San Carlino and the Ara Pacis Augustae - 3 April

San Carlino alla Quattro Fontana has to be the most wonderful  baroque church in Rome. It's probably one of the smallest, but shows that the designer, Borromini, was a master architect. The site is small and difficult (one side is not at right angles because of an existing street) but Borromini managed to create a church, a cloister and a convent on this tiny area. The ceiling is a wonder, the intricate coffering other-worldly. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Borromini enlivens the composition by putting a gentle curve in the wall supporting the corners of the upper storey of the cloister.

The cloister

Borromini and his rival Bernini shaped the Roman Baroque style. They were very different personalities, and clashed several times. Bernini was a gregarious extrovert with influential friends and contacts, Borromini a quiet loner who was often bad-tempered and obsessive. This church is Borromini's masterpiece.

The Triton Fountain at Piazza Barberini

    Walked from here up to Piazza Barberini, stopping on the way to look in at the massive Palazzo Barberini, which now houses one of Rome's many art collections. The prize exhibit here is Caravaggio's 'Judith beheading Holophernes' a ghastly subject but carried out with typical Caravaggesque bravado. Holbein's portrait of King Henry VIII is here too, the King's selfish little mouth pursed up like a bad-tempered baby about to throw a tantrum. No artistic flattery here; I somehow think that perhaps the King was not pleased with the portrait and that was why it ended up here in Italy.
  Up to the top of the Spanish Steps and down them, thinking of the scene in Fellini's Roma where hippies and drugged- up drop outs drape themselves around the balustrades. Just tourists now, and the usual tourist tat. Stopped at Babbington's Tea Shop for a cup of Earl Grey and some delicious little cakes.
  Then to the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Augustan Peace. Many years ago, I had to write my first ever Art History assignment on a comparison of the Ara Pacis and the Parthenon Frieze, so I was very interested to see this. It has been recently housed in a new museum building of its own, with appropriate displays of the history and symbolism of the altar. It was basically a PR exercise for Augustus, celebrating the achievements of his Julio-Claudian family and the Pax Romana that he saw himself as bringing to the world. (Pity about the slaves and the massive standing army). The altar was buried for many centuries under earth and silt from the river.

Some of the Julio-Claudians

Finally today, I walked up to the Capitoline Museums, walking along Via del Corso, which follows the line of the ancient Roman road, the Via Flaminia, the main road from Rome to the north of 

Italy.

 

There are two museums on the Capitoline Hill, but I only went to one, which houses the original of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (a copy is outside in the Piazza) and other antique sculpture, plus the remains of the Temple of Jupiter that used to stand here.

Colossal foot of Constantine.

Colossal head of Constantine.

Quite a resemblance here. Colossal head of me.

Boy removing a thorn from his foot - Greek statue

Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue

I liked this better than the Marcus. This was the base of a statue, probably of the Goddess Diana, as they are hunting dogs. The artist has captured the dogginess of the dogs perfectly, alert, all ready to take off after something.

An evening view of Rome from a window in the museum.

The Villa d'Este and gardens - 2 April

Villa d'Este - decided to take a trip today to visit this famous garden in the Alban Hills. The journey was dreary. The bus was unaccountably late, no one at the ticket office to ask why, only automatic ticket dispensers, seems to be the way the world is going now, a world run by robots who are not answerable to anyone human. A lot of people standing around, puzzled, even the Italians didn't know why the bus was late. When the bus finally arrived, one of the passengers gave the driver a fair big piece of his mind. Just as well I couldn't understand it, but I could understand his tone of voice! 
  The journey out was through a dreary light-industrial, poor part of Rome, the other face of Italy that the coffee-table books don't show you. Car dealerships, graffiti, road works, tacky shops and pizza places - modern buildings but badly built and unattractive.
   The Villa d'Este in the town of Tivoli is the complete antithesis of these. The gardens are particularly famous for their use of water. Spouts, fountains, gushers, cascades, squirts, pools, rills and grottoes are all here in abundance. Each garden "room" is built around a water feature of some kind. The garden and villa were created by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, the son of Lucrezia Borgia and her third husband, the Duke of Ferrara. Ippolito had the nearby river diverted into the garden and used the steep hillside setting to provide spectacular cascades and fountains. Later, Franz Liszt composed his piano pieces "Cypresses of the Villa d'Este" and "Fountains of the Villa d'Este" while living here.

View of Tivoli from the villa balcony

Fresco on the ceiling of the 'Moses' room, showing Moses striking the rock to obtain water - appropriate for a water garden. (The weird things with nipples behind him are tents, took me a while to work that out).

Lovely spring day

Maybe my new Facebook avatar?

One of the ancient cypresses framing the spring sky.

The Dragon fountain - my favourite

This is the famous water-organ that plays a tune when water rushes through it.

Just the place for a long summer lunch. This garden would have been a wonderfully cool retreat from the summer heat of Rome.

Not about my holiday

Taking a break from my holiday snaps. Did lots of gardening today, the garden has been neglected for nigh on eight weeks now, so since we had a fine day today, with rain forecast for tomorrow, I started getting things into order again. I've taken apart the pumpkin bed that I made with straw bales, and now have lots of compost/straw mix to spread over the vegetable garden.  This was a good idea, and will be repeated next year. The pumpkins are great; very sweet to eat.  I also planted out leeks, which I bought before I went away but didn't get around to planting. Ditto tulips, now in two terracotta pots. It's been a very wet autumn, so our autumn colours have not been very impressive this year, except for my maple, which flames away in the corner of the garden. 

Expecting the first real cold any day now. Will we have snow this year? Maybe.

It's been an expensive week. New battery, registration and warrant for the car, podiatrist's bill for me. I've hurt my foot, probably plantar fasciitis and/or a bone spur. The podiatrist thinks the reason is cheap walking shoes from The Warehouse, not providing enough support. So, cheap shoes are not so cheap in the long run, it seems. Long run, har har, geddit?

Churches of the Celian Hill, palaces of the Palatine - 1 April

April fool! Went to see one of my favourite places in Rome, the Parco Celimontana on the Celian Hill, but it was closed. The villa there is being restored, so the park was out of bounds too.  Instead I made a more thorough inspection of the nearby churches. The first is the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo, built over the original house of  these two early Christian martyrs. The church has parts from all eras, best is the Romanesque bell tower, a very nice example. Underneath the tower is the original house and ruins.

One side of the church is buttressed into the hillside with these brick arches.

Another large church here is San Gregorio, an imposing structure dating from the mid 1700's. 

The church was not open, but is part of a larger complex including a little old chapel next door, due to be renovated. Just in front of the chapel is a well-ended vegetable garden. Here in the middle of Rome, just a short walk from the Colosseum, is a country-style traditional vegetable garden, with rows of artichokes and spring cabbage all set out. Fruit trees include fig, apricot and peach. S. Gregorio has a monastery and guest house attached, so I guess this is their garden.

View of the Palatine Hill from S. Gregorio, over the vegetable garden

The over the road to the Palatine Hill, where the Roman aristocracy and the Imperial family had their homes. The picture above is of the end of the aqueduct that served the hillside villas, bringing fresh water all the way from the Alban Hills, a good 50 miles away. I didn't have time to visit this last time I was here.

Umbrella pines and the church of Ss. Giovanni e Paolo on the Celian Hill.

Among the villas were parks and pleasure gardens; this is what remains of one. The interp. board gives some idea of what it would have looked like.

Art students sketching the scene

Notice at the oldest part of the Palatine. Interesting that the oldest deities were female.

This is the ruin of Augustus' (who will always be Brian Blessed to me) palace; the best views and the coolest breezes in summer, and plenty of sun for those cold winter days.

A little Renaissance-style garden right at the top of the Hill

Then I walked down into the Forum. Above is what remains of the house of the Vestal Virgins, below a partial reconstruction of the Temple of Vesta, where the sacred fire was always kept lit (unless some silly novice let it go out). 

It's very hard to really appreciate now what the Forum would have looked like during the days of Rome's glory. I notice on this trip that a lot more areas are fenced off; in the past there's been a very easy-going attitude to the ruins, and when I visited the last time I was surprised how many people were just allowed to go anywhere on the site. Now there seems to be a more serious conservation ethic taking hold. Perhaps someone should reconstruct the Forum somewhere in the suburbs, a kind of Forum themepark to reduce wear and tear on the real one. I'm sure some enterprising Italian has already thought of this.

Back home to rest. It's been very hot today but the sightseeing must go on tomorrow.