August 13, 2015
Notwithstanding the title above, my feet didn't start to hurt until my seventh hour on my feet in Rome. I walked across the city to the Villa Borghese, to which I had an 11:00 a.m. ticket.
As I started out at about 8:30 a.m., I thought I'd get there with time to spare. However, the Villa Borghese is in northwest of Rome and off many tourist maps, so I didn't know how to proceed directly. Instead I walked to via Condotti, which leads directly to the Spanish steps and Trinita dei Monti at their top. On a trip to Rome a few years ago I learned that the park of the Villa Borghese is not far from Trinita dei Monti, although that didn't help me, as things turned out.
Nonetheless, I had a nice visit at the Hotel Hassler, perhaps the poshest in Rome. There I got a map from a friendly concierge and realized I had a long way to go before getting to the museum. I scurried and just made it.
The Villa Borghese is full of statues by Bernini, paintings by Caravaggio and many of the finest painters of the Italian Renaissance. It also has the famous statue of a recumbent Pauline Bonaparte, sculpted by Canova in the early 1800s, when Pauline (Napoleon's sister) was Duchess of Guastalla (through her marriage to Camilo Borghese). A famous photograph shows the art critic Bernard Berenson appraising the statue with a quizzical eye, taking in the idealized curves and no doubt remembering the provenance of the famous statue and the prices fetched at each sale.
There is something overwhelming about the splendid marble decorations everywhere. Unlike most other art galleries I've been in, visitors remain largely quiet in the Villa Borghese. In the face of such idealized Roman images, gravitas embodied in every line of the sculptor's, visitors show unusual respect. There is layered on a show of the clothes designed by Azzedine Alaia, all made for women with impossibly long and slender bodies, fashion goddesses at home amidst the others.
After leaving the Villa Borghese I went in search of the first place I stayed in Rome, the Grand Hotel Beverly Hills, near the top of Via Salaria. The hotel is where I stayed with my late husband, Bill Barbeosch, and we only stayed once, as it was so far away from the center of Rome. Although the facade has been modernized, the interiors, all made of fine wood paneling, have remained the same. I had a drink at the little bar where we had had a drink --pressed lemon juice --a drink the Italians call spremuta-- and went on my way.
I was a long way from home. I first had to get myself to Piazza Venezia, near the "wedding cake" monument built by Mussolini that no one ever forgets if they remember nothing else about Rome. That meant walking the length of Via Salaria until it became Via Piave. I ended up near the Baths of Diocletian and from there walked along Via Nazionali.
It was there that my feet gave out. I passed a tiny men's clothing store and thought I would buy socks. They had some, but even with socks, my feet still hurt. So I bought a new pair of sneakers, which was a good move. I was able to get to Piazza Venezia, where I picked up the #8 bus to my stop, Ministerio Publico on Lungotevere Trastevere, two blocks from the studio.
After a cold shower and a change of clothes, I am going to a neighborhood adjoining Trastevere called Testaccio. My former neighbors, Mary Ann and Andrew live there. Andrew is an architect, Mary Ann is a composer, singer and elementary school teacher. They have been living in Rome five years now and have a 2 year old son, Tobias.
After such a demanding day, I think it best to find them and do nothing in preparation for another challenging day tomorrow: I want to see the mausoleum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis museum, Bramante's Tempiello at the very least, if not the Lateran Basilica --the latter which is on the other side of Rome from the former, another long hike.
***
It was very easy to get to Testaccio from where I am, a walk over the nearby Ponte Sublicio, twenty minutes on foot. The area is very green and like the rest of Rome, full of ancient ruins, the Porta Portese most notably. However, I don't have a cell phone, and my friends' name is not on the door of their apartment building, so I struck out. I walked down the street and found a playground, but there was no sign of my friends and their son.
So I looked for a place to sit down and enjoy a beer, as it is still hot and beer is one of the best things to drink in such heat. I found a tiny cafe run by Chinese-Italians and had a sandwich plus beer. Sitting outside, I saw a few customers come in carrying grocery bags and realized there was a grocery store down the street. Once I finished my meal I walked down there and discovered a grocery store that has a great selection of bread and fresh things to eat: marinated mushrooms, marinated zucchini, marinated filets of fish, fresh mozzarella, a culinary lifeline. And they are going to be open from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on ferragosto, which is extraordinary.
It's five minutes of seven and the light will start to fade in an hour, so I'm going to walk up the steps at the end of Viale Glorioso and see if I can make my way to the Janiculum to watch the sun set over Rome.
***
Being a diplomat posted in Rome must be a plum assignment, I've concluded after seeing that the Irish and Spanish embassies are located at the top of the Janiculum Hill (Giancolo in Italian). They are villas with views overlooking all of Rome, reached by winding roads up the hill. In the summer they must be among the coolest places to be in Rome and the beauty of the location --the enormous Baroque fountain La Fontana di Acqua Paola is a stone's throw from both buildings, which are independent villas with gardens.
Rather than return the way I came, I take via Garibaldi to another section of Trastevere, the more touristed areas around Piazza San Dorotea and Piazza Trilucci. Studying the map I realize that when I was that the top of the Giancolo I was not far from the Piazza San Pietro in Montorio where I would find Bramante's Tempiello, one of the architectural treasures on my list. The "must see" items on my list are maddeningly far apart from each other. I am going to have to be quite disciplined to see them all in the days I have, as it takes much longer to get from place to place than I had anticipated.
***
The Italians are so much better dressed than the French, although the French may be more original in their turn-out. While the French frequently appear on television in open-necked shirts without ties and in jeans, the Italian men wear exquisitely tailored suits, rich and modest neckties over shirts of fine cottons. The women, too, are better groomed, their hair neatly dressed, while Frenchwoman (excepting those of the highest strata) always look disheveled and dress like teenagers.
It is as if the Italians were saying "Yes, we know it might be silly all this attention to how we look, but dressing is a way of confronting the world, but gracefully, whatever we might feel inside."
And the Italians believe in beauty, while the French have theorized it away as a social construct. They have not rejected the ideals of classical beauty or its expression in the neo-classic; yet they have embraced their own modernist aesthetic, which manages to be graceful and practical simultaneously in the design of practical objects from Alessi teapots to Fornasetti trays.
***
Yet Italian day-to-day life is just as full of delays and inadequate supplies as French life is, as I learned on a visit to the post office first thing this morning. I took a slip I though was the slip for people waiting on line to buy stamps. A few minutes later I learned I had taken the wrong slip.
I took a new slip --for those queuing for stamps-- and waited. The supervisor, a slender, elegantly dressed man in his 60s came up to me.
"What are you doing with two slips?" he chided. I explained as best I could in my non-existent Italian.
I waited -and waited. When I was finally called by the young man who sells stamps, he informed me that there were no stamps for international mail available at this post office, and I would have to go to another post office. The young man was clearly apologetic, but I had waited so long for nothing, I was genuinely irritated.
I then did something I would never do in France: I crumpled up my queue slip and threw it on his desk, then walked away. As I passed the supervisor (who was determinedly looking away from me) I raised my right hand and made the "thumbs down" sign with my hand as I walked out.
In Italy it is fine to express displeasure with a civil servant. In France you would be taken to task and have it explained to you what decision someone at a higher level had made which the civil servant dealing with you had no power over, but only had to follow, and "Who are you to express displeasure for something over which he or she has no control?"
In Italy you get to speak your mind, even if the official response is just a shrug.
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