Last Day in Italy (Part 2)

We are in Rome's "metropolitana" which unlike many other European metro systems, is dirty, rundown, absolutely packed, and worst of all, full of thieves.

You feel nervous down here, the way you might feel in Mexico City's subway. You hold on tight to your bag and remain vigilant.

You travel the few stops packed like sardines.

There's an air of extreme paranoia and the slightest accidental brush of an arm or any physical contact results in a dirty stare, flinching retreat or even a curse.


We are somewhere inside the rabbit warren of connecting tunnels between platforms and as if on cue, there's a sudden shriek. A crowd collects, commuters gasp in horror, an army of security guards come rushing out of nowhere. A woman is lying face down on the escalators. She has been knocked down by a purse snatcher who is gone in a flash.

You thank God it wasn't you. You know everyone else is thinking the same thing.
We emerge into the light of day: Piazza Spagna, the "Spanish Steps".

Ugg! You catch sight of literally hundreds of people lounging all over the elegant scalinata which climbs toward Piazza Trinità dei Mont. There are lots of kids fooling around and people taking stupid photos of themselves. The scene resembles one of those overcrowded penguin colonies you see in documentaries about Antarctica. There is barely any room to make the ascent - so we give up on doing that too!

We've come to see the Keats-Shelley House, which luckily is at the foot of the Spanish Steps. I have a brief moment of dread. If there are this many people here in the piazza will it also be packed in the house?

But it's like stepping into another world...

The crowds are obviously not into the Romantics in the numbers I had imagined!

The house is almost empty. You make your way up a narrow staircase lined with portraits of Keats, Shelley, Byron and their contemporaries. You are welcomed at the reception desk and pay a small fee to enter this historical bubble. It's all polished wood, parquet floors, book-lined walls, sparkling vitrines which contain letters, drafts of poems, miniatures and personal keepsakes.

There are three rooms, each dedicated to the three poets. Why it is not called the Keats, Shelley and Byron House, I am not quite sure.

The commentaries in English (no Italian, which is a bit of a pity) provide some fascinating, and unexpectedly moving detail.

I was touched by the story of Keats' sister, Fanny, pictured here in old age. She saw little of her brother when she was younger but corresponded closely with him all of her life. Fanny treasured the letters throughout her life, while Keats asked her letters be buried with him in Rome.

In 1823 Fanny married a Spaniard, Valentin IIanos, who had seen her brother in Rome three days before he died. Not until 1861 did Fanny feel she could finally go to Rome herself to visit the grave of her brother.
At the house on Piazza Spagna she by chance met Keats' dearest friend, Joseph Severn, who was at the poet's bedside when he died.

He wrote:

For a long time we remained as if unable to speak ...'twas like a brother and sister who had parted in early life meeting after forty years. How singular that we should meet in the very place where Keats died.

Severn accompanied Fanny (who had travelled alone from Spain) to the cemetery where her brother was buried.

They planted two bay trees there.

The drowning of Shelley and his highly romanticised cremation on the beach by Byron and Co. (idealistically painted by Fournier in 1889) was apparently sheer fiction.

In pre-Victorian times it was English custom that women would not attend funerals for health reasons. Mary Shelley did not attend, but was featured in the painting, kneeling at the left-hand side. Leigh Hunt stayed in the carriage during the ceremony but is also pictured. Also, Trelawney, in his account of the recovery of Shelley's body, records that "the face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by the dress, were fleshless," and by the time that the party returned to the beach for the cremation, the body was even further decomposed. In his graphic account of the cremation, he writes of Byron being unable to face the scene, and withdrawing to the beach.

But one piece of "mythology" which may in fact be true relates to Byron whose good looks were said to be gob-smacking. There are several drawings and paintings of the great man on display.

I will leave it to you girls (and boys) to decide for yourselves.

Posted with Blogsy

Last Day in Italy (Part 1)

"The charm, as always in Italy, is in the tone and the air and the happy hazard of things"

- Henry James, Italian Hours (1900)

We didn't bother getting off the #64 bus this morning. It was raining and we had good seats. We sailed right past our intended destination and got off at the Vatican instead.

It must be the "pagan" in both us. We looked at one another, barely exchanged a word and made a quick retreat out of that square. I'm not convinced there is anything very spiritual going on in the Vatican at all!

We then walked towards the Tiber with St. Peter's behind us turning every so often to get a glimpse. Our original destination, the Castel Sant' Angelo, looms up before us. It sits majestically on the banks of the Tiber and is in fact not a palace but Diocletian's Mausoleum. The huge, rotund edifice was given a Catholic, rococo make over and become a Papal possession several hundred years ago.

I always recall it from the long, silent, closing scene of Fellini's "Roma" in which the motorcyclists roar around Rome by night passing the city's key buildings and monuments.

We cross the Ponte Sant Angelo straddling the Tiber. we are now officially back in Rome. It's beginning to rain. We take shelter in a tiny cafe with a group of traffic cops - the most hated species of worker in Italy. The waiter takes pity on us and lets us drink our cuppucino seated for the same price as standing up at the bar.

Before long we are in Piazza Novona admiring the Fontana dei Fiume. Now we are searching for the real spiritual heart of the city (if it has one?) and take a few wrong turns.

"Signora, una indicazzione, per favore?" My mantra!

We are quickly steered back on the right track.

We turn out of a grimy, cobble stoned lane and then there it is in front of us in its ancient glory:

M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIUM·FECIT

"Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made this building when consul for the third time"

We enter the building.

Again, like Diocletian's mausoleum, the Christian overlay grates. The building even has a ludicrous other name, "the Church of St. Mary and the Martyrs". The tacky ecclesiastical trimmings seem ridiculous and totally out of place.

Look up at the vaulted dome and you immediately know this is a "Pantheon" - a place of "All Gods".

The oculus opens to the sky at the centre of the dome and is as perfect a symbol of Other-worldliness as anyone ever imagined. The sight of it really does inspire awe. The rain is streaking down and hitting the marble floor. It drains away through barely visible cracks installed most likely by Emperor Hadrian in the first century AD.

Our little journey continues along Via Largo de Argentina to the ruins of the Theatre of Pompii where Julius Cesar was knifed in the back. For us it is more affectionately associated with its present day occupants - hundreds of stray and abandonned cats. There is a cat shelter here run by volunteers. The shelter desexes and immunises the felines though the volunteers are hard pressed to keep up with demand - Romans keep dumping yesterday's kittens on them.

Whether it is because the pussies are no longer as cute as they once were, spray or make a mess in the city's shoebox sized apartments or just don't go with this year's Prada handbag is anyone's guess.

 

...to be continued

 

Posted with Blogsy