A Short Guide to Rome

By Lars Kaaber

The following pages are basically a guide I wrote for the benefit of some friends going to Rome ten years ago and they have since been passed on, updated and amended (the pages, not my friends). I have listed the absolute 'musts' of Rome and added a few of my favourite items for good measure. The list is by no means exhaustive (as no list can be; there is no end to the Eternal City), but it is sure to exhaust you if you try to make it in less than five days. However, if you hope to convince friends and neighbours at home that you have truly been to Rome, I advise you not to skip too much.

To anyone going to Rome;

In general:

      As you will quickly learn, most of Rome is yellow ochre. The oldest buildings have been washed in this particular colour and more recent ones have followed suit. The two kinds of trees dominating Rome are stone pines and cypresses. The cypresses are the pointy ones and the stone pines are the flat ones – Hans Christian Andersen called them ‘open and shut umbrellas,’ which is very apposite. These three aspects: the yellowish colour, the cypresses and the stone pines are in themselves sufficient to identify Rome in a couple of seconds – should you be in doubt where you are (for instance, on a two-week European bus trip). No other city is quite like Rome.

      You need to get an overall view of the city, and in this connection some useful advice is in its place.

      The part of town known as “Rome” (if one is a tourist) is not an alarmingly large area, and everything is within walking distance. The northernmost sight on my list is the Borghese Park, the westernmost is the Vatican and St. Peter’s, the easternmost sight is the Scala Santa (at the Lateran Church), and the southernmost is the Aventine Hill (where you will – and must – find the ‘keyhole’) and the Protestant Cemetery - the latter being actually outside the city proper.

Busses: No no. You can’t buy tickets on the bus, but must purchase them at some tobacconist  who closes his shop around 5.30 pm or whenever he feels like it. You may be fined for riding the bus without a ticket. You can also trust your luck – I’ve never been caught, but then again, I rarely ride the bus. In Rome, I prefer to walk.

Trains: Not on your life. At any rate not during rush hours when you are likely to be accosted by some unauthorised collector, in which case the fare is everything in your purse or wallet (including purse and wallet and all).

Walking, then – the Roman traffic can be a forbidding sight, especially with the knowledge that there are Italians behind the wheels. What’s more, you will find that very often absurdly narrow and deserted streets are equipped with zebra crossings and traffic signals whereas many main roads, although broad as the Bosphorus, leave pedestrians entirely to their own devices. But be without fear. Keep your cool and signal clearly to the drivers that you intend to cross by venturing slowly out on the road. Never run – walk with determined steps into the mayhem. You may raise a hand against the traffic, but chances are that they will see you anyway. Italians love their cars with a passion and hate to get their bumpers dented.

Taxis – they’re cheap! My guess is that a taxi from Termini – the central station – to, say, Galleria Borghese (whither you must go!) will only set you back $10.  But going around in Rome by taxi is a bit wimpy. You really ought to walk, at least as much as you can. You see so much more and meet people. Which brings me to another warning: the darling little gypsy kids approaching you with either a newspaper or a cut-up cardboard box. Beware of those! They speak very fast in accents of some unknown tongue, all the while wrapping their paraphernalia around you as if to see how garbage will suit you. However, while you are thinking: “Whatever do those cute little kids want from me?” they empty your pockets and bag for all valuables. Far be it for me to advise against subsidizing the less fortunate, but the story that these gypsies are picked up by their fathers or husbands in limos each afternoon at Piazza del Popolo is no urban legend. It is the truth. If you don’t believe me, stroll around on the piazza at sundown.

      What you need to do is to look the little darlings straight in their eyes and say: “Vada via!” (scram!) and do sound as if you mean it. Don’t smile! If you practise your vada via, they may even take you for a Roman.

Language: speak English and use your hands. The Romans are not as good at English as they think, but unlike the French, they are endowed with imagination and benevolence.

Restaurants: Go where you like, but check the menu outside. If the menu is not posted outside, don’t go in. The place is likely to be way beyond any budget.

At the top of the menu – sometimes at the bottom – there is an item called ‘pane e coperta’ – meaning bread and the use of tablecloth, napkins, cutlery, glasses. It may also say ‘servizio’ – service, meaning the tip. At cheap restaurants, the ‘pane e coperta’ will be around $4 and the tip will not be specified, in which case you tip as much or as little as you like.

      If you want to be adventurous and try something authentically Italian, go for the menu turistico – the tourist menu. It sounds awkward, I know, but that’s how the Italians try to get tourists to eat real Italian dinners. We northerners are apt to think that Italian cuisine is, say, minestrone and spaghetti, but this is merely the primo that the Italians eat before the main course, secondo, which is very often only a steak or fish with a little salad on the side. If you want more – such as potatoes - you have to order contorno. The full Italian menu will even include antipasto, some little starters you get before the soup or the pasta.

      After antipasto, primo and secondo you have to leave room for the dessert (dolce), usually ice cream, cake or a fruit salad (macedonia).

      As for pizza, this has never been a main course in Italy – it ranges alongside our hot dogs or sandwiches. Pizzas were not originally round, either, and in the Roman streets you will find that pizza is sold in square pieces cut out of a huge, rectangular roasting pan. The customer decides the size of the slice. You order it ‘to go’ (porta via) and munch it down while admiring what you came for - the sights of the city. But do get some of these slices – you have never really tasted true pizza until you do. For what it's worth, my favourite is funghi con mozzarella (mushrooms with cheese).

Notice that the Romans (who go out a lot) rarely eat before 8 pm and often as late as 9 pm. 

      Don’t miss out on the tiramisu! The best dessert in the world, not to be confused with tiramisu-flavoured ice cream. The name means ‘pull me up’, but tiramisu is more likely to weigh you seriously down: it is savoiardi (‘lady fingers’) drenched in marsala wine and strong espresso, smothered in mascarpone and powdered with cocoa. To die for. Or of. The best tiramisu can be had at the small, cosy Il Nerone which is worth a visit or two anyway. I’ll come back to Il Nerone later. As will you, once you've been there.

      For lunch, just buy something off the street. Find a trattoria, but be warned: at most places you are charged one price for eating at the bar (same price for take-away), and another for sitting down at the tables. Another disadvantage about Roman trattorias is that you have to pay at the till before you get the food, which means you have to go look at the exhibition first, memorize the items you fancy and how you think they should be pronounced, then pay the cashier, receive your receipt and finally go back to the food and tell the guy there what you ordered. That’s how the Italians like to do business, and it has probably never occurred to them that their turnover is limited by the customer’s memory – but, conversely, it limits your risk of an eating binge as well.

      At one place, however, you order and pay simultaneously – at my favourite place, Il Delfino. Nor do prices go up if you sit down. Il Delfino is on Vittorio Emmanuele II  just across from Largo Argentina, with Piazza Navona right around the corner. Do sample their supplis! A special Roman treat: rice and tomato lovingly enfolding a slice of mozzarella, rolled into a ball, breaded and deep-fried. At first, you may not be all that charmed, but supplis grow on you (quite literally, especially around the waist.) They cost only around $3, and two of them will make up a lunch.

Be sure to sample the tasty tramezzini while in Rome. A tramezzino is a triangular sandwich of freshly moist, white bread with the crust removed (pancarré) and a choice of filling. Also, if you come across a bakery (I know there's one in Campo dei Fiori, for instance), you should get some pizza biancha (which is just the bread, no topping) and get some cheese and ham to go with it. That will do nicely for a roughing-it lunch in a park or in a square in town.

The Sights

      There are four things you should do in one stroll, all of them musts in Rome. They are about five minutes apart by foot, and they are:

 The Trevi Fountain, Ignazio di Loyola, the Pantheon and Piazza Navona.

      The Trevi Fountain is the last blast from the Baroque period, which is to say from the latter part of the 1600s. When reaching the fountain by way of the narrow streets leading to it, you cannot fail to be impressed: even though it is built into a house, it towers up before you in a wealth of white marble. It depicts Neptune, the sea god, and his tritons. In Rome you will see a lot of fountains depicting tritons, and they all celebrate water as essential to the city. Without the waters of Rome, led there by the famed Roman viaducts, the city would have been situated somewhere else. 

      In the 1960s the fame of the Trevi Fountain was renewed by Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita in which Anita Ekberg (right) in a huge gala dress held up by willpower goes paddling in the fountain by night.

      One thing one has to do at the Trevi Fountain is to stand with one’s back to the fountain, hold a coin in one’s right hand and hurl it over one’s left shoulder into the water. The saying goes that this manoeuvre will secure your return to Rome. I happen to know that it works, and even that it works this way: the more coins you throw in, the sooner you’ll return. I was backpacking through Europe in 1982 and was leaving Rome for Athens. While standing with my back to the Trevi, with one coin that I meant to donate in my right hand and the rest of my coins in my left hand, I was distracted in the crucial moment and threw in all my coins save the one intended for the fountain. That same evening I boarded a train to Brindisi, but the carriage I entered was disconnected at night and returned to Rome while I slept. That’s why I know for certain that the coin-in-the-fountain trick works.

      In order to get from the Trevi Fountain to Ignazio di Loyola, the Jesuit church, you have to cross the Corso, the great street that is Rome’s equivalent to Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. In Via Caravita you find San Ignazio di Loyola, famous for its trompe l’oeuil (French for ‘fools-the-eye’) -  its optical illusion in the ceiling. The longer you peruse the ceiling, the less you believe that it’s all painted on a flat surface – everything appears to stick out or cave in. And the painting seems to suck you in – the more you gaze at it, the more you get that ‘beam-me-up-Scotty-feeling’ as was intended by Andrea Pozzo, the main artist behind the frescos.

      Only five minutes away, the Pantheon awaits you. ‘Pan’ mean ‘all’ and theos, of course, is ‘gods’, so this edifice was intended as a get-together for all the gods of Rome. Even the gods of other peoples were welcome, but, as it turned out, the God of Christianity could brook no roommates, so out went everybody else and now it’s a Christian church.

      The dome is the second-largest in the world, surpassed only by the dome spanning British Museum’s library in London. When Michelangelo, who was duly impressed by this antique dome, designed the dome of St. Peter’s, he made it somewhat smaller, as he did not want to surpass the old masters. An uncommonly modest gesture for Michelangelo.

      The skylight – a circular hole – measures 9 meter in diameter. I know that for certain, for once, when I visited the Pantheon during a silent rain, I paced the wet spot on the floor.

      The famous renaissance painter Raphael is buried in the Pantheon. He was reinterred from his original burial site while Hans Christian Andersen was visiting Rome in the 19^th century, and the Danish poet went to witness the event. The great double doors now seen in the Pantheon were removed for restoration, which left only a narrow passage to the church, and they had to tip Raphael’s coffin to get it through. Andersen reports that he heard ‘a distasteful rattling of dry bones’.

      When you have enjoyed the Pantheon, go the 200 feet around the church to Piazza Minerva. For any Bernini devotee (such as myself), there’s something to see: a little grumpy elephant carrying an obelisk. The obelisk is original – from Egypt - and Bernini sought to illustrate the point that ‘it takes great strength (the elephant) to carry great wisdom (the obelisk). Why the elephant looks so disgruntled, I don’t know. I take it that great wisdom doesn’t necessarily make you merry. Given the fact, however, that an obelisk represents a petrified ray of sun (worshipped by the ancient Egyptians), we might have expected the elephant to have a sunnier disposition.

      Behind the elephant in the church of Santa Minerva you can see Michelangelo’s famous Jesus statue. A nude statue, since – as we all know – Michelangelo had a special interest in male genitalia. A later and more prudish age has added a golden loincloth. To the left of the statue you will find a slot machine ready to receive your coins, but don’t believe for a minute that your donation will make the loincloth disappear. It merely turns on a spotlight.

      Go back to the Pantheon. Place yourself with your back to the main entrance, cross the piazza to ”MacDonald’s” – that Scottish restaurant that seems to have branched out all over – and go down Via Giustiniani. Pass along that street and cross over two streets – no more than three minutes later you will be on Piazza Navona. It is an oblong square and you enter on the long side. In the 18^th century it was fashion among the young, rich Romans to have the piazza flooded and race around in open carriages, water spouting to all sides. These days, the piazza is quite safe, hvowever.

      And now for the sights of Piazza Navona. Take a look at Bernini’s fountain in the middle.

      The four characters represent four rivers – the Nile, the Ganges, the Danube and the Platte. The story goes that Bernini had hoped to get the commission of building the church on the piazza, but, due to a change of Pope, his rival Borromini got to build the church, whereas our friend Bernini only got the crumby fountain. To add insult to injury, Borromini turned out not to have sufficient skill to build the church. Any fool would have placed the church at the end of the square, but Borromini – determined to be no fool – placed his church on the long side. “The church will be too tall,” Bernini objected, “it will appear to be tumbling down at the spectator!” Borromini believed that this could be adjusted by a concave facade, but, as you will see, the church does in fact appear to be falling on us. And Bernini’s revenge? Well, take a look at the Rio della Platte, the river closest to the church: he is holding his hand up, as if to ward off the falling stones.

      Look at the other rivers, too: the Nile has a rag around his head because the source of the Nile was unknown to the Renaissance; the Ganges is punting along with a pole (the accustomed means of transportation on the Ganges) and the Danube is straddling the monument and waving his limbs in all directions to signify the many tributaries of that Mid-European river. When looking at the fountain, take note of the characteristics of the Baroque period, and how the placidity and harmony of the High Renaissance have been replaced by Baroque vivacity and turmoil. As you will observe in Bernini’s other masterpieces, they all appear to capture some wildly energetic moments.

      That was something for the mind; your physical cravings are steps away from the utmost satisfaction. Cross the square to Tre Scalini - meaning ‘the three little steps’ although there are no steps – where you will purchase the unsurpassed Tartuffo ice cream, the specialty of the place. It will cost you around $8 if you take it ‘porta via' – take-away. It is a special Renaissance flavour – violent, exuberant and filling – of chocolate and mocca, with a maraschino berry entombed in the middle (a cherry drowned in maraschino liqueur), and whipped cream on the side. But beware! Tartuffo is addictive!  You taste it and think, ”well, that was nice,” but after a short while you discover that it was the taste of a lifetime. I once left Piazza Navona on my way to St. Peter’s only to discover, halfway across the Tiber, that I had to return for seconds.

Close to Piazza Navona, on 40, Via Uffici del Vicario, you find another famous ice cream parlor, Giolitti, in business since 1890. They serve the ice cream in irresistible waffle cones.

      After the Tartuffo, walk away from Tre Scalini past Bernini’s fountain in the centre of the piazza and continue straight out of the Navona Square, down to the big Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II.

      When you stand here – with your back to Piazza Navona – you will see the church Andrea della Valle across the street on your left. This church is the location of the first act of Puccini’s opera Tosca, in which Tosca’s jealousy is aroused at Mario’s painting of a blue-eyed  Madonna (Tosca’s eyes are black). If you then turn left, down Vittorio Emmanuele II and walk down two blocks in this direction (towards the town centre), you will have Il Delfino (the place with the good supplis) on a corner on your left.

      If, on the other hand, you don’t want to eat any more (what with the Tartuffos), you may wish to see Campo dei Fiori (meaning ’the field of flowers’). In that case, cross the busy Vittorio Emmanuele II , keeping the Andrea della Valle church on your left. If you continue down two blocks, you'll find a market with fruit and vegetables in the morning (until noon), but at all hours it is a very cosy piazza. Except of course for that day in 1600 when they burned Giordano Bruno for heresy on this very spot. However, the city of Rome has atoned for this mistake by erecting a statue of the supposed heretic on the square. Bruno was executed for stating that the universe is infinite, that the earth is not its centre and that God and nature are one and the same. Galileo Galilei later claimed something similar and was incarcerated in Castel Sant’Angelo, across the Tiber. On being shown the instruments of torture, Galilei prudently escaped Bruno’s fate by recanting. When he signed the recantation, he is reported to have whispered under his breath: E pur si muove! – ‘it moves, nonetheless’ – meaning the earth around the sun. Later times have agreed with Galilei, but unlike Bruno, he was not in a mind to sacrifice his life for the truth.

One block further away from Vittorio Emmanuele II, you'll run into Palazzo Farnese (the location of Tosca's second act). Palazzo Farnese, once a Papal residence, now houses the French Embassy. On her arrival in Rome, Swedish Queen Christina lived there a while, but proved - to quote Pope Alexander VII - 'the tenant from hell.' Behind Palazzo Farnese, Via di Capo di Ferro will take you to Palazzo Spada (half a block away). Every once in a while, tourists are permitted to see the courtyard ('il cortile' if you have to ask someone) with Borromini's optical illusion. You look down a colonnade that you take to be about some 35-40 yards with a life-size statue at the end. In fact, the colonnade is less than 9 yards long as you will quickly find when you try to walk through it - or better still: send one of your companions down the hallway. The effect is astounding, and to some degree rehabilitates Borromini for his washout with the church on Piazza Navona.

 The Protestant Cemetery and the Aventine

      You may choose to take a cab out to see the Protestant Cemetery and the famed keyhole on the Aventine Hill, but if you are up to it, this trip to southern Rome can be combined with the tour to Forum Romanum and the Coliseum (see below), in which case you leave the Coliseum by passing the huge Constantine Arch down Via di S. Gregorio, past Circus Maximus (on your right) and then straight out along the Viale Aventino and Viale Piramido Cestia. This will take you to the Cestius Pyramid and the Protestant Cemetery in about 40 minutes. I can recommend the cemetery if the weather is nice, for it is a very poetic place, and appropriately so since both Percy Shelley and John Keats are interred there. I shall return to these. The famous German poet, Goethe, has a son buried there, under a disheartening headstone that simply reads: Goethe filius – son of Goethe. Taking the fame of the father a bit too far, if you ask me.

      The cemetery is small, but nice, with a neatly trimmed lawn at the end where Keats lies buried in the corner farthest away from the Cestius Pyramid. His headstone is modest – though not ludicrously so, as in the case of Goethe’s son – and reads: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” Keats himself requested this epithet, but he was certainly wrong. His friend Joseph Severn promptly erected a tablet that puts matters in the proper perspective.

      After seeing Keats’ grave, you cross the lawn and make your way through the heavy traffic of cats and kittens that always haunt the graveyard, and then you climb uphill. Just before you reach the top of the hill, Shelley lies on your left, against the outer wall of the cemetery close to the Cestius Pyramid. His headstone reads: Cor cordium – ‘heart of hearts’, which is cruelly poignant. When he drowned during a boating trip in the Bay of Spezia on July 8, 1822, Byron and a few friends were asked to identify his remains and dispose of the body. They burned it on the beach, but for some reason, the heart wouldn’t burn. In the end, Byron brought it to Mary Shelley.

      Then the keyhole of the Aventine: when you leave the cemetery you must turn right and walk 2 minutes to Via Marmorata, which you then cross and turn left. Turn right after the post office and take the second street on your right (not the big, trafficked one, Via Pollione, but the next). Then you turn left again up the steep Via Lavernale which you follow until it ends smack on Piazza di Cavaliere di Malta, the Square of the Maltese Knights. You then cross the small and peaceful piazza and proceed to the huge gate in front of you. You can’t enter, but that’s the beauty of it: you have to look through the keyhole which isn’t a keyhole, really, but a small, round hole put there exclusively for the view. You look down a long garden path and in the centre you get a view of St. Peter’s dome, on the other side of the Tiber. You may chance to see some young Romans, loving couples, visiting the gate on their vespas (scooters, aptly named for the sound they make, for ‘vespa’ means wasp.)

      If you have taken a taxi out to the cemetery, you may want to walk home. You saunter down Via Sabina, a very lovely street taking you down the Aventine Hill, at the bottom of which you run into the busy and heavily trafficked Via del Circo Massimo, which you cross. On your left, below the ruins of the Palatine looming on the horizon, you will see Circus Maximus after which the street is named. It looks like a location for Ben Hur, but isn’t, since the famous horse race scene in that oscar film took place in Africa. As you turn left on the other side of Via del Circo Massimo – away from the Circus Maximus – you follow the street toward the town centre. Look out for a church on your right just as you turn a corner and reach an open space. In a small passage outside this church you will find Bocca della Verita – the Mouth of Truth. Lovers go there, too, and demand that their one and only put a hand into the horrid mouth of the stone face and claim fidelity (or whatever), for legend has it that Bocca della Verita will bite off hands of liars. In Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck scares Audrey Hepburn to pieces with a demonstration of this.

      Continue along the street by which you arrived – now renamed Via del Teatro di Marcello – and follow this to the big Piazza Venezia, the actual and official town centre. As you get there, you will see a huge, very, very white building, which most Romans call la macchina da scrivere – the typewriter. It was built in 1885 and inaugurated in 1911 as a monument to the unknown soldier, and it is generally detested by Romans for being ‘too white teeth in an old man’s mouth’ – the ‘old man’ being Rome. And yet, there is something that has always fascinated me about this monumental eyesore. Perhaps it is just that this is ancient Rome as we always imagined it, and as the Hollywood movies depicted it and, unlike the palaces of the Forum and the Palatine Hill, it is still standing. If you get the chance, do climb the huge monument – it is sometimes open to public. You get a splendid view of the town from up there, among the shining white colonnades. The Square in front of the monument – Piazza Venezia - is lovely too, especially now that Mussolini can no longer make his hysterical speeches from the balcony on your right (when you have your back to the monument).

      The heavily trafficked street at the end of Piazza Venezia is Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II and if you turn left, it will take you to “Il Delfino” and, eventually, to Piazza Navona, via a right turn at the right moment.

      Right across from the white monument, taking off from Vittorio Emmanuele II is the Corso – Rome’s main shopping street. It goes without saying that shopping here is dangerous for the less affluent, for it is, as mentioned, Rome’s 5^th Av.

St. Peter's and the Vatican 

The best way to get to St. Peter's is by crossing the Ponte Sant'Angelo. If we assume that you are staying at a hotel near Termini, you go to Piazza Navona (down Vittorio Emmanuele II, past Il Delfino and make a right for Piazza Navona). This time you cross Piazza Navona directly, and when you leave the square at the far end, a few meandering streets will take you to the Tiber at the Bridge of the Angel – Ponte Sant’Angelo. Across the river you will now see Castel Sant’Angelo – the angel fortress. But don’t forget to look at the angels on the bridge! They are made by Bernini, my favourite sculptor. Bernini’s sculptures always contain some element of fun, and you never look for it in vain.

      The angels hold religious attributes, but they treat them quite irreverently! One angel swings the thorny crown of Christ as if it were a tambourine, and another holds the cross as if it were a cello. The angel carrying Veronica’s sudarium – the cloth with which Veronica wiped the face of Jesus – looks as if he wanted to sell it to gullible tourists. You can virtually see him saying: “5 Euro – shop around, you can't beat that price!”

      Cross the bridge to Castel San Angelo. This is Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum, and it is much bigger than it is beautiful. One version of the story goes that Hadrian built his mausoleum in good time and then thought that it would be a touching gesture if his young lover, Antinous, would commit suicide by jumping into the Tiber after the emperor died. However, in order to ensure this event, Hadrian had Antinous pushed off the mausoleum before his own demise. Sober historians, however, claim that Antinous was drowned far away from Rome and that Hadrian sincerely mourned for his death .

      Hadrian’s mausoleum received its modern name in 590, when the archangel Michael appeared at the top of the edifice sheathing his sword to let the Romans know that the dreaded plague would end.

      Castel Sant’Angelo is also where Puccini’s opera Tosca ends. As you may recall, Tosca flew into a jealous rage in the church of San Andrea della Valle (at the other end of Piazza Navona), and her temper prompted her to reveal Mario’s relations with the Italian resistance movement during the Napoleonic wars. Mario is apprehended by the evil Scarpia, head of the secret police, and subjected to torture. He is sentenced to death, but Scarpia puts it to Tosca that if she sleeps with him, he will arrange a mock execution for Mario. Tosca makes Scarpia sign the papers first and then, instead of kissing him, she plunges a dagger into his heart and makes off with the pardon. However, Scarpia has fooled Tosca, and when she finds that the execution squad has not used blanks, she hurls herself over the edge of Castel Sant’Angelo and plummets to her death.

      When Sarah Bernhardt, the legendary French actress of la belle epoque, played this scene in Paris, she had so charmed the young stagehand in charge of putting the mattress out for her drop behind the set piece of Castel Sant’Angelo that he forgot to do so. Sarah broke her leg, gangrene ensued and the leg had to go. ”I had never thought that I would go piecemeal to my grave!” Sarah exclaimed.

      Turn left when you have crossed the Tiber and continue in this direction. You can see St. Peter’s now, and you may think that it is not far. But you would be deluded. You will learn that the walk to St. Peter’s resembles a nightmare: you never seem to get any closer, but the church keeps growing before your eyes. At a certain point you catch sight of people in front of the church and you realize how infinitesimal they are, like little bugs around the huge wedding cake that is St. Peter’s.

      When at long last you reach St. Peter’s Square, the pleasure-loving Bernini has once again contrived to divert you.  Find one of the two colonnade stones on either side of the fountain in the middle of the round square – if you imagine the square as the face of a clock with the church at 12, the colonnade stones will be at 3 and 9. Place yourself right on one colonnade stone and take a look at the four rows of columns embracing the square – the huge pillars of the colonnade have been designed and erected with such precision that from this angle, the four rows melt together as one, giving you a perfect view to the world beyond the square.

      The obelisk in the centre of the fountain allegedly contains a splinter of the true Cross in the small monstrance at the top (although in the middle ages, it was believed to contain the ashes of Julius Caesar), but of even greater interest is the raising of the obelisk in 1586. Pope Sixtus V had ordered perfect silence from the crowd that gathered to watch the event – on pain of death! -  since the elevation of such a tall obelisk was risky business back then. However, when the ropes of the hoist began to show signs of fatigue, a Ligurian sailor allowed his professional skill to outweigh the Papal decree and cried: “Throw water on the ropes!” thus saving the whole enterprise from disaster. The sailor was not executed, but received exclusive rights for himself and his family throughout eternity to sell palm branches for the festivities on Palm Sunday. He made a bundle and deserved it, too.

      Now it is time to enter St. Peter’s. Please remember that one has to wear suitable clothes in order to pass the guards. Shoulders and knees must be covered, although practically the first sight that greets you inside the church is that of an all but naked Jesus, in the arms of his mother Mary in Michelangelo’s Pietà. But of course, allowances must be made for the Saviour. Pietà is on your right when you enter the church. It is one of Michelangelo’s early works, and one of the few he ever signed; the artist’s name is engraved on the ribbon running across Mary’s breast – Michelangelo Buonarotti. Mary looks very young – certainly not a day beyond twenty – but when criticised by the Pope who remarked that Jesus died at 33 and that his mother consequently must have been pushing 50 at the time of his death, Michelangelo merely replied: “The mother of God has no age.” All the same, this goes to show one of the differences between the High Renaissance (1450-1527) and Bernini’s subsequent Baroque period that always strove to present mankind as it really is, warts and all.

      Orientate yourself from a position where you face the baldachin – the 98 feet high canopy covering the high altar designed by Bernini with twisted pillars, copies of those in Solomon’s temple. On the floor in front of you there are markings showing the size of other famous churches in the world – how far they would stretch if crammed into St. Peter’s which, of course, dwarfs them all.

Peter is supposedly buried in the crypt below the baldachin, along with every pope since him.

      Halfway up the centre aisle you must take another right turn to get to the famed statue of St. Peter sticking his foot out for the Catholics to kiss. The statue as such is tarnished and dark bronze, but the toe shines brightly from wear and tear brought on by centuries of devout kissing. This was the toe that had such fatal consequences for Lady Flora Gordon in Isak Dinesen’s The Cardinal’s Third Tale (Lady Flora contracted syphilis, with which in mind, do as many of the Catholics do: kiss your own fingers and then place them on the toe). Blixen remarks that the statue looks exceptionally bad-tempered for St. Peter who by all accounts was a mild-mannered if slightly dim-witted apostle. It may be that the statue was originally one of Zeus (Jove), with Jove’s attribute, the bolt of lightning, replaced by Peter’s attribute, the keys.

      But why two keys? one may ask. The front and backdoor to Paradise?

The attribute derives from the place in the Gospel of St. Matthew where Jesus says to Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church (...) And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” These lines – inscribed within the dome - are the foundation of so many things, first and foremost of Papal power, for all the popes are successors of St. Peter. The Latin text has ‘claves’ for keys, plural form, and sculptors and painters have ever since settled for the minimum: two.

      It is significant, too, that Peter of all was given the keys. Not only was his faith often faltering, but Peter does not strike us as the sharpest tool in the shed. We recall how he plunged right into Lake Genezareth when he tried to walk upon the surface like Jesus, he thrice denied Christ after the arrest in Gethsemane and he attempted to flee Rome under Nero, so that Christ had to stop him on Via Appia and persuade him to return to Rome for his own execution. One may also question the wisdom of his remark to his executioners that to die on the cross like Christ was too great an honour – for it prompted the Romans to have him crucified upside down.

      But perhaps a moral emerges from Peter’s story: his own wavering faith and modest intelligence provide a license for mankind. We don’t have to be martyrs or geniuses; we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven with all our shortcomings. Had, say, St. Paul been the doorman, I doubt that many would have made it. His attribute is a sword.

      We may as well go though the attributes of the other four evangelists as well, since they are depicted in the dome. Matthew has an angel or a child, Mark has a lion, Luke has an ox and John has an eagle. That’s how you can know them when you meet them.

      Directly across the centre aisle from St. Peter’s disgruntled statue, now on the left side of the church, I invite you to find Bernini’s Tomb of Pope Alexander VII. We need a laugh at this time. The monument is in one of the niches. A gilded death is flying right in our face, waving an hour glass to signify that “time’s up” – as the British publicans will have it – for Alexander. However, the grim reaper seems to have been delayed because someone has thrown a marble cloth across him, and he is struggling to get free.

      Alexander sits praying, his eyes toward heaven, and seems in no way bothered by the summons. As a Pope his admittance is guaranteed. Nevertheless, he seems to be slightly distracted by a woman on his right carrying a huge, fat baby. She is supposed to represent motherhood, but in Bernini’s version of this symbol, she holds up her baby with an air of accusation – is she putting the paternity over on Alexander? The angel on Alexander’s left is resting her foot on the world, a globe. Her heel is planted defiantly on England who had recently left the Church of Rome and gone Protestant.

      Having seen these sights and a few more while taking in the general atmosphere, you may want to go to the top of the church. It’s a rough climb and claustrophobic, and you have to exit the church to get to the stairs or the lift (that doesn't go all the way up, mind you), but the view from up there is magnificent and gives you a very good impression of the seven hills of Rome. “If I don’t do it now, I may never get to do it” is a good incentive that should often be applied on foreign trips whenever fatigue strikes you. We never know if we shall pass this way again. So do go.

      The Vatican collections are reached in this manner: exit the church, go to Bernini’s colonnade on your left and follow the pavement around the high walls of the Vatican. It’s a ten minutes walk.

      The Vatican collections are vast. In her book on Rome, Karen Jacobsen writes that if you spend one minute on each of the items in here, you will have to stay for 34 years, around the clock and with no breaks for lunch. I believe it. Don't let that intimidate you; just sauntering through the collections for a couple of hours will be a treat. There's art and curiosities all around you, even on the floors and in the arched ceilings.

       I suggest that you look up the Laocoon, the antique statue which inspired the Renaissance artists (as you know, renaissance means ‘rebirth’, and this statue was the father of the fashion in the Renaissance. The statue is in a courtyard and the guides will assist you in finding it. Especially if you pronounce the statue in Italian (La-o-kon-te).        

      Laocoon was a Trojan priest of Poseidon who defied the deity by marrying and having two sons. During the Trojan wars and the ten-year siege of Troy, he foresaw the Greek plan of the Trojan horse and tried to warn the Trojans (in Vergil’s phrasing: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!”), but before he could reveal it, Apollo had sent some giant snakes to strangle both Laocoon and his two sons. Notice the poetic license of the ancient sculptor: both sons are fully grown, but half Laocoon's size in order to illustrate that they are his sons.

      Another antique gem is the Discus Thrower, along with several statues of Hadrian’s young lover, Antinous. For early Renaissance, don’t miss Raphael’s Parnassus.

      You may want to end up in the Sistine Chapel. This is where the cardinals gather in conclave whenever a new pope is to be elected and when they have reached their decision, they burn the ballots together with some chemical additives which make white smoke issue from the chimney of the chapel. More importantly, the Sistine Chapel is where you may behold Michelangelo’s piece de resistance, the frescos and the Last Judgment. The place is usually crowded and you can’t speak very loudly down there – they insist on silence – but this was where Michelangelo spent 4 years, from 1508 to 1512, painting the ceiling. He was lying on his back on the scaffolding, sometimes for days on end. Fresco painting is always an excruciating undertaking. The transparent paint is applied to the wet plaster, so the artist has to work fast before the surface congeals, but one wrong stroke of the brush may mean that he has to redo a whole section since frescos behave like water colours rather than oils, where you can always mend mistakes by applying more paint on top of the botched job.

       The Sistine Chapel was the result of endless fights between Michelangelo and Pope Julius II, each as cantankerous as the other. Michelangelo never wanted to do the ceiling in the first place; he considered himself a sculptor and, once the artist was persuaded, Julius constantly felt that the job wasn’t done as quickly as he wanted. He turned out to be right: poor Pope Julius died before he could behold the finished masterpiece. During one furious tantrum, he actually struck Michelangelo with his walking stick. The artist avenged himself by depicting the incident among the Biblical stories in the frescos: when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, we see God waving a stick at them. 

      Michelangelo returned to the Sistine Chapel in 1535 to paint the Last Judgment on the end wall. Once again, Michelangelo’s paintings were inspired by real events, in this case the Sack of Rome (Sacco di Roma) in 1527 when the Holy Roman Empire sent its not-so-holy mercenary forces to loot and destroy the city. Michelangelo, devastated at the Sack of Rome, has endowed a flayed human skin with his own facial features and the painting on te whole portrays a massacre and a sea of suffering people. The Sack of Rome marked the end of the High Renaissance.

      While the work was in progress, the Pope’s Master of Ceremony, Cesena, complained that it was improper for the Sistine Chapel to display all those nudes, and as Michelangelo refused to cover anything, Cesena ordered another painter, Volterra, to paint breeches and loincloths on all the figures in the Last Judgment. Yet again, Michelangelo’s vengeance was swift as he painted Cesena’s face on Minos, the Judge of Hell. Cesena complained to the Pope who replied that his jurisdiction did not extend as far as to hell. The painting stayed as it was.  And poor Volterra was ever after referred to as ‘Il Braghettone’ – the painter of breeches.

      If you have managed St. Peter and the Vatican in one day – as you should – you need a rest and something to eat. This is where I hasten to recommend Il Nerone, on the way between the Termini (the main station in Rome) and the Coliseum, but closer to the latter.

      The place is run by two elderly and very cultured brothers who speak a very enchanting English - as I found out once I had brought all my small Italian to bear in ordering a dinner for 24 people. The old gentleman – one of the brothers – listened attentively, with not a shadow of a smile on his kind face as I mangled his language, applying the subjunctive mood in all the wrong places and battling with the past tense. He even adjusted his replies to Italian phrases within my reach. Much later, I heard him talk to a British lady in perfect English, so all my endeavours had been in vain.  The booking on the said night was for a birthday celebration, as I managed to mention, since ‘compleanno’ was part of my vocabulary even then. The old gentleman picked that up, and when they served their to-die-for tiramisu, they brought it in a huge pan with a birthday candle on top. That’s the kind of place it is – but in fact, most Italian restaurants are very cosy and hospitable and generally go out of their way to give you a good meal and a good time. So unlike the majority of Parisian restaurants, I may add, where you always feel that you’re on approval and may be rejected as a customer any time if you are not up to their standards.
You find Il Nerone on 96 Via delle Terme di Tito this way: from Termini you go down Via Cavour and cross the intersection at Via Giovanni Lanza. On the last stretch of Via Cavour, just before you reach the Coliseum, you will see a narrow stairway on your left leading up to an archway. You climb the stairs, enter the archway, go straight ahead and reach a small square. On the corner in front of you is Il Nerone. In the summer, the tables in front of the restaurant give you a view of the Coliseum.

The prices are reasonable, the food defies description, but you’ll be wise to book in advance, the place is usually crowded. Your hotel may do that for you, but here is what at least used to be the number: (+39) 06 474 5207.
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The Forum Romanum and the Coliseum

      Ancient Rome is littered all over the city – bits and bobs of ancient relics found on building sites adorn into 20^th century houses here and there – but the greatest concentration of antiquity is around the Forum Romanum. I usually recommend a visit to the Forum that ends by the exit/entrance leading out to the Coliseum.

      So enter from the gate nearest Via Cavour (that runs from the Termini and ends just west of the Coliseum). As soon as you enter Forum Romanum, you are on Via Sacra – Fifth Avenue in ancient Rome where the ladies of fashion would exhibit the last word in tunics, stolas and pallas as well as their golden-red hair (dyed hair was all the rage). Moreover, you will be treading on the very stones that Caesar touched on his way to his assassination in 44 BC! Turn right first and visit the Curia – now rebuilt, but without the marble. This is where the Senate convened in ancient Rome. Young patricians vying for a seat in the Senate would make public speeches from the Rostra - the pulpit opposite the Curia. They would wear bright white togas to show that they were candidates - candida means 'white' in Latin, hence the phrase. However, the Curia was being renovated on that fateful day, March 15 in 44 b.C. and Caesar had to walk all the way to the Marcellus Theatre, outside the Forum. He had been warned repeatedly that dirty work was afoot, but he brushed aside all concerns with imprudent stoicism. The problem was, of course, that prominent political figures wished to see Rome return to the republic, and Caesar's recent crowning as emperor fell somewhat short of their idea of democracy.

      Among the conspirators was Brutus, Caesar’s adopted son, always portrayed as an idealist, but the facts of the matter may be that he felt upstaged by Mark Antony, another adopted son of Caesar’s and now the old man’s favourite. Whatever the true motive, 23 conspirators gathered at the Marcellus Theatre. The last word of warning Caesar received – according to Shakespeare and Suetonius on whose chronicles Shakespeare based his play – was from an old soothsayer who had previously cautioned Caesar to “Beware of the Ides of March!” (March 15). On meeting the old soothsayer again, Caesar rather arrogantly said: “The Ides of March are come!” (meaning: - and I’m still alive), to which the old man replied: “Ay, Caesar, but not gone!”.

      And sure enough: when Caesar entered the theatre that served as a provisional Senate house, he was immediately surrounded by the conspirators who diverted his attention with petitions, enabling the conspirator Casca to strike the first blow. One blow for each conspirator followed in quick succession, 23 stab wounds in all. According to Suetonius, Caesar bravely defended himself until he saw Brutus come at him. “Et tu, Brute?” - you too, Brutus? - he said and then pulled his toga over his head and gave it up.

      If the conspirators had followed the basic guidelines for a successful coup d'etat, they would have had a long proscription list with names of people who had to go because of their loyalty to the deposed ruler. They didn’t, though  – they believed that Rome would see reason and applaud the deed. The conspirators’ most grievous mistake, however, was that they permitted Mark Antony to speak at Caesar’s corpse in public. After Brutus’ lofty rhetoric on the political necessity of the assassination - which escaped most of the listeners - Mark Antony mounted the Rostra and made a speech that everyone understood, about Caesar as his friend and a friend of the people. According to Shakespeare, Mark Antony used a prime example of 'objective correlative' (a symbol conveying an emotion) by exhibiting the dead Caesar's mantle, run through with the conspirators' daggers; "Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb'd; And as he pluck'd his cursed steel away, /Mark how the blood of Caesar follow'd it, /As rushing out of doors, to be resolved / If Brutus so unkindly knock'd, or no." In the course of one short speech and without directly attacking Brutus and his co-conspirators (to whom he constantly refers to as 'honourable men'), Mark Antony managed so to incense the Romans that they stormed the Senate, pulled out the benches and burnt them. They attacked and killed whoever they thought was even remotely connected with the assassination, and the innocent Cinna, who pleaded for his life ("I am Cinna the poet, not Cinna the conspirator!") was killed for his bad verses. Mark Antony and all the conspirators had to flee the city.

      And so, the whole power balance of the civilized world rotated on a few crucial events on that day. Brutus was beaten in the ensuing civil war and took his own life. Mark Antony entered a triumvirate with Pompey and Augustus. Pompey was murdered and Mark Antony fell for Cleopatra, which cleared the path for the decisive century (27 BC to 68 AD) of the Julio-Claudian dynasty: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. After this, and by way of one year of civil war, the power and the glory passed to the Flavian dynasty who were, by and large, soldiers: Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian. Rome could hardly be further from a republic than during the Flavians. Vespasian wasn't a bad sort, however, and a wit to boot. His famous last words were, 'Vae, puto deus fio' ('Oh dear, I think I'm becoming a god'), a joke on at the fact that by this time, Roman emperors were automatically deified at their death.

      Go back along the Via Sacra toward the Arch of Titus at the far end of the Forum. If you opt for a relaxed afternoon on the Palatine, just turn right at the arch and spend an hour or so in the shades of the tall cypresses and stone pines on the hill where all the Roman emperors had their villas.

But first check out the Arch of Titus – on the frieze inside you see an illustration of the sacking of Jerusalem in 71 AD. Notice that the soldiers carry not only a menorah, but also – presumably – the trumpets of Jericho and the Ark of the Covenant, all looted from Solomon’s temple.

      Now the Coliseum rises before you at the far end of the Forum. I seem to recall that they have installed an intricate ticket system – at least for groups – so you may have to wait a while at the Coliseum, but it’s definitely worth a visit. 50,000 people could be seated in that place, and it was all part of the Roman policy of panem et circenses – provide the people with bread and entertainment, and they will never rebel. The Coliseum was begun by Emperor Vespasian and finished by his son Titus in 72 AD. In spite of insistent claims to the contrary, Emperor Nero never was in the Coliseum to burn Christians as we see in Qvo Vadis, for instance. He had planned the site to house his giant palace, Domus Aureus, and Vespasian’s plan to make it into a public area instead was vastly popular with everyone.

By the time the Coliseum was erected, the Christians were already gaining ground and would soon take over the whole city (although their faith did suffer a severe relapse during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian, just before Constantine christened the city).  

Scala Santa

When you have done with the Coliseum and if it’s still early days, or not too close  to 2 in the afternoon, you may want to stroll up to Scala Santa, only half an hour’s walk away (that is: if you don't opt for the southern outing to the Protestant Cemetery instead, as suggested in the above). You can get to Scala Santa by Via Giovanni in Laterano that starts right behind the Coliseum, leading east - it is a 20 minutes' walk. When you have the huge Lateran Church on your right, the building holding the Holy Steps – Scala Santa – is right in front of you, across a big square. It was Helena, the mother of Constantine (the Emperor who christened Rome around 300 AD) who had the steps shipped in from Jerusalem. According to tradition, these 28 white marble steps had led to Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem, and hence these were the steps that Christ had to climb at his trial. Consequently, none of us mere mortals are allowed to step on them, but we are permitted to climb them on our knees if we say a Hail Mary or the Lord’s Prayer or some other prayer for each step.  

 A Bernini Extravaganza - Teresa and Borghese

      Let’s start in the area around Termini. In the Santa Maria della Vittoria church (on the corner of Largo di Susanna and Via XX Settembre, 10 minutes' easy walk from the Termini) you’ll find the not-to-be-missed "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa." It is Bernini on his all-time humorous high. Teresa was a Spanish virgin who renounced all earthly pleasures and flogged herself if she felt the slightest inclination. She was rewarded by a visit from an angel who conveyed the divine decree that she should establish the Carmelite order of nuns, a sisterhood of world-forsaking flagellants like herself.

      Teresa’s story must have sounded hysterically far-fetched in the ears of Renaissance man Bernini. It has been said of the Renaissance people that they built as though they would live for a thousand years and lived as though they were to die tomorrow. The world was their oyster, to quote Shakespeare, that most illustrious of all Renaissance men. Deciding to give Teresa what she herself so foolishly rejected, Bernini took a cue from the word ‘ecstasy’ and depicted Teresa partly supine, legs apart and with the most dubious expression on her face. A half naked, male angel rises from between her legs – well, that’s what it looks like, since Bernini has taken pains to conceal Teresa’s right foot in the maelstrom of baroque folds in her garments – and the angel aims his gilded spear right at her, well, at her ... let’s just say, that if you stand to the far right of the statue and view it from this angle, it could be her heart. Notice the gallery of elderly gentlemen on either side of Teresa and her angel; they look disturbed and seem to debate the spectacle. What’s going on?’ It’s a peep show. That’s Bernini at his best. I always imagine him chipping away at the marble blocks, laughing all the while. Some people claim that Bernini only set out to portray Teresa’s deeply religious experience, but one look at the statue removes all doubt. In fact, a Dutch merchant who witnessed the unveiling in 1652 exclaimed: “If that’s the heavenly ecstasy, I know it, too!”

      Let me dwell for a short while on the many folds in Teresa’s dress: this is one of the obvious differences between High Renaissance and Baroque: the earlier artists always sought to depict harmony and the dresses of their statues – if they wore clothes at all – always hung down neatly and vertically from the bodies. The Baroque artists, however, favoured wild movement in order to express the jubilant or anguished minds and moods of the wearers. The Baroque period is less inscrutable, more explicit, than the High Renaissance.

      From St. Teresa you go out on Via XX Settembre and proceed to Via Quintino Sella on your right. Cross Via Boncompagnia – the Street of Good Company – straight across, pass down Via Romagna, still straight ahead, until you reach the Borghese Park and the Galleria Borghese in about 30 minutes.

      You need a booking to get into the gallery. You can choose to visit the park a few days in advance, or you can visit this website with the 'ticketeria' for Museo Borghese.You can also go there on the day, get your booking and rest in the lovely, big park for a couple of hours until you’re due at the museum – but whatever you do: don’t miss the gallery!

      The Galleria Borghese is a cornucopia of Bernini’s works. When you have been there, you know all you need to know about the Baroque period. You are free to roam the museum in whatever order, so I just list the most unmissable works:

      My favourite 5 square inches in Rome is in Bernini’s "Pluto and Proserpina". Pluto, (whom the Greeks called Hades) god of the underworld, abducts Proserpina (or Persefone) although she is loath to go and frightened by Cerberus, his three-headed dog. Ceres, the mother of the girl, pleaded with Pluto to return her daughter and it ended in a bargain: Proserpina would remain with Pluto for half a year at a time and could return to earth for six months. To ensure that Pluto held up his end of the bargain, Ceres, who happened to be the goddess of fertility, let the earth be barren for as long as her daughter was absent, to bring it to fruition only when she got the girl back. And now for my favourite square inches: look at Pluto’s fingers pressing down on the girl’s plump thigh! You can hardly believe it’s marble! It looks so soft and lifelike.

      Bernini's “Aeneas” is seen leading his infant son and carrying his old father out of the burning city of Troy. As you may recall, the Trojan Wars started when Prince Paris made off with Helen, the wife of Greek Menelaos. The war lasted for 10 years and ended with the fall of Troy. Aeneas rescued his son and father and became the grandfather of the Roman people, according to Vergil. In Bernini’s rendition, Aeneas also rescues a small figurine of his ancestors, so the group as such symbolizes the generations, or ancestral values. And what has interested Bernini is the different appearance of the male body at three ages. Aeneas is a muscular hunk in his prime, as seen in so many other statues, and the son is a small putti, a male angel, plump and pink, one can imagine. The old, decrepit father is Bernini's stroke of genius: his old, loose skin sagging around his brittle bones is expertly done.

      Bernini's “David” (in a room of its own) is a youthful self-portrait of Bernini. He looks pretty muscular, but rather than to suppose that Bernini beautified himself we should consider that cutting marble is pretty good exercise. Notice the difference between Michelangelo’s more famous David and Bernini’s: the High Renaissance artist depicted a calm, relaxed man and it is impossible to tell from Michelangelo's statue whether David has just thrown the stone that killed Goliath, or is about to. It fact, it may just as well be David about to take a shower ten years after he event. Then look at the Bernini version: one split second of concentration, every muscle tightened, a David focused from top to toe on the target just before propelling the stone into Goliath’s brain and felling the giant. 

Most people's favourite, however, is "Apollo and Daphne", also in a separate room. The story goes that Apollo had fallen madly in love with the pretty nymph Daphne and was ‘aspiring to her bed,’ as Ovid so delicately puts it in his Metamorphoses. Unimpressed by the youthful god, Daphne fled from what she considered a fate worse than death. As Apollo gains on the girl, she pleads with the Olympian powers to help her, even if it means destroying her beauty:

Gape Earth, and this unhappy wretch intomb;
Or change my form, whence all my sorrows come.

And the Olympian powers concur:

Scarce had she finish'd, when her feet she found
Benumb'd with cold, and fasten'd to the ground:
A filmy rind about her body grows;
Her hair to leaves, her arms extend to boughs:
The nymph is all into a laurel gone;
The smoothness of her skin remains alone.

The nymph is metamorphosed into the first laurel tree in the world, in fact. But see how Bernini has captured the dynamics of Ovid’s verses – almost like something out of Disney. Poor Daphne is so concentrated on her flight that she is oblivious to the transformation that is taking place in an instant, it seems: her stretched fingers shoot leaves (so thinly chiselled that they seem almost transparent!), the bark modestly covers her abdomen and small roots dart out of her toes. It’s mythology captured in a marble snapshot!

Even Apollo seems baffled at the transformation; his face exhibits surprise and quite a modicum of disappointment.  

Notice also how Bernini has varied his treatment of the marble: the bark is crudely cut, the leaves are velvety and only the figures of the two youngsters are polished so as to suggest bodies sweating from the exertion and excitement.

Apollo never got over Daphne, by the way. Ovid has him say:

Because thou canst not be
My mistress, I espouse thee for my tree:
Be thou the prize of honour, and renown;
The deathless poet, and the poem, crown.
Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,
And, after poets, be by victors worn.

      While in the Apollo and Daphne room, do not fail to observe the ceiling, a marvellous piece of trompe l'æuil. The decorations, ribbons and bows and the like, are all painted on a flat ceiling, but the effect is so well achieved that people usually have to gaze at the ceiling for several minutes before they finally believe that there are no protrusions at all. It is indeed flat, and all done with masterful painting. It almost surpasses the effect achieved in the ceiling of Ignazio di Loyola.

      You may want to cheat on Bernini for a while and take a look at Canova’s statue of Pauline Borghese, Napoleon’s sister, on a couch in the middle of another room. She is stark naked. Her friends were appalled that she, a noble lady, had taken off all her clothes for a sculptor, even if he was Canova. “Why not?” she replied, “the room was well heated.” She has an apple in her hand, the classic symbol of temptation, and Pauline believed herself to be a great seductress. The English poet John Keats used to dodge her when he came across her in the Borghese Park. He was a small fellow, only 5 feet 2, and by all accounts, Pauline could be rather insistent.

      On the top floor of Galleria Borghese you must find two of Bernini’s three self-portraits. On the first he is 26 (the age at which he made Apollo and Daphne), and on the other he is 42. Both portraits are excellent, and not without his accustomed irony. In the first portrait he looks liked a hunted animal – he is busy, isn’t he? And there is an air of ‘out of my way – here I come!” in this portrait. In the second, Bernini is more settled – he had married by this time (he didn’t find time to marry until he was 40) and his home was already teeming with children. This Bernini has arrived, but he is still too busy to shave or comb his hair! He looks as though he has posed for a hasty snapshot, whereas, in fact, he has been sitting for his own portrait for hours. A third self-portrait exists of Bernini as an old man, not exhibited in Borghese. His hair is still a mess (what's left of it), he still looks haunted by the immense amount of work to do, but this time his face has a baffled expression, as if to say: where did all the years go?

      On either side of the portraits you find two busts of Cardinal Scipio Borghese – they are almost identical, but if you look at the bust on the left you will see the sculptor’s worst nightmare: a hidden crack concealed in the marble, revealed only when the work was all but finished! In Borghese’s bust, the crack runs across the Cardinal’s forehead. That wouldn’t do, so Bernini had to make another. Which he did, in only two weeks.

      On the first floor of the galleria, you must also see Titian’s ”The Celestial and the Terrestrial Venus” – the clothed and the naked Goddess of Love sitting by a well with a cupid.

      You can also see five or six paintings of the nutty but brilliant Caravaggio, among which ’The Prodigal Son’. The pictures say “Michelangelo”, but it’s Michelangelo Merisi di Caravaggio, not Buonarotti. There are no Michelangelos in Villa Borghese.

      When you leave Borghese, go through the park, not out on the street. If you continue southwest, you will reach the park road Via di Belvedere - 'street of the beautiful view', aptly named, since it gives you a breathtaking view of Piazza del Popolo. The great archway on the Piazza was erected in 1654 to celebrate the arrival in Rome of Swedish Queen Christina who had abdicated and converted to Catholicism. Christina was an unruly woman in every respect and not half as pretty as Garbo in the 1933 film. Christina flaunted her lesbian proclivities (which sheds new light on her famous aphorism that 'marriage is as good as incompatible with love') and dressed like a man. While this did not sit well with her fellow Swedes back home, Catholic countries are often more tolerant and Pope Alexander VII (whose tomb in St. Peter's was designed by Bernini, as you recall) was certainly thrilled to welcome the royal apostate with all due pomp and circumstance in the piazza. Christina was received by a crowd of 6,000 people and was entertained with camels, elephants, jousts and fireworks. She soon resumed her capricious manners, however, and once, when Cardinal Medici was late for an appointment, she fired a cannon at his gate to signal her displeasure. The cannonball is still imbedded in the bowl of the fountain outside what is now the French Academy in Viale della Trinita which you pass on your way from Belvedere to the Spanish Steps.

You reach the Spanish Steps at the top by Trinita dei Monti, the church, and if you proceed down the steps on the left side of the stairs, you will pass the terrace of the apartment where John Keats lived until he died in 1821, 26 years of age. As you descend the stairs, Babington’s Tea Rooms is on your right. It’s not the cheapest place to have your tea, but do spoil yourself. The founder of the place was related to the Babington that attempted to free Mary Queen of Scots, but eventually provided the conclusive evidence that had her beheaded.

Perhaps you prefer to visit Caffé Greco in Via Condotti, the street connecting the Spanish Steps and the Corso. It was founded in 1760, and since then, everybody who is anybody has had a cup of coffee there, such as John Keats, Goethe, Byron, Franz Liszt, Hans Christian Andersen, Henrik Ibsen, Buffalo Bill, Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Caffé Greco is not entirely inexpensive, but then again: you will be served by waiters in livery.

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Recommendable non-musts

      If you are interested in English poetry, you should visit Keats’ apartment as well, for a small fee. The custodians are enlightened people and like to talk. The apartment is where Keats died, and it has been turned into memorial rooms for the younger school of romantics: Byron, Shelley and Keats. They all died in exile. As mentioned, Shelley was drowned in the Gulf of Spezia at the age of 30, and Keats succumbed to tuberculosis at 26. Being a former student of medicine, he was able to diagnose his own illness when he found a spot of bright red blood on his pillow one morning:  "I cannot be deceived by that colour - " he wrote to his brother, "I must die". Coughing up dark blood is bad enough, but bright red blood indicates a haemorrhage straight from the lungs, and that is fatal. With its beneficial climate, Rome probably secured Keats a couple of extra months. His last letter home to England testifies to his knowledge that death was imminent: "I can scarcely bid you goodbye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you." He died on February 23, 1821, as the first to go among the younger school of English romantic poets. Shelley followed one year later, and Byron in 1824.
Keats was held in high esteem by Byron and Shelley who never ceased to defend him against his detractors. As opposed to the erotic and humourous verse of Byron and the political tracts of Shelley, Keats' poetry is in a gentle and philosophic vein. His subjects are archetypal to romantic poetry in that they deal with life and art, a subject he keeps on a general level, never making it autobiographical as in the poetry of his two great contemporaries. Typical of Keats is his description of life as "the reading of an ever-changing tale/ The light uplifting of a maiden's veil," juxtaposing the grand scope of the unpredictability of life - we never know what waits for us around the next corner - with that small occurrence in a split second that will decide the course of our lives.

      If I have succeeded in arousing your interest in Bernini, you may want to see his own little church, a far cry from the splendour and grandiosity of St. Peter’s. It is called San Andrea Al' Quirinale and is located on the Quirinale, close to Termini. It is small indeed, very rosy in hue and slightly oval. The sight to behold in this church is the ceiling. Hundreds of little putti – happy baby angels on the fat side – are flying effortlessly into the sky (the dome of a church always represents the heaven awaiting us in the afterlife), and they want us to come too; they are beckoning us to follow them, as if they have failed to observe that we have no wings. The host of plump angels is swirling high above us, and when looking at the dome, you get the feeling that Bernini’s inspiration has been water running out of a sink. It seems as if someone pulled the plug of heaven and that the angels are being sucked up there, in defiance of the law of gravitation. And oh, the mirth of it! Perhaps that’s why I’m so fond of Bernini; no one could be further away from the gloom & doom that so many artists and so many churches force down on Christianity. Bernini seems to challenge us: “Who says we can’t have fun? Where is it written that we mustn’t pull a joke? If heaven is eternal bliss, let’s practise a bit while we wait.”

The inspiration of Bernini’s dome is evident: he was three times a father when he designed it, five more children would follow, so soon his own house must have resembled the ceiling of the Andrea Al' Quirinale - filled with the fruits of the fun he himself had.

      At the other end of the scale, you may peruse the Cappuccine Crypt, a gruesome spectacle. Find Piazza Barberini and proceed some 35 yards up Via Vittorio Veneto, the broadest street leading from Piazza Barberini. A big staircase on your right takes you up to the entrance. Admission is free, but I’ll be surprised if the Cappucine monk on duty does not touch you for alms.

The crypt seems to be a celebration of death. Thousands of deceased brethren, along with noble supporters of the order, have had their bones exhibited in ornate patterns. When I was young and backpacking through Europe with a friend of mine, we had to spend two hours in the small crypt because my companion was a medical student and he had a field day identifying all the various bones. “Oh, here’s a wall completely decorated with fibulas! And there are femoral bones in this section!” and so on.

The skeleton of Princess Barberini who died when she was eight is the centre piece in the last niche of the crypt. She is arranged as the Angel of Death, and I believe my old pal identified her scythe as a scapula, or shoulder blade.

Scribbled down on an unassuming piece of cardboard in the last niche you will find a memento mori summing up the message of the dead artefacts in the crypt to the still living visitors: Quello che siete, noi eravamo, quello che siamo, voi sarebbe –  “What you are now, we once were.What we are, you will be.”

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