A Fortnight in Italy, Part 1

[I have made the executive decision to split this description into separate cities, because it would be quite long otherwise. I think there will probably be five parts total. Ready? Go.]

Per lor maladizion sì non si perde,
che non possa tornar, l’etterno amore,
mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde.
Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio Canto III lines 133-5

I hadn’t planned to go to Italy this year, or even thought about going; but events occurring in their usual fashion meant that that was where I went, with Robin and one of her friends. Although this was the third time I’d been to Italy, it was by far the longest I’d spent there, and it was a church- and art-filled two weeks.

Roma e Città del Vaticano
My first impression of Rome, from standing outside little Ciampino Airport, was that it reminded me of Spain. It was the pine trees. My second impression, from riding the bus into the city, was that Rome seemed weird, but look! Ruins just lying around! The third impression, when we arrived outside Termini train station, was that there are lots of people, and lots of kinds of people, in Rome, which borders on overwhelming when you’re coming from Tisovec, or even Bratislava.

On our first full day in Italy we left the country. Robin had reserved tickets for Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, and technically Vatican City is its own country. After picking up the tickets in Rome proper, we went to the Vatican, peeked inside St. Peter’s, and went to the Vatican Museums. There is a lot of really, really world-famous art in Italy, and we hit the ground running looking at it all. The Vatican has Raphael’s School of Athens and, of course, the Sistine Chapel. That ceiling is covered in paintings. The room was full of people staring up and trying to sneak furtive photographs, and guards intermittently yelling, “NO PHOTOGRAPHS!” As much as I appreciate technology, the bad thing about living in the Information Age* is that we’ve seen the famous works of art all our lives, reproduced on mouse pads and towels. For me, the impact of the Sistine Chapel was lessened by this inundation of images; but that of other works of art wasn’t.

We stood in line outside the Basilica for four hours before Mass, and it rained for at least half of that time. Although I was wearing my most waterproof jacket, I finally broke down and bought an umbrella. (I didn’t need it any time after Christmas, but I’m proud that I got it all the way back to Tisovec.) Mass started at 10 and they started letting people in at 8:30, and the group we’d formed in the line managed to stick together through the crush and find seats quite near the front. We were also close to the middle aisle, and so we had a good view of the procession when it entered, and of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. I WAS AT MASS WITH THE POPE IN THE VATICAN ON CHRISTMAS EVE. And it was brilliant. Most of the service was in Latin (with some readings and prayers in different languages, including Italian, German, French, Polish, and Tagalog), and I’ve always wanted to go to a Latin Mass; and I was proud of how much I understood. Before we split up, someone in the group suggested we meet for lunch on Christmas, so we’d have some kind of “family” with each other.
After a leisurely Christmas morning, when we stopped by the Trevi Fountain to toss in some euro pennies and ensure we’d return to Rome, we met everyone else at the Spanish Steps. Then, with the guidance of Robin’s Top 10 Rome book, we had a delightful late lunch at restaurant #8, where I had homemade strozzapreti al ragu, in part because I remembered hearing somewhere that strozzapreti means “strangled priests,” and an excellent pear mousse for dessert.

On Boxing Day I ventured forth and went in three interesting churches. Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri looks almost like a cave from the outside, even though it’s in the middle of the Piazza della Repubblica. Inside it’s part church, part exhibition on Galileo “E pur si muove” Galilei. The church of Santa Maria della Vittoria has Bernini’s sculpture of the Ecstasy of St. Theresa; on my first lap around the church I totally missed seeing it, noticed a note on the door about it on the way out, and went back through to see it. Della Vittoria’s across-the-street neighbor is the church of Santa Susanna, and, intending to take a look, I walked up to the door at 9:55 to find that the church is the home of the American Catholic congregation in Rome, and that they had a service at 10:30. As rad as Mass was, nothing beats being able to sing Christmas hymns in your own language, so I was really happy to have found an English service.

After church it was time to look at some old stuff. I crossed the Tiber (Tevere) to Castel Sant’Angelo, but determined I didn’t want to spend €8 to go inside, since there was nothing on the sign that seemed that interesting. Also, I remembered how boring Castello Sforzesco had been in Milan the previous winter. I re-crossed the river, got some gelato for lunch, and went to the Pantheon, the temple-turned-church. There was scaffolding on the front façade—I think there’s a rule that says there must be scaffolding on some major sight in every European city at all times—so it didn’t look as impressive as it must have normally. But on the inside, that dome! With a hole in it! Who leaves a hole in the middle of the roof of their temple? For thousands of years? And of course the dome is like mathematically and engineeringly perfect. This is my first real taste of ancient Rome, and it’s a good one. Also, Raphael is buried inside.
The next ancient thing I found was the Area Sacra. It’s like a square, but instead of having a fountain in the middle, there’s an excavated area with the ruins of four different temples. This looked more like my imagination said ancient Rome should look, with columns and those pine trees. Lots of cats live in the Area Sacra. Lots of cats live in lots of public places in Italy, actually. I don’t blame them; if I were a cat in Rome, I’d hang out among the ancient temples, too.

I started wandering again and found myself near Trajan’s Forum, then walked down the Via dei Fori Imperiali, which is lined by ruins on both sides. It’s a little hard to believe all the ancient ruins are really real. In the Fora, it looks like someone just left set-pieces around after filming a movie. If you wander far enough down the street, all of a sudden the Colosseum is there. It kind of sneaks up on you, somehow, even though it’s a large building. On the way back up, I went in the Basilica dei Santi Cosma e Damiano, the oldest church in the Forum. It’s from the sixth century. Just sayin’. Later that evening I went back to take some pictures of the Colosseum at night. The metro isn’t kidding, calling the stop “Colosseo”; when you walk out of the station you’re directly opposite the thing.
(Obviously there were tons of priests and monks and nuns in Rome at Christmastime. There are also tons of scooters, too. Ciao.)

On the last full day in Rome it was time to see some dead people. Or at least a higher concentration of dead people, as you can’t help but find a lot of graves when you go into as many churches as I did. I took the metro down to the stop called “Piramide,” so named because when you go out of the station and look to the left, there’s a pyramid that some nutbag leader or other built for himself. It’s not Giza-scale, but it’s a fair-sized pyramid nonetheless.

Behind the pyramid is the “English” cemetery, English in this sense (and in Florence) meaning non-Catholic. I stumbled on the cemetery online, saw that some English authors are buried there, and decided to check it out. It is now one of my favorite cemeteries in Europe. There were graves from people of lots of different countries, and rather more princesses than I’d seen buried anywhere else (and more cats). It was fascinating to think about how people were born in other countries and ended up dying and being buried in Italy, mostly in the 19th century. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ashes and John Keats, “one whose name was writ in water,” are buried in the cemetery.

For some reason I really wanted to see the Appian Way, so I walked for a while until finally I found it. Nowadays there are two Appian Ways: the Via Appica Antica and the Via Appia Nuova. On Sundays, the Antica is closed to car traffic, and people walk or bike it. During the week, I would not advise walking it, because within the first few miles there are walls on both sides of the road and the drivers act like they’re from the country that spawned Lamborghini and Ferrari. I braved the road because I was trying to get to some catacombs.

Heading the direction I was, the first ones you reach are the San Callisto catacombs. I darted up the long drive, happy to be safe from the motorists of the Appian Way. Walking up that drive was the closest I got to ancient Rome, I felt; there were fields, and trees, and the city in the distance. When I reached the catacombs and went on a tour, I found that they were somewhat creepy. The combination of being an ancient burial place, underground, and with dark, empty recesses made it a little bit scary. The guided tour only goes to the first two levels; the third and fourth levels are closed to visitors. They’ve moved nearly all of the remains from the first levels down further into the catacombs, except for a few still on display under glass.

Inspired by walking along this path, that night I broke down, went to a movie theater, and watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in Italian.

*Happy New Year! 2011 is officially The Future. Where is my flying car?