Villa Borghese

Our only 'booked' event of the Rome part of our trip was our reservation at the museum at the Villa Borghese. After eating at the hotel's complimentary breakfast buffet (quite nice, actually - scrambled eggs, strange bacon, pastries, blood orange juice), we walked up the hill to the Baldo degli Ubaldi metro station and took the train to the Spagna station where I was shouted at for going the wrong way up a flight of stairs. At the top of the (presumably) correct flight of stairs we saw signs indicating that the the left-hand corridor led to the Piazza da Spagna and the right-hand to the Villa Borghese. We emerged from the subway into a not-reassuring, gravelly wasteland next to a busy, guardrailed motorway. We tentatively explored the stretch of wasteland leading away from the station, decided that it couldn't be the right way, turned back, realised that the opposite direction couldn't be right either, turned back again and ventured a little further. The sign fifty yards further along saying "Villa Borghese" might as well have said "This way to be murdered" as far as I was concerned - the surroundings were looking even less promising - gravel, trash, weeds, overgrown chainlink fencing. We saw a man, woman and teenage boy struggling along a little way ahead of us and decided that in numbers lay strength. Getting a little closer to them we overheard the man say "this must be the right direction - there are other people going this way". I turned to him and said "that's what we were just saying about you!" The family turned out to be from Winnipeg and had been in Milwaukee for the son's volleyball event just a few months previously. They had reservations for the same 11 a.m. time slot at the museum and we chatted as we walked along through the park to the Villa. Lovely people.

Paul and I picked up our tickets (amazing that a crap piece of paper printed out from the Interweb weeks before and thousands of miles away can actually be exchanged for something of value) and deposited our chattels at the coatroom. We went back outside to the museum entrance and realised that we had forty minutes before we could enter. While Paul was inside retrieving our cameras I did a little people-watching. There were a lot of runners in the park. One of them, I decided, looked extraordinarily like my brother. Running next to him was a woman who looked extraordinarily like Laura St. Pierre. As I started waving to them, I heard my sister-in-law Carolyn screaming "CHARLIE!". The coincidence broke my brain. We'd made arrangements to visit them at their rooms in the Campo di Fiori the following night - I was mentally unprepared to see them before that. We had a lovely little reunion and then saw them on their way.

The park was very beautiful. There were formal gardens attached to the villa which were bounded by walls and pavilions decorated with statuary and grotesques. In the park beyond there was a mysterious grove of trees, two Mesopotamian monuments, a sarcophagus, a huge classical bust on a pillar and a strange, haunted-looking tower in a clearing.

Back to the Villa for our 11 to 1 time slot. The collection at the museum is astounding. For me the highlights were the five Bernini sculptures, a reclining female figure by Canova and an exquisite Madonna and Child by Bellini. The Baby Jesus ("baby cheeses" for "Modern Family" fans) in most Madonnas and Child look like little men - this one was remarkable to me in that the baby really looked like an angelic little child. Paul got the recorded tour and shared some of the information with me as we walked. Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne" is incredible. Daphne's transformation into a tree is captured in white, Carrara marble in a way that reminded me of those multi-camera views of splashes of liquid one sees in beer commercials - an instant of frantic motion and transformation frozen for eternity. Her outstretched fingers turn into twigs and leaves, rough bark races up her legs and roots sprout from her feet. The delicacy of the carving amazes - Apollo's robe is so thin that light penetrates from behind and, as the guide informed us, when flicked with a finger, the delicate leaves ring like the lip of a wineglass. Seen in subsequent rooms, the artist's "David" and "Pluto and Proserpina" have a similar frozen dynamism - David's lips are compressed in concentration as he winds up to release his sling and one can see the indentations of Pluto's fingers in the soft, yielding flesh of Prosperpina's thigh as rendered in hard, unyielding marble.

We assumed that the 1 p.m. end of our reservation was more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule - not so - at 12:59 an announcement was made and docents began herding us to the exit. Unbidden, the image of Billie Whitelaw's dogs from "The Omen" came to mind - I imagined us being chased by them down the spiral staircase and out into the gardens.

Out into the gardens we went and back the way we came along the wide, tree-shaded path toward the corner of the park. From there we crossed through the Aurelian Wall by way of the Porta Pinciana (I think) and made our way down the Via Veneto to the Piazza Barberini. The Via Veneto wasn't half posh. Lined with luxury boutiques, the street has a sidewalk wide enough to accommodate permanent, glassed-in seating for the restaurants along the way - intriguing little dining rooms with white linen and potted palms. I shudder to think how much even a glass of acqua minerale would cost in one of those places.

Piazza Barberini

The Piazza Barberini was very neat. A neat line of buildings surrounding a neat street with a neat square at the middle, featureless except for the fountain at one end. If there's an image that evokes "The Eternal City" for me, it's the juxtaposition of unchanging, hard sculptural forms with the ephemeral, random designs made by the splashing of water. Bernini's merman blows a conch while sitting atop a shell supported by four dolphins. As at so many of the places we saw in Rome, I found the colors in the scene very attractive - the blue of the sky, the startlingly intense sea-green of the water in the fountain's basin, the mustards and pinks of the buildings behind.

Piazza da Spagna

With all the fantastic shopping to be had in Rome I was attracted to only one sort of display: diecast cars. While working our way down the Via Sistina toward the Piazza da Spagna I saw a tempting array of little cars in a shop window - I don't know if there really are Lamborghinis bearing the Carabinieri livery, but I'd like to think that there are.

The first sign of the Spanish Steps seen from the Via Sistina is the Obelisk (one of many we were to encounter in Rome) in front of the Trinita del Monti church. If Wikipedia is to be believed (and it always is, by me) the obelisk is a Roman imitation of an Egyptian obelisk and not the genuine article. We drank in the view from the top of the steps for several minutes and then descended, like the untold millions before us, into the piazza below. Another pretty fountain to admire, this one with water pouring from the mouth of a sun face.

From the piazza, Paul and I headed down the Via Condotti, fashion emporium central. Give me die-cast cars any day. I admit (grudgingly) that it was fun to see all the crazy window displays: glass, chrome, slick typography on plate glass hovering in front of mannequins arrayed in the latest fashions, exquisitely dressed shop attendants trying to achieve that perfect balance between hospitality and scorn (please allow me to wait on you, you repellent insect).

Piazza Colonna

The narrow street opened suddenly (as we learned that they are wont to do in Rome) onto yet another impressive scene: the Piazza Colonna, a truly square square, tenanted by the column of Marcus Aurelius, commemorating a military campaign by that emperor. For this pilgrim it will always commemorate my first taste of gelato which we purchased and consumed in its shadow, sitting at the edge of the little fountain near its base. I'd always quietly dismissed gelato as a means for unpatriotic, frozen-dessert snobs to denigrate American ice cream and the values that make this country great. (Embarrassed silence) Well, in the shadow of the column of Marcus Aurelius, I learned the error of my ways. Gelato ROCKS! Through a happy mistake in ordering, I came away with TWO flavours, nocciola (hazelnut) and pistacchio in one cup. Heaven. The flavours are amazingly intense. The pistachio had lovely little crunchy bits in it. Patriotism demands that I say that gelato can never replace a bowl of Dean's Moose Tracks but it does indeed stand in a class by itself.

Fontana di Trevi

Our Burma death-march continued in an attempt to find the Trevi Fountain. We wended our way through narrow streets that opened into tiny courtyards, occasionally reassured by little signs reading "Fontana di Trevi". Just when I thought we really WERE going the wrong way, we emerged into the open space opposite the fountain. The scene was the farthest imaginable from that segment of "La Dolce Vita" in which Anita Ekberg and a vodka-fortified Marcello Mastroianni disport themselves in an otherwise-deserted, night-shrouded Trevi Fountain. Seething hordes of tourists (how we hate them!) pressed up against the railings and completely filled the amphitheatre-like steps that descend to the fountain's edge. We eventually found an opening in the crowd at the lip of the fountain on the right side and sat for a while, enjoying the spectacle. I refute my earlier statement to say that it was lovely to rub elbows with so many friendly visitors enjoying the day. People everywhere were volunteering and accepting the photographic services of total strangers, us included.

Pantheon

On, on in quest of the Pantheon. Our search didn't take long - after only a few minutes, we saw the rounded side of the huge structure through a gap between two buildings on the far side of a parking lot. I'd visited the place once before in the virtual world of my friend Donna's XBox™ game "Assassins' Creed". During that visit, Donna scaled the outside of the church (formerly temple to all the gods, hence the name) and climbed down into the coffered dome through the oculus, the round opening at the dome's summit. Our visit was less adventurous - we settled for admiring the exterior from the piazza (another fountain with ANOTHER obelisk - are there ANY obelisks left in Egypt, we ask ourselves?) and then entering through the portico to look up at the amazing concrete dome with its pattern of stepped, square coffering. The building was very crowded - regular announcements pleaded with the crowd in a variety of languages to "observe silence" in respect of the building's modern role as a working catholic church. I imagined an announcement in "American": "Shut the f**k up, already!" I'm grateful that both Marcus Aurelius' column and the Pantheon are both still standing, but I'm of two minds about the statue of the christian saint surmounting the former and the ecclesiastical decorations of the interior of the latter. Part of me wishes that both monuments could be seen closer to their original appearance. I have to remember that statues were having their heads swapped and their bits chiseled off even in ancient times and that those alterations are, arguably, a valuable part of their history. Whatever.

The Pantheon was a must-see for me as it served as an inspiration for Jefferson's Rotunda, the centerpiece of the Central Grounds at my (adopting grotesque parody of southern accent) alma mater, The University of Virginia. The oculus in that dome is glazed, unlike the one at its progenitor which is open to the elements (where DOES the rain go?).

Piazza Navona

Our pop-up map of Rome told us that the Piazza Navona was the logical next stop on our odyssey. It was at around this time that my feet, which had been quietly grumbling since the Via Sistina, started complaining in earnest. Not to be outdone, my stomach joined the chorus a few minutes later. Our second order of business, after emerging into the Piazza Navona and admiring Bernini's amazing Fountain of the Four Rivers, was to find a likely place to eat. One of the restaurants with outdoor seating on the Piazza looked eager enough and we were ushered to a table under an umbrella not far from the central fountain. The late afternoon sun lay in strips across our table - the far side of the piazza was already in deep shadow.

While enjoying a delicate pizzetta and a glass of chianti ("are the lambs still screaming, Clarice?") we soaked in the atmosphere of what might just be my favourite piazza in Rome. The elongated oval of the piazza is the negative space left by the dissolution of the Circus Agonalis, an athletic arena from the 1st Century C.E. - the name of the piazza is a corruption of name of the arena, according to that irrefutable fount of knowledge, Wikipedia. The central fountain (there are two smaller ones at the ends of the piazza) consists of four allegorical figures representing the Danube, Nile, Ganges and the Rio Plata. This last is the river in South America that enters the Atlantic near Buenos Aires. The fountain is surmounted by yet ANOTHER obelisk. One wonders if Egypt has ever tried to get any of them back.

The people-watching in Rome can't be beat - the Navona was at least as crowded with elegant amazons striding along in absurdly high heels and insolently beautiful adonises in tight football jerseys as the other parts of the city we'd seen. Snatches of conversation in every language imaginable were overheard from tourists in garb ranging from the fashionable to the ridiculous (strangely, many of the people wearing Hard Rock cafe t-shirts turned out to be Italian, if not Roman). Two street performers were vying for the attentions of passersby opposite our cafe - unfortunately, both of their acts involved repetitive snatches of music which became supremely annoying after a very few minutes.

The well-defined shape of the piazza, the striking arrangement of the fountains and church, and the colorful backdrop of the surrounding buildings made me imagine the piazza to be a world unto itself.

Reluctantly leaving the piazza, we walked the short distance to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and turned right toward the Tiber. After a brief peek into the Campo di Fiori, we continued along the Corso toward the river. I think it was at the end of that first full day that we discovered "our" place to catch taxis back to our hotel. Just over the bridge was a hospital on the street running along the river. Just past the hospital began a thoroughfare which, after passing under the Janiculum in a tunnel and skirting the south edge of the Vatican, becomes the Via Gregorio VII, a broad avenue with express lanes which went most of the way back to our hotel. All three or four of the cab rides we took during the course of our stay were exciting (terrifying) with the driver weaving in and out of traffic, passing within inches of other vehicles and, once, going into the lane of oncoming traffic in order to get around a slower-moving bus.

The psychological exhaustion of the cab ride, coupled with the physical exhaustion of an epic walk through Rome ensured us a good night's sleep after our first full day in the city.