when I saw it in 1996.  

After making that realization, I found a great viewing spot across from the Quirinale.  And, a couple of minutes later, I found what I think is my favorite spot in Rome:

I mean, where else can you find an intersection that has a fountain on each of its four corners--and each of those fountains is whimsical, and even beautiful?  

The funny thing is that a few minutes later, I found myself at Trevi, almost without trying.

The real highlight of this day, though, was going to the Pantheon:

In a previous post, I mentioned that it took New York City seven and a half years to build a toilet stall in the Brooklyn park where I spent many hours of my childhood.  Although it incorporates "green" technology found in other state-of-the-art facilities (Does that strike you as a funny phrase to use in reference to a toilet stall?), it isn't innovative or unusual, at least in a technical sense.  And it cost more, per square foot, than it would take to buy the most expensive apartment in Trump Tower!

Nearly two milennia ago, the Emperor Hadrian built this monument, if I'm not mistaken, in two years. Moreover, this dome is something that nobody would know how to construct, even today.  For one thing, no one is entirely sure about the materials used: It's said to be concrete, but to my understanding, concrete was not widely, if at all, used at that time.  Also, it's unsupported and half again as wide in diameter as the dome on the US Capitol building.

One of the reasons why the Pantheon still stands today is that since 609 it has been known as, officially, the Church of St. Mary and The Martyrs.  Although most people still call it the Pantheon (after the Greek word for "all of the gods"; pandemonium, a word coined by John Milton in Paradise Lost, means "all demons"), it is a Roman Catholic house of worship--which is probably what saved it from being destroyed during the Middle Ages, as many other "pagan" structures were.  

(Interestingly, one might argue that the reason the Hagia Sophia stands today is that it became a mosque.  Had it remained a Christian church, it might not have survived the Moorish invasion.)


Hmm....How lost was I today?

Tours That Brought Me Back

So, again....Why Rome?

I thought it would have remained a rhetorical question after I missed breakfast at the hotel this morning.  It seems that I took in more sun than I'd realized and stayed up later, so I slept until 9:30--something I don't normally do during a trip.

So I went for a walk.  I figured that I needed to get beyond the neighborhood where I'm staying, as much as I like it. The hotel is most of the way up a hill, and the Forum, which I visited yesterday morning, is at the bottom of it:  about a five-minute walk.  And the Colosseum is only about the same distance in another direction.  Although I walked a lot yesterday among the ruins (they cover a lot of ground), I hadn't ventured much beyond my "base", if you will.

Today I started by walking in the other direction, past Termini--the main rail and bus station--and kept going.  I honestly had no idea of where I was, but I knew I was moving away from the tourists.  Finally, after about an hour and a half, I stopped at a cafe for a coffee--an espresso, to be exact.  

Then I did something that, I think, took the baristo by surprise:  I ordered another.  It was that good:  Caffeine jitters be damned, I told myself.  But I didn't experience them, though I was almost giddy for a moment.

Anyway, I continued to walk, guided by the navigational skills of no less than Signoro Colombo, and climbed the hill to the Villa Medici.  It now houses the Academie Francaise of Rome, but the real reason you go that way is for the gardens adjacent to it--and for the views.  In particular, it's at the top of the hill you reach when you climb the Spanish Steps--which I descended.

Even though it seems like half of the human race is in La Piazza Spagna on days like this, it's difficult not to like:  When a staircase is built with such artistry and function and connects two places with different kinds of beauty, well, it's not difficult to see why it would draw all sorts of people.  

By this time, I was feeling better about having come to Rome, but something still felt a bit off.  Then I realized I hadn't taken a pill I normally take in the morning. (It's not psychtropic, at least not technically!)  So I went back to my hotel room--as it turned out, five stops on the Rome Metro A line--and downed it with a bottle of San Benedetto water.

Actually, that trip back to the hotel room wasn't a diversion.  I had scheduled a bike tour for 3 pm, and the shop at which I booked it--one of the three branches of Bici & Baci--is located most of the way down that hill from my hotel to the Forum, near the end of la via Cavour.  

Bici & Baci is an interesting place.  Although they rent bicycles and conduct bicycle tours, their main focus is on Vespas.  In fact, the shop's basement hosts the Vespa Museum.  Perhaps if I really wanted to "do as the Romans do", I would ride one.  But I wanted to stick to pedals, if for no other reason that I haven't driven any sort of motorized vehicle in a long time. 

They couldn't have given me a better guide than Roberto.  He asked what I'd already seen.  When I told him, he said, "OK, we will not do the 'highlights' tour--unless you want that."

Instead, he offered to show me "Rome as a Roman."  Of course!   That meant, among other things, this:

Hundreds of fountains like these are located all over the city.  The water is indeed potable, and people often fill their bottles under them.  But that's something a Roman wouldn't do, Roberto told me. Oddly, most people don't seem to notice the hole at the top of the pipe on all of those  fountains:  To prove his point, we stopped at three, all of which had that feature.  

I wonder whether the Roman water authorities designed them that way and didn't bother to tell the rest of the world. Or, perhaps, that hole serves some other purpose (aeration?)  and someone discovered the easy way to drink from them.

Anyway, on our route, I learned entertaining stories like the one about the fountain the Borgheses supposedly built in one night to show that, although they'd fallen on hard time, they had the financial wherewithal for such things. Why?  Well, a Borghese daughter wanted to marry the son of the family that owned the land on which the fountain was built--the Matteis, who were rich and influential.  But they were reluctant to let him take her hand because they'd heard about their financial straits.  According to legend, the next morning, the Mattei patriarch woke and, much to his surprise, saw the fountain on his land, amidst the houses that ringed the palazzo.

Interestingly, although the Matteis were Roman Catholic--as were nearly all members of noble families at their time--they lived right in the middle of the Ghetto (yes, the original one), the traditional Jewish quarter of the city.  Literally steps away from that fountain, one can find momentos like these:

Although a higher percentage of the Jewish population survived in Rome and in Italy than in other European cities and countries, many Italian Jews ended up in Auschwitz once Mussolini was deposed and the Nazis invaded. Although the Italian Jewish community is smaller, especially in Rome and the North, than it was before the war, it has had a lot of influence in Italian and the world's culture. And, as Roberto--interestingly--pointed out, much of the Roman kitchen (cuisine) in fact originated with the city's Jews.

Back to the Matteis:  They were patrons of the arts.  Among the painters they sponsored was the one who gave us this:

Madonna dei Pellegrini, by Caravaggio

It adorns a portico of the Sant'Agostino chruch, the last stop of our tour.  Roberto made a point of stopping there because he loves that painting, and Caravaggio generally.  So do I.  

Finally, in keeping with Roberto's promise to show me what a Roman knows about his city, he took me up the Aventine hill, which has a garden with the most unique view:

You might think it's just another way of seeing the Vatican. But the park and garden were designed so that the closer to the edge of the hill--and to the dome of the Vatican--you walk (You can't ride in the park.), the smaller it seems.  That is because the approach brings other tall structures into view, which diminishes the perspective of the dome.

Nearby is another interesting view, which I tried to capture:

I wasn't peeping.  I swear!

This peephole is on the gate of the Villa del Priorato di Malta, which--like the Vatican--has extraterratorial status in Rome.  I tried to capture the view of the Vatican which, as Roberto pointed out, makes the gate one of the few places in the world where you can look at three countries (or, at any rate, sovereign territories)--i.e., Italy, Malta and the Vatican--at the same time.

Now tell me:  What else could I have asked for on a day in Rome?


Note: As you can probably tell, I am feeling much better about this city and country than I did yesterday.  Still, I have one complaint:  I am on the slowest internet connection I've experienced in at least 15 years.  My photos are taking forever to upload! So, you won't see as many of them in upcoming posts.  But I'll share some more, if you'd like, after I return home!