Le Cose Romane

So far, Roman Holiday hasn’t devoted much time to Rome. We’ve been talking about highlights and big events, but there has been an absence of the excellent filling in between all of that, which is Rome, of course, the temporary hometown.

The task at hand is daunting because everyday resembles a routine but manages to always be different. Over simplifaction--le cose italiane che faccio spesso—Italian things that I’ve been doing regularly: walking extensively, visiting physical architectural history on a daily basis, saying hello to strangers, jaywalking, managing brutally small breakfasts consisting of caffeine and the smallest pastry in the world, tramezzini, panini, pizza a portare via (to go), street markets, drawing buildings, churches, ruins and scenes that I find interesting, cooking four dinners a week with my Italian roommate Antonio and fellow American abroad student Scott, enjoying a beer everyday—preferably in front of an ancient monument, playing soccer, and finally, trying to speak as much Italian as possible.

American things that I have not been doing: useless snacking, watching television, eating unhealthy food, being lazy, actually studying, wasting time, taking things for granted, spending time online (save travel planning), worrying about my future, enjoying myself only on the weekends, applying for internships, concerning myself about summer jobs, facebook, sleeping in.

I’m so dumb to have left until now all of the information I now feel obliged to convey. There is a great deal of very excellent things occurring constantly that deserve recording. So it would be best to divide into categories: epic architectural/art sites visited, academia, food, and daily routine.

Remains of the Temple of Saturn, Roman Forum

---Epic Architectural Sites Visited:

There are a few of these places in Rome. From the period of antiquity, I’ve visited and spent significant time observing the Pantheon, Roman Forum, Via Saccra, Forum Boarium, and Imperial Fora. The Roman Forum and Imperial Fora, along with the Forum Boarium, offer the most extensive glimpse into ancient Roman civic life. Ruins ranging from rubble to complete columns provide the archaeological evidence that allows for accurate reconstruction drawings that we can use now to speculate about the ancient Roman architectural environment. The Forum is especially great for this, because it has always been a sacred place in Rome—and always is a long time, because Rome is old. The forum was the center for civic life in the city’s early development and continued to thrive during the height of Rome’s imperial dominance. It contains the critical political, civic, religious, and honorary buildings of early Rome, and was recognized during its use as a sacred place in general, a hub for Roman culture, and the physical embodiment of the center of an empire. There is a point in the forum that is still there which marks the official center of ancient Rome. All distances were calculated from this point. When you consider how far the empire grew to be in the centuries after Christ, that point is really a remarkable place.

Part of an Architrave, somewhere on the ground in the Forum. This thing could have rested 75 ft in the air, but it still had to perfect.

From the Forum grew the Imperial Fora, or additional forums added on by emperors Caesar, Augustus, Nerva, and Trajan. These new areas expanded the public space in the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills to include the area approaching the Quirinale hill, northeast of the original forum. For one of my classes we were able to visit the forum of Trajan, whose ruins now lie along the Viale dei Fori Imperiali, to see the remains of one of these imperial fora. Excellent.

Trajan's Market, next to Trajan's forum. The columns in the lower left are the remains of the semicircular exedra of Trajan's Forum. The market echoed that shape.

This is a pretty ugly rendering of Trajan's forum, but its useful to locate the last picture. The exedra, whose ruins you can see in the photo, is the semicircular room to the extreme right of the trees.

In present day Rome it is hard to imagine what this area looked like because many of the basilicas were three stories high, with colonnades and porticos containing over 20 columns spaced 10 feet apart. When Trajan added the final imperial forum in 106 AD the area of the Imperial Fora was a tightly woven and spectacular collection of public buildings that provided the infrastructure for critical daily civic functions.

Bored yet? Brutal.

There is a lot more to recount about the Rome of antiquity that I’ve been able to enjoy, but I need to move on. Suffice to say that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time at some great ancient sites with my sketchbook and I’m beginning to develop an understanding of the type of built space that characterized the ancient city.

The second category, I suppose, has to include all churches of the Christian era, from medieval to Renaissance to Baroque. There is one Gothic cathedral in Rome, but I have yet to go. I’ve been to a lot of churches and I haven’t even scratched the surface of Rome’s collection. It seems that for every three square blocks there is one church. There’s no point in going into any detail about them, but there is one facet that is really interesting and generally applicable to most of the architectural sites in Rome. Because Rome, unlike any other city in the world, really, has always had something going on inside of its walls for basically 2300 years, give or take a few hundred, a great deal of the architecture is layered on top of something that preceded it. In other words, it is common to find a church that was originally built in the early Middle Ages on top of the foundation of a pagan temple or basilica from antiquity. That church was then renovated in the 11^th century, redesigned or renovated again in the 15^th Century Renaissance, and then renovated again in the baroque. Columns, pilasters, and capitals from ancient Rome, removed from their original site, are placed oddly in the colonnade of a medieval church that has a Baroque ceiling fresco. This is simply a reality of a building that has survived for 1500 years, and in many cases the architects that followed with renovations were very successful in combining the old with the new. [Borromini’s baroque renovation of San Giovanni in Laterno comes to mind as a particularly successful example.]

Renovated nave of S. Giovanni in Laterno, Borromini architect. E' bello.

That, I suppose, is the theme of the city—for architecture and everything else, because Rome is in a constant civic struggle to be a global capital in 2008 and a physical representation of 2000 years ago all at the same time. Its great to observe this phenomenon because preservation/innovation is a big part of architecture anywhere and the relationship is constantly being stretched to its maximum limits here in Rome. Probably more than any other place in the world.

The next highlight has to be our recent trip to the Musei Vaticani, which houss a small percentage of the amazing and unfair collection of art owned by the Catholic Church. The majority of it, I’m assuming, is in some secret lair in a tunnel. The part we do get to see is excellent, though, and this past Wednesday, Antonio, Scott and I spent the better part of the day perusing the collection.

Sculpture at Musei Vaticani, sculptor unknown

Despite the presence of the Sisteen Chapel, which is obviously immaculate and incredible, my favorite part of the Vatican Museums was the Stanza della Segnatura, the Raffaello room that houses the amazing “Scuola di Atene” and “La Disputa del Sacramento” frescoes. Not gonna go into it because they are way too good for words. Each painting has an incredible story behind it and there is so much to enjoy. Google them. And visit them.

I also made it to the Borghese Gallery a while back to see its famous collection of Bernini sculpture and Caravaggio chiaroscuro. The Borghese is probably my favorite museum that I’ve ever visited. The building itself is absolutely incredible. The Borghese family was rich, and their gallery is about as ostentatious as you can get. The ceiling fresco itself in the entrance hall is expansive and worthy of at least 2 hours of your time. Unfortunately you only get 2 hours in the museum before they shuffle the next group in, so you have to move on and bring your eyes down to street level.

The Bernini sculptures are amazing. I’m seeing a lot of things here in Italy that I’ve already seen on slide presentations, so that feels nice. The Bernini sculptures at the Borghese feel the best. MAN they are good. I get excited thinking about them here at the keyboard. Go to Rome immediately and indulge in this brilliance. The Rape of Persephone. David. Apollo and Daphne. Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius. They are all in one place, they are all waiting for you, and they are all the best thing you have ever seen.

I’ve been to many other churches on my own and for some of my classes at IES, but I think it best to move onto “Academia”.

---Academia:

Classes at IES are unfortunately not that great. They are not demanding but still manage to take up time, and they are not providing information that I could not find on my own. On the up side, they do employ Rome’s incredible urban landscape on a weekly basis—site visits occur for 2 of the 3 hours of class time each week. So, at least for most of my class time in my architecture and archaeology classes, I am out in the field observing important sites in the city.

S. Clemente: Medieval church, built on top of a Roman house of antiquity, then renovated in the baroque with a 19th century ceiling. Thats what happens in Rome.

The more exciting class is my drawing and painting class at RUFA—Roman University of Fine Arts—where I go every Wednesday from 6-9 pm for a great studio art class. The teacher is excellent and my desire to improve my ability to observe/record/render has increased 100 fold. The RUFA class coupled with my own desire to fill my sketchbook should result in a good collection of drawings and renderings by the end of the semester.

Enough about school. Moving on to Food.

Food in general is outrageous. The quality of ingredients is top notch and the markets are great. We’ve been cooking as much as possible, which has been great because it is much less expensive and the result is 95% of the time much better. My roommate Scott is a much more accomplished in the kitchen than I am, but we make a lot of our meals together and I’ve been learning a bit from him as well as from our Italian roommate, Antonio. The kitchen is always stocked and we’ve been eating like champions. The diet is carb/protein heavy, but we get our good share of fruit and vegetables in from the markets to even everything out. Cheese and cured meats are unbeatable, so well conceived snacking is a regular occurrence.

A beer everyday, as demonstrated by the boys. If we use the size of the beer as a judge, I think that must have been a Tuesday.

The food section wouldn’t be complete without describing the almost daily lunch routine exercised by Ethan and me + whoever else is interested on that given day. We frequently make the 10 minute walk from IES to Campo dei Fiori where we get some of the best pizza in Rome at Forno de’ Campo, a great forno with always fresh pizza and pastries. Its cheap and excellent. My favorites are the pizza pomodorini, which is a plain thin crust with small sweet tomatoes, oil and spices, along with the pizza melanzane, which has eggplant and a bunch of other tasty things on top. From time to time ill get a rice pastry for dessert. Excellent. We always finish lunch off at the market in Campo that has great fresh fruit. The blood oranges are my personal favorite—so good.

Gelato, cappuccino, and cornetti in the morning round out general consumption. I really like the Italian morning routine. Everyone makes time for a pit stop at a favorite caffe, which gives you time to enjoy the necessary morning fuel and meet people that are on the same schedule. I have a place right outside my door that makes every morning a good one.

Jam Session at Charity Cafe, tutti giovedi

More about food in later posts, hopefully. The next item in the list is daily routine. One paragraph about that will do. Wake up, shower, cappuccino and cornetto at Nero Café, field study on site or trip to IES, class, lunch out and about, Italian, back home, a beer or glass of wine with a friend, dinner effort in the kitchen back home, half hour of homework, and something fun at night. That is the template, always open for change. Wednesday night adds my class at RUFA—Tuesday night adds soccer in Bologna at 10, and Thursday night is my favorite jam session at Charity Café. Not bad.

That’s an unfortunate recapitulation of what really has been an amazing first five weeks in Rome. The highlights have been so high and the daily life has been spectacular. I am enjoying every moment—anything “bad” isn’t really that bad and everything “good” is extra good. I live the good life here, there’s no doubt about it. The only fear is that I’m not doing a good enough job at soaking it all in.