Living in Rome 21 - 23.11.10

21.11.10

The last time we saw the Colisseum it still had gladiators racing around it. Well, not quite, but it was a really long time ago. Funny, it still looks just the same except that it now has squillions of tourists racing around it. We hadn’t thought to go early to get a ticket to get in, maybe there were not even tickets needed last time, but we decide to join a guided tour to avoid an hour’s wait in a queue. There’s not much for a guide to say about it really: it’s very very big, it held 80,000 people, they used to have all sorts of unpleasant sports in there, ending with the death of animals and people and they also used to fill the floor with water and have mock naval battles.

They did, however, provide it all free, along with food, to keep the populace happy. Considering how much money tourists pour into the Roman economy every year in hotels, restaurants, taxis, souvenirs, I reckon they should just let everyone in for free now.

It was our day to tick off the Colisseum, the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus on our must-see list, and they were all worth a look. The one that really got to us (and there were only about 6 tourists there) was the Circus Maximus because it was actually built by the Etruscans and held 350,000 spectators for the big Charlton Heston chariot racing events. 350,000 people! Huge!

Talking of big and free events, the city of Rome did actually turn on something both big and free yesterday. All of the museums in the city were open in the evening (and when I say all the museums, in Rome that means an incredible number) plus the university and lots of the palazzos, for free hour-long concerts. Every kind of music you could imagine: fancy a New Orleans jazz band? Go to the Accademia Belgica.. Some Flamenco? Try the Casa delle Letterature. Folk music? Spanish? Blues? Any kind of classical you could imagine? Something like 40 concerts at once. Dazzled by the choice we opt for baroque music with 2 sopranos and a bass, partly because it is close and partly because it is baroque music and is in the Museo Nationale Romano Crypta Balbi, which sounds interesting. When we get there, after wandering up and down the street for half an hour, we enter a museum that has no sign at all outside and is something really different. It is a history museum, certainly, but of one city block. A whole museum just for one block. That’s Rome for you, way too much history.

The musicians file in, we are all standing on the walkway above one of the exhibits, a few big chunks of pillars, and they start to do their thing. Pretty little madrigals float up to us, accompanied by a man playing those unlikely-looking old stringed instruments, lutes with long necks, or strangely bent. It was very entertaining, and when it finished we wandered around looking at the exhibits. Another bit of pottery, rusty spoons, that sort of thing. We don’t stay long, seen it all before.


22.11.10

So we’re sitting in the trattoria right next door to our apartment. (We are pretty well placed, a trattoria is next door and directly opposite is the internet café and a hairdresser). Anyway, the restaurant is full of people and the guitarist is wandering from table to table, singing all the usual suspects: Santa Lucia, Volare, O Sole Mio. Everyone is clapping, singing along, laughing.

Today is a big day. We saw Pompeii! Why is it so big (apart from Pompeii’s story, of course)? Because the last time we tried , in 1971, it was closed (of course!) But not today. We figured if we went with a group it would be sure to be open. Once bitten, twice shy, we won’t risk just rocking up again.

So we book into a bus tour for the day. This is very weird for us, we have never done it before, we always laugh at those groups of people wandering around tourist spots like little flocks of sheep, but here we are , at 7 am getting onto a coach to drive 3 hours for a quick look at Naples and a slightly longer look at Pompeii.

We eye off the other passengers as they get on. There is a plump boy from Brisbane with a big camera and a bag of sweets. There is a brisk grey-haired woman from Canada and a genial man from Brazil. A bunch of tubby middle-aged Portuguese women get on, it seems like 100 from the noise they make, but it’s really only 6. They talk without pausing for breath for the entire day. What can they possibly think of to say for so long? There are two petite little gals of no fixed age from the deep South in the USA, with identical face-lifts. Several querulous yanks complaining sotto voce about almost everything. And us, settled back to watch the world go by at 100 km an hour.

Mt Vesuvius across the Bay of Naples

How amazing is Pompeii! What a vivid sense of the city in full swing; the remains of the houses, still with mosaic floors and painted walls, giving a clear picture of comfortable middle-class life in 79 A.D.

Beware of the Dog Mosaic

The wine and oil shops, the bakery which still had 80 loaves of bread in the oven, the theatre with seating for 3,000 and the baths, both with inscriptions from the city councillors who paid for repairs after an earthquake. The message between the lines: we paid for this, vote for us. There is a lot of giggling and chuckling about the brothel with its little rooms with stone divans and built-in pillows, the explicit paintings still on the walls.

Then there are the extremely poignant figures, just a few are on display. One of the early archaeologists made plaster casts of some of the figures he found; the ash had covered them, and set, then the bodies and bones had disappeared leaving the shape. So these poor people are preserved in the moment of death, crouched down with their hands over their faces against the ash and cinders, or lying, felled as they ran. A dog twisted in its death throes. It is very moving. This was a bustling, thriving city of 25,000 people captured forever in one cataclysmic event.

23.11.10

So we’re sitting in the trattoria this evening. Sounds like last night doesn’t it! We’ve just ordered dinner and we are surrounded by people eating and chatting. Suddenly the whole place erupts in shrieks. We jump, startled. Then we realise that a football game is on the two little plasma screens. It’s Roma vs a Dutch team and a goal has made it 2:1 to the Dutch. There is utter drama in the restaurant. All the staff are glued to the screen along with most of the diners. Even the chef is leaning through the hatch between the kitchen and the dining room. The cashier is running his hands through his hair in despair.

We hope the chef will be able to cope. We need to eat, it’s been a big day. We did the Sistine Chapel. Well actually Michelangelo and his band of genius mates did the Sistine Chapel. But we gave it our best effort and, yes, it’s worth all the fuss. Every inch of every wall and the ceiling is covered with fabulous art. This is not unusual in Italy, there’s acres of it in every building in every city, but this is utterly stunning.

Panel in Sistine Chapel
Just to do the end wall behind the altar took Michelangelo 6 years. Of course, it’s a biggish sort of wall and he did 300 figures on it. Judgment Day, people rising from the grave, being swept up to the sky. Jesus on a cloud sending them either to heaven or, look at those poor devils (so to speak) down to hell.

And then the ceiling with the oh, so famous image of…sorry, another yell just went up, another goal, this time to Roma. The decibels reach pain level around us. Roma has won the game 3 to 2! Someone is thumping a table and shouting. The cashier looks exhausted and has tears in his eyes. Now , where was I? Oh yes, God breathing life into Adam, figures almost touching, in the middle of the ceiling. Panels all along the sides by the foremost painters of the day. All different, all fabulous. We looked and looked, went out, came back for another long gaze. I needed to check the faces on the Judgment Day wall again.

But there’s much more to the Vatican, so much that part of it is now called the Vatican Museum. Before tourism took off, who saw all this stuff? Just the Pope and his pals? Hundreds of rooms crammed with antiquities, artefacts, art.

Section of Fresco in Rafael Room

And every wall, every ceiling, every pillar and post painted by painters famous for their brilliance. It’s dazzling, stunning, overwhelming. What is not any of these are the 54 rooms of modern religious art, which is unremittingly ugly and it is irritating to have to walk past it after being immersed in such extremes of beauty. What were they thinking to hang this stuff on the wall? We get through that, look for the one thing we haven’t yet managed to connect with anywhere, the Etruscan exhibits, but that section is closed (of course!). We have a coffee and walk home along the river, heads reeling.