Sporca Miseria to Splendor!

I have an ambitious day today and it involves the Metro (subway).  It is a good time to introduce you to the saying "sporca miseria," which means 'dirty misery.' It's wretchedness and it goes something like this:

It's public and it's transport.  No worries.  Because after a few transfers you end up at the metro stop Pyramide! It was built in 18-12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius though they have never found his remains in it.  It might have been raided at some point in history or there may be a chamber they haven't discovered yet.  Anyway, Cestius served in one of the campaigns to Egypt and Nubia and at the time of his death, Egyptian style was in vogue.

Half of it is inside what is now the Protestant Cemetery.  This was just what I needed, a quiet day out of the craziness of central Rome.  It's filled with birds, cats, and beautiful old tombstones.

Goodness.  Wow.  So exquisite. 

Keats and Shelley are buried in this cemetery so I went and had a moment with them.  Then, on to catch another train to Ostia Antica!!  This port city was founded in the 4th century BC.  I guess it started life as a military camp because it essentially 'guards' the mouth of the Tiber.  Hence it's name ... ostium is Latin for 'mouth.' From there it really took off as a port town and they estimate that its population was about 50,000 around the 2nd century AD.  It fell to ruin after the fall of the Empire and was abandoned, its marble 'procured' for other building projects, and then just basically covered by river silt.... which is why it exists in such a primo state.  It's not unlike what happened to Pompeii.

It's huge, acres!  You walk in on this ancient Roman road.  There are mosaic floors here and there.

The bath house has these gorgeous floors feature Neptune and other sea motifs:

There's an amphitheater:

And it's all just ... there.  Just there.  Hey ho.  No one's looking. 

Eine kliene German Romanticism

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, like any German Romantic worth his salt, was drawn to Italy during his life.  In fact, he made a personal pilgrimage to the Eternal City in 1786 with the intention of spending time with artist Tischbein, who ended up painting this rather famous portrait of him:

He stayed with Tischbein, in a little apartment off the Palazzo del Popolo.  Today I visited this residence.  Probably the coolest things in there are his sketches and some thoughts written down on various scraps of paper and journals.

I love the intimacy of things like this.  I bought a book that had excerpts from his diary and here is one of my favorite of his observations:  "I am now in a state of clarity and calm such as I had not known for a long time.  My habit of looking at and accepting things as they are without pretension is standing me in good stead and makes me secretly very happy.  Each day bring me some new remarkable object, some new great pleasure, and a whole city that the imagination will never encompass, however long one thinks and dreams. ... The Colosseum is so huge that the mind cannot retain its image."  (11 Nov 1786)
I simply had to have lunch to ponder it all:

Earlier in the day I went to the Museo Etrusco at the Villa Giulia inside the Borghese gardens.  Again, part of the thrill of museums here is just being allowed into these stunning old homes:

With their courtyards so beautiful.  Who needs a room with a view when you have this?

The collection is vast and unbelievable.  It is mostly the collection of a very wealthy 19th century devotee of Etruscan art.  V v old.  6-7th century BC, darlings.  And so sophisticated and divine!

Here's a very famous couple :)  You have to take a close look at these works or you'll miss their story:

Juxtaposition.... not into it

One comes to Italy to escape the modern.  Why do they insist on setting up these exhibits that juxtapose the modern with the clearly more superior Baroque.  I'm not buying it, dudes.  For example, today I bought skin cream that is banned by the U.S. FDA.  Why?  Because it is made out of god knows what, DNA from Etruscan placenta?  What ever it is, it works.  I don't need to be saved from my skin cream.  I want to live on the edge.  Frankly, Italians know a thing or two about living forever.  They all smoke, they drive like maniacs, they're all emaciated and short, and they live to be 105. 
I think it's all about gusto.  Beefy, gorgeous, no-holds-barred gusto.  Lop off a couple of heads.  In fact, that is today's theme, compliments of Salome and Judith:

Today I headed to several churches that I love, those that have on exhibit lovely paintings that I like to visit:

A little Caravaggio after colazione.  Gorgeous.  Then I simply want to be in other people's villas.  So I went to two museums that are in family homes: the Rome National (Palazzo Altemps) and the Doria Pamphilj.  I am so inspired by these elegant homes and the interior courtyards filled with fountains, trees in pots and statuary:

Chock full of glorious statuary, 'collected' by the uber-rich, pillaged from archaeological sites in the wonderful days before people got too picky about moving a couple of rocks, for god's sake.  And then of course, I'm off to lunch.  What a fantasy life.  Sleeping in, walking, art, lunch.....at a wonderful Tuscan ristorante, where I had pasta and black truffles:

And a gift of a tiny glass of vin santo from my charming waiter...who thought my italiano was splendido!

The Sacred

Northern Rome ~ Parioli!

Since I am indulging myself in a whole week in Roma I have moved up north of the Borghese Villa to a neighborhood called Parioli.  It's a fairly posh area, I think, and there are many huge villas of ages past that are now apartment buildings.  There is also a lot of post-WWII stuff as well.  Typical flats with terraces:

Here is the way to the door of my apartment building:

Jasmine is in full bloom all over Rome!  Here is my bed:

I spent the day wandering around the Borghese gardens.  Then made my way to Castel St Angelo because I've always wondered what it's like inside.  It's a huge, mangled, somewhat dilapidated barracks, not unlike the Liberal Arts building at Boise State.  It was a defense building, made to look imposing and impenetrable.  There are lots of romantic stories of popes running for their lives, catapults, cannons, swashbuckling and torture sessions... again, not unlike the LA building back home.  If you're in to weapons, go see it.  If not, the highlight is surely this beautiful St Michael:

And then you have to stroll across the Ponte St Angelo and marvel at M's angels:

  A presto!

Due per Uno

Darlings,
One of the many fabulous things about life in Italy is the 2 for 1 deal.  Every day is 2 for 1.  You get two days even though it's only one.  Perche?  Because every day is split in half.  You get the morning, then a break, then the afternoon.  This morning I enjoyed an early breakfast at Hotel Sonya.  Their signature 'egg cake' thing, a croissant, and a piece of breakfast cake.  Then I grabbed my Roma Pass (slowly it's making sense) and went to the metro to catch the B ttrain to the Colosseo.  You get there, leave the metro station, and there it is.  Huge.  Colossal.  Though the 'colossalness' of it actually refers to a huge statue of one of the emperors that used to be there.  Sorry, I can't remember which one. 
I skipped the Coliseum and headed to the Roman Forum.  So fabulous.  And so peaceful for about an hour.  I am totally inspired by the notion of Vestal Virgins.  So much so that I have decided  I am one.  Really.  These women were very powerful. Consecrated as symbols of divination and glory.  They were chosen at a young age and committed themselves  to live out their days (not all of them) as virgins.  IF, god forbid, one was caught in the fantastically muscular arms of some BASTARDLY fabulous gladiator, she was condemned.  She was given a loaf of bread and a lamp and then sealed away in a tomb.  I'm totally inspired to redo this notion in my back yard:

But of course the rest of the Forum is beyond belief in its beauty and scale.  You simply have to see it in person.  It is the rhetorical punch of architecture in one lesson:

After all of this fabulousness, there is only one thing to do.  Have lunch.  Ho fame.  So I make my way to Ristorante di Giglio.  My waiter was so marvelous.  He let me speak in broken Italian and never once defaulted to his broken English.  I spoke only in Italian!  And at the end, I told him 'Grazie per aver ascoltato il mio italiano malo' he said, 'no no.  E perfetto.'  Glory!

Lamb of God and potatoes, darlings.
And..... how do they get their torta limone so light and their caffe so heavy?  It's divine:

A Roma! Lo adoro!

Ciao ragazzi!
After a fairly comfortable and uneventful flight I am back in lovely Italy.  Even the nonstop drizzle can't get me down.  Of course, everything is molto fabuloso and I spent my first day pushing through the typical exhaustion one experiences after an international flight and being awake for far too long. I checked in to Hotel Sonya, left my luggage as the room was not ready yet, and took off for a little walk.  I went to a Tabacchi and bought a Roma Pass, which is incomprehensible but gets you free access to public transport and a few museums.  First stop was the National Museum of Rome.  Featuring lots of gorgeous busts and statuary from the Glory Days of antiquity, it is housed what used to be Palazzo Massimo.  The building is magnificent.  It is right next to Roma Termini.  In fact, many of the pieces in this museum were unearthed right in this area.  When construction began on Roma Termini (the train station) they realized they were about to build on top of this massive villa and garbage dump of glorious objets.  THEIR garbage is decidedly better than ours because it included items like:

"The Boxer" ~ An exquisite bronze of muscularity with a tinge of exhaustion and defeat.  His broken nose, his scars and wounds, his wrapped hands complete with metal knuckles, his back muscles....so very fab, and his overall nakedness make him quite the thing to behold!  So very Roman.
And his counterpoint:

"The Disc Thrower" encapsulates the Greek fascination with not just athletic prowess, but more philosophically, the moment... that nano-second moment of splendor when mind and body work in unison!  It's the wind up!  He hasn't thrown the discus yet.  You can see the concentration, the mental part of the sport, on his face.  You are witness to his physical training just by looking at his body.  But perfection in sport is mind and body, in sync.

So of course, that means it's time for lunch, at a lovely trattoria by S. Maria Maggiore:

From there, a very long and confusing walk through ruins:

T

And then, in the Church of St Stephen, a tribute to my beautiful sister, Laura.  (In Italian, you would pronounce it LA-OO-RAH).  There is a marble effigy of him encased in plexiglass.  Slots allow people to drop in notes, photos, pleas for help.  I dropped in a photo of my beautiful sister so she can just be there.