August 18, 2015
As I have seen so much of Bernini's work this week in Rome, it seemed entirely fitting to spend my last afternoon at the Vatican. However, the idea of visiting the Vatican is always overwhelming, and I'd only made up my mind to go Monday, so a private tour was out, even if I were willing to shell out the $300 one costs.
So I thought that, in the morning, I would visit another of Bernini's works in a corner of Rome tourists pass through on their way to bigger monuments, the obelisk and elephant statue in Piazza della Minerva, between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona.
It was a sunny day, but it was possible to beat the heat by going down the little vicolos, narrow little streets lined with Renaissance era houses. There were lots of pennant-waving tour guides moving groups along, most of them with the tread of people for whom viewing the sights tourists want to see has become almost as soulless an exercise as it is for the visitors on the tour.
I waded through the groups (wearing my knapsack on my chest, a necessary precaution in crowded areas in Rome), and came to Bernini's monument, which has a small obelisk from ancient Egypt riding atop a caparisoned, smiling elephant. The elephant's trunk is turned towards its rear; it was said that the position of the animal was deliberate: the rear end and trunk both point in the direction of the residence of one of Bernini's enemies. It is a charming statue.
Piazza della Minerva is also the home of the tailors to the Pope, Gamarelli. The sign above their door reads Sartori per Ecclesiastici. Google Images has some rather amusing photos of prelates exiting the shop, which also makes cardinal's caps. It's interesting to see that Gamarelli changes its window displays, sometimes featuring white outfits, other times red. And that is not the limit of colors that official vestments for high-ranking Vatican officials can be made in: dark mauve, too, is used sometimes. Photos of Papal Conclaves in the Sistine chapel have everyone in red and white, while a photo I saw of those attending Vatican II were all dressed in white with mitres on their heads. The fashion options of Catholic cardinals may be limited, but every one of them is wearing clothes laundered, bleached, pressed and starched within an inch of their lives.
It is noon by the time my visit to Piazza Minerva is over, and I decide to head home for lunch, like a good Italian. I have almost exhausted my stash from Volpetti, but not quite. I still have some dried tomatoes marinated in olive oil with onions and olives, and an entire mozzarella. The style of the mozzarella is fior di latte (the flower of the milk), and it is: the mozzarella is so tender it might be mascarpone, but for the ovoid shape. And the taste is delicate and the perfect accompaniment to the vegetables. Dessert is a few dried figs, succulent and dripping with sugar.
I have very much enjoyed eating food much better than I would have had at almost any restaurant in Rome. When travelling alone I find it difficult to sit down at restaurants. And as I have had so many places to see, eating at home has been a way of nourishing myself as I would wish to be nourished, but also an opportunity to recharge, washing up and resting before facing the street again.
I spend the afternoon walking as far as Ponte Margherita, the northernmost bridge in Rome and approaching the Vatican Museums by a street called Via Cole di Rienzo, a posh street of well-dressed people, both Italian and foreign and expensive shops. Here is where wealthy Romans desport themselves.
The Vatican Museums are always impressive: the Raphael Rooms, the Borghese Apartments, the Sistine Chapel. It is always, however, a sweat bath and dispiriting despite the beauty of the collections. If 17,000 people visit daily it is hard to know how to avoid the manufactured nature of the experience; and then the images of the Sistine Chapel have become so familiar as to be bowdlerized everywhere, degrading their visual impact --even if you have no issues with the restoration work, which has created controversy.
My most significant moment in the museums is the time I spent with a priest from Nigeria, Father Valentine, who has been posted in the middle of the gallery adjoining the Sistine Chapel. A little sign by the desk where he sits reads in Italian "Art and Faith". He is reading a book when I approach, but greets me warmly.
I proceed to have a ninety minute conversation with him, as it turns out that he is writing a doctoral dissertation on a subject I know something about: press freedom and legal protection for it. He is a gentle, discerning soul and the warmth of this personality gives meaning to the Vatican experience in a way nothing I saw could have. He tells me there is a way to get into Saint Peter's without having to queue and he accompanies me back to the Sistine Chapel to show me which way to go. He has spent time in Birmingham, Alabama, Houston, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida, which is interesting, because in the course of our conversation he tells me of an older friend of his, a priest who faced discrimination on account of his race in italy. I give him my e-mail address --he has an I-Phone-- and he promises to send me an e-mail with the citation for a case in Nigeria in which an archbishop sued a journalist for libel and won.
I leave Saint Peter's just as the sun is setting. The Vatican post office is still open, though, so I scurry over to buy postcards and 2 stamps printed with an image of Pope Francis --at $2.60 each. I send one of the postcards to myself: the idea of receiving a postcard franked by the Vatican is just too tempting.
Of course, the Vatican is a city state to which ambassadors are appointed, which seems unusual, given its size. However, the Vatican once ruled over a large territory stretching from Rome to the Adriatic, as well as Rome. The three basilicas I visited are distant reminders of the once-land rich papacy, which is now in possession of only the Vatican and the property consisting of the basilicas of Saint John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore and Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Nonetheless, the Vatican plays a backstage role in a number of international contexts, providing diplomats who cannot meet publicly for reasons of political conflict between their countries, a Vatican intermediary. Such was the case between Chile and Argentina, where John Paul II helped prevent war between the two countries; and, less successfully, between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
I walk back home along the Tiber, then happily turn in and eat what is left of my stash from Volpetti. It's time to pack and say goodbye to Rome: I have to be on my way to the airport by 6:00 a.m.
When I think of the Rome I have seen I think of the Rome of travelers, fictitious and actual. Of Henry James and his heroine Daisy Miller, an American girl who died of ignoring the advice of natives and ex-pat habitués of Rome to not go walking in the Colosseum at night, contracting and dying of a deadly fever she caught there. I think of H.V. Morton, my guide on this tour, and of the English visitors who stayed in pensione, some more --and some less- comfortable than they would have expected. I think of John Keats, who died here, and his loyal friend, Joseph Severn. Of Percy Bysse Shelley whose ashes are there, too: Cor Cordium --heart of hearts, is the inscription on his tombstone.
What gives me the greatest pleasure, though, is to think of the sun rising --or setting-- over the Janiculum Hill and of mounting Viale Glorioso, just a few steps away from here-- to begin my journey there.
I close citing the inscription (a quote from Sergio Leone, the director of spaghetti Westerns) on the plaque by the scalinata of Viale Glorioso, that piano-length series of steps ascending the Gianicolo:
Il mio modo de vedere le cose talvolta e ingenuo un po infantile come i bambini della scalinata di Viale Glorioso
My way of seeing things is at times ingenuous and a bit childish like the kids [playing on] the steps of Viale Glorioso.
--To Rome, with love.
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