Today’s I offer you a Guest Blog of my sister Deborah’s recent visit to Rome. It is truly a compelling read and captures the fascination and sheer grandiosity of this amazing city.
The Baths of Caracalla
I wanted to share with you some of my memories and photos from my recent trip to Rome. It was my first visit to the Eternal City and it changed my life. My eyes, ears, heart, and soul were opened and filled with the light, art, music, culture and beautiful citizens of Rome.
The world now shines a little more brightly for me. I find myself smiling a lot – when I wake in the morning, in the middle of a business meeting (yes, I have a new grant writing contract) and just about any time I look at these photos. It is all part of my transformation that involves taking really good care of me and releasing a lot of the old patterns and behaviors that have held me back from realizing my perfect life.
View from Forum looking toward Monti
What a contrast from where I was just four months ago when I was sacked from a job that I thought would take me into retirement. I spent about a week in my pj’s watching old movies and feeling sorry for myself, then decided to put together “Team Deb,” a group comprised of a therapist, trainer, chiropractor, PT, life coach and hypnotist. I begged, bartered, used savings and began a process of imagining my perfect life, releasing old wounds, no longer looking back and longing for what was but nurturing and caring for myself, developing greater self-awareness and focus. I decided to seize any opportunity that would support me in my new endeavor. Then Carlota Baca, my good friend in Santa Fe, invited me to be her guest for three weeks in an apartment she had rented in the Monti neighborhood of Rome. God bless Carlota. Her generosity enabled me to have a life-altering experience I will never forget.
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Rome has always been considered the greatest open-air museum in the world and walking is the only way to see it. Traces of its layered history can be found on every street and corner. On our walks we regularly encountered Bernini, Rafael, Michelangelo, Hadrain and Caesar, to name a few. We started out doing extensive guidebook and map research to find the exact location of a sculpture, fresco or ancient site we wanted to see. I was happy to let Carlota – a lover of maps (and a trained orienteer) who is familiar with Rome – lead the way but after the first week I chose to discard the map in favor of getting lost. It was so much fun to just drift and wander and then suddenly find myself, without knowing how, at the Piazza Navona or the Pantheon. O Gods, the Pantheon – the most perfect architecture in the world created for all the Gods. No accident that I just kept ending up there.
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In a sensory feast of art overload, helped with copious quantities of wine, Rome swims before your eyes, the languid ocher walls glowing in the afternoon light, the sound of fountains, twisting streets that must have witnessed intrigues, brawls and vendettas during the Renaissance, now populated with swaggering Romans brandishing cell phones; the smell of wet cobblestones, clay and dank old limestone wafting out of construction sites halted forever by the discovery of even more ancient ruins.
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I loved being in such an ancient city with so many layers of culture, similar in that respect to my beloved Santa Fe. However, despite all the famous names, historic landmarks, ancient ruins, untold layers of stucco, plaster and paint slapped on over the centuries; despite so many buildings grafted on to generations of older buildings – what ultimately matters the most are the small, simple, everyday pleasures: wonderful water, great coffee, incredibly delicious food and wine, marble warmed in sunlight, and people – some of the most beautiful people in the world.
There was also great music to choose from with concerts in churches just about every night and reasonably priced tickets, although the acoustics can be iffy. We lucked out and heard a wonderful performance of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor at an Anglican church named St. Paul’s Within the Walls.
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I also managed to do some work while I was in Rome (I am once again working in renewable energy). I met with Tony Piccolo, an Aquatic Biofuels specialist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations which is headquartered in Rome. Tony has developed a process of combining algae and fish ponds for biofuels production, food and income generation in developing countries. Check it out: www.aquaticbiofuel.com
Back to Art: Carlota and I were obsessed with Bernini’s sculpture. His brilliance can be found at the Vatican, in fountains and at churches, especially at St. Maria della Vittoria where the Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila can be viewed in all of her spiritual and astonishingly sexual demeanor. But it was at the Villa Borghese Museum where I stood in awe of Apollo and Daphne, wondering how it was possible to make marble appear as light as laurel leaves – until I saw Pluto and Persephone where Pluto’s fingers are pressed into the soft, vulnerable flesh of Persephone’s thigh as she cries marble tears and struggles vainly from his grip. That was just the first floor! The painting gallery above was filled with works by Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio and many more.
To further gild the lily, there was an exhibition of a collection of Caravaggio’s paintings juxtaposed with those of Francis Bacon. The two artists were similar in that they were both considered the “bad boys” of their respective periods, painting dark portraits of saints and popes and other characters. They both still have the power to shock, disturb and fascinate. My point and shoot camera couldn’t do justice to the art and interiors – get a book.
The Borghese villa is set in an enormous park that provides the “lungs” of Rome and helps to mitigate some of the air pollution. It is full of trails, gardens, fountains and the ubiquitous Roman umbrella pine. We were so fortunate to have lovely weather – in the 70’s during the day and 50’s at night, with enough rain to make the City look and smell even more wonderful.
Our neighborhood, Monti, was the red light district of Ancient Rome (and believed to be where the fire started) so, of course it was located just opposite the Forum. This location gave us access to everything we wanted to see, like the Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill designed by Michelangelo. He created an exquisite trapezoidal piazza, with a gradual, ramp-like staircase that leads to the street below. In the center of an oval shape is the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius and lots and lots of tourists.
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On another walk we crossed the Tiber into Trastevare – the neighborhood that claims to be the “true” Rome – to hunt for more Bernini sculpture which we found at the Church of San Francesco a Ripa where St. Francis himself once stayed as a guest. Bernini really had a thing for women in states of religious ecstasy. His sculpted Beata Ludovica in Ecstasy reclines in a very earthy brand of ecstasy on a couch with the most exquisite sculpted drapery. We lunched at a lovely trattoria (is there any other word to describe the eateries of Rome?) where we had spaghetti cacao e pepe – the simple and mind-blowingly fabulous Roman specialty of pasta served with cheese and pepper.
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A walk through the Ghetto was bittersweet. We visited the Great Synagogue, built in 1904 of travertine marble with an Assyrian-Babylonian style dome. Jews have been in Rome for 22 centuries – before the Diaspora. It is one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. There were 40,000 Jews that lived in ancient Rome and they had 13 synagogues to choose from. Roman Jews survived the edicts of Popes and the Nazis who emptied it of 4,000 souls; only 16 survived.
Kosher Bakery
At a kosher restaurant we dined next to a large family celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of a Jewish couple that lived in the Ghetto. It was a joyful event and they were happy to share with us that the wife was the niece of one of the 16 Jews that survived the Nazis!
I could go on but I’ll wrap it up a few more shots – of new friends and favorite places that I want to revisit.
“A lifetime is not enough to know Rome,” the old adage goes – and I now know that to be true. I’ll end with a quote from Paul Theroux: “Travel is a funny indulgence – the simple challenge of congenial strangeness to animate portions of the body and soul. Embracing the unknown to find the familiar; a way of remembering.”
By Guest Travel Blogger – Deborah Boldt
Your Cruising Editor 