Savoring the Roma

May 8

A quick consultation with the guidebook told me something I didn’t mention yesterday. There has been a church on the site of Santa Maria Maggiore since about 420 A.D. But since this is the Old World, it was easy to do that one better. 

We went back out to see the Bernini sculpture, St. Teresa in Ecstasy, which is in a church not far from the hotel. But on the way we came to Piazza de Repubblica and Saint Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs.

This one was really old school. The building was once the baths of Diocletian, built around the year 310. Diocletian was the last big-time persecutor of the Christians, so I guess they figured it was fair enough after they were put in charge to take over Diocletian’s legacy.

The idea was first put forward by a priest and floated for a while. Apparently, access to the site was difficult, or at least inconvenient, maybe sort of like Kennedy airport. But eventually a road or two came through and everbody got behind the idea. They hired Michelangelo, who was in his 80s at the time, to repurpose the building.

It is baroque today, but the facade is stunning. It looks like a castle that has been hit by artillery. Fragments remain of great arches, no longer needed. They may have been dismantled. Or maybe they had collapsed by the time the church was put in.

The facade is curved because that is where the steam room was.

You enter the church to stand in what was the cooling off room. The nave of the church is the old central hall. Its soaring arches are appropriately majestic.

A very curious feature of the nave is a timepiece laid into the floor. We were there in the afternoon, so I have no idea how it works. It’s a long metal line laid into the marble floor. It is a scale marked with numbers. there are astrological signs next to it. (This is all blocked off by velvet ropes so no tourists or errant children will walk on it.)

According to a sign, it was installed sometime in the early 1700s and was used for a century or two to set the timepieces in Rome.

According to Wikipedia, it is a meridian line and one of its uses was to check the accuracy of the Gregorian calendar.

One corner of the nave had a small exhibit of Renaissance-age technology as an appreciation of Galileo. There was a pendulum, weighted by a globe attached to the finger of a bronze hand, swaying ever so slightly. A poster gave us a brief discussion of the pendulum's importance in keeping track of time, and Galileo's contribution to that discovery. I'm not sure, but he may have been the first to experiment and write about pendulum movement. 

If I remember right, you can set the ratio of the weight to the length so that each swing will take exactly one second, so there you have the foundation for a clock. the weight always swings in the same plane, but because the Earth rotates under it, the pendulum appears to be turning its swing. There may be other information you can infer from that, but truth to tell, this part is so abstract it makes my head hurt.

The exhibition may have been the church’s way of making up a little for bullying the guy when he was alive.

The old church has some modern pieces, including a carved head of John the Baptist.

We went from there to a small Carmelite church, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, a few blocks away. There, high above a side altar, is St. Teresa being stuck by a rather amused angel as she reels back in orgasm. 

This is possibly one of the wildest pieces of religious art ever. I never met Bernini, so I haven’t had the chance to ask him about this installation, but one question I don’t need to ask is “What were you thinking?”  It’s written all over her face. 

On the opposite side of the church is an altar that houses the body of St. Victoria, a virgin martyr. A life-size effigy, which may actually contain a body, is displayed behind glass inside the altar. The throat has been cut.

We headed toward the Trevi Fountain and stopped for a glass of wine (Montepulciano de Abruzzo) at a restaurant across from the Triton Fountain. This, we discovered from reading signs, is the neighborhood of the Barberini family, heavy hitters from the baroque era.

The Trevi Fountain is maybe half a mile from there. It is apparently always packed with people. It was fun. The water is loud, the statuary is indeed monumental. I even made a 360 degree video. Who knows? Maybe they can cut that in as file film if they remake “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

The photo of the day may be Oceanus, the principal figure of the fountain. The inscription over its head mentions Clement VIII, Pontifex Maximus (i.e. Pope).  I kind of like the idea of the pope out skinny dipping.

The area for a block or two in every direction is lined with souvenir stalls and small restaurants. They were packed with people eating pizza and pasta. The food looked and smelled pretty good. But for my first meal in Rome, I was going to be a food snob and look for something that might be a little more authentic.

We had passed a place called Trattoria la Stampa on Via de Maroniti, a small alley a short walk away from the Trevi plaza. So we went there for spaghetti carbonara and tripe. Larry had told me they were outstanding dishes in Rome. 

They were out of tripe, so we had rabbit cacciatora instead.

The carbonara was good enough to be called exciting: pasta al dente and covered in (I believe) pecorino Romana. The pancetta bits had been fried crisp. The result was enough to bring tears to the eyes.

The rabbit was in a slightly sweet clear sauce, and while it was good, was not nearly as much fun as the spaghetti.

We split—actually, Joanna sampled and I drank—a half liter of the house red. It was OK, and lost some of its acidity when we had it with the food.

It was also good when I dipped the coarse bread into it.

We went back to the fountain to see it lighted in the dark, and there were still crowds of people there. 

We walked back to the neighborhood of the hotel without getting lost. I don’t get lost as often these days as I used to. I sort of miss that. Maybe I’m not traveling hard enough.

We stopped at the bar on the corner—where we had gone for coffee earlier—and I ordered two glasses of red. I asked Joanna if she wanted me to order wine for her too, but she said no. She sipped a little of mine, but she had polished off a glass with dinner and that was it for her.

It must have been midnight—about 6 p.m. back home—when we shut down for the night. I woke this morning to a siren in the street. it was 9:30.

I’ve pretty much made up for a restless night on a plane.

So far, so good. And it doesn’t get better than that.

May8

This is a fascinating essay—as your travelogues always are.

Two words of caution. Be careful of your use of “Roma,” which in addition to referring to a great city, is the PC synonym for Gypsies, who constitute a real problem in some areas.

More importantly: beware if raw Mediterranean shellfish. Or, if you indulge and are stricken, take the medicine prescribed—all of it. (My continuing grief could have been avoided even after I’d become violently ill had I taken all the medicine—but the pills were so big they scratched my throat so I stopped. The medicine can’t be had in the US. It was a case of a parasite, unknown here.)

Diocletian is fascinating. Everybody knows about his constitution but doesn’t know it no longer exists—all copies destroyed by Justinian so as to avoid confusion with his constitution. Spent weeks trying to find Diocletian’s and even my professor didn’t know about its non-existence.

Alan is now reading your article and making observations about history—and Diocletian, whom he rather admires.

Best to Joanna.

Beatrice

May 8

It's nice to know that you're having a good time in Rome. That was one of the stops on my honeymoon many years ago. One never has enough time there.

Peter

May 8

Just wanted to say we are all enjoying the history and art from Rome.    Keep them coming!

Ciao,

Jeanie