I have decided to risk travelling in these Covid times and provided I don’t succumb to the disease in the coming week I am going to visit Rome for a week.
I have made several visits over the years and will visit again the usual places. It looks like the Vatican museums might be a more appealing prospect with timed entry and reduced numbers. I have been avidly watching webcams of the tourist spots over the past week and am amazed how uncrowded places are that I remember as being heaving (Trevi fountain, Spanish steps etc).
So if anyone has any suggestions for less visited places that might be interesting or objects overlooked in the well known museums I would be very grateful. Simply to hear what people have enjoyed seeing or their favourite books would be interesting to me.
I have Georgina Masson’s guide as well as Amanda Claridge’s Archaeological guide and a literary companion by John Varriano. Aeneid Book 8 might be fun to read there. Gorski and Packer 's Roman Forum is probably a a bit too weighty to carry round.
This trip is very last minute so my post is less focussed than my question last year about the Archaeological Museum in Florence, which elicited helpful replies, but I would be grateful for suggestions. I am staying in Trastevere near the Isola Tiberina.
It may have already come across your radar, but the Torlonia Marbles exhibit looks really interesting.
The items on display are not only outstanding examples of ancient sculpture (busts, reliefs, statues, sarcophagi and decorative elements), but also a reflection of a cultural process – the beginnings of the collecting of antiquities and the crucially important transition from the collection to the Museum
I’d go to SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini for Mass in the authentic Roman rite. It was St. Philip Neri’s first church. If you speak some Italian, this sites has suggestions and itineraries: Roma Segreta
Last year we stayed in a boutique hotel in the Hebrew Quarter (with a manned police car stationed on the street corner 24/7) across from the isola, where every restaurant serves carciofi alla giudia (fried artichokes). They should be in season from November on. I recommend Piperno (very traditional), where I was taken by a Roman friend, but they’re good on the street too.
As to the Ara Pacis, my friend disapproves mightily of the new structure. But she’s very much a traditionalist and holds that every change in Rome is for the worse (except for the forum of course, still under excavation).
But Rome is stale, as well as dangerous. Pass it up and go down to Paestum. Both the site and the Greek temples are a wonder, and were practically deserted even in August. And there’s a water buffalo farm very close by where you can stay and have the world’s best buffala mozzarella in fascinating company.
Thanks for all these suggestions. I am committed to Rome and am already booked. Alas I will miss the fried artichokes. Last time I was in Paestum although I enjoyed the bucolic charm I was mercilessly bitten by the mosquitoes endemic there.
I was concerned at the suggestion that Rome was dangerous. I was once advised that Naples would deliver an unhappy end but I felt quite safe there.
Aetos reminded me of my last visit to the Ara Pacis which coincided with a Valentino exhibition. I was surprised to say the least. But the mannequins brought an element of humour to this somewhat dour, if beautiful, piece of Augustan propaganda.
Thanks for the photos, Seneca! If I’m not mistaken, this is a fashion exhibition. It is intriguing! Whoever decided on the placement of the mannequins seemed to be not only setting an aesthetically pleasing display of Valentino’s creations, but also seemed to be capturing a moment in time where you have a crowd of onlookers or worshippers in red watching a procession of supplicants or priestesses in white approaching the altar, then (as far as I can tell) emerging from the other end in black without any audience.
Hopefully, someday I’ll get a chance to see it (the Ara Pacis, that is)and a lot more of Rome. You’d think I’d have done a lot of sight-seeing when I was flying, but paradoxically, most of my off-duty time was either spent sleeping in hotels or eating at various restaurants and when I had holidays, I preferred to spend them at home with my family, always deferring personal travel till after retirement. Perhaps next year…
There are a number of catacombs along the Via Appia Antica. Last time I was there I visited ‘The Catacombs of Saint Calistus,’ info. here: https://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/index.php. (Be sure to get a return ticket for the bus as you can’t buy tickets on board)
Rome is still one of my all-time favourite places. I managed to get in a fortnight there and in Florence just before the lockdown earlier this year.
Starting with restaurants not too far away from where you’re staying, definitely get the cacio e pepe at Roma Sparita; depending on your coffee addiction, I’d still start the day by walking over to Sant’ Eustachio for an espresso. As for the sites, you may already know that some of the best ones are off the tourist trail: you don’t need to queue to get into San Giovanni in Laterano, the mother of all Catholic churches (not St Peters).
I spend at least one day each time in Rome walking from the Spanish steps area where I normally stay all the way down to the Via Appia Antica, and still find it amazing that you can go by foot (OK it’s a long walk) from the historical centre of a major city to real countryside where you can be on your own with ruins for hours. There are good restaurants down that way; in January I found one that serves a dessert straight from an ancient Roman cookbook, sort of like a panna cotta, but covered in black pepper—strange but delicious. You won’t really need too many restaurant recommendations in Rome though, it’s pretty easy.
Many other beautiful and pretty famous (but not as famous at the most famous) churches are usually pretty empty of tourists, e.g. Santa Maria in Ara coeli, as are many of the smaller museums, e.g. if you are walking down the via Appia, you can pop up onto the old walls for free by going into the little non-descript glass door leading up to the Museo delle Mura at the Porta San Sebastiano; there are also really nice parks outside the main ones if you like that. There’s lots of new things to discover each time if you look around you to explore rather than delving into the guides.
It turned out that the most extraordinary thing about this trip was not so much the opportunity to visit new less visited sights but rather the unique experience of being able to visit the most famous sights without the usual crowds. I spent a day in the Vatican museum and was often in a gallery on my own. I had to pinch myself as I stood in the octagonal courtyard in front of the Laocoön totally alone. Last time I saw it I was jostled out of the way my an ill-tempered chap who wanted to photograph it and was perplexed that I just wanted to look at it. The crowds then were unbearable. This was heaven. Lots of time to sit down and think. All very sad for the Italian economy but perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity for visitors.
It took me a while to work out that whilst it seemed compulsory to make on line reservations, one could often turn up and make a booking in person often for immediate entry or for a later day (as I did at the Galleria Borghese). So I missed a lot of things through lack of organisation - some of the on-line-booking systems were far from straightforward. But there were many compensations. There is nothing quite like just wandering around and seeing parts of ancient Rome peeping out from later construction.
A highlight was an afternoon and early evening in the forum and on the Palatine again untroubled by crowds or the “whistle women” who incessantly hailed those climbing on the ruins to admonish them. It was quiet and peaceful. The changing light making even marble seem warmer.
I hadn’t visited the house of Augustus before and am keen now to read Wiseman’s The house of Augustus: a historical detective story ( Bryn Mawr review here at https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2020/2020.09.23/) . Nothing better than wandering in the warmth of the sun and a light breeze… In the forum the area around the Curia and the Lapis Niger were all off limits. This is being developed to “allow visitors to make more sense of the site” possibly with some kind of access to the underground chamber.
I even came to quite admire the Vittorio Emanuele II monument. When I first saw this as a child all I could was lament that the Capitol had been gouged out to accommodate it. (Influenced no doubt by my father’s very adverse views on it). The history of the republican and imperial fora is one of change and remodelling and this is just another example of that. I wonder if those who first saw Constantine’s basilica were as offended by the bombast as my father was by the Altar della Patria. A week spent looking at many Roman statues left me with a strong sense of alienation. The more I looked the less I felt I understood.
St Peter’s seemed to me a very inhuman place. I was disappointed that my favourite tomb, that of Alexander VII by Bernini was roped off for no apparently good reason. There was hardly anyone there. I was more than compensated by seeing the Ecstasy of St Teresa in the Conaro chapel in a deserted Santa Maria della Vittoria. In several places I also had my fill of Caravaggio. On my last day I was surprised by Gnocchi Cozze e pecorino. It was delicious and seems to be the exception to not serving cheese with fish/molluscs in Italy. Cacio e pepe with tonarelli was delicious. It was my own fault that some of the food was awful but when you are tired and you just want to eat you take what’s at hand.
I am both happy for you and worried for you regarding this trip…that I only noticed now.
Please make sure to keep a mask on at all times except in your own room, and eat while relatively separated from other people…or better yet just eat in your room to be safe.
Thanks for your concern but I felt completely safe in Rome, in fact much safer than I am in London where social distancing is rapidly becoming a distant memory and mask wearing although obligatory on public transport widely ignored.
But we are such a freedom loving nation or so our great and beloved leaders tell us. I rather think the fact that the UK is amongst the worst performers in the pandemic in Europe has much to do with the incompetence of those supposedly in control.
To bring this back to Rome here are some pictures from the so called Trajan’s Markets (more like offices is the current view) and the celebrated column which was at one time surrounded on two sides by a Latin and Greek library. A kind of spiritual home for Textkiters.
And especially for Aetos as I owe him something as I didn’t visit the Ara Pacis again, how about this statue from the Galleria Borghese? The subject is unmistakable (and I think is close to his heart) - an early work by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in collaboration possibly (?) with his father Pietro.
Thank you, Seneca! The photos are beautiful. The only pictures I’ve seen of this sculpture are black & white illustrations in my textbooks, so I very much appreciate your sharing these with us and you’re right-the subject is close to my heart. I’m sure most of the folks here will recognise the subject of the sculpture, but for those who don’t, this is Aeneas escaping from Troy, carrying his father Anchises who is holding the household gods(Penates), whilst tagging along just behind him is his son, Ascanius (Iulus). This scene is described in lines 692-725 of book II of the Aeneid. Not long after this scene, Aeneas loses Creusa, his first wife and the first victim of his destiny. Dido was the next.
