Rome Travel Guide


Monday, April 27, 2015

Liberation Day: The Politics of "Bella Ciao"

RST attended three April 25, 2015 Liberation Day ceremonies.  At 2 of them, and possibly 3 (we left before the end of the 3rd one, televised by RAI 1), the "Bella Ciao" anthem was sung.  To further understanding of the importance of the song and its place in Italian culture, we are republishing a revealing 2010 piece by writer and translator Frederika Randall.  Following her commentary, Randall presents the song's lyrics in Italian and English.

Frederika Randall returns as guest blogger with this post, that begins with a curious but telling incident at a Rome public school. Randall has written about Italian society, the arts, literature, film and culture for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and now reports on politics for the Nation and the Italian weekly Internazionale. She lives in Rome.

The G.G. Belli is a middle school in Prati, named, as state schools in Italy are, for famous men--in this case, the great 19th C Romanesco sonneteer Giuseppe Gioachino Belli. (Just about the only schools honoring famous women are those named after female saints and martyrs.) On an ordinary day, not much happens at the G.G. Belli beyond the usual stuff that happens in a school full of budding teenagers. But May 27 was no ordinary day.

The school orchestra had been invited to the Education Ministry in Trastevere, to give a special concert for several illustrious members of the Berlusconi adminstration including the Undersecretary for Education, a certain Giuseppe Pizza (I had to look him up, a former Christian Democrat politician, I learned from the Corriere della Sera, who never merited a single dispatch by the national wire service ANSA in his first forty years of service.)

And so the kids performed their program and after they had finished, they played, by way of an encore, a few bars of Bella Ciao, a rousing partisan song dear to the Italian Resistance, and a piece of music known around the world.

Bad choice.

Minutes later, the Belli’s principal was fit to be tied. She immediately dashed off a letter to the teaching staff, students and parents calling the encore rendition “a deplorable act” and suggesting it had been prompted by some unnamed adults.

So what was wrong with playing Bella Ciao?
Only a few years ago the anti-Fascist Resistance was practically sacred in Italy, for it was the resistance movement that had battled the Nazi invaders and the Fascist dictatorship and gave birth to the Italian Republic in 1946, and the constitution in 1948. But for some on the right, Berlusconi among them, the Resistance smacks of disobedience, of insurrection, of the Communist brigades among the partisans who fought Mussolini and who some once feared would inherit power after the war. Berlusconi--who regularly campaigns on an anti-Communist platform despite the fact that the Italian Communist Party was dissolved in 1991, before he entered politics—not only governs with the support of the former neo-Fascists, he has often had kind words for Mussolini, who he seems to think has an underserved bad rep. A lot of people on the right don’t like Bella Ciao. In parts of Northern Italy, where the extreme rightists-separatists of the Northern League govern, the song was banned this year on April 25, Liberation Day.

We can only guess that the Belli school principal had all these facts in mind when she chastised the kids for playing Bella Ciao. The performance had “cast a lingering shadow of discredit, placing the entire school in difficulty,” she warned. “We must never forget our duties toward our hosts,” she added, urging the parents to send letters of apology to the ministry. God knows these are grim days for school budgets, but her reaction seemed, well, a little excessive.

The parents thought so, too.
After a flurry of organizing on Facebook, a little group of kids and parents (see above left) turned out one morning to sing Bella Ciao in front of the school as the students were going in. For a video of the event, see

Prequel: In the summer of 2008 my husband and I were traveling through Montpelier, Vermont when we heard a busker playing Bella Ciao on the street. “It’s a beautiful old Italian partisan song,” the musician told Vittorio, who’s not only Italian but old enough (just) to remember the Resistance. They sang it together, Vittorio in Italian and the busker in English.
Strange to say, there is some uncertainty about the origins of the song. Although there’s general agreement on the lyrics, they do vary slightly from rendition to rendition. Those below come from Wikipedia, which also offers several English translations. Mine, below, is an attempt to provide a singable text that follows the meter of the Italian. To that end—sorry about that--some of the Italian words have been preserved.

Most musicologists believe Bella Ciao was adapted from a work song of the mondine, the women who worked in the rice fields of northern Italy, standing knee-deep in cold water, picking out tiny weeds. But recently, an amateur musical historian noticed that the melody of Bella Ciao was astonishingly similar to a klezmer song called Koilen, recorded in 1919 in New York by a Gypsy klezmer performer from Odessa named Mishka Tsiganoff. It was theorized that perhaps the song had made its way to Italy via returning Italian immigrants in the 1930s. Although an Italian origin is more likely, it does seem odd that a work song (and a stirring resistance melody) would be so melancholy, so minor key, as this one.

And now, for the good news: for the first time in many years, the National Association of Italian Partisans not only didn’t shrink in size as its members aged and died, but actually grew by some 20,000 members, many of them young people from 18-30 years of age.
So maybe there is a future for the Resistance after all.

Bella Ciao [this version is devoted to the Iranian dissidents]

Una mattina mi son svegliato,
Una mattina mi son svegliato,
e ho trovato l'invasor.
O partigiano, portami via,
O partigiano, portami via,
ché mi sento di morir.
E se io muoio da partigiano,
(E se io muoio sulla montagna)
E se io muoio da partigiano,
(E se io muoio sulla montagna)
tu mi devi seppellir.
E seppellire lassù in montagna,
(E tu mi devi seppellire)
E seppellire lassù in montagna,
(E tu mi devi seppellire)
sotto l'ombra di un bel fior.
Tutte le genti che passeranno,
(E tutti quelli che passeranno)
Tutte le genti che passeranno,
(E tutti quelli che passeranno)
Mi diranno «Che bel fior!»
(E poi diranno «Che bel fior!»)
«È questo il fiore del partigiano»,
(E questo è il fiore del partigiano)
«È questo il fiore del partigiano,
(E questo è il fiore del partigiano)
morto per la libertà!»
(che e' morto per la liberta')


And here, in English is that “beautiful old Italian partisan song”

Early one morning, as I was waking
Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Early one morning, as I was waking,
I found the foe was at my door.

O partigiano, please take me with you
O partigiano, please take me with you,
For something tells me I must die.

If I should die then, as a partigiano,
If I should die in the hills, in the hills up there,
If I should die then, die in the hills there,
Then you must dig for me a grave.

Up in the hills there, dig me a grave then,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella cia, ciao, ciao,
Up in the hills there, lay me to rest there,
There in the shade of a flowering tree.

So all who pass by, so all who pass by,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
So all who pass by, so all who pass by,
Will see a splendid flowering tree.

The flower of freedom, of the partigiano,
The flower of freedom, of the partigiano,
Who died so all may now be free.
It’s the flower of freedom, of the partigiano,
Who died so all may now be free.

--tr F. Randall

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Round Rome: An Architectural Guide

Architects of all ages have favored square or rectangular buildings; they're easier to design and cheaper to build, and everything from bookcases to sofas fits better against a straight wall than a curved one.  Nonetheless, Rome has its share of round or rounded structures, or structures with distinctive round features.  Some are churches--older ones and newer ones alike--but the modernist architects of the 20th century, with their investments in geometric forms, were also fond of round forms.

Below, RST presents 24 examples of Rome in the round.  If you can identify--by name, general location, or architect--any 10 of them, you can take credit for having a solid knowledge of Rome architecture.  Get 15 and you're ready to guide tours.   Look at the photos and make some notes before reading the text and captions!   Bill

The Pantheon is the mother of all Rome's round buildings. At least this is true chronologically, and the structure has been influential over the centuries in encouraging the city's architects to construct round buildings.

Pantheon, exterior

Pantheon, interior

Other buildings of ancient Rome have round or
rounded features.  The ruins of this Roman bath
are located on Colle Appio.

Churches often have round features--most obviously the dome. The church at the right, probably constructed about 1940, is simply weird.  You can find it--assuming we recall correctly--in Piazza Lecce, intersecting Via Bari, southwest of Piazza Bologna.

This dainty little round building is actually a temple, inside the courtyard of a church. It's called the Tempietto (little temple), and it was designed by Bramante.  Scholars consider it a nearly perfect structure and by all accounts it has been enormously influential for architects.  It's on the Gianicolo, a stone's throw (assuming you've got a major league arm) from the Aqua Paola fountain.  (And Dianne insisted on including it on the stairways walk, one of the 4 itineraries in Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.)

Santo Stefano Rotondo, exterior

At right, Santo Stefano Rotondo (round).  It was the first Rome church with a circular plan. The original incarnation dates to about 475, but it's been through numerous restorations.  Even so, the interior, especially, is powerfully evocative.  Perhaps because that most famous of round Rome buildings, the Pantheon, was pagan rather than Christian, some scholars--and for a while RST--thought Santo Stefano Rotondo was coverted from a pagan temple.  Nope.  It was always Christian.  (Almost directly south from the Coliseum.)

Santo Stefano Rotondo, interior.

The round church  below--exterior and interior--is on the University of Rome's main campus.  Likethe rest of the campus, it was constructed during the 1930s, when modernism was in fashion in Fascist Italy.  The rounded windows--a common feature of modernist buildings for the period, perhaps referencing ship portholes--add to the effect.  

A 21st-century church on Rome's periphery.

A round, modernist tower graces the church of Gesu Divino Lavoratore in the Marconi district, just off Piazza della Radio. c. 1940s

One of many buildings that make up the Foro Italico (once Foro Mussolini).  To repeat: the architects of the era reveled in geometric forms. The fascinating complex is located on the right bank of the Tevere, just across the river from the big bulge in the Flaminio zone.  In the shadow of Monte Mario.

More rounded forms--and more of that classic red/rose paint. This structure was originally an outbuilding for the Foro Italico.  Today's it's a privately owned business: Officine Farneto.  A two-minute walk from Stadio Olimpico, up via Monti della Farnesina.  You'll walk right into it.  Looks better today than in this photo.

This impressive rounded structure dominates Piazza Bartolomeo Romano, in the Garbatella neighborhood.  The Teatro Palladium (1927) was designed by Innocenzo Sabbatini, who did other buildings in Garbatella.  It was originally a movie house, with apartments behind, and is now a cultural center owned by the Third University of Rome. (Again, part of one of the itineraries in Modern Rome.)

The two buildings below are not round, but they do have round flourishes, round decoration.  The first is just a supermarket, construction date unknown.  The circular decoration fits nicely with the 1950-ish apartments behind the store.  The other building, the Banca Popolare di Milano (1972-73), is standard late modernist box-style--two boxes, actually--but given a bit of style with three round constructions atop the structure. Although it's not a particularly interesting building, the architect is one of Rome's most famous: Luigi Moretti.  Moretti's best-known Rome work is the Casa Della GIL (House of the Italian Fascist Youth, now often referred to as the ex-GIL).  Built between 1933 and 1936, it's a lovely example of Fascist-era modernism.  The ex-GIL is in Trastevere.  (Moretti's best-known work in the US is the Washington, D.C. Watergate complex, which has given us all our "-gate" scandal names, and which has round features.) The bank is just outside the wall at Piazza del Popolo, in Piazzale Flaminio.

Another late modernist structure, just up the road from the bank (above) in Flaminio.  A true classic: Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport (1956/57).  Nervi was an engineer as well as an architect, and he had to be to produce this elegant building out of reinforced concrete. Because the roof needs paint, it looks a bit shabby in this photograph.  It's gorgeous at night when there's an event taking place inside.  We wrote about this building and many others in the area in our book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler (2014)

We have no idea who designed this building or when.  But we--Bill, especially--loves the lines created by the white fencing around the apartment balconies.  On, would you believe, the current route of the old road, via Latina.

This mushroom-like building is, or was, a dancehall.  This is the back of it.  It's crammed into a small space (obviously) somewhere (we might be hard pressed to find it again) in Appio Latino.

Another mushroom facility.  Not sure what it's for.  Exact location is unknown, but it would be quite close to the intersection of via Boccea and the Circonvalazione Aurelia, near the entrance to Parco del Pineta Sacchetti, in the city's northwest quadrant.

Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica.  Location: Flaminio, just steps from Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport.

Parking garages don't have to be circular, but Rome has two that are.  This beauty by architect Riccardo Morandi is on via Magna Grecia, just south of San Giovanni in Laterano.  It was built in 1957, and we wonder if it inspired Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim, completed a few years later.

Another parking garage, architect and
date unknown.  Hard to find, because it's hidden
except from one angle.  Location: a few blocks
northwest of Piazza Fiume.  Good hunting!

Not really a round building, but the circular ceiling cutout is so lovely that we couldn't resist. Another Luigi Moretti creation.  Part of the ex-GIL (1933-36) in Trastevere, next to Nanni Moretti's theatre.

Rome's gazometri (literally, gas meters) are among Rome's best-known Rome structures: very visible, and quite strange.
As we understand it, they are essentially shells that once housed and contained large bags of natural gas.  Such structures are not unique to Rome.  In the Ostiense neighborhood.

Above and below, two of Rome's finest staircases in the round mode.  Above, a Luigi Moretti staircase in the ex-GIL (around back on the left, beyond the entrance to the athletic complex).  Below, the staircase that leads up and out of the parking garage beneath the Villa Borghese.  Incredibly, it, too, was designed by Luigi Moretti.   

Monday, April 13, 2015

Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City. Book Review.

Foro Italico, one site of the 1960
Olympic Games
Is Rome a global city?  That's one of the claims--it's right there in title, Global Rome--made in this edited collection of 17 essays, subtitled Changing Faces of the Eternal City.  As Bjorn Thomassen and Piero Vereni point out in the first of the essays, it's certainly not a global financial city, or a global industrial city, but it is, arguably, the most "imagined" city in the world.

And, as the editors, Thomassen and Isabella Clough Marinaro emphasize, it's global in its tourism, as a locus of international diplomacy and, especially, in its growing number of immigrants, who now make up about 1/8 of the city's population.

Moreover, as Simon Martin's essay makes clear, Rome has been, and to some extent remains, a global sporting city, hosting the 1960 Olympic Games and the 2009 World Swimming Championships (in contrast, Mark Dyal's essay on romanità argues that the term's application to soccer was part of a larger effort to hold on to an older, traditional Rome threatened by multiculturalism, modernization--and globalization).

In a new shop near Piazza Vittorio, an Asian
family eats lunch
Curiously, there isn't much in the book about tourism or diplomacy or the imagining of Rome, and Michael Herzfeld's contribution makes the point that despite its increasingly global population, Rome as an immigration center is also characterized by "extreme localism"; Romans resent the newcomers.  Still, treatments of immigration are the focus of at least six of the essays.  Pierluigi Cervelli looks at several groups of new arrivals and at what he calls their "spatial practices."  The Chinese have prospered by buying property in the Esqulino--the area surrounding Piazza Vittorio--where they predicted property values would rise over time.  Bangladeshi settled a bit further out, in the near suburb of Torpignattara.  Romanians and Albanians occupy areas even farther outside the center, near and beyond the GRA to the north.  And the Roma have survived by being "invisible" to the authorities, living in underpasses and along river banks--and moving often.

Cinema Impero closed in 1983, before
the Bangladeshi arrived in Tor Pignattara
We were particularly interested in the experience of the Bangladeshi in Torpignattara, because we "discovered" and wrote about the area a few years ago and have since returned several times to explore its art galleries and its substantial array of graffiti.  Alessandra Broccolini presents the community as a "frontier," where over two decades the Italian population has been partly displaced and forced to accommodate an influx of Bangladeshi---about 5,000, most living in what is known to older residents as the  Marranella--that has led some to call the place "Banglatown."  As of 2007 about 25% of shops were run by the newcomers.  Lest one assume that the new immigrants led to the decline of the area, Broccolini points out that the area was hardly prospering before the Bangladeshi arrived--the striking, modernist movie house, the Cinema Impero, closed in 1983.  After the population influx, the crime rate declined and the crime rate declined and the street lighting improved.

Carlo Pisacane elementary school--the site of conflict
between Italians and Bangladeshi
Herzfeld's "extreme localism" appeared in Torpignattara in the form of the "Piscane Affair," a series of events swirling around the Carlo Pisacane School, attended by Bangaldeshi, Chinese, and Egyptian students--together, 115 of 140 students in one survey. The change led school authorities to cap foreign enrollment at Pisacane at 30% of the total.  As author Piero Vereni notes, the assignation "foreign" applied even to children born in Rome and fluent in Italian.  The Pisacane affair, he concludes, was about what it meant to be "Italian."

Via Boccea, one of the areas where Roma "settled".

The Roma are doubtless Rome's most despised immigrant group.  Tourists protect their wallets when they approach, and to most Italians they seem incapable of the hard work and community-building that would bring them into the mainstream.  They come off somewhat differently in two essays in this collection.  Marco Solimene presents the Xoraxanè Roma, immigrants from Yugoslavia beginning in the 1960s, as a determined and responsible group, one that cultivated relationships with the Italians who offered services the Roma needed: bars, Internet points, tobacconists, and the Trastevere train station, which served as a meeting place.  Some settled in the via Boccea area to the northwest, others out via Nomentana to the north, and the largest number in Rome's southwest, in Trullo, Corviale, Tor di Valle, Muratella, and especially Magliana, with its concentration of scrap iron dealers to whom Roma scavengers could sell.

Trullo's self-managed community center, "Ricomincio
dal Faro," operated by squatters.  Once a movie house.
In our more innocent days, we explored the massive housing project at Corviale and, more recently, spent an afternoon in Trullo, watching trash cans burn and admiring what we learned--from this book--was a self-managed community center created by squatting (occupato) in an abandoned movie theater.

And, having lived in the Marconi district and across the river in San Paolo, we were eager to learn
Squatters still live tucked away on the grounds
of the now-defunct Testaccio slaughterhouse.  
more about the Roma who had been living nearby.  Ulderico Daniele and editor Marinaro tell two stories involving the Roma, both about evictions.  One features Roma living under Ponte Marconi and on vicolo Savini in Ostiense, both evicted and moved by the city to Pomezia, 25 km away and far from their closest community settlement.  Another group, evicted from an unauthorized camp in 2011, took refuge in the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le mura--and, for several days, refused to leave.  That group ended up at an authorized camp in via Salaria, on the other side of the city.

For Daniele and Marinaro, these episodes are typical of authorities' efforts to clear areas deemed valuable--such as vicolo Savini and the Testaccio slaughterhouse--and give them over
to private developers.  Cristina Lombardi-Diop tells a similar story, and a similarly depressing one, of some 2,000 Senegalese immigrants, happily and productively renting apartments in 5 buildings in "Residence Roma" near Forte Bravetta, yet forced to relocate--to Ladispoli, Pomezia, Centocelle, and Torpignattara--to make way for single-family villas.  The mayor at the time was left-center Walter Veltroni, who wrote the foreword to our first book.

This account of evictions is one of several in the collection that deal interestingly with the ugly Rome politics of housing and homelessness.  One the one hand, the city's interest in cultural heritage protection--argues Valerie Higgins--has emptied central Rome of Italians (only 100,000 live in the Centro Storico, a term that didn't exist until 1960), marginalizing locals and making the core "more like a museum" than a living community.  To find an authentic Rome--that is, areas inhabited by Romans--she adds, you have to go the suburbs and even the periphery--the subject, we self-servingly add, of Rome the Second Time and Modern Rome and, especially, of this blog.

On the other hand, failure of the city authorities to develop a reasonable and coherent housing policy has led to something of a frontier mentality in areas distant from the center and has played into the hands of unscrupulous or short-sighted developers.  Carlo Cellamare labels Rome "The Self-Made City" because so much of its periphery has undergone "development by improvisation"--housing made by squatters in abandoned buildings or on public land, or just plain illegal building, sometimes on a grand scale.  The Valle Borghesiana, between via Prenestina and via Casilina and about 7 km beyond the GRA, is typical: a lot of building but no public space and minimal services--a few bars that take on a quasi-public function as meeting places.  Young people have only the mall.

Miles away on the coast sits the tiny community of Idroscalo, in recent years a symbol of Rome's dysfunctional housing policy.  Located just around the corner from the memorial to Pier Paolo
We've never been to Idrascalo, but it's just a stone's
throw from this small park, a memorial to Pier
Paolo Pasolini.
Pasolini (see our post, which has directions), this illegal, unauthorized "town" of 300 homes, all built on public land, continues to vex authorities, who have both allowed it to exist and expand and yet regularly threaten its residents with expulsion--presumably so that this valuable property could be "developed."  In the meantime, as Ferruccio Trabalzi writes, Idroscalo plugs along, its residents pleased to be on the sea, enjoying the sunsets, yet lacking shops, a library, city offices, a community center--even a piazza. In his essay on the Porta di Roma shopping center on Rome's periphery, Cellamare offers another case of service-deprivation, describing the enormous mall as a "black hole," sucking the life out of nearby housing areas.

Pierpaolo Mudu is equally critical of Rome's housing history, arguing that the failure to build housing--and better housing--is a matter of policy.  He dates the problem to l924, when the term "borgate" was coined and Acilia was built, far from the center.  Housing developers became key players  in the postwar era, building projects that were poorly constructed and, again, lacked services--like  Magliana, constructed along the Tevere in the 1960s.  A
The shopping center  in Torbellamonaca, a suburb
constructed as an "episode."
1962 housing law--housing law 167--produced Spinaceto, Corviale, Laurentino 38, and
Torbellamonaca--all constructed, writes Mudu, as "episodes," rather than as integrated parts  of Rome.  With the withdrawal of the public sector from the housing market after 1970, illegal (abusive) housing became common.  Rent controls were abolished in 1998.  In the 1970s and 1980s, Tufello, San Basilio, and Trullo became sites of resistance to these policies and practices, resistance to the "refusal of the political class to take on any responsibility."

Rome's dysfunctional policies on housing and land use have likely contributed to the inclination of Romans to abandon the public sphere for an insular retreat to the private sphere and family life.  Nonetheless, there have been
An occupied social center in Ostiense.  The facade is now
fully painted--by street artist Blu..  Inside, a cafe serves
tea, apertifs, and snacks.  
counter-developments, efforts to fashion a community experience.  Beginning in the 1970s, young people began to create social centers, many of them by occupying--that is, squatting in--unoccupied buildings.  As Mudu explains, most of these were created by the left (Angelo Mai, Garage, and Rialto), but a few--notably Casa Pound--were established by the right.  Today, some 34 social centers exist in Rome, and about half are legal.

Likely an illegal private garden, in the Parco della Cafferella--
that is, on public land.  
Other Romans have taken to farming without permission on public land; in 2011, there were
70 public gardens in Rome, and many communal gardens--all created in the absence of a coherent city policy.  Not to make money, as Ferruccio Trabalzi notes, but to foster community. 

Global Rome is a remarkable collection, a complex yet accessible mix that sheds light on little-understood aspects of a city whose cultural patrimony can overwhelm efforts to appreciate and understand its nuances.  It will have special appeal for scholars of modern Rome and for those interested in exploring beyond the historic center, and beyond the suburbs into the periphery.  Rome the third time, perhaps.


Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City, ed. Isabella Clough Marinaro and Bjorn Thomassen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), is available through Indiana University Press [$32 paper, $27.99 eBook] and amazon [$27.56 paper, $16.40 eBook].

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Off-the-beaten-path churches: The Basilica of San Pancrazio

"Here San Pancrazio was decapitated."

The basilica of San Pancrazio wasn't always so off-the-beaten-path.  It sits less than half a mile from the famous Porta di San Pancrazio, a gateway to the Gianicolo.

Of course, RST thinks it's worth a visit.  Even though we've lived close enough to the neighborhood several times, it did take several tries to get both of us there.  One problem, the reluctant visitor to churches that were built before 1920, and the other problem of timing our visit when the church is open.  It's widely acknowledged it gets few visitors and tourists and, therefore, is no longer always open (hours at end of this post).

Time, wars, history, have not been kind to this - originally - 7th-century church built on the alleged site of the named saint's martyrdom (see photo at top).  As Wiki Roman Churches puts it,  "It was thoroughly looted by the French in 1798, and was partially destroyed by the Garibaldians during their futile defence of the Roman Republic against the French army in 1849. This vandalism included having the shrine broken open and the relics of the martyr disposed of. Whatever the vandals did with them, whether they put them down the toilet or shot them from a cannon, it is the case that not a fragment was recovered. Hence, when substantial necessary repairs were carried out to the church in the later 19th century, a small relic was brought back from the head of the saint at St John Lateran to be enshrined."
(For more on Garibaldi and this area, which we find fascinating, see one of RST's posts.)

And if that wasn't enough, there was a collapse in 2001 that closed the church and catacombs for a while.

Yes, catacombs.  One of the reasons I like the basilica.  Like several Roman churches, it sits atop an immense catacomb, and this one is not full of a line of visitors with buses waiting outside for them.   The upside - you can have a free, private tour of the catacombs.  The downside - only in Italian.  Our guide was a sweet and dedicated man, who seemed surprised when we made a 5 Euro offering.  I like the church's Web site explanation for no fee for the visits:  "The memory of the Martyrs has no price."  The entry is inside the main body of the church - just don't fall down the hole.

The coffered ceiling.
Trompe l'oeil fresco being restored.
 The setting of the church is evocative - it's at the end of a shaded lane, with walls on each side housing the monastery and a small museum.  All of this is couched in a corner of the immense park Villa Pamphili.

And, yes, it has art works, among them a restored monumental wooden coffered ceiling and frescoes attributed to the Cavalier d'Arpino, both 17th century. 

For more information, the Roman Churches Wiki site is decent, and the church offers a pamphlet in English.  Or, you can go to the basilica's Web site, which has some extensive history; use a translation program if you don't read Italian (click on "I Monumenti"  and then either "Basilica" or "Catacombe."

The catacombs are open Wednesday and Thursday mornings, 9:30 a.m - noon, and Wednesday afternoon, 4:30 - 7 p.m.  The church is open 8:30 a.m. - noon, every day (8 a.m. - 1 p.m. on Sundays and holidays) and afternoons 4:30 - 7 p.m. (7:30 p.m. July - September, and  8 p.m. on Sundays and holidays).  It's at Piazza San Pancrazio, at the end of via San Pancrazio (where it turns into via Vitellia). The location is "due passi" (2 steps - i.e., only a little way) from part of the first water itinerary in Rome the Second Time: 15 Itineraries That Don't Go to the Coliseum.


Friday, April 3, 2015

Train Station Soccer, Fossato

         (Mostly) locals gather at the train station in Fossato to watch soccer on a Sunday afternoon.