Kyrie - Missa Papae Marcelli - Palestrina

St Peters, cats, and the Pantheon - 31 March

Today to St Peters. Took the metro to the Ottaviana stop, hundreds and hundreds of people all in the morning commuter rush. Some confusion (mine) led me to be on the wrong side of the platform for the direction I wanted, so I had to go back and buy another ticket and start again, under the line to the correct side. Annoying people at the ticket dispensers, beggars 'helping' you with the machine then asking for money. They 'help' you even if you don't want help and are perfectly able to do it yourself.
   Anyway, got out at Ottaviana stop, beautiful day, already quite hot enough for me. The Romans think it's chilly though, they're all bundled up in boots, scarves and puffer jackets.
   St Peters is very big. Everything on  a grand scale, huge statues, huge tombs of long-defunct popes and cardinals, the whole idea to impress the viewer with the might and power of the Church Triumphant. And it is impressive, but you do wonder what could have been done for the poor if the money put into just one of these tombs had been used to alleviate poverty. (Still, I suppose it kept generations of stonecarvers and labourers in work that they otherwise wouldn't have had). Went down into the crypt, lots more dead popes; the only one I 'knew' was Pope Marcellus, for whose funeral Palestrina wrote the 'Missa Papae Marcellae'.

Baroque funerary art par excellence - swirling draperies, figures gesticulating, high drama.

  Head whirling (yes, OK I am impressed) I looked at Michelangelo's beautiful Pieta, but sadly it's now behind bullet-proof glass and some way off from the viewer, so the full pathos and beauty of the sculpture is lost.

A quick walk and lunch in Bernini's colonnade, large group of priests walking through, some kind of conference I guess. Only one of about 150 stopped to give a beggar some money, but these days beggars are 'run' by organised crime, or so 'they' say. I'd be curious to know how much the Mafia make with his, it would hardly be worth it I would have thought.

Walked to Castel Sant'Angelo, had a little rest and a sit down, forts are not my thing, they're usually fairly boring bits of masonry and brick. 

The only notable thing for me was that this was where the Borgia family retreated when anti-Borgia riots broke out among the people. Popes were not always popular; Pius IV's head was hacked from his body post-mortem and kicked around the streets of Rome. He brought the Inquisition to Italy, and was a fanatic of the first order. He famously said that if his own father had been an heretic, he would have helped gather the wood to burn him, a theology entirely antithetical to the Italian heart and mind. 

 Walked to Piazza Navona, a bit of a tourist trap with the usual tat and beggars, but the little streets to the west of the Piazza are charming. I had a gelato at Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro, nice to sit in the sun and rest my weary feet. Somehow I went wrong on my way to the Pantheon and ended up at Largo Argentina instead, where a colony of cats snooze in the sun on the ruins of three temples.  The cats are fed by volunteers and have their own website.

This poor baby only had three legs.

 Cat paradise

Coming away, I walked up a street that was full of shops selling priestly vestments, window displays of what the best-dressed priests will be wearing this coming year. Only in Rome!

Bernini's Elephant holds up an Egyptian stele, surmounted with a cross to symbolise the victory of Christianity over paganism.

And I had to revisit the Pantheon, which I saw on my last visit to Rome. That amazing dome! It's only 2000 years old, but looks as if it was built last year.  Attempts to turn this into a Christian church have failed dismally; everyone ignores the saintly statues around the perimeter and gazes upward at this triumph of Roman architecture.

Last stop, one of those serendipitous things, "just as I was passing" I went to an exhibitiion of Modigliani and Soutine's works at the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj. It included other artists from their circle in Paris, particularly Suzanne Valadon, whose paintings I hadn't seen much before. Modigliani and Soutine's paintings very different, Modigliani serene and classical, Soutine wild and expressionist.

Am I tired? Yes,  and the Roman cobblestones are very hard on the feet.

I'm back!

After many problems with my passwords/account, I can now write again. And yes, you will get all my holiday and pics thereof. Because I couldn't write directly on my blog, I kept a journal of my trip (how very bourgeois) so I'll unleash each day here, headed with the date I wrote it. So I'll start with the day I arrived in Rome, 30th March: - 

View across the forum of Trajan - column on right hand side

    Arrive in Rome. Very tired and sick of being in a flying tin-can, but interesting coming in to Rome over Naples, seeing Vesuvius like a great big pimple coming out of the face of the earth. Tired but impossible to resist the urge to go out and look at Rome! Went first to Santa Maria Maggiore, just caught the end of Mass. This is a very active church, not just for tourists, but always something going on, either in the main church or one of the substantial side chapels. One of Pope Francesco's favourite churches, he came here to give thanks after his election. Mass is now in Italian not Latin, so I could understand the 'partenze in pace' and the communal peace/handshaking. It's a practice that should be more general, perhaps we'd all get on better if we wished each other well every morning.
   Then I pootled off to the Quirinale, noticing oranges grown as street trees in Via Consulta, all the lower branches well and truly picked clean. If only citrus were as easy to cultivate at home. Then somehow I got to the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Nerva, now much more accessible than the last time I was here, with steel ramps and interp. boards. Loads of tourists and associated hawkers and tat.

  Went to lunch at a tiny little place in a street behind the fora. Can't remember now what I ate, there was a domestic drama going on with one of the other diners. She was in tears and objected to my sitting down near her table, and abused me a little for shoving her out (which was not my intention at all, I was bone-weary and hungry, and thought she was leaving). However, she came back and apologised to me, saying she shouldn't have ruined my day as well as her own. When I told her I'd just arrived after a 36-hour journey and it was my birthday, she shouted me a drink and drank my health. She was an Englishwoman who had lived for many years in Rome, and we had quite a long chat, so it was all right after all.

Forum of Trajan

Forum of Augustus

   After lunch I wandered around a bit more and found the Basilica of S. Pietro ad Vincoli (Saint Peter in Victory) which has Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius in it. Built in the 5th century to house the chains of Saint Peter, this church is accessed from Via Cavour by a set of stairs that goes up inside a tunnel in the hillside.

 The statue of Moses is the only statue of the tomb that Michelangelo completed; the other figures are by other artists, and Moses looks a bit out of place, like a prince among paupers. 

Moses as superhero

Apologies to Michelangelo, but I was more impressed by this other tomb sculpture, to a Cardinal - he looks pleasantly surprised by the appearance of the skeletons "You've come for me?"

   Back to Via Cesare Balbo to sleep.

The Muppets: Pöpcørn

Love the way the Muppets have embraced the comedic aspects of new technology.

The Muppets: Ode To Joy - still one of my favs

Busy day

Bought another chip for my camera, room for 1400 images! These are just some experimental shots to see if it's working OK. Seems to be. Thomas is out of focus but that's me not the camera.

Even had time to plant a few bulbs. Not going crazy over bulbs this year, I've spent enough on the trip and things associated with it. There's always something you need, new socks or a new bra, batteries for the torch, plus a whole lot of catfood for Thomas. I wish I could take him, I'll miss having a cat around. I'll try and find an Italian cat, the Italians are keen on cats, and there are several public refuges for strays where the cats live within a fenced area and are fed every day by volunteers. There's one in Rome in an old temple in Via Arenula; the cats sit on the warm stones and have a lovely life. The temple complex is below the road level so the cats are enclosed (well, as much as you can enclose a cat).

http://www.romancats.com/index_eng.php

 I once tried to feed a cat in San Gimignano; I offered him some processed cheese from my sandwich. You would have thought I'd offered him fresh excrement judging by the look on his face! Wow, even the cats are gourmets in Italy.

Less mad

Feeling a little less panicky now. Last day of work was yesterday, and today got down to some serious sorting out of packing and getting things ready for the housesitter. Thom's food is stored away, he's been flea'd, and I've started eating up the bits and pieces in the fridge. Made a pork and apple casserole with red cabbage and squash, I'll be eating that for the next three nights. I'm not going to do a big tidy in the garden, that can wait for when I get home and will be part of the Big Winter Clean-Up. Most garden produce is gathered in, just the Red Delicious apples to go, and I'll have a couple before I leave. Still have to write accomodation details in my diary, but I'll take a sheaf of photocopied maps, etc. anyway. Whew! It's starting to seem real now, in a good way.