Monday, July 12, 2010

La Casa di Rosy, Roma
0909 EET

One thing about touring and exploring yesterday that photos and written words fail to convey, is the sheer size of the architecture. Even the ruins where only a low wall or a few colossal pillars still stand. Made of stone, they easily match the height of buildings at home and our four-story house. Some things, where most are low ruins, are in exceptional shape such as the Curia, a brick building which as its roof and restored in the Renaissance; the bronze doors of a temple dedicated to an Emperor’s deceased son named Romolo that’s lock and key work to this day; the altar of Caesar where the statesman was cremated after death which is made of tufa and offerings are still made to him. I regret when walking down the Via Sacra in the Foro Romano that I did not take a picture of Mom and my feet on the cobblestones.

Alanna in Colosseo next to pillar piece.

Big, big, big. And not even the Italians knew. See the level
of the church's door? That was the ground level with the church
was built. They decided to pull down the pillars at one point but
couldn't do it because they didn't know how big they really were.

Roman aged bronze hinges and lock are still functional.

First paved Roman road, the Via Sacra.

Last night I did not sleep quiet as soundly, mostly from the coughing fits and while I was sore and stiff climbing into this bed, this morning at breakfast I was the usual slight ache. Which can be more than expected from the sudden mass amounts of walking exercise I am getting. Thankfully besides the black mark that has rubbed onto me from where my sandal shoe was repaired from Bailey [our six month old chocolate retriever] chewing it apart and has not washed off, my feet are fine. This morning I also sorted my photos (and was able to after remembering to plug in the re-charger at 0500 approximately this morning) and wrote my five postcards.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it again, from reading one of the bilingual sings on Palatino I learned that casa is house and di is of so our bed and breakfast translates as House of Rosy. While touring the Colosseo we also learned that the word arena comes from the Latin word for sand, which was spread in the stage area of amphitheatres, hence arena instead of stage, which is what it is. There was also only one of the twenty-four to twenty-six gladiator types that were permitted to kill another after the spectators gave their verdict. Our guide Serena also recommended a website, Rome 3-D, to view the Colosseo in its complete form.

La Casa di Rosy, Roma
1947 EET

Our time after departing our room around 1030 was eventful. First, we went to Roma Termini to locate where they sold the train tickets and the metro, which we were going to use to transverse to our catacomb meeting place, also done by Dark Rome Tour Group, plus purchase postage and mail our postcards. Well, the lines were intimidating, the metro automated, and of course in Italino, and the wait time at PosteItaliano horrendous. So we decided to go to the Nazionale Romano museum which was recommended by the Oriental archaeologist as a “Roman” museum—and after walking around the building to check it out, wouldn’t you know, it’s closed on Mondays.

So we decided to return to the termini and do our business. Mom went to purchase the train tickets and I to the post office. If we had kept our old ticket number [people take numbers], I would have been called to the counter within three minutes. As it was, we had over an hour wait until our new ticket number, A215, was up on the computer billboard. During that time, Mom used the self-serve for the train tickets and fetched lunch from the Pizza House, where we had our first Italian pizza. When my number went up on the sign board the teller and I, with the assistance of another women waiting to post, purchased forty international stamps at €42.50 [$55.5267] which fortunately I had enough cash on my as they didn’t accept mastercards. Finishing there at 1307 we made our way to the metro, figured out how to use the self-serve to buy tickets at €1.00 [$1.3065] each and boarded from the Termini to Barberini. The escalator for the Barberini station is incredible in length and incline so I most willing rode it all the way to the top, instead of my usual ‘it’s a staircase and you walk on stairs’ mentality.

We arrived forty-five minutes before our catacomb tour started but it gave us time to find an interact machine and withdraw cash, €150.00 [$195.9767] in my case, and locate a gelato shop. A little more pricey than other shops at €2.50 [$3.2663] for a small cone with two flavours, my selection was their tiramisu and white chocolate. The later flavour was divine and had a liberal amount of white chocolate shavings. As for the shop name, the card and receipt have it in a different order so I will write it as the card and sign were: Mamo dream s.r.l. crema & cioccolato.

The gelato is shop between the two motorcyclists.

Piazza Barbarini with Fontano del Tritone.

Fontano del Tritone [Fountain of Triton.]

Retracing out steps to the Fontano del Tritone we meet up with our Dark Rome guides and boarded a bus which took us down Via Appia, past a fortified gate of an old defence wall, the Porta San Sebastiano [Gate of Saint Sebastian] where Roman fathers who were displeased with their newborn children could expose the infants while they were under three days of age, left the infants and the Christians would bury the infant in the nearby catacombs or adopt it if the infant lived. Our destination was the Catacombe di San Callisto, which is one of the sixty-nine catacombs of Roma and one of the few tourists are permitted to visit, built in the 3rd-century under the organisation of Canon Callisto. Callisto was elected by the previous pope to become pope, but Callisto only served for about a year before being exiled to slavery by the papacy. Within the catacombs are the Cripta dei Papi [Chapel of the Popes], which was the crypt for some of the earliest popes, a replica of a statue of Santa Ceclia the patroness of music whose martyr decapitation is shown on the statue by the line on her neck, some frescos of Jesus, the earlier crosses, and other artwork. These catacombs are also notable for the high number of infant burials due to its proximity to Porta San Sebastiano.

A fortified gate of an old defense wall.

Catacombe di San Callisto.

Some prominent things we learned from our engaging and energetic guide Jeremiah [irreverent according to Mom] was that Christians during their prosecution didn’t have secret handshake but a secret foot move of drawing a fish [the earliest sign of Christianity/Jesus] on the ground by putting their foot forward and drawing it back. Also during prosecution, they did not hide out and live in the catacombs because once away from the airshafts there is at best, only twenty-five minutes of air. As Jeremiah humorously described it; put thirty people in one of the larger cubicula, light an Indiana Jones sized torch, which would consume all the oxygen and those thirty people would pass out from oxygen deprivation.

There are two types of burial, within a loculi in the passage walls, which commonly held three poor people within and the cubicula [burial rooms containing loculi] which a wealthy family or families would have dug by the workers who were specialists acclimatized to the conditions digging through the tufa and surrounded by decomposing bodies. The burial loculi were sealed up with terra cotta or a stone slab, which was of marble if the individual or family was wealthy.

When departing the catacombs, across from the cubicula where Jeremiah did his lecture about the structure of the catacombs, were two sarcophagi which when I check on, held some skeleton remains underneath their transparent coverings. One thing about the catacombs is after they ceased being used as burial grounds, ‘barbarian’ invaders would take the bones of saints to extract ransom from the Church, the only group around during that time that really had money, the Church finally removed the important bones (but not before they had three skulls of San Pietro and enough fragments of the cross Jesus was crucified upon to make two hundred crossed) and the entrances and knowledge of the catacombs were lost until a farmer’s cow through a catacomb roof and became the Holy Cow. After purchasing postcards of what we saw as photography was not allowed, we boarded the bus to our second destination: Basilica di San Clemente.

Basilica di San Clemente.

San Clemente of the 1st-century was the fourth pope counting San Pietro. The unique thing about the basilica beyond its Byzantine art is that it has some rare layers beneath the basilica and is an outstanding example of the building and soil layer as well as unique in one of its layers. As Rachel, the other guide told the story while we were on the bus, an Irish monk living in the basilica swore he heard running water underneath the basilica, so he persisted and an archaeological excavation took place and discovered an even larger 4th-century basilica underneath, forgotten.

The Irish monk did not live to discover what the source of the running water sound was, as later excavation discovered a 1st-century Templo di Mithra [Temple of Mithras, an originally Persian god of light and truth, identified with the sun, who slew a primordial bull and fertilized the world with its blood, guardian against evil] which had been built on another 1st-century apartment complex that had been destroyed during Nero’s Fire. So the apartment had indoor sink pluming (which had become backed up over the centuries and become the source of the running water sound, but is running fine now), with partial walls with diagonal pattern as the upper portion which was closets to and supported wood, grass, and thatch roof, had burned. Also original was the chevron pattern floor.

Back within the 4th-century basilica, we examined some frescos that survived, San Clemente celebra la messa, the lowest panel, which depicts one of his miraculous escapes from Roman legionnaires by tuning into a stone pillar. The fresco is complete with speech “bubbles” and the soldier’s leader swearing nastily. It is also monumental because it is one of the earliest known frescos with Italiano in it. The second highlight in that underground 4th-century basilica was a mosaic depicting San Cirillo and San Metodio, who were involved in San Clemente’s story and San Cirillo created the Cyrillic alphabet. The two saint brothers recovered the body of San Clemente from the Black Sea and the anchor he had been tied to for his execution. San Clemente after conversion had originally been enslaved and sent to work in some mines. As royal blood, son of an active senator, and former orator of Emperor Trajan it was just bad politics to kill him—but after he converted his fellow mining slaves and mine soldiers the empire revised that decision.

Not mentioned by Jeremiah but read on one of the signs by myself in the time I separated from the group and got suitably anxious about it, a fresco of Madonna and Child was on view and had been revealed when the overlaying fresco, also of Madonna and Child, had fallen off soon after discovery to reveal the better one underneath. So being reunited with the group after some gut wrenching moments while I attempted to calm myself with thoughts of: I knew where in the city I was, could walk back to La Casa Di Rosy, and had the room keys with me; we progressed back to our third and final stop at Pizzale Barberum where our meeting fountain, Fontano del Tritone, is.

Cappucciai is home to the Cappuccino Order of friars when a monk of the Francisco Order became disgusted the “tad” materialistic nature (Francisco monks with gold rings) of the Roman Catholic Church during the Renaissance broke off and founded the order. The Church after all owns ninety percent of the red Egyptian marble, which is worth millions of euros per cubic centimetre today, with most of the material being a part of the Vatican. The Church was displeased with the criticism that was implied by the Order’s creation and even excommunicated its members before relenting and giving them “temporary” quarters in one location (some 170 years) before giving them their current church and when they moved, the monks wanted to take their brethren with them. So they did and used their bones to decorate the walls. Very artistic and symbolic, the practice was outlawed when Italy was unified under a monarch and the pope became a prisoner within the Vatican, which is why when a bone falls from a wall they are not permitted to restore or replace it. There are four thousand monks contributing to the bone art and a few uniquely mummified bodies after the art practice was outlawed as well as burials in soil from Jerusalem. And yes, the ice cappuccino is named for the monks.

Chiesa Immacolata Concezione, home to the Cappuccino friars.

Some other things learned during the cool tour (deliciously in temperature and history) is that there are over nine hundred ten churches in Roma. Retold for me, but an excellent reminder to write it down, was that the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuell II, also called “Vittoriano,” is heartily disliked by the people or Roma because it’s construction involved the destruction of a Roman apartment complex and the palace where Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni stayed while he was painting the Cappella Sistina and designing the Piazzale Compidoglio where the gilded bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus is displayed.

Also, if we had known how easy it was to use the metro we would have used it much earlier to explore the city. I regret that today is our last full day in Roma as not only is there so much I would like to see, I would like to retrace our tour paths and more leisurely savour the sights.