My Favorite Graffitti

Graffiti is one of the oldest methods of transmitting information through words and/or pictures, and in Rome, something ubiquitous. It is an Italian word, after all. Even Pompeii has graffiti, and Ancient Rome was famous for it. Now, most of the graffiti tells me such important things as 'Flavio is lame' or 'Marco loves Giulia' (you'd be amazed at how much of the graffiti in Rome is declaring love in one way or another), but every once in a while I come across something really spectacular. The below picture represents not only my favorite graffiti in the city of Rome, but also the hard work of someone who might be a kindred soul:


If the text at the bottom of the image is too hard to read, it says:
YOU ARE 8851 STEPS FROM THE AURELIAN WALL
And below, the same in Italian. As you can see, this data is accompanied by a map of the city of Rome with the Aurelian walls marked in red. The red plus signs represent the places where this clever artist posted this graffiti, changing the number of steps at each location.

I am incredibly impressed that someone took the time to figure out how many steps it took to get from the old city walls (built in the 3rd century AD) to the wall on which this was painted. Also, this mysterious tagger somehow got or made a stencil in the shape of Rome, with some of the streets marked out. The photo here I was lucky to find, because the first time I saw this image was on a wall only a few blocks from my apartment. Not having my camera with me at that moment, I resolved to come back later and take the photo. However, when I returned, camera in hand, more graffiti had been sprayed over most of the map, declaring 'Via Induno Libera!' ('Free Via Induno!' From what, I do not know. I think it is a pun on another street in our neighborhood, which is actually called Via Roma Libera [Street of the Free Rome]). I tried to edit the writing out of the map, but my photoshop skills are not that honed. Within a week, both graffiti were painted over and the wall was blank again. I found this one recently on a wall behind the Forum, where I had wandered on an afternoon off from work.

Secret Ingredients

Around the corner from my apartment is a restaurant that does a pretty consistent business. It is a small place, and very clearly locally run. It is so local that it has no discernible name, it is just recognizable. I have never eaten in this place, because I usually eat in another local place just up the street when I am looking for basic, 'real' Italian food, but perhaps I should rethink this decision. Recently, I have noticed more and more people eating at this restaurant, and have wondered what is behind the upswing in business. Last night, however, as I was walking past this place (on my way home from my local), I caught sight of a sign that is advertising the secret ingredients that seem to be drawing a crowd of regulars:


Now, I have no idea how to put 'Italian Love' into a pizza, and definitely no idea what 'amazing' is, but clearly, this is a winning combination.

Rome in August...

...is a ghost town! It is also approximately the same temperature as the surface of the sun, except more humid. Last year I managed to get myself to Ireland before the dog days of summer really kicked in, but this year, I am in Rome, and working the whole month. The heat, however, is nothing compared to the silence in the city. My neighborhood is usually full of families and screaming children (which I don't miss as much as some other things), and the piazza has shops all around it that are now boarded up with signs reading: Chiuso per ferie!

In August, Romans get a big holiday, and I don't mean something like Labor Day weekend; they take 3 WEEKS of vacation, and most people leave the confines of the Eternal City for somewhere cooler, like the beach or the mountains. My own landlord went to Reggio Calabria, and said he'll be back at the beginning of September. (Here's hoping the washing machine doesn't blow up.)

However, it is not just the private citizens who head for the hills; all the shop owners go as well, and to my great dismay, this includes the men who own and operate I Suppli, a little hole-in-the-wall tavola calda that makes the best suppli in the entire world. They also make breathtaking pizza bianca. I was in there a few days ago, and they know my face (I am in there often enough that when I walk in behind a herd of little old ladies, I just wave at the guys behind the counter and they shout, 'Oh-o! Suppli! Ciao Alessandra!' This makes me very happy, because I get presto suppli, but I think it really angers the ladies.), and the main man started saying things really quickly to me in Italian. I hate to admit when I don't understand, so I did my typical smile and nod, and say 'si' a few times. The next day, however, I felt like a complete idiot, because there was the Chiuso per Ferie sign pasted onto the boarded up wall of I Suppli. They had been trying to ask me what I would do without them for 3 weeks. I still don't know the answer!

Venice

Dara and I went to Venice for the long weekend, as a little mini-holiday in the middle of the high tourist season. It seems a bit decadent to be taking off 3 days when we could be working, but having gone and returned, I can tell you just how wonderful (and almost necessary) it was. I always think of living in Rome as being on an extended holiday, no matter how long I am here, because Rome to me is a magical place, and regardless of my high level of familiarity, it is different enough from home to feel that way. Still, taking a holiday from Rome was an incredibly relaxing experience!

Firstly, I got to sleep in a bed that was not mine. Now, in fairness, the hotel bed was really hard (which made my own bed feel a million times more comfortable than it already

is when I came home!), but the room was air conditioned, and I actually went and a

te breakfast every day! Our hotel, San Giorgio, was adorable if incredibly rococo, but it was very near San Marco and we had a window that overlooked the canal. The smell of the canals wasn't as bad as I had expected, either; mostly, they smelled like the sea, which was actually quite nice.

Secondly, I went out every day with absolutely zero plans. It was fantastic. I am a notorious plan-lover, but to walk around a city without having a schedule was a rare treat. I still got to see plenty of art and architecture, but on a whim, Dara and I went out to one of the other islands, which ended up being absolutely amazing. It was San Giorgio Maggiore, home to a huge church and the yacht club, and nothing else, and we took off our shoes and went wading on the submerged steps. This is the island:

That's me, from a very great distance. Believe it or not, that is me with a tan.

As it turns out, the church had a bell tower, and we climbed it and were rewarded with incredible views of the whole lagoon. I'll leave you with a sample of those!

Mary Mary

The Virgin Mary is a very important figure in Italy, in both a religious and practical way. While the Catholicism of Rome is a variable thing (some are martyrs, some are Borgia popes, and most people oscillate between those extremes), Mary is constant. She is there when they baptize the Roman babies (and the Sicilian, and the Florentine, and all the Italian babies, for that matter) in an elaborate ceremony that revolves around a pampered infant in a frilly dress, who probably won't remember any of it, and she is there when those infants grow up and get married (another elaborate ceremony involving a frilly dress; the Italians seem to really love them). When people are trying to have children, they go write notes to the Virgin and leave them at the feet of her

statues. When those children, a few years later, fall off a playground, their mothers call on Mary again for help. She is not just for children and mothers, however; grown men invoke her name when they see a beautiful woman walking down the street (their eyes bug out and they yell 'maDONNA', with a great flourish and serious emphasis on the 'donna' part.)

In return for this constant work, however, Mary gets a few perks, and one of them, currently in process here in my lovely Trastevere, is a huge festival devoted to her. There are many Marys in Rome, but this festival is the Celebrazioni per la Festa della Madonna del Carmine, better

known in English as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, friend to the Carmelites. Technically, her feast

day is the 16th of July, but since 1996 (and I know this because there is a plaque put up by John Paul II on the church) there has been a big festival in this area that lasts for 10 days, the last of which was yesterday.

On the first day of her festival, they dress the large (almost life sized) statue of the Virgin in a beautiful dress (she gets a new one every year, though they always look the same) and a m

assive crown, and they put in her hands something called 'scapulars'. (A side story: it took me ages to figure out what these were called, because all the people I asked were too busy yelling to enunciate properly...) Having looked it up later, I found that while a scapular refers to the monk's cloak, which goes over the shoulders and covers the front and the back, what our Mary was holding is a devotional scapular, which in her case is a small rectangle of wood with a beautiful

silver overlay. She holds four of them, two in each hand, with her initials and a portrait of her with the baby Jesus on them.

Having dressed her up for the occasion, the population of Trastevere all crams into San Crisogono for mass, and then the statue is lifted up on a platform and processed around the neighborhood. For the occasion, some streets are decorated with Christmas lights. And there were masses of people waiting for the Virgin to appear. When she did, she was announced by a man on a loudspeaker, who sang (quite well, actually) Schubert's Ave Maria. When he was done, her procession moved up the street, and people were yelling her name and applauding. This is a picture of her being carried by the Carmelite monks, but that man's head got in the way of my camera flash:

Here you can see her processing up the street with all the Christmas lights:

She ends up in another church, Sant' Agata, where she stayed until this morning. At that point, as far as I can tell, she is sprited off to someplace upriver, and there she waits, until the evening. This evening, Dara and I were wandering around Trastevere, unaware of the impending arrival of Mary (unaware, in fact, that she had left Sant' Agata), but when we got to Ponte Garibaldi, we saw not only that bridge lined with people holding candles, but the bridges as far down as Tiber Island, and the top of the Tiber embankments on both sides of the river as well. Not wanting to miss out, we collected some candles and elbowed our way to the front of the crowd, and waited. The sun started to go down, which makes a beautiful light at that exact point in Rome (more on this in another post), and people started to light their candles. Eventually, Mary appeared, still decked out in all her finery, on a boat, majestically moving down the river. When the boat reached Ponte Garibaldi, Mary, after disembarking, was once more carried on her platform and processed towards Santa Maria in Trastevere, possibly one of the top 5 most beautiful churches in Rome.

More yelling and cheering accompanied her, as did throngs of people holding lit candles, which was a bit of an adventure. When the statue and her followers reached Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, the bells of the church started to ring, and the statue was moved inside the church. At that point, there was a rush for tables at local restaraunts, and I could hear people thanking the Virgin when they managed to grab one of the prime, outdoor tables. The next day, in a much quieter and more solemn procession, Mary was returned to Sant' Agata and her festival garb removed, to face another year of being the go-to girl of Romans and Italians everywhere.

Tram Magic

One of the beauties of not driving in Rome is the public transportation system. While that might sound incredibly facetious, I am in fact a big fan of this system. Mostly because it is almost entirely free to use (to the intrepid and attentive, if morally ambiguous passenger), but also because it is diverse and generally air conditioned.

This is not to say there are not flaws in the system. I imagine that the Roman Transportation Authority (ATAC, ironically) feels that all the free rides are a flaw, but for the normal traveller, these flaws are things like overcrowding, noise, and the fact that none of the buses seem to have any sort of suspension (and Rome is a city of cobbled streets). I can't say anything bad about the scheduling, because buses, trains, and trams tend to be pretty regular.

I happen to live near one of the tram lines, which I love, because it is usually faster and cooler than the bus, and because it is the fastest way to get to the center of town. It is also quiet, and free from the plague of cobblestones. Still, the tram has its own problems, which would never happen on a bus, such as too many trams at the capolinea, the turnaround point, or abrupt stops due to electrical short circuits.

Today, however, one of the doors on the tram would not close. No matter how many times the driver pressed the button, the doors stayed resolutely open, even after everyone on board had moved far away from them. The button pressing and anxious glares went on for about 3 minutes before someone decided to take matters into his own hands. A little old Italian man got up out of his seat with a great air of command and wisdom, and approached the misbehaving doorswith both hands in the air. The driver pressed the useless 'close' button once more, before geturing to the old man to go on with whatever he was doing. The man eyed the doors speculatively, looked them up and down, and with a great movement of his head, sneezed on them.

They closed immediately.

Tivoli

Yesterday I went to Tivoli, because I had to practice giving a tour there, and because it is a lovely little town high in the hills, and it was a good excuse to get out of Rome. I haven't been to Tivoli in about 2 years, and it was even more charming than I remembered.

I took the metro and then the bus out there, which took only an hour and a half (and only cost 2 euro!), and once we left the city, the drive was beautiful. At one point we even drove past a travertine quarry. Perhaps this is not as exciting to all of my readers as it is to me, but travertine is the main building stone of both the Romans and the Catholic Church (and hey, the Fascists used a lot of it too, but I am not overly fond of their architecture), and therefore figures quite heavily into most of my tours.

It was a pretty relaxing day, begun at Hadrian's Villa, which is full of mosquitos, and ended at the Villa d'Este, which is gorgeous. I don't mean to discount Hadrian's villa, it is a really remarkable example of how talented the Romans were with brick and mortar (even if they did cover it with marble), but we had to walk quite far in the hot sun to get there, and then the biting insects seemed to find me particularly tasty. The site itself was uncrowded and vast, which was a nice change from Rome, and the temperature was nearly perfect by the time we left in the late afternoon. We got into the Villa d'Este at the last entrance, which turned out to be wonderful, as we were there when the sun began to go down, and the Villa's panoramic views are all to the west.

Not overly exciting, but a beautiful and calm weekend trip.