Two churches

My father dragged us to churches all across Europe, and my and brother and I fought him every step of the way.

But now...

Here are two of the most beautiful little churches I know, just a hundred yards from one another.  

San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane (Borromini, 1646) and (the last image), Sant'Andrea al Quirinale (Bernini, 1661).

Pines

Every morning as the water heats up in my Moka coffee pot, I look out the window of the 2^nd floor kitchen.  The view across the street includes a formal garden in a building owned by the Academy but rented out to the American representative to the Vatican.  Beyond, down the hill of the Janiculum, is the city center.  And framing the view are a group of remarkable umbrella pines, to me the symbol of the city.  They are more powerful even than the ruins. When I first flew into Rome, in 1984, I remember seeing the pines from the plane.  I was reminded of this when I arrived last Monday morning in the rain.  I saw a huge stand of the trees near the coast and know that my Roman adventure had begun.

What is it about these trees that so evokes a place?

I hope to spend more time exploring their story – their natural history and human history – in the coming weeks.

For now, I think I’ll listen to Respighi’s Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome), which Eric Nathan pointed me to.

Bureaucracy, Italian Style

My Italian colleagues may believe there is something uniquely awful about Italian bureaucracy.  But I have heard this as well from colleagues in Argentina and Germany, and the United States.  We almost revel in decrying the awfulness of bureaucratic entanglements.  But I think that each country or city contributes its own particular seasoning to bureaucratic frustrations.  

I love public life and government, as you all well know.  But I am not immune to the petty frustrations that come along sometimes, to test our mettle.

Today, I take the plunge into Italy's bureaucratic soup, in pursuit of my required permesso di soggiorno."  I think it means that I pay a bunch of money both to acquire and file a series of forms which will make my extended stay in this country legal.  I paid nothing for my study visa -- thank you, Italy -- but will be a good bit more for this forms, which includes, to be fair, a contribution to the health care system.  (Of course, to get my visa I had to prove that I have health care that will cover me while in Italy!).

Gianpaolo, a very helpful staff member at the Academy, filled out the forms for me and explained the process.  

I take the forms to the post office and will pay a series of fees for the permesso.  However, although I will pay the fees at the post office, I must go to a tobacco store to purchase the marco di bollo, the stamp that will show that in fact I paid.  In other words, I buy the receipt in one place, for the payment in another.  I will then get a receipt and an appointment for another visit to an office on the edge of the city where I will prove who I am, prove that I am here to study, prove that I paid the fees.  I was urged, as well, to make a copy of the post office's own copy of my receipt -- that is, the one THEY keep in order to return to me my formal card a few months from now -- because it often gets lost in their files.  "Make a copy on a full-size piece of paper," Gianpaolo suggested, "so it is easier for them to find."  Okay!

And then, as is common everywhere, in all bureaucratic encounters,  I will wait.  And at some point, likely months from now, I will be notified that I must return to the post office to pick up the actual card, which will show that I am legally able to be here.  Then, probably a week later, I will fly home.

Buona fortuna!

Weary Feet

I walked the entire length of the Aurelian Walls yesterday – a good 12 miles.  Jan Gadeyne, professor of archaeology, led his students from the Temple University program, along with a bunch of us from the Academy and a host of others.  It was about 50 or sixty people during a counter-clockwise walk around the city. Jan has led this walk 48 times over the past twenty-five years.  It was a fantastic introduction to the city, as we weaved in and out of the walls, seeing the neighborhoods that ring the historic center.  As a former tour guide, I especially appreciated Jan's good balance of information, enthusiasm, and just plain walking.

More on the walk later, but suffice it to say that today's cold rain is providing an easy excuse to stay in doors and rest my weary feet!

Here are a few photos I took along the walk.

A few more views of and from the Academy

Words about the Pantheon

Here are a few of my favorite comments about the Pantheon

From Eleanor Clark, Rome and a Villa (New York: Atheneum, 1982; orig. 1950):

The spaces are shocking.  They are close too, and give no warnings, so that suddenly the Pantheon or the huge volutes of Sant’ Ignazio are crowding right over you; you are not allowed to stand off, it seems you are not allowed to admire at all; it is as though a giant mother were squashing you to her breast. (p. 53)

The sense of touch is especially strong here, the space being tiny in relation to the dark immensity of the Pantheon columns and their associations.  There is a jungle craziness in the proportions, crushing on short acquaintance, of which the modest obelisk with a cross on top and the water, the whole raised by a few steps, are the secrete balancing point…There is something of the sacred grove about this square, which affects its more or less hobo occupants, and it is surely from the sense of this that Piranesi gave so strange a perspective to his best etching of it, putting the Pantheon off at an impossible distance with the little fountain grandly spreading in the foreground. (p. 79)

From John Varriano’s A Literary Companion to Rome (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1991):

The Pantheon “has this great advantage:  it requires only two moments to be penetrated by its beauty.  You stop before the portico; you take a few steps, you see the church, and the whole thing is over.” 

--Stendhal (p. 156)

….its begrimed surface, its fissures and mutilations, and the half-effaced inscription of its architrave, give it a maimed and invalid appearance.

            --Hippolyte Taine, Italy, Rome and Naples (1868)

The Pantheon stands in a narrow and dirty piazza, and is shouldered and elbowed by a mob of vulgar houses.  There is no breathing-space around, which it might penetrate with the light of its own serene beauty….On one side is a market; and the space before the matchless portico is trewn with fish-bones, decayed vegetables, and offal. 

            --George Hillard, p. 157

Shalt thou not last? – Time’s scythe and tyrants rods

Shiver upon thee – sanctuary and home

Of art and piety – Pantheon! – ride of Rome!

            --Byron  (1812-1818),  p. 158

By ar the most beautiful piece of ancientry [sic] in Rome is that simple and unutterable Pantheon to which I repeated my devotions yesterday afternoon.  It makes you profoundly regret that you are not a pagan suckled in the creed outworn that produced it.  It’s the most conclusive example I have yet seen of the simple sublime.

            --Henry James (1869), p. 158

The great slanting beam…was visible all the way down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust or a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the shadow.  Insects were playing to and fro in the beam, high up towards the opening.  There is a wonderful charm in the naturalness of all this…So the sunbeam would represent those rays of divine intelligence which enable us to see wonders and to know that they are natural things.

            --Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (1860), p. 159

Tasso's Oak

The poet, Torquato Tasso (died 1595), spent his last years at the monastery of Sant'Onofrio.  He is said to have planted an oak by which he would sit and write.  Literary admirers from Goethe to Henry James and John Cheever came to pay their respects.

The oak survives, sort of.  Held up by rusty I-beam's, it is a poignant work of preservation.

But this is the difference between Rome and New York.  The Stuyvesant Pear Trees (which I wrote about in The Creative Destruction of Manhattan) were planted not that long after Tasso died (around 1647, by the new Governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant) and lasted until 1867, when a collision on what was now 13th Street and 3rd Avenue felled the dying tree.  The New York Times reported on the event.  Unlike the Tasso Oak, which appears quite dead but is preserved on the spot, well over 400 years ago, the Stuyvesant Pear was promptly taken down with a health slice deposited in the New-York Historical Society where you can visit it today.