Rome Archives - The Patroclus

December 26, 2023April 30, 2024

Paleochristian Churches Part V – The Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome

Welcome to another article on paleochristian churches – buildings that survive from the early Christian era. In this case, the church is the Basilica of Santa Sabina all’Aventino, in Rome.

As I said in the introduction to this series,”paleochristian” is a somewhat elastic term; in some contexts it is used quite strictly to refer only to the very earliest periods, while in others it might apply more broadly to periods in the first millennium AD when Christian art, architecture and doctrine were all still evolving. I’m not a proper historian so I lean towards elasticity, selecting my examples on the basis of what they can show us that is different to the familiar architectural and artistic conventions of the Middle Ages and onwards, and also because really old things are very cool.

Since the Middle Ages the term “basilica” has meant a large church, granted special privileges by the Catholic Church. But in ancient Roman times, it referred simply to a large public building, used for various purposes including law courts, tax offices and so on; the colonnaded side aisles could be subdivided with curtains so a basilica might serve multiple purposes at the same time.

Basilicas were built to a standard plan, and after the establishment of Christianity as the state religion under Constantine, the basic plan – and the term – was adopted for large churches.

If you are a regular reader you will know that I am often disappointed to find that very old ecclesiastical art and architecture can be hard to find beneath later – often baroque, but also Renaissance – accretions. If you find yourself similarly disappointed, then I can recommend Santa Sabina, which is the oldest surviving basilica in Rome that retains its original appearance. While it did have some internal additions in the 16th Century, these were removed in the 20th.

Dating from 422 or so, the Basilica of Santa Sabina is a couple of decades older than the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – but it is in something much closer to its original condition than the mighty basilica of Santa Maria.

Santa Sabina is also easy to get to if you are in Rome. It stands on the Aventine Hill – that’s the southernmost of the ancient seven hills, beside the Tiber, next to the Circus Maximus and across the river from Trastevere. There’s a pleasant park there called the Giardino degli Aranci (Garden of the Oranges) from which you get one of the better views of Rome.

Map of Aventine Hill — Map showing the Basilica of Santa Sabina in the lower left (click to open in Google Maps)

Unless you arrive there in a bus or a taxi, or on one of those blasted electric scooters, you will probably do what we have done each time and slog up the hill on foot from the Circus Maximus, or from the Lungotevere (the avenue beside the Tiber). If you take the former route you will see a pleasant rose garden on the way.

Via di Valle Murcia — The approach to the Aventine Hill through the rose garden. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

When you get to Santa Sabina, in the car park you might see an immaculate old Lancia or Alfa Romeo with white ribbons on the bonnet, because the church is a very popular place for weddings.

In ancient republican Rome the hill was the site of several temples dedicated to deities associated with the plebeian classes, but by imperial times the hill seems to have become a very up-market suburban area, with luxurious houses owned by aristocratic families, and a temple of Juno. One of the houses is said to have belonged to a lady called Sabina, a Christian convert who was martyred in the 2nd Century and later canonised. I don’t know whether Sabina’s house became a church after her death, but in any case there would probably have been no continuity with the later basilica dedicated to Sabina, because in the early 400s the area is thought to have been completely destroyed when Alaric the Goth sacked Rome. That makes sense – Alaric ordered his troops to respect religious places, but private houses in a wealthy suburb would have had no such protection.

It must be said that even some Catholic sources are a bit dubious as to whether “Saint Sabina” even existed. One scholar argues that the real-life Sabina was likely to have been a wealthy 5th-Century donor of the land on which the basilica was to be built, and that the whole story about the 2nd-Century martyr was an early medieval invention. This is by no means impossible; in my post about Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese we saw how two completely different Costanzas appear to have been postumously conflated into a single rather implausible saint. And it is not hard to imagine that “Sabina’s Church”, ie the church built on Sabina’s land, became “Saint Sabina’s Church” over time, creating the need for a confected hagiography to explain who the purported saint had been.

As we saw in my post on A Return to Ravenna, when the Gothic army left Rome, one of their hostages was the young Galla Placidia, daughter of the Emperor Theodosius, who was later to marry one of her captors and later still became, as regent for her son, the last competent ruler of the Western Empire. As a wealthy Roman lady, might our possible real Sabina have moved in the same circles as Galla Placidia, and perhaps met her? It is an interesting but unprovable speculation.

What is known for certain is that in the 420s, not long after the sack of Rome by the Goths, a churchman called Peter of Illyria commissioned the basilica that when complete twelve years later would become known as Santa Sabina. I wondered what this area might have looked like then. Only a few years after the sack, Rome was already experiencing severe depopulation, and the wealthy people who had lived on the Aventine Hill before the sack (including Sabina?) may well have had country estates to which they could relocate. In my imagination the hill would still have been a place of ruins, perhaps with improvised market gardens or animals grazing where once there had been luxurious houses. (Note: I recently watched an interesting video on the role of population decline in the fall of the Western Empire. You can find it here.)

Looking north from the hilltop, what would one have seen? More ruins across the river in Trastevere, I suppose, and to the right on the Palatine Hill. But Rome was to suffer two more sackings in the next six decades, so it wasn’t yet as bad as it would get.

View from Giardino degli Aranci — A modern view looking north-west from the Giardini degli Aranci towards Trastevere and St Peter’s on the left. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens, two images stitched in Capture One software (click to enlarge).

Was the Temple of Juno still standing on the Aventine Hill? As a pagan structure it would not have been afforded any special protection by the Goths, but in any case, given the suppression of the old religion by now-dominant Christianity, it might already have fallen into a state in which it wasn’t worth looting.

The Interior

Inside the Basilica of Santa Sabina, the overwhelming impression is of an austere nobility. Whenever we have been there, there have been no seats in the nave, so you really feel the space. Lining the nave are columns that were taken from the Temple of Juno and re-used. That temple was built around 400 BC and then restored during the reign of Augustus. So you are standing in a building that is over 1600 years old, but the columns are even older – I’m not an expert, but I would guess that elaborate Corinthian capitals like this would date from the Augustan restoration, making them 400 years older than most of the church.

Above the door is a dedication in Latin hexameters, which I assume is the reason we know that Peter of Illyria commissioned the church.

The windows in the apse, and in the clerestory (that is, along the top of the walls of the nave), contain neither plain nor coloured glass, but shards of a translucent mineral called selenite, mounted in delicate stone tracery. This is apparently a very ancient practice – the first use of glass in windows is supposed to have been some decades after Santa Sabina was built. As far as I can find out, this is one of the very few ancient buildings (or perhaps the only one) where you can still see selenite windows.

The Doors

If you get excited about unlikely survivals of really old stuff, then a highlight of Santa Sabina is seeing the original doors of cypress wood, still in position. They are huge, and are easily the oldest large wooden artefacts that survive from antiquity. Despite their being made of wood, and despite their having been exposed to the open air for around 1,600 years, you can still look at the intricate carvings of biblical scenes.

Santa Sabina doors — Santa Sabina: the doors. The fact that most adults can walk through the opening upright gives an idea of the scale. I believe that the marble door frame, like the columns, started out in another, older, building. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Needless to say the carvings on the doors have been the subject of intense academic study – and the inevitable disagreements – but two things stood out to me. One is a small panel at the far top left, which was rather hard to photograph with the lens I had with me. It shows three figures with their arms outstretched, and while there are some alternative interpretations, it is hard to disagree with the conventional view that this is the earliest known representation of the crucifixion of Christ, with the other figures being the two thieves.

The second thing that stood out to me was the panel showing the adoration of the magi. Unfortunately I do not have a photograph with sufficient recoverable detail to show here, but as in Ravenna and in Santa Maria Maggiore, our three friends are wearing tights and Phrygian caps (or “smurf hats”, if you prefer). On some future visit to Rome I will try and get a reproducible image and update this post.

Another panel shows a figure being acclaimed by others, standing in front of a church and accompanied by an angel. While there have been various interpretations that this is a biblical event, another theory has it that the person’s costume would make him a Roman-Byzantine Emperor. If so, the most plausible candidate is Theodosius II, the Eastern Emperor at the time that Santa Sabina was built (and the nephew of Galla Placidia).

Later History

The basilica survived subsequent sackings of Rome and the rest of the Dark Ages. In 1216, when the Order of the Dominicans was established, Pope Honorius granted Santa Sabina to them to use as their headquarters. Some internal redecoration occurred in the Renaissance, but the building avoided the worst indignities of the period, especially that of having an entirely inappropriate Renaissance or baroque facade stuck on the front. At one point due to fears for the integrity of the structure most of the windows were bricked in, which must have made the interior very dark.

In the half-dome of the apse there was once an original 5th-Century mosaic, which was replaced in the 16th Century by a mediocre fresco. I have not managed to find a description of the original, but it is suggested that the composition of the replacement mimics that of the original.

During Napoleon’s occupation of Rome the Dominicans were expelled, but returned afterwards. Then when the Kingdom of Italy took Rome from the Papacy in 1870 they were expelled again, and the Italian Government converted the church to a quarantine station, of all things. These days the basilica is again a consecrated church of the Dominicans.

There were two separate restorations during the 20th Century, the first of which was criticised for some of the aesthetic decisions made, including the installation of a rather bizarre pagoda-like ciborium, baldacchino or altar canopy, which was removed, along with other accretions, in the second restoration. At that time the windows were re-opened, with the stone tracery recreated based on the remains of the 5th-Century originals which had been discovered during excavations.

However if you would like to see the ciborium, and you live in California, you can do so. Someone bought it, shipped it to America and reassembled it in the grounds of the Los Angeles Forest Lawn cemetery.

September 24, 2023January 29, 2024

A Walk to Porta Pia

Here is a brief photo essay featuring pictures taken on a walk through the inner Rome suburb of Nomentano to the Castel Pretorio, the Aurelian Walls and Porta Pia. The pictures didn’t really lend themselves to a unifying theme, so rather than trying to manufacture one I thought I would let the walk itself be the theme.

In August this year, at the national holiday of Ferragosto, I again stayed in Rome for a few nights on the basis that Rome is one of the few places in Italy where accommodation actually gets a bit cheaper during August; outside the historic centre the city is considerably emptier then. Last year we visited and I wrote about the origins of the holiday and a visit to the Milvian Bridge, site of one of the more momentous battles in history.

To the extent that I had any objectives other than staying in an air-conditioned hotel room, they were to take more photographs of paleochristian churches for future articles. Since then I have already published one on Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede featuring photos previously taken, and some taken on this visit. There will be at least one more to come.

Normally at this time of year the public transport in Rome is comparatively empty, but this year the authorities had decided to take advantage of the season to close one of the two Metro lines for maintenance, so the buses were rather crowded. Given that, one morning I looked at the map and decided that I could probably achieve some of my objectives on foot.

The map below shows the first part of my route. Because I was intending to take architectural photographs, sometimes indoors in low light, I took my heavy Fujifilm GFX 50R medium-format camera with me rather than the little Fujifilm X-Pro3, despite the extra discomfort.

I started at a favourite Sicilian bar in Nomentano, and after coffee and a pastry, set off down Via Catanzaro. One of the advantages of being in Rome during Ferragosto is that one can from time to time step into the street to compose a photograph without being immediately flattened by surging traffic, as would happen at any other time of year.

When I first realised that the word palazzo in Italian can mean “apartment block” as well as palace”, it struck me as a bit odd, but looking at some examples in Rome one realises that it is not entirely inappropriate – the architects were clearly trying for that sort of effect.

The rococo palazzo in the picture below, in Via Morgagni, was very striking; it was apparently built in 1926. The inscription on the front – NON DOMO DOMINUS SED DOMINO DOMUS is a quotation from Cicero, meaning that it is not the house (or family) that confers honour on its head, but the behaviour and bearing of the head that brings honour to the house. I don’t know what the significance of the snails at the top is, but they are a nice touch.

One sees quite a lot of early 20^th-Century public artworks in Rome, and the tendency is to mentally label the more monumental examples as “fascist” art, because, well, fascists liked that sort of thing. And since public art is usually paid for by the state, it often appears in contexts associated with the ideology of the government of the day. But it is correlation rather than causation – sculptors in non-Fascist regimes like Jacob Epstein in Britain were producing public works in similar styles.

In Italy, one clue is to look at the dates on public inscriptions. If there is a date, followed by a smaller number with “A” and/or “EF” then they are saying “Year (Anno) X of the Fascist Era (Epoca Fascista)”. Once you know to look, it is actually rather surprising how often you still see this in Italy – there was nothing like the sort of comprehensive removal of reminders of Nazism that happened in Germany after the war.

Below is a building from 1925, the Dopolavoro of the Italian railway workers in Rome, on Via Bari.

Dopolavoro Ferroviario, built in 1925. Via Bari, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

What was a dopolavoro? Literally meaning “after work”, the dopolavori were social clubs for industrial and agricultural working people, and as elsewhere in Europe had their origins in the late 19^th Century. Some were created by trade unions, and many by so-called “mutual assistance societies”. With the advent of Fascism, the trade unions were banned and the independent societies were incorporated into state-controlled organisations. The dopolavori proliferated, though, because the Fascist government liked the idea of them. The movement continued after the war and these days if you go to the website of the Dopolavoro Ferroviario (DLF) you will find an organisation offering cultural opportunities and cut-price travel.

Continuing along Via Catania I saw to my left the wall of a large building of obvious ancient Roman construction. This was the Castra Praetoria, or in modern Italian, Castel Pretorio – a name familiar to me from the metro station of the same name, but actually the remains of the barracks of the famous Praetorian Guard.

The walls of Castra Praetoria (Castel Pretorio). Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

In Republican Rome, the title praetor was given to men serving as magistrates, or as commanders in the army. It is from the bodyguards of the latter that the Praetorian Guard was descended. In imperial times they were the elite corps of the army that protected the emperor, fought beside him in battle, and sometimes performed sensitive intelligence missions.

Over time they went from protecting the emperor to sometimes choosing him as well, starting with the famous occasion where they supposedly found Claudius hiding behind a curtain after the assassination of Caligula. They were the only troops permitted to carry weapons in Rome without special authority, and being known for their arrogant behaviour they were not popular in the city. Emperors needed to keep the Praetorians happy with generous bribes to retain their loyalty, but one of the occasions when they were completely faithful to their duty was their final act, when they fought alongside the emperor Maxentius on the losing side against Constantine at the battle of the Milvian Bridge. This was not, as Christian propaganda had it, the final triumph of Christianity over pagan persecution, because Maxentius had already promulgated an edict of toleration for Christianity (for which Constantine then took the credit). But it was the victory of one political faction over another, and Constantine took his revenge by disbanding the Praetorians and demolishing their headquarters.

Constantine didn’t demolish the Castel Pretorio completely, as it formed part of the Aurelian Walls of Rome, and I continued along Via Catania with those walls now to my left. The Aurelian Walls were built around 275 AD, after a long period of peace in which Romans did not feel threatened, and the city had spread far outside the original city walls of six centuries earlier. But the Vandal incursions into Italy of the 3^rd Century put an end to that complacency, and the Emperor Aurelian hastily commissioned the walls which bear his name.

In 275 the walls were probably not strong enough to withstand a determined siege. That wasn’t their original purpose, though – it was to deter hit-and-run raids by barbarians, and to allow troops to be deployed rapidly to the site of an attack from one of the many watchtowers. However a few decades later Maxentius raised the height of the walls to make them a serious defence against siege warfare. It is an interesting hypothetical to consider what might have happened if Maxentius had decided to retreat behind the walls instead of engaging Constantine’s army at the Milvian Bridge.

Around 1,800 years later, the walls are still in pretty good condition where they have not been demolished to let roads through. I suspect that there are three reasons for this. Obviously, the first is that the walls were built strongly to start with – brick outer layers may not seem all that resilient but when the space between is filled with concrete and rock the result is very tough. The second is that brick and concrete are not materials that lend themselves to be scavenged for re-use, as happened to so much stone, marble and bronze from ancient buildings.

But probably the most important reason is that on a regular basis the walls continued to be needed for defence, right up until the 1870s, so the city authorities would have tried to keep them well-maintained. Which brings me – both in the narrative and in terms of my actual location – to Porta Pia.

The city gate of Porta Pia, replacing an older gate which was too small, was erected in the 1560s in the reign of Pope Pius IV, from whom it took its name. It was designed by Michelangelo who offered three versions, but Pius did not want to spend a lot of money and chose the cheapest-looking of the three. Even then the external façade was not completed until the 1860s, on a neo-classical design which is supposedly faithful to Michelangelo’s intentions (we do not know because the original drawings have been lost). But the facade on the inside of the walls is authentic Michelangelo.

That’s all very well, but it isn’t the reason why every Italian schoolchild learns about the Porta Pia in history lessons. No, in 1870, the Porta Pia was where the army of the Kingdom of Italy forced its way into Rome. If you are not familiar with the history of the Risorgimento, that might have come as a bit of a surprise – the Italian army, capturing Rome?

When Italy united in 1861, the new Italian parliament, meeting in Turin, declared that Rome was to be the capital. But there was a problem: the Pope was Pius IX, of whom much had been expected by progressives on his accession as a comparatively young man. But he had grown increasingly reactionary as he grew older. He refused to recognise the Kingdom of Italy, denounced it as an abomination and told Italians that it was a serious sin to vote in national elections. He then spent the rest of his life sulking. Papal forces were quickly evicted from almost all the Papal States, but the Italian Army stopped at the walls of Rome. There were a couple of reasons for this. One was that it would not have been a good look to shed Italian blood in a conflict with the forces of the Catholic Church, a prospect which seriously troubled King Victor Emmanuel. But the main reason was that Rome was strongly garrisoned by mercenaries and foreign forces, most of which were provided by the French Emperor Napoleon III.

Over the decade or so following the establishment of the Italian state, various attempts were made to find a negotiated solution, but they almost always ended with Pius throwing a tantrum, leading to the point where, in 1870 and to the general surprise of theologians, he declared himself infallible. Papal infallibility only applied on doctrinal pronouncements, but on the other hand Pius obviously considered the legitimacy of the Italian state a matter of doctrine.

Everything changed with France’s impending defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, which saw the hurried withdrawal of French troops from Rome. Faced with the impossibility of defending the city, Pius still refused any kind of agreement, but privately let it be known that if the Italian forces were able to breach the city’s defences he would yield to force majeure. And those defences were, mostly, the Aurelian Walls.

In the event, the loss of life – although completely unnecessary – was not huge. On the 20^th of September 1870, after a pounding by artillery, a breach was opened just to the west of the Porta Pia, the Bersaglieri light infantry of the Italian army entered Rome, and after brief fighting, the Papal forces laid down their arms. Most, being foreign mercenaries, were repatriated, although the Swiss were allowed to remain in Papal service. At a subsequent plebiscite, the vote by Romans to become part of Italy was overwhelmingly in the majority, so while 19^th-Century plebiscites did not observe modern standards of integrity and transparency, it was probably a fair representation of public opinion.

But this was an armistice, not a formal peace. While the Pope and his administration were given the territory of the Vatican and certain other church properties, and afforded extravagant diplomatic courtesies by the Italian Government, they still did not formally recognise the Italian state, or concede the loss of their former territories in central Italy. Pius declared a mass excommunication of all the Italian forces involved in the military action.

In fact, the problem was not solved until 1929, when the new Italian Prime Minister Mussolini negotiated the “Lateran Treaty”. Meanwhile, many Italian towns renamed their principal streets and piazzas “XX Settembre” in commemoration of the capture of Rome.

Just outside the gate is a monument to the Bersaglieri – and we can actually call this one “fascist” because it was commissioned by Mussolini. Although the soldier on top is in a uniform from the First World War, he is charging straight at the gate. In case you missed the point, the gatehouse of Porta Pia itself now houses a museum of the Bersaglieri, and once inside the gate, the name of the street changes from Via Nomentana to Via XX Settembre.

Bersaglieri Monument — Bersaglieri monument. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

After the capture of Rome, the Bersaglieri were immediately celebrated as heroes, and, with the Alpini, they remain a much-loved symbol of the Italian Army. I’m not sure what the best translation of the name would be – perhaps “riflemen”, “marksmen” or more generically, “light infantry”. I read somewhere that Piedmont lacked the resources to maintain a standing force of light cavalry, so the requirement for a highly-mobile battlefield force was filled by the Bersaglieri, which is why, rather than marching, they do everything at a run. And very fine they look too with their ostrich-plumed hats.

From Porta Pia I continued south towards the Esquiline Hill, then to the Colosseum, past the Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus, then up the Aventine Hill, ending at the Basilica of Santa Sabina and the Giardini degli Aranci, from which there are excellent views over the Tiber towards Trastevere and the Vatican. That will be the subject of a separate post.

September 3, 2023November 19, 2023

Paleochristian Churches IV – Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede

Welcome to the fourth instalment in this series, in which we look at Santa Maria Maggiore, one of Rome’s most famous churches, and two smaller but very interesting ones nearby – Santa Pudenziana and Santa Prassede.

My interest in this subject is historical and secular rather than religious, but it is not possible to discuss European history in the first millennium without reference to the evolution and controversies of Christian doctrine. I try my best to consider these issues objectively, but hope not to offend the devout.

Esquilino — Map of the Esquiline district of Rome. Santa Maria Maggiore is at the centre-right, Santa Prassede immediately below, and Santa Pudenziana is at the upper left. (*Source: Google*, click to open in Google Maps)

Santa Maria Maggiore

On a spur of Rome’s Esquiline Hill, not far from the Termini railway station, is the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore – Saint Mary the Great. These days the word “basilica” means a church that has been granted special privileges by the Pope, but in ancient Rome a basilica was just a large public building, built to a standard pattern on a rectangular plan, with a large central hall and side aisles divided from the central area by rows of columns. Santa Maria Maggiore is a basilica in both senses.

One interesting point about the special status of Santa Maria Maggiore is that when you step into it you are no longer in Italy, in a jurisdictional sense. Under the terms of the Lateran Treaty of 1929, in which the Catholic Church finally recognised the existence of the Italian state, the basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and St John Lateran remained little exclaves of Vatican City, analogous to the way that diplomatic premises are granted special status under international conventions. But my purpose here is to talk about the most ancient aspects of the building.

As is often the case, the exact origins of the building are a bit obscure, but it seems to have been built in the mid-400s on the site of another church which was about a century older. There is a legend about a miraculous summer fall of snow which indicated where the church should be built, but versions vary as to whether that refers to the older or the newer church.

What is known is that the central structure of the present church is that of the 5^th-Century building. The church has been repaired, modified and extended several times over the centuries, with the most dramatic change being the addition of the huge baroque façade in the 1740s. That, added to the late medieval campanile and the domes, has the result that on first sight it really does not look very ancient at all.

Santa Maria Maggiore from Via Carlo Alberto, not looking very ancient at all. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

But you have to look a bit closer. Unlike many of the terribly destructive modernisations of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, this 18^th-Century one left the 12^th-Century mosaics on the original façade intact. So while that’s not paleochristian but medieval, it’s a good start.

Before we examine the insides, let us consider the fact that the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This doesn’t sound particularly unusual to us now, but in the mid-400s, it was. Why is that? The answer begins with the fact that the Council of Ephesus had just concluded.

Some of the – for me anyway – more tiresome aspects of the history of the early Christian era are the endless controversies over Christology – the nature of Christ. Was he human, or divine? Or did he have both human and divine agency? If so, was his divine agency separate from that of God’s? How could his human agency not have been tainted by original sin? And so on, and on, and on, literally for centuries. Attempts to resolve these questions by reasoning led to all sorts of abstruse doctrines with no basis in scripture, including the Trinity, the immaculate conception of Mary and more, all of which just spawned additional disagreements. Well-meaning emperors, popes and patriarchs tried – when they were not active disputants themselves – to resolve the issues by convening councils, but those councils usually ended up with enraged clerics hurling anathemas at each other, and sometimes furniture.

One such council, and an important one, was the Council of Ephesus in 431 which was called by the Emperor Theodosius II. I’ll spare you the details of all the issues in dispute (although if you are interested there is a fairly comprehensive summary on Wikipedia) but one of the outcomes was that Mary was now officially designated “Mother of God” and that led rapidly to her promotion to the important position she has since occupied in both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the first to be dedicated to the Virgin, was erected to commemorate this decision, which you will agree was a momentous one given the focus of intense veneration which she quickly became.

Now let us step inside. The first impression is of yet another large baroque church. There is an immense 16^th-Century gilded ceiling which is “over the top” figuratively as well as literally. There is a huge baldacchino (canopy) over the altar, and at the rear of the nave over the door is a mock Roman temple façade with columns and tympanum, papal crest and a couple of angels. Above the altar is a dome and arches with every available surface covered with baroque wedding-cake style decoration.

But look at the columns that line the nave – although the capitals are more recent, they are real ancient Roman columns, recycled either from the church that stood on the site before this one, or from an earlier pagan temple (maybe both).

Above the frieze is a series of 5^th-Century mosaic panels telling the story of Moses on the eastern side, and various other Old Testament stories on the western.

The Red Sea — The Egyptians are drowned in the Red Sea, Santa Maria Maggiore. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

I’m assuming this one depicts the Battle of Jericho. Santa Maria Maggiore. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

But the real glories of Santa Maria Maggiore are the 5^th-Century mosaics on the arch separating the nave from the apse, and the 13^th-Century mosaics in the apse itself. And they make a real contrast in Marian iconography.

Let’s do this backwards in time and look at the apse first. It is a magnificent example of a very conventional medieval image – Christ crowning His mother as Queen of Heaven. Christ has long dark hair and a beard. Mary wears her conventional shawl and outer blue cloak. Angels, saints, popes and cardinals are in attendance.

Now let us go back eight hundred years before that and look at what may be the earliest-surviving representations of Mary in western religious art, on the so-called triumphal arch. Remember, this was just after she had been proclaimed Mother of God by the Council of Ephesus. Here is a series of illustrations from the life of the Virgin – the annunciation, the nativity, and so on. But where is Mary? You would be forgiven for not noticing her at first – she’s not dressed in her normal blue cloak, but is the one dressed as an aristocratic lady from the late Roman period – complete with silk dress, necklace and tiara. Nor does she seem to have a halo (although, weirdly, Herod does). Nothing like the later representations of her.

Triumphal arch mosaic — Santa Maria Maggiore, detail of the triumphal arch, with the Annunciation at the top, Adoration of the Magi immediately below. In the Annunciation, Mary is said to be piously weaving a new veil for the temple. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF100-200mm R LM OIS WR lens (click to enlarge).

And look for the three kings who appear in the adoration of the magi on the left side of the arch, and before Herod on the right. With their brightly-coloured tights and their Phrygian caps, we’ve seen those guys before, in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, built about fifty years after Santa Maria Maggiore. I had thought that version of them was unique to Ravenna, but clearly it was a conventional representation at the time. This stuff is really fascinating to late-Roman history nerds like me.

When we visited the church I was very pleased to see, as is often the case with the grand Roman basilicas, that the nave was empty of pews or chairs. This gives a sense of space and a much better idea of how the original must have felt (churches did not have seating until the late Middle Ages; before that you stayed standing or knelt on the floor).

Note: The original version of this article featured photographs of the arch mosaics taken with a high ISO and a short zoom lens and heavily cropped. The results were unsatisfactory and in October 2023 when I was next in Rome I took new ones with a longer lens with image stabilisation, which have replaced the earlier ones. It was still quite a challenge to process them.

Santa Pudenziana

The next church on our little itinerary is that of Santa Pudenziana, quite close by (see the map above). It is a very different sort of experience to Santa Maria Maggiore. The church is in a location described as the oldest place of Christian worship in Rome (although it is not the oldest surviving church building) and there seem to be reasonable grounds for making the claim. However the fabric of the building itself dates from the mid-4^th Century which still makes it very old indeed.

Pudenziana (Latin Pudentiana) and her sister Prassede (Latin Praxedis or Praxedes) are supposed to have been the daughters of an early Christian convert in Rome called Pudens. Pudens probably existed – St Paul sends a cheerio on his behalf in 2 Timothy 4:21. There is a suggestion from linguistic evidence that Pudentiana might not have been a real person, and that her existence has been wrongly inferred from the phrase domus Pudentiana, which could have meant the “house (or family) of Pudens”. Whether she was real or not, a tradition sprang up that Pudentiana and Praxedis went around collecting the blood of martyrs before being martyred themselves in due course.

The church is on the site of a 1^st-Century Roman house, so it is by no means implausible that the house was the home of a convert to Christianity (whom we may as well call Pudens) which in due course became an unofficial, then an official, place of worship.

Approaching the church of Santa Pudenziana from the street. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

It is hard to get a good sense of the building as you approach it – it is surrounded by other buildings including hotels and apartment blocks, and sits some way below the current street level, showing how much higher the ground level is in Rome these days (you can see a video explaining this phenomenon here). When you do get to it you see an architectural mish-mash which visually owes more to medieval and 19^th Century renovations than to anything from the 4^th Century.

Inside it is initially a bit disappointing as well – plaster-covered arches and a baroque altarpiece do not convey any sense of antiquity.

There is a notionally 4^th-Century mosaic in the apse, showing Christ and the apostles and once described as the most beautiful in Rome, but it was heavily restored in the 16^th Century, losing much in the process. The background, featuring an idealised Jerusalem and, in the sky the symbols of the four evangelists, looks original, and some of the faces of the figures on the left may be.

The rest of the decoration in the church is mediocre stuff from the 16^th Century and later. I have to admit that the first time I visited here a few years ago I took a quick look around, sniffed disapprovingly at the redecorations, and quickly left.

But the evidence of the building’s antiquity is there in front of you – not in the decorations, but between them. Stuck unobtrusively between the plaster arches are the original Roman columns that support the nave, and – unusually for a redecorated church – the walls of the nave are the original unrendered Roman brickwork. At the top of the picture below you can see the herringbone pattern that is very characteristic of the era.

So, as it often turns out, it is worth pausing, looking carefully and thinking about what you see. You may then also reflect that during the weekly Sunday services (the church has been adopted by Rome’s Filipino community), the walls that look down on the congregation are the same ones that looked down on congregations over 1600 years ago.

Santa Prassede

The final church we are visiting today is on the other side of Santa Maria Maggiore and is dedicated to Pudenziana’s sister Praxedis/Prassede. Although I don’t believe there is any evidence for Prassede’s existence other than tradition, I have not come across any explicit doubts about whether she existed, as there are in her sister’s case.

From the street, Santa Prassede is a bit unprepossessing. The first time we visited was an “are you sure this is the right place?” moment – but go inside, because you will be rewarded.

The church is later than the other two in this article, dating from the 700s, although there was a church on the same spot a couple of centuries earlier, and legend has it that the land was originally owned by the family of Pudens. It was commissioned by Pope Hadrian I to house the supposed bones of Prassede and Pudenziana. Shortly after it was built, around 820, the church was enlarged and redecorated on the instructions of Pope Paschal I, and it is these decorations on the arch and apse that – if you look past the inevitable baroque stuff lower down – make an overwhelming first impression.

Old Paschal wanted to make sure that he got the credit for this – under the both the triumphal arch and the apsidal arch you will see his monogram. And in the apse itself you will see him on the left of the group of figures surrounding Christ, holding a model of the church – since he was alive at the time of the depiction, by convention he is given a square halo. Either side of Christ, two female martyrs, presumably Prassede and Pudenziana, are being presented by Saints Peter and Paul. I don’t know who the saint on the far right is.

It’s a bit difficult to get a decent photograph of the apse mosaic from floor level, thanks to the ornate baroque baldacchino over the altar, so I had to take it in sections.

The church and its decorations are very impressive by 21^st-Century standards, but must have been breathtaking indeed in the 800s. Shortly after it was built it was visited by a couple of pilgrims from a distant northern land – King Æthelwulf of England and his young son, the future Alfred the Great. At a time when most buildings in England would have been made of timber, you can imagine the effect this must have had.

For me one of the highlights of the church is the little chapel of San Zeno, built by Paschal to contain the tomb of his mother Theodora. Inside it is covered in mosaics – not to the same standard as in the main church, but they are charming and intimate. A lady labelled as Theodora is presumably Paschal’s mother, and since she too has a square halo she must still have been alive at the time.

Cappella San Zeno — Santa Prassede, Cappella San Zeo. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

In the photographs above the lady on the left is Theodora, Paschal’s mother, followed by probably Santa Prassede. Then comes the Virgin Mary, by now (400 years after Santa Maria Maggiore) conventionally dressed in a blue cloak with her head covered. I don’t know who the saint on the right is – it could be Santa Pudenziana, but if it were one would expect her to be wearing a martyr’s crown like her sister.

Cappella San Zeno, ceiling mosaic. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Also in the church is part of an antique pillar of polished stone – said to be that to which Jesus was tied when scourged in front of Pilate. This was identified in situ by Saint Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine. Helena made a trip to the Holy Land during which, in addition to the pillar, she also managed to identify pieces of wood from the True Cross, parts of Jesus’s crib and various other relics which sparked a lucrative trade in such things for the next millennium or so. She also confidently indicated various sites mentioned in scripture such as Golgotha, the location of the Last Supper, and so on.

January 18, 2023November 19, 2023

Paleochristian Churches (part one) – Santa Costanza and Sant’Agnese

The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza and the Church of Sant’Agnese are two remarkable buildings in Rome, giving visitors insights into the late imperial and early post-imperial eras. This post is the first of a series I have in mind, concentrating on some of the oldest surviving Christian buildings. (Note: you can click on the “Paleochristian” tag at the bottom of the article to see others in this series.)

Although I write about these things from a firmly secular point of view, I find the subject matter causes some algorithms to group my posts with genuinely religious articles, and this series will only make that more likely. So if you have come across this by that route then I apologise, but hope you like the pictures anyway.

I enjoy visiting so-called “paleochristian” churches, for all sorts of reasons. The term, meaning simply “old Christian” is a bit elastic, but it obviously includes anything built in the late imperial period, and ends – well, sometime after that, but certainly well before the end of the first millennium AD. So the magnificent 5^th and 6^th-Century buildings in Ravenna like San Vitale and the Arian Baptistry which I talked about in my post on Ravenna at the Fall of the Empire can probably be included.

What’s the attraction? Well firstly, if you are interested in the late Roman and early medieval periods, then any survival from those times is going to be worth a look, because frankly there isn’t all that much still around, and what there is will almost always be religious.

I suppose one of the main attractions is the sheer implausibility of the survival of these buildings. After all, the immediate post-Roman period saw some intensely destructive wars. However even without warfare, the general impoverishment of Italy and the decline of government administration meant that routine maintenance of public buildings almost certainly ceased. Even without earthquakes, some would just have fallen to bits.

Others were wantonly destroyed. As ancient Roman engineering knowledge faded away, old buildings tended to be seen as a source of materials for recycling, rather than something to be preserved. Being a consecrated church was some protection against such a fate, albeit not a perfect one.

Even if the main structure survived, subsequent generations sometimes destroyed the original interiors and exteriors. They may have censored artwork that was no longer considered theologically correct, as in the case of some of the Arian mosaics in Ravenna. More often it was simply that they felt like redecorating. This, alas, was the case for a great many churches in Rome in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. So, for example, tourists visiting the mighty basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (to be the subject of a later post) will be greeted by the huge Baroque façade, and will need to look past a great deal of later stuff to see the magnificent 5^th-Century mosaics in the apse.

In architecture as in bird-watching, relative rarity definitely adds to the thrill of discovery.

The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza

We will start, appropriately, in Rome, and with a building whose claims to antiquity are beyond argument. This is because it is a mausoleum probably built to house the tomb of one of the daughters of Constantine, the Emperor who was given credit for ceasing the persecution of Christianity and setting it on the way to becoming the established religion (it may actually have been his predecessor and rival Maxentius). That dates it to the 350s or thereabouts.

Constantine may or may not have formally converted to Christianity, but his formidable mother Helena and his two daughters definitely did. Constantine’s daughters – Constantina and another Helena – were both buried in this building, in magnificent porphyry sarcophagi that are now in the Vatican museum. There is a very plausible theory that the mausoleum was actually built for the younger sister Helena, who was married to the emperor Julian the Apostate, but tradition gives it to her sister Constantina, subsequently Italianised as Costanza.

It’s not clear that this particular Costanza was ever a canonised saint. Indeed contemporary accounts talk of a rather violent, vindictive and highly political person, whose second marriage was to the eastern sub-Emperor Gallus – not really saint material. It seems likely to me that at some stage she was conflated with another Costanza who was a 1^st-Century martyr. The saintly virgin martyr and the tough-cookie empress were merged and a completely ahistorical life story was confected to suit this new hybrid character. If you do an online search for “Saint Constance” you will find modern documents referring to a pious unmarried virgin who was the daughter of the emperor and was cured of leprosy by a miracle. Obviously not true.

Be all that as it may, the building is well worth a visit. It is in the inner northern suburb called Nomentano, not far outside the Aurelian Walls of Rome, so in the 4^th Century probably a settled area of villas and market gardens but with enough open land available to build this sort of thing. Roman law banned burials inside the walls, so it is in places like this that one sees classical tombs like those which line the Via Appia, and where Christian catacombs may be found, as we shall see later.

The Mausoleum is a fairly short walk from the Sant’Agnese/Annibaliano metro station. You can just walk in off the Via Nomentana, and suddenly you have left the roar and bustle of modern Rome and entered a quiet place that has been sleeping for 1700-odd years. If you have enough coins in your pocket and the meter is actually working, you can turn on lights to illuminate the interior. We have been there several times over the years, and each time we were struck by how few other visitors there were.

Location of Santa Costanza — Location of the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza (source: Google Maps)

Like many of the most ancient religious buildings it is circular, rather than having the cross-shaped plan adopted in the Middle Ages. Its construction is concrete faced with brick, and in turn the bricks were apparently once covered with coloured stone, now lost. So it was probably quite imposing. The central area has a high dome, once covered in mosaics but unfortunately now decorated with a mediocre fresco from what looks like the 17^th or 18^th Century.

The real highlights are the mosaics covering the ceiling of the circular ambulatory vault which surrounds the central area. These are quite secular in their themes, suggesting that the mausoleum was not originally intended as a church, even though it was later consecrated. Indeed, several have a bucolic theme, with birds, flowers and fruit, amphorae of oil or wine, and a slightly bacchanalian one with grape vines, and cherubs gathering and pressing the grapes.

The panel shown below is interesting in that it contains pagan imagery, albeit by that stage perhaps considered decorative motifs rather than religious ones. The style is apparently characteristic of decorations in imperial palaces of the day, so quite appropriate for the daughter of one emperor and the wife of another. Nevertheless it shows that the later institutionalised hostility to pagan symbols (I guess we would call it “cancelling” today) was still some way off.

There are some Christian images: the lost mosaic inside the dome was apparently of biblical scenes, and around the ambulatory there are a couple of apses, with mosaics in a different style and perhaps of poorer quality than the secular ones. One shows “Christos Pantokrator”, or “Christ the ruler of all”. The other, below, shows a youthful, blond Christ giving a scroll representing divine law to Saints Peter and Paul.

It’s fascinating to see how some of the Christian iconography with which we are familiar from the Middle Ages and Renaissance had not yet become entrenched. Early representations of Christ often show him young, blond and sometimes clean-shaven. On the other hand the traditional representations of St Peter as white-haired and bearded, and St Paul as dark-haired and balding, as here, are very ancient.

Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura

If you leave the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza and look to your left, you will see what looks like a park with some old walls sticking up out of the earth. The old walls are in fact the remains of a large basilica dedicated to Saint Agnes (Sant’Agnese), which predated the Mausoleum. Agnes is a saint whose martyrdom (with various miraculous embellishments) was said to have occurred during the Diocletian persecutions at the end of the 3^rd Century. There was a catacomb here where Agnes was buried, and her cult quickly led to the building of the basilica, to which her supposed remains were transferred. In those early days “basilica” didn’t have its later meaning of a dedicated religious building, but was simply a large public building.

Basilica of Sant'Agnese — The ruined Basilica of Sant’Agnese, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

As I said earlier, in the post-imperial period sometimes buildings just fell to bits through neglect, and it seems that this is what happened to the original basilica of Sant’Agnese. So in the 7^th Century Pope Honorius decided to replace the old basilica with a new church a short distance away. It is that which now stands beside the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, and which holds the supposed bones of the Saint. The church is called Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura (St Agnes Outside the Walls), which serves to distinguish it from the famous church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, the large (now very much baroque-style) church on the western side of the Piazza Navona in central Rome, built over the traditional site of the saint’s martyrdom.

The approach to the church is through a pretty little garden, then down a long set of stairs, showing how the ground level has risen over the centuries. Lining the stairs is a display of fragments of funerary inscriptions from the site of the old basilica and the catacombs.

Sant'Agnese — Funerary inscriptions, Church of Sant’Agnese, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once inside the church the layout is fairly conventional, with a nave, transepts and apse, suggesting that by the 600s the basic plan for churches had settled down. And as you will see in the photographs below, there is a good deal of decoration that is much more recent than the 7^th Century, including the ceiling, the mosaic above the apse, and the canopy over the altar (ciborium, or baldacchino).

In fact the only major feature still in original 7^th Century condition is the apse mosaic behind the altar, which shows Saint Agnes flanked by Pope Honorius (holding a model of the church) and another pope whose identity I have not been able to find. Since it dates from his time, we may suppose that the picture of Honorius is a likeness. Honorius is mostly known now for his unsuccessful attempts to resolve the long-running controversies about the nature of Christ, and whether Christ had separate divine and human energies. His efforts earned him little gratitude.

Agnes was a particularly popular saint, whose portfolios included being the patron of young girls. One of the traditions associated with her is that a young girl who prayed to St Agnes on the eve of her feast day would dream of her future husband. This is the subject of one of Keats’s finest poems, The Eve of St Agnes.

Due to her association with innocence and virginity – and also, one suspects, to a coincidental Latin pun on her name (agnus meaning “lamb”) – Sant’Agnese is often shown accompanied by lambs. One tradition still celebrated at the church is that on her feast day, two lambs are brought there to be blessed by the Pope. When the lambs are later shorn, the wool is used to weave the pallia, white bands worn around the neck, which are presented to newly-appointed bishops.

The area which includes the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza, the church of Sant’Agnese, the archaeological remains of the basilica and – incongruously – the Sant’Agnese Tennis Club covers a large urban block, and you can still visit the catacombs underneath, although we have yet to do so.

The last couple of times we have visited, it was noisy, chaotic and very hot outside. Inside both buildings it was cool and quiet, and the cherubs and saints looked down benignly on the few visitors that had found their way into the shadows, just as they would have done for over fourteen hundred years.

August 23, 2022November 19, 2023

The Milvian Bridge at Feriae Augusti – when all roads lead OUT of Rome

During the holiday week of Ferragosto, we visited a semi-deserted Rome to see the Milvian Bridge, site of a crucial battle in 312 AD.

In August, accommodation in many parts of Italy changes from having been comparatively inexpensive to being breathtakingly expensive. And that is because in August there falls the holiday of Ferragosto, where everything closes down and everyone heads out of town.

Ferragosto has its origin in something in Ancient Rome called Feriae Augusti – the holiday of Augustus. When Octavius Caesar took over as emperor he renamed himself Augustus. He also renamed the month of Quintilis after his predecessor Julius Caesar, so it became July, and he renamed the month of Sextilis after himself, so it became August. And because the hottest weather was in August and no-one felt like working, he decided to give all the working people of Rome a few days off. It would have been marked by chariot races, and various religious festivals to honour harvest deities and the like.

These days the 15th of August is Ferragosto and for a week or two on either side, factories close, public administration grinds to a halt and four out of five shops have signs in their windows saying chiuso per ferie (closed for holidays). Vast numbers of Italians head away, mostly to the coast but also to the mountains, and often to exactly the same place they have been going all their lives. It may be an urban myth, but there have even been stories of wanted criminals being captured in August because the police staked out the places they had been going to for holidays since they were children.

It would have been truly remarkable if the modern Ferragosto was an uninterrupted survival from antiquity – and it isn’t, of course. Or not much. What actually happened is that at first, like all other pre-Christian holidays, Feriae Augusti was incorporated into the Christian calendar, in this case being allocated to the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. No doubt under the new administration the festival retained some of the characteristics of the original, if for no other reason than that it was hot, no-one felt like working, and in any case the harvest was in.

Then, in the 1930s, the Fascist government decided to revive Feriae Augusti as a secular holiday. Like authoritarian social movements elsewhere they liked the idea of organised leisure for factory and farm workers, and thus many working class people experienced trips to mountains and the seaside for the first time. The Fascists were also enthusiastic about any links, actual or imagined, with ancient Rome, so the Feast of the Assumption got turned back into Feriae Augusti, or Ferragosto in modern Italian. Of course the religious festival is still observed, so it wasn’t an actual reversion to paganism.

After the war, the Italians had got rid of the Fascists but they found they liked the idea of shutting the whole country down for a holiday, so they kept it. And every year the cities empty, the roads clog and the beaches fill up with thousands of identical beach umbrellas, precisely arranged, where people can come back to the same position, next to the same people, every year. Most decent beaches in Italy are private property and are run as businesses, handed down through generations of the same families.

Beach Umbrellas, Cefalù, Sicily. Hasselblad 501C/M Camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

It slowly dawned on us that Rome was one of the few places in Italy where accommodation might actually get cheaper during August. And thus it proved.

We had read about how Rome is deserted during Ferragosto. Not the historic centre, because that is still full of foreign tourists, but everywhere else. We took that to be a bit implausible – after all, who could imagine Rome not being busy? But it really isn’t. The traffic was light on the Ring Road, and as we arrived in the inner northern area of Nomentano there was almost no-one on the roads. The photo below was taken from the middle of a road, the crossing of which would have been suicidal when we were last there in June.

Rome at Ferragosto — A Roman street at Ferragosto. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

All our favourite restaurants were closed, of course, but the hotel directed us to one which was open and which proved to be a decent little Roman trattoria. And a Sicilian cafe on the corner was open for breakfast pastries and evening aperitivi, so the necessities of life were available.

The Via Giulia, Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

A visit to Central Rome was a bit of a contrast. While the back streets might be quiet, in the Trevi Fountain – Pantheon – Piazza Navona triangle there was a full load of tourists surging back and forth like the tides. And because this was the time of the northern hemisphere summer holidays, a high proportion of the crowd was made up of junior bogans of all nations. And they were making full use of the greatest menace in Rome this year – electric bikes and scooters. The scooter riders were the worst. They tore along both the streets and the pavements at stupid speeds, and when they had got where they were going they abandoned the blasted things wherever they felt like it.

None of them were wearing protection for heads, elbows or knees, so I wonder how busy Rome’s hospital casualty departments are this summer. Italian local governments don’t have much patience for this sort of thing so I hope to read before long that e-scooters and e-bikes are being better regulated, and stupid behaviour thereon is attracting fines. After all, you can get fined for sitting on the Spanish Steps.

The photo below shows the Porta del Popolo, with a statue of St Peter vainly pointing out the part of the city by-laws dealing with electric scooters.

The next day we decided to take advantage of the lack of crowds to do our own tour of Rome on public transport. The hop-on-hop-off Rome tourist buses cost €15-20 or more, but we paid €7 each for a 24 hour ticket and had many more options than the tourist bus. We started by taking the number 61 bus which took us around the old Aurelian Walls of Rome for a bit, then entered the central city through the Porta Pia, the gate where Italian troops forced entry to Rome to defeat Papal forces in one of the later episodes of Italian unification in 1870. The bus then bounced along some rather potholed downtown streets before taking us through the Borghese Gardens and depositing us in the “Viale Giorgio Washington” just outside the Porta del Popolo.

That is where the old Roman military road, the Via Flaminia, left the city on its way north. Its dead straight path out of Rome is followed by the modern road, which still bears its name. The number 2 tram goes along it, so we jumped on board.

Start of Via Flaminia — The start of the Via Flaminia, looking north from the Porta del Popolo in Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The tram took us past some grandiose buildings housing government ministries, and some seedy low-cost housing. Out here the Ferragosto effect was very much in force and pretty much every shop and bar was closed and shuttered. A bit like Canberra in the first week of January.

But the main reason we had gone there was because I wanted to see the bridge where the Via Flaminia crosses the Tiber. It is called the “Milvian Bridge”, or the Ponte Milvio in modern Italian. It is much repaired and remodelled since antiquity, and no longer carries vehicular traffic. Some time in the Middle Ages it was partially destroyed by one of the leading Roman families, to force traffic to use the Ponte Sant’Angelo which was in territory they controlled. Nonetheless some of the stonework around the arches looks as if it might be original.

Ponte Milvio (Milvian Bridge) — The Ponte Milvio. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The old bridge has seen a lot. This was where the legions marched away to conquer Europe, or rebel troops like those of Julius Caesar entered Rome in defiance of the Senate.

As a defensible entry point to Rome it was the site of military actions over the centuries, and the most famous battle was in 312 AD between two rival emperors, Constantine and Maxentius. Constantine won and later claimed to have been inspired by a vision of the Christian cross. He then revoked the remaining restrictions on Christianity and started it on its way to becoming the established religion. As a result the “Battle of the Milvian Bridge” is much celebrated in religious art. Some paintings show Maxentius’s troops seeing the vision of the cross as well, throwing down their weapons and running away. Which is a bit unfair on them.

According to some accounts I have read, Maxentius had actually demolished part of the stone bridge and replaced it with a wooden pontoon bridge, which collapsed when he tried to bring his army back across it. You can see a discussion of the battle in a YouTube video here.

The Ponte Milvio and the Via Flaminia leading north from the Piazza del Popolo (source: Google Maps).

Since his defeat, Maxentius’s reputation was systematically dismantled with a Soviet-style rewriting of history. Some modern historians are trying to rescue his reputation, pointing out that the edict of toleration for Christianity, long attributed to Constantine, was very likely issued by Maxentius. You can see a very interesting discussion of this subject in a YouTube video here.

In addition, Constantine’s personal commitment to Christianity is debated. It may well just have been political pragmatism on his part, since Christianity was well on its way to becoming the dominant religion anyway, at least in terms of the number of adherents. At a time when his legitimacy might have been in question, getting a substantial part of the population on his side would have been a smart move.

There is no doubt though that his mother and daughters were enthusiastic Christians – his mother, the Empress Helena (Saint Helena to the church) paid a visit to the Holy Land and, without any obvious evidence, pronounced that manky old bit of wood to be the True Cross, and that scrubby old hill to be the site of Golgotha, here the Last Supper, there the Holy Sepulchre, and so forth. Most of her topological identifications are still observed by tradition, so she was pretty influential too. One of Constantine’s daughters was Costanza, and one can still visit her beautiful mausoleum in the Via Nomentana. I shall include that in a separate post on Paleochristian sites in Rome.

Edit: I have now posted that article and you can find it here.

The other thing that Constantine did was to move the imperial capital away from Rome to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople, after himself.

Looking down from the bridge at the Tiber now it seems hard to imagine two armies engaging on the steep banks, but those are artificial, the river having been embanked some time in the 19th Century.

Tiber from Milvian Bridge — The Tiber from the Ponte Milvio. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Another military engagement is commemorated on a plaque at the northern end of the bridge. In 1849, when France and Austria came to the aid of the Papacy to snuff out the self-proclaimed and short-lived Roman Republic, a party of Garibaldi’s troops sabotaged the bridge to prevent enemy troops crossing the river.

Commemorative inscription on the Ponte Milvio — Commemorative Inscription on the Ponte Milvio. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once we had caught the tram back we passed through the gate into Piazza del Popolo and suddenly we were back into a Rome that was heaving with tourists. There are a couple of ritzy cafes beside the Piazza – the sort of places where the waiters wear uniforms and you pay more for a glass of prosecco than you would pay for the whole bottle in a supermarket. I was reminded of the travel writer H.V. Morton’s observation that at Florian’s Cafe in St Mark’s Square in Venice, the waiter serves your coffee “with the air of some grandee doing it for a wager”. This place had the same sort of feeling.

Despite the prices it was nice to sit looking out on the Piazza del Popolo with a drink and a sandwich. We were watching a couple of immigrants trying to sell roses to female tourists. They weren’t getting many takers. Then a sudden storm broke and for a moment all was confusion as the tourists rushed for shelter. Although we had only been distracted for a moment, by some conjuring trick the immigrants’ roses had magically been replaced by umbrellas.

August 17, 2022November 19, 2023

A Little Place in the Country – The Villa Farnese at Caprarola

Intended as a fortress, then converted into a palace, the Villa Farnese in Caprarola is above all a monument to one of the most powerful families in Renaissance Italy.

The Farnese family accumulated a fair bit of real estate. If you have been to central Rome there is a good chance that you will have seen the massive Palazzo Farnese (now the French Embassy), or the beautiful Villa Farnesina across the Tiber, with Raphael’s famous frescoes. If you have visited Parma you might have seen the elegant “Palazzo del Giardino”, also a Farnese palace. This post is about one of the most remarkable, in the town of Caprarola north of Rome.

The Palazzo Farnese in Rome, August 2022, somewhat disfigured by scaffolding and hoardings. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnesina in Rome. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50c digital back, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens (click to enlarge).

Parma Ducal Palace — The “Palazzo del Giardino” (Ducal Palace) in Parma. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, CFV-50c digital back, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Farnese Family

We met the Farnese family when they were the villains of the story, violently subduing the city of Perugia. This time they get to be the heroes – which is not really surprising since they are telling this story themselves.

Although claiming ancient origins, the Farnese family first came to the notice of history in the 12^th Century, with a power base north of Rome. In the interminable Guelph versus Ghibelline wars of the Middle Ages, they generally turned up on the Guelph side, ie the side of the Papacy. It seems they knew where the family’s future fortunes lay.

And stupendous fortunes they were, built on acquisition of noble titles and huge estates, mercenary soldiering on behalf of the popes, and shameless simony and nepotism. “Simony” refers to the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices and anticipated rewards in the afterlife, like Papal indulgences. “Nepotism” comes from the Latin word for “nephew” and was coined to refer to the practice of Popes granting lucrative high offices – ecclesiastical or secular – to their (ahem) “nephews”.

There were other ways to power. Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, owed his Cardinal’s hat to his sister Giulia. She was the mistress of Pope Alexander VI, and persuaded him to make her brother a cardinal.

Caprarola

In 1504 Cardinal Alessandro Farnese splashed out on the purchase of the estate of Caprarola in northern Lazio, in the heart of his family’s historical power base. He then commissioned his favourite architect Antonio Sangallo to design and build a large fortress on the site.

We have already met both Alessandro and Sangallo, later in their careers. Forty or so years later, Alessandro was by then Pope Paul III, and, having ordered the subjugation of Perugia by his ~~nephew~~ son Pierluigi, he commissioned Sangallo to build a huge fortress at the south of the town, to keep it that way. All this is described in my earlier post on The Buried Streets of Perugia. But for now the Papacy lay in the future for Alessandro Farnese.

Alessandro’s brief to Sangallo for Caprarola, it seems, was for a military structure, similar to that which he would one day build in Perugia. It was to be a pentagonal fortress in a good defensive position, with bastions that could provide raking fire on attackers. That a prince of the Church thought it prudent to design such a building tells you a bit about 16^th-Century Italian politics. When things in the city got a bit awkward, it was time to head to the country estate and pull up the drawbridge.

In any case the fortress was never completed as planned. In 1556 Pope Paul’s grandson, another Alessandro Farnese and another cardinal, had the half-built fortress converted into a lavish country villa by an architect named Giacomo Vignola. It seems that the mood was a bit less bellicose half a century later, but the bastions are still visible at the lower level, and the finished villa retains the pentagonal shape of Sangallo’s original project. And the villa was still used as somewhere to retreat to whenever the Farnese found themselves on the losing side of papal politics.

The Villa

The villa is in the late Renaissance, or “Mannerist” style, and sits on a slope, with formal Renaissance gardens up the hill behind. The front of the building faces south-east, in the direction of Rome. This aspect of the building was doubtless dictated by the topology of the site. It is nonetheless rather appropriate that while the Farnese were enjoying breakfast on their balcony, they were looking towards the city that would always be at the front of their minds – the source of their power, and of threats from rival families. Immediately in front of the building is a massive piazza.

Villa Farnese from the piazza. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Walking up to the front entrance across the piazza, we were not accompanied by a ceremonial guard, so we felt pretty small. Actually, you would probably feel fairly small even with a medium-sized ceremonial guard, which was presumably the intention.

Looking south-east from the Villa Farnese, in the direction of Rome. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Once inside you realise that the pentagonal shape is hollow, and that each floor has a gallery around the edge of the central space.

Ground floor gallery, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Inside, the rooms are lavishly decorated, with every square metre of wall and ceiling put to use. As is frequently the case in Renaissance palaces, each room has a theme. Sometimes the theme is obvious and sometimes it would need fairly recondite knowledge to spot all the references. Fortunately for those who are not Renaissance humanists, these days there are plenty of explanatory panels.

Villa Farnese Winter Apartment — Winter Apartment, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnese Room of Jupiter — Room of Jupiter, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnese Spring Room — Spring Room, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

The Royal Staircase

You access the upper floors by means of the “Royal Staircase”. In this period staircases were an opportunity for architects to show off their skill. The mathematical complexities of their design, the combination of strength and delicacy, and the visual attractiveness of curves and spirals, could come together to show both technical and aesthetic mastery. Vignola seems to have hit all the marks on this occasion.

Villa Farnese Royal Staircase — Royal Staircase, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

And of course the walls and ceiling of the stairwell provide more real estate for decoration.

Deeds and Maps

Upstairs the decoration gets even more impressive, and when you enter “The Room of the Farnese Deeds” you realise you are in a Farnese family theme park. Enormous frescoes show great world events in which the family took part. Here the Farnese Pope Paul III and the Emperor Charles V wage war on the Lutherans, accompanied by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and his brother Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza.

Villa Farnese Room of Farnese Deeds — Room of Farnese Deeds, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge)

Here the French King Francis rides out from Paris to meet Charles V on the way to chastise the Belgians (or something), accompanied naturally by Cardinal Farnese, the “ambassador of great affairs”.

Room of Farnese Deeds, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

It would be a bit nauseating were it not for the sheer pomposity of it all which renders it a bit ridiculous to modern eyes. Freud would no doubt have said that Alessandro was compensating for something. Here is the ceiling, in which almost every panel is a Farnese doing deeds, or angels cheering them on.

The Room of the Maps contains maps of the whole world as it was known in the 16^th Century. So no Australia and New Zealand, obviously. It apparently so impressed one of the Popes that he commissioned a similar thing for the Vatican.

Villa Farnese Room of the Maps — Map of the World in The Room of the Maps, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Vatican Gallery of Maps — The “Gallery of Maps” in the Vatican. The Farnese thought of it first. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The Gardens

As you complete the tour of the villa, you find yourself in the lower of the two gardens – a formal and symmetrical Renaissance garden which is presumably similar to the 16^th-Century original. You can imagine the younger Alessandro strolling here, in quiet conversation with some confidential envoy bringing news of developments in the Vatican.

Villa Farnese Lower Gardens — The Lower Gardens, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

From the lower garden you wander uphill through a chestnut wood. I don’t know what was planted here 450 years ago but the absence of buildings or landscaping suggests that it was intended to simulate a wild landscape. Then you get to the something called the “Secret Garden”, presumably because it was invisible from the main villa. The Secret Garden is approached through a corridor of some pretty exuberant Mannerist waterworks and statuary, starting with a catena d’acqua or “chain of water” which leads up to a pair of colossal statues of river gods.

Villa Farnese Secreet Garden — The “Catena d’Acqua” leading up to the Secret Garden, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Villa Farnese Secret Garden — The Secret Garden, Villa Farnese. Fujifilm GFX 50R camera, Fujifilm GF32-64mm R LM WR lens (click to enlarge).

Beyond the statues are another pair of gardens and a charming building called the “casino”. By most standards this would be considered a substantial dwelling but in the context of the Villa Farnese it is obviously just a little summer house.

After the Farnese

Unusually for a Farnese cardinal, the younger Alessandro left no direct heirs. The villa passed to his relatives, the Dukes of Parma and Piacenza. In the 18^th Century the Farnese line died out and their property passed through marriage to the Bourbon kings of Naples.

After the unification of Italy in the 19^th Century the villa became the property of the Italian state. For a while the villa was used as a residence for the heir to the Italian throne, but under the Republic it is now a museum.

The “casino” in the upper garden is used as a residence for the President of the Italian Republic. I don’t know if President Mattarella gets to use it very much, but I hope he does. It would be a nice place to get away from the complexities of political life in Rome for a while, just as it was five centuries ago.

June 23, 2020March 9, 2024

Evening Photography: Rome, Venice and Tuscany

Evening photography can produce dramatic results, although it has its challenges. Here are some examples from Venice, Rome and Tuscany.

Earlier I promised some evening shots to complement my early morning photographs of Venice. Evening photography has the same main benefit as dawn, which is to say warmer light and lower contrast. In fact, sometimes the atmospheric haze at the end of a long day (natural or from pollution) can produce more pleasing colours than in the clarity of dawn.

Evening in Venice — Venice at sunset from the bridge over the Rio de la Tana. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-M 300mm lens, Horseman 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Another advantage over dawn photography is not having to set the alarm clock. The disadvantage, of course, is that there will usually be many more people about. So bridges and waterfronts are good places to be to try and avoid having people wander through your shot.

Getting the exposure right can be tricky – even if your camera has the very latest algorithms to calculate exposure, it won’t always get it right. For much of my photography life, I did not use cameras with automatic exposure, but found that a good result could usually be obtained by using a hand-held spot meter on a point just to the side of the setting sun. For the photograph above I metered on a point about halfway between the sun and the belltower in Piazza San Marco. For the photograph below I metered from the clouds in the centre, just above the trees.

San Pietro — Rome: the dome of St Peter’s silhouetted by the setting sun, from Ponte Umberto I. Hasselblad 500 C/M medium format camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The picture above was taken with a “standard” focal length which roughly approximates what the eye sees. But if I had used a telephoto lens just to zoom in on the bright area, the result would have been less realistic but more dramatic. The photograph of the Val d’Orcia below shows how, with a long telephoto lens, you can take that to extremes – if that is the sort of thing you like.

Val d'Orcia — Sunset in the Val d’Orcia, Tuscany. Canon EOS-3 35mm film camera, 100-400mm IS L lens at 400mm. Fujichrome Velvia film. No filter was used, and no colour manipulation was applied to the digital file (click to enlarge).

The picture below of St Peter’s in Rome demonstrates a similar effect, although this time with some foreground detail. The “starburst” effect on the streetlights is not the result of a filter, but of the type of aperture used in large format lenses. The long exposure has smoothed the surface of the Tiber.

From memory, that photograph needed an exposure of almost ten minutes, given the slow film and the very small aperture I was using. Onlookers on either side took quite an interest, so I had to do my best to avoid anyone knocking the tripod. Halfway through the exposure, one of Rome’s ubiquitous hawkers tried to sell me a selfie stick but I explained to him that my camera was too big and heavy for that.

Venice: the lagoon in front of Giudecca, from the temporary pontoon bridge erected for the Festa del Redentore each year. Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

When you have a distant silhouetted skyline, as in the photograph above, it is important that it be sharp. But to focus at infinity, while giving you that sharpness in the distance, would throw the foreground out of focus. The solution is to focus on the “hyperfocal distance”. The exact calculation of hyperfocal distance, and why it is important, is explained here, but a rule of thumb is to focus about a third of the way into the area you wish to be in focus, and use focus guides on your lens, if it has them, to give you an indication of the closest and furthest points that will be acceptably sharp at your chosen aperture. Some modern cameras will give you an indication of the range of sharp focus on the display, but I always like to see focus guides on a lens.

After sunset, as the light fades, there will come a point where everything is lost in shadow. But before that there will be a brief period, perhaps only a couple of minutes, when the intensity of both sky and ground is similar enough to capture detail and colour in both. Exactly when that is will depend on various things, including how bright it is in the areas you want to capture. In the photograph below I wanted to roughly balance the sky, the lights strung between the lamp posts, and the interior of the shop. Although it was still quite crowded, the people walking along the quayside are largely lost in the shadows, giving a sense of peace.

Giudecca Evening — Venice: the Giudecca after sunset, with festive lights put out for the Festa del Redentore. Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

If you are not sure, a hand-held spot meter reading from all areas you wish to capture will help. My meter even has an function which allows you to take spot readings from multiple sources and then gives you an average exposure value. High-end modern SLRs can do the same thing in-camera. But I have to admit that in this picture I guessed – the more experience you have, the more likely you are to guess right. And if you are using digital, it costs you nothing to try various settings.

This final photograph in the set was quite challenging to take. I was set up on the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice, which is one of the busiest areas, just near the Doge’s Palace. It was around 8pm, so there were still many people about, but I couldn’t leave it any later without the sky fading to black. My calculated exposure was around 10 minutes, and there was no way that I could go that long without other people wandering into the shot, or, even if they were out of shot, taking flash photographs which would have reflected off the nearer objects.

So I set the camera up, and started the exposure, timed with a stopwatch. Whenever it looked as if someone was about to wander in front of me, or was getting ready to take a flash photograph, I closed the shutter and stopped the stopwatch. When the coast was clear, I re-opened the shutter and restarted the stopwatch. All up, my ten-minute exposure took more than half an hour.

Venice: the Basino and San Giorgio Maggiore from the Riva degli Schiavoni. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

The long exposure necessarily produced some artefacts. Obviously, the rocking of the gondolas blurred their outlines. The faint white blur about a third of the way over from the left is the shirt of a gondolier who climbed onto his boat and rowed away. Various bright horizontal streaks mark the passage of the lights on vaporetti and other craft. And the wavy bright line to the right of the centre is made by the light on the back of a gondola that was being rowed along.

Is it a “realistic” photograph? Probably not in any technical sense of the word. But to me it does bring back the mood of that evening rather powerfully. And I really only make photographs to please myself, so I guess that makes it a success.

May 20, 2020November 19, 2023

Street Photography in Italy

“Street Photography” is a term that actually means “candid photography of people in the street” as in the famous photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. So that usually requires that you are doing it without those people’s consent. That makes it a bit tricky, but it is legal in Italy if it is not for commercial purposes, as this article explains.

Candid means not staged, although there are degrees of candidness. The very famous 1951 photograph An American Girl in Italy (actually one of a series) was planned by the photographer and the subject, who even did a second pass through the group of men to try and get better reactions. Despite her apparent distress, the subject, Ninalee Allen, claimed to have enjoyed herself thoroughly, imagining herself as Beatrice in a famous Victorian painting of Dante and Beatrice, as explained in her 2018 obituary in The Economist. Afterwards she went for a ride on the back of the scooter on the right.

And of course there are some good although much less famous examples from Francis Sandwith here.

My approach tends towards the opportunistic, and I do worry about the privacy aspect. That being said, the group of jolly gondolieri below, sauntering along the Riva degli Schiavoni in their traditional costumes looking for business can probably be assumed not to be seeking privacy. Similarly, people dressing up in historical costume and parading in the streets are not doing it for privacy either.

Children make good subjects, thanks to their lack of self-consciousness, however – sadly – taking candid pictures of children can be thought a bit creepy in these nervous times, so it is a good idea to make sure that they are anonymous.

Via Garibaldi, Venice. Contax G1 35mm rangefinder camera, Zeiss Planar 45mm lens. Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

A good example of street photography won’t just be a picture of people milling about aimlessly. There should be something special about it – it might tell a story, like Ninalee being ogled in Florence, or it might make the viewer speculate about what is happening. Sometimes there might be an element of drama, or you might catch someone in a serendipitous artistic pose, or in a position which adds to the composition.

Souvenir seller, Burano, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

My favourite camera for street photography was my beloved Contax G1 35mm film camera(1). It was small, quiet and unobtrusive, and its quick autofocus and large-aperture Zeiss lenses meant that you could quickly grab a sharp image. In comparison, the medium-format Hasselblad V-series is pretty large, needs to be focussed manually, and makes a terrifically loud agricultural-sounding clonk when you trip the shutter, so it isn’t particularly subtle. That being said, you can always fit a longer lens and take from further away. And although I usually use an eye-level prism viewfinder on the Hasselblad, if you fit the traditional looking-down-from-above waist-level viewfinder, you can be a bit sneaky about composing the shot.

Rio S Anna — Rio Sant’Anna, Venice. Contax G1 35mm rangefinder camera, Zeiss Planar 45mm lens. Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Sometimes you can add the drama yourself through photographic artefacts. In the picture below, I was looking down on St Mark’s Square and realised that with some people moving quickly and some standing still, a slow-ish exposure through a long lens might show some people blurred and some sharp. I had to steady the camera on the balustrade of the St Mark’s Basilica portico, but the result was acceptable.

Tourists in Piazza San Marco, Venice. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Sonnar C 250mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

If children make great unselfconscious subjects, dogs are even better (to the best of my knowledge, no-one has yet deemed it creepy to take pictures of dogs).

S Margherita — A stand-off at high noon, Campo Santa Margherita, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

An enthusiastic customer, Bellagio, Lake Como. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Sometimes a picture with a group of unrelated people can achieve a sort of balletic unity. In the picture below, there is a family group in the centre, one of whom is in a wheelchair. The child at the left rear looking at his phone seems almost posed, and at the right rear a young woman is working on a painting. All are positioned against an architecturally regular background, as if a theatre director had thought carefully about where each should go.

Giudecca, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The next picture looks to me a bit like one of those scenes of frantic activity before the first act of an opera, where the cast bustle about the stage doing various bits of business while the orchestra gets stuck into the overture. Here a waiter approaches from the left holding a handful of bills, while nearby a father and daughter attend to their ice cream cones. And the little boy in the centre, hanging on to his mother’s hand, was clearly posed by someone who studied at the Louvre.

Castello district, Venice. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Distagon CF 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Because of the influence of photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ruth Orkin, black and white photographs tend to evoke their brand of “reportage” photography.

On the Ponte Santi Apostoli in Venice, a pair of gondolieri scan the passing crowd for likely customers. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Ilford 200 B&W film (click to enlarge).

Street scene in Florence. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Ilford 200 B&W film (click to enlarge).

The group of young buskers below were playing in one of the back streets in Naples, raising the price of their morning coffees and pastries, or maybe a lunchtime aperitivo. I like various things about this, including the dog lying in front of the guitarist, and the way that the natty red costume of the gentleman on the left is balanced by the scooter of the same colour on the right.

Buskers in Via Tribunali, Naples. Hasselblad 500C/M camera, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The next picture was taken in Rome, in the Piazza del Popolo. It was evening, at the time of the passeggiata when people put on their nice clothes and head out into the street for a stroll and a chat. The setting sun was shining straight along the Via del Corso, and illuminated this very elegantly dressed old gentleman, who is talking to an equally elegant young carabiniere, standing very respectfully as he listens. And the red stripe on his trousers gives the picture a bit of life.

Piazza del Poplo — Piazza del Popolo, Rome. Hasselblad 500C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6×6 rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The final two photographs were taken on fast (and therefore grainy) black-and-white film on a dull rainy day in the Ghetto area of Venice. “Ghetto” is an old Venetian word for foundry, and it was the area given to the Jews to live in. It is still a place of Jewish culture, and like “lido” and “arsenal”, it is another word that Venice gave the world. The first picture is of a shopkeeper who has stepped out into the street for a quick cigarette.

Shortly the light drizzle turned into proper rain, and a couple of deliverymen halted their boat under the Ponte delle Guglie to shelter until it passed.

Note (1) February 2023: After many years of looking for a digital equivalent of the Contax G1 I have recently bought a Fujifilm X-Pro3 which promises to be just that. I will report separately when I have had a chance to come to grips with it.

Note (2) March 2023: I have posted again on street photography, this time in Naples, here.

And again in Bologna, here.

August 20, 2019November 19, 2023

The Serious Business of Dressing Up

Watching one of the countless Italian events where people get dressed up in historical costume is great fun for tourists. But here’s the thing – most of the time they aren’t really doing it for you, they’re doing it for themselves.

Yes of course, events like the Palio in Siena are big tourist drawcards, but by all accounts the municipal rivalries on display are no less intense for that. And for every big event there are dozens if not scores of smaller local ones. Few are genuine survivals from antiquity, but many have been bolted on to things that are, such as the commemoration of a town’s patron saint, or a Good Friday recreation of the Passion.

Moreover, there seems to be a difference between the way these things are approached in Italy and in English-speaking countries. While living in England several years ago we saw an historical re-enactment which was clearly exemplary in its attention to historical detail – in costumes, weapons and military tactics. In Italy things can sometimes be a bit more approximate – the costumes worn by participants in a “medieval” festival might range from the 13^th to the 17^th Centuries.

But, with great respect to the English lot, they do seem to come from a more narrowly-defined (dare I say nerdy?) group than do their equivalents in Italy. In Italy you might find your neighbour – a carpenter during the week – walking solemnly along dressed in a monk’s cowl. Or the chap who wins the archery contest is the accountant who helps you work out your annual property tax. Or the gonfaloniere (banner carrier) in the parade is your plumber. Or the beautiful damsel in the flowing dress is the girl who serves your morning coffee at your favourite bar in the piazza. In other words, in Italy you get the sense that a broader section of the local community is involved. And thoroughly enjoying itself, to boot.

Here are four vignettes of this – one from Como in Lombardy, one from Rome, and two from Todi in Umbria.

Como, 2017

We had been staying in Cadenabbia, halfway up the lake, and had caught the hydrofoil down to Como for the day. The main object of the visit was the 11^th-Century Lombard-Romanesque Basilica of Sant’ Abbondio, which involved a pleasant walk through the length of the historic centre of Como.

On the way back to the ferry terminal we heard the characteristic sound of a group of drummers some way off, and before long we came across a group of drummers and sbandieratori – those people who do the complicated displays with flags, including tossing them into the air and catching them.

Como Sbandieratori — *Sbandieratori* in Como. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Distagon 60mm lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

They were accompanied by a leather-lunged individual who, in breaks between drumming and flag-tossing, announced the forthcoming highlights of the medieval fair that was on that weekend. He in turn was accompanied by a small serious-looking child in a white smock and skullcap, and large spectacles. The effect (hopefully intended) was of some sort of miniature Doctor of Physick.

The flag-tossers were not the most expert, and a couple of times had to run into the crowd to catch the flags before they landed on spectators, but no-one seemed to mind very much.

Buon Compleanno, Roma, 2015

We were making our way into the city from our digs in Trastevere, intending to visit the Aventine Hill (one of the Seven Hills of Rome^tm). On the way, near the church of Santa Maria in Cosmadin, I pointed to a crowd in the distance and observed that there seemed to be an awful lot of tourists down there. Lou’s eyesight was better than mine in those days and she thought that it looked more like some kind of political demonstration.

At that point we realised that it was at least seventy years since political demonstrations in Rome involved people marching in ranks wearing polished helmets, carrying weapons, and axe-heads in bundles of sticks. In fact, what we had stumbled on was the annual celebration of Rome’s traditional birthday. By tradition, Rome was founded on the 21st of April, 753 BC. That made the following Tuesday the 2768th birthday of the city. So instead of fascists (OK, some of them were being fascists but in the ancient sense) what we were seeing was a large number of historical re-enactment societies from all over Italy – and there are a LOT of them – descending on Rome to take part in a parade.

Centurion — A centurion. Google Nexus phone camera (click to enlarge).

Several of the societies clearly took it very seriously indeed. They had adopted the legion that was raised in their own area and had put enormous effort into authentic recreation of the armour and weapons of the era. Others were a bit – well – cardboard, but everyone was having a jolly good time.

There were lots of legionaries, chanting the Latin version of the Romans, united, will never be defeated, a fair few gladiators, a handful of foederati (barbarian allies), and lots of vestal virgins.

A group of senators dressed in their scarlet-trimmed white togas came past. I gave them an “ave” which they solemnly returned.

Festa di San Fortunato, Todi, Umbria, 2018

Saint Fortunatus is the patron saint of Todi. He seems to have been an historical figure, as he was a bishop of the town in the 6th Century who is said to have persuaded the invading Goths not to attack. On the other hand it is possible that they were just put off by the prospect of the long steep climb up from the Tiber Valley below, which is challenging enough for a Fiat Panda.

Falconry — A falconry demonstration. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

His saint’s day continues to be marked by religious observance in Todi, and there is no reason not to believe that the tradition has continued without interruption since antiquity. In recent times, the tradition has been augmented by a weekend of medieval high jinks including falconry demonstrations and an archery competition between the rioni or town districts, culminating in a grand parade.

Todi San Fortunato — Todi, Festa di San Fortunato. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

Many of the groups in the parade were from other towns in the region, and as I said before, the definition of “medieval” was elastic enough to include costumes from eras up to the 17^th Century.

Some groups, in costumes that could have been painted by Rembrandt, looked so fine that I was prepared to forgive them the anachronism.

Several of the young women of Todi had obviously decided to go with a general medieval vibe over strict authenticity and rather than wearing long dresses, had opted for long tights and short tunics. After careful consideration, I was prepared to forgive them that as well.

Archery Competition and Sbandieratori, Todi, Umbria, 2019

Medieval archery has become quite a thing in Todi and in April there is a competition which attracts teams from all over Italy. Contestants move between various locations in the town, where they take part in different events – shooting at conventional targets, shooting at targets that move, shooting from moving saddles that mimic the movement of horses, and so on. You can see a video of the 2018 tournament here.

Todi Archery Festival — That little girl has just decided what she wants to be when she grows up. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

There is a medieval-themed market, some of which is just stalls selling the usual local produce with the stallholders in period dress, but some of which are selling “medieval” wares of varying degrees of authenticity.

Todi medieval market — Todi, Festa di San Fortunato. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

A group of drummers and sbandieratori is associated with the Todi archery group and they are very good.

Todi sbandieratori — Todi Sbandieratori. Hasselblad 501 C/M with Zeiss Sonnar 150mm CF lens , CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge).

The crowd favourites were three small girls who took part with special lightweight flags, and who took it all very seriously indeed. Each did a session with an adult (maybe her dad) in which they followed his movements with great concentration.

June 28, 2019November 19, 2023

Villas and Vistas in Tivoli

A while ago we took ourselves off for a short trip to Tivoli, just east of Rome. Tivoli is famous for the ornate Renaissance water gardens of the Villa d’Este – so famous as a place of refined pleasure that people everywhere appropriated the name. Hence the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, and various Tivoli theatres around the world. Apparently there is a suburb of Kingston, Jamaica called Tivoli Gardens which is ravaged by drugs and poverty, so the name didn’t always help.

Tivoli is one of the fortified towns on outlying hills at the base of the Apennines where the mountains run close to the coastal plain. They belonged to the various powerful Roman families in the Middle Ages and Renaissance and from time to time when a family’s fortunes were temporarily on the wane they would retreat to their town and put the fortifications to use defending against their rivals.

Much earlier, it was an independent Latin city in the early years of ancient Rome, and after its absorption into the Roman state it became a location where wealthy Roman families built villas.

Today, Tivoli is administratively and culturally part of greater metropolitan Rome. So the food is good and the traffic is crazy.

The Villa d’Este

To start with the gardens, then. These are attached to a large Renaissance palace called the Villa d’Este. The d’Este family were rulers of Ferrara in the region of Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy, quite a long way from Rome. The d’Estes and their close allies, the Gonzaga family of Mantua, always tried to ensure that at least one of their number held high office in the church, doubtless with an eye to influence in the Papal curia as their small states tried to maintain an uneasy semi-independence from Rome (which did them no good in the end, both states eventually being brought under direct Papal rule). To gain such advancement for their sons they dealt with the church more on a secular than a spiritual basis, making monetary and military contributions as required.

The chap who built the Villa d’Este in Tivoli was Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. He was actually a grandchild of the Borgia pope Alexander VI, being the son of Alexander’s famous daughter Lucrezia Borgia, who married one of the d’Este dukes, and who apparently doesn’t deserve the infamy granted her by history. Unlike her brother Cesare, who absolutely does. Anyway, young Ippolito was clearly a talented little fellow who was marked for future greatness, being appointed (purely on merit, of course) as Archbishop of Milan at the age of ten. Ippolito grew up to be enormously wealthy, a cardinal and a generous patron of the arts.

He was very keen to become Pope, but kept missing out. As it transpired, he was a man out of his time. Enormously rich cardinals leading Lucullan lifestyles had regularly been waved into the papacy in former generations, not least because of the huge bribes involved. But Ippolito’s misfortune was to be around during the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent, and that sort of thing didn’t quite fit the zeitgeist. So after one of his failed attempts he was awarded a consolation prize in the form of the governorship of Tivoli, which ended up suiting him fairly well, although he kept nominating himself whenever there was a vacancy in the Holy See.

The visit begins in the Villa d’Este, through which most visitors sprint in order to get to the gardens, but if you want to see inside a 16th Century palace built and decorated by an extremely wealthy patron of the arts, this is the place for you. After descending a couple of floors and going through multiple frescoed rooms, you eventually emerge onto a terrace above the gardens, which descend down the side of a steep hill. Being at the foot of the Apennines, Tivoli has many rivers and springs and these were all harnessed by some very talented hydraulic engineers to feed an extraordinary number of fountains. After falling into disrepair in the 18th and 19th Centuries, most of the fountains have now been restored.

Tivoli Villa d'Este — Tivoli, Villa d’Este. The Rometta Fountain. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Looking down at the gardens from the villa I noticed that several picturesque areas were fenced off, which initially seemed a bit disappointing until I realised that this was actually a good thing. This way there would at least be a few places that were not swarming with elderly tour groups and people waving selfie sticks. There was even a picnicking mother-and-daughter pair who parked themselves right in the middle of the view of the main fountain. And I’m ashamed to report that overhearing them later, I realised they were Australians. Sorry about that.

Villa d'Este — Tivoli, Villa d’Este: Fontana dell’Ovato. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

Time and again my attempts to get a decent picture were obstructed by couples grinning at their phones, or elegant young women making duck-faces while their obedient boyfriends took photos which would be critically reviewed, rejected, retaken, and resubmitted for approval. We even saw a young couple set their camera up and do a short dance routine. Presumably this will in due course be edited into a composite video taking in all the major tourist spots of Italy, and uploaded to YouTube. Fortunately in bright sunshine at ISO 100 you only need the narcissists to stay out of the way for 1/500 of a second at f/8.

After spending about an hour and a half in the villa and the gardens we made our way to a space above the main fountain where there is a hydraulic organ (meaning that air is forced through the pipes by water pressure) and which plays every two hours. The original seems to have been quite impressive with various mechanical effects, but having fallen apart long ago it was replaced this century by a completely new system which just plays music. However it does play actual Renaissance dance tunes by Susato and the like so one shouldn’t complain.

The Town

The town of Tivoli is pleasant enough, and occasionally one happens upon a view that seems strangely familiar. This is because Tivoli had a few ancient Roman remains lying about and was close enough to Rome to be visited frequently by 18th Century grand tourists. This in turn created a market for so-called veduta (or “view”) paintings and prints. The original veduta paintings were highly accurate representations of real scenes, like those of Venice by Canaletto. In places like Tivoli a distinct sub-genre emerged, which was of old ruins in romantic settings. Initially realistic, these quickly became even more romanticised at the expense of strict accuracy. You can see second-rate examples of such paintings by the score in provincial Italian museums in places where all the good stuff was pinched by Napoleon. A typical example might contain a ruined temple half-overgrown with ivy, with a broken column in front of it and in the foreground a lonely shepherd leaning on his staff, or a couple of blokes in tricorn hats, one gesturing with his stick to illustrate the vanity of human pride, or the transience of worldly glory, or something. This veduta genre was like statue-busking today; the first person to do it was very original, and most weren’t.

One such view of Tivoli can still be seen, and is where the Aniene river runs out of the Sabine Hills, down into a gorge and over a waterfall, past the remains of a Roman temple, variously described as “The Temple of the Sibyls” or “The Temple of Vesta”. Of course you have to mentally block out the hotels and bars in the frame, so you can see why the vedutisti painters took a few liberties.

Tivoli Temple of Vesta — Tivoli, Temple of Vesta (Temple of the Sibyls). Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

The Villa di Bruto (Villa of Brutus)

As I said, during the classical period wealthy Roman families built villas in Tivoli. Our B&B had the grandiose name of “Antica Villa di Bruto” meaning “Ancient Villa of Brutus” but we had taken that with a pinch of salt. When we checked in, the chap who ran the place asked if we were interested in seeing some of the Roman remains in the grounds. We said yes out of politeness, expecting to see a few stones in the olive grove out the front. The next morning we were shown around by the manager’s brother, whose wife is the owner of the property.

The archaeological remains are extensive – they include large cisterns on which the present house is built, and, down the hill under the olive grove, extensive rooms and galleries. Much remains underground, and cannot now be excavated without state approval. Of what has been excavated over the past couple of hundred years, there is evidence that frescoes and statuary have been illegally taken. The olive grove that sits over the bulk of the remains is also pretty ancient – the oldest trees have very wide and gnarled trunks and look as if they had been drawn by Arthur Rackham. Our host estimated that the oldest are six or seven hundred years old.

Villa Bruto — Ancient olive tree in the grounds of the VIlla Bruto, Nokia 6.1 smartphone camera (click to enlarge).

There seems to be some historical basis for believing that the Villa was owned by the Brutus family, of which Marcus Junius Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins, is the most famous. The attribution of the property to the Bruti is at least a couple of hundred years old as there is a fairly well-known print of the place dating from 1794 – doubtless drawn with the usual artistic license.

Villa di Bruto 1794 — “Villa di Bruto” as interpreted by the artist Albert Cristoph Dies in 1794 (click to enlarge).

The Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa)

About 5 kilometres down from the town of Tivoli, but before the hills descend fully to the coastal plain, there is a very large archaeological site called the Villa Adriana, which is the “villa” of the emperor Hadrian. I say “villa” in quotation marks because it covers about 80 hectares or 200 acres and was actually more like a small city. There were artificial lakes, fountains, temples, offices, baths and boulevards. There is an excellent model of the villa in the visitors’ centre and I include a photograph below. As you can see, it was a humble little place.

Villa Adriana Model — Model of the Villa Adriana, Nokia 6.1 smartphone camera (click to enlarge).

At a time when the standard treatment for a newly-discovered ancient marble statue was for it to be burnt for its lime content, it was actually a bit fortunate that the Villa Adriana started to be excavated when Ippolito d’Este was in charge, because he actually cared about antiquity, and was rich enough not to need the money to be had from recycling ancient remains.

Hadrian is of course known in the English-speaking world as the builder of Hadrian’s Wall (as defended by Parnesius in Puck of Pook’s Hill) but he was a prolific instigator of building projects all around the periphery of the empire. Unlike most of his predecessors, he often travelled to these remote provinces in person rather than taking reports from local officials. In doing so he appeared to apply a more consistent approach to the long-term defensibility of the Imperial borders.

Tivoli, Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa). Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Distagon 60mm CF lens, CFV-50c digital back (click to enlarge)

According to the sources quoted in Wikipedia, he was a keen architect himself and rated his own talents quite highly, so it seems more likely than not that the overall plan of the Villa Adriana, as well of the designs of the major buildings therein, bear his personal stamp.

The combination of the size of the villa and a surprisingly small number of visitors meant that it was less crowded than the Villa d’Este by a couple of orders of magnitude and we strolled around happily in the hot sun mostly by ourselves for a couple of hours.

I was speculating that the size of the place was due to the fact that when the Emperor was in residence, it would have been the de facto centre of government of the empire. So – a purpose-built place up in the hills, full of pretentious architecture and artificial lakes, populated by government officials who were forced to move there reluctantly from the real city. “Just like Canberra then” said Lou.

May 12, 2019February 14, 2024

The Garden of Livia Drusilla

I started writing this post in Rome, where I had to go and visit the Australian Embassy to cast a vote in the forthcoming federal election. We decided to make a trip of it and chose a place to stay in walking distance of the embassy, near the Piazza Bologna metro station.

On previous visits to Rome we have always stayed in the Centro Storico, but this time we had a car with us and we didn’t want to go anywhere near the dreaded Zona Traffico Limitato (ZTL) – the permit zone that can see hapless tourists cop several expensive fines within a few minutes as they desperately try and find a way out. We too have had the unpleasant experience of finding ourselves in a one-way street, surrounded by surging traffic, being swept inexorably into the ZTL. In that case we got away with it – maybe because it was during one of the short periods that the ZTL does not operate, or maybe the camera was not working. But I wouldn’t want to repeat it, so we chose somewhere at a safe distance.

The area near the Piazza Bologna is called Nomentana (named after a gate in the late Roman era city wall) and turned out to be a cheerful bustling district with much to recommend it, not least a Sicilian cafe called Mizzica where we had a cheap but excellent breakfast both mornings, of coffee and Sicilian pastries. Learning to eat the latter without getting sticky sweet mascarpone all over my chin remains a work in progress. In the evening we went back for aperitivi and snacks, sitting at a table outside and watching the world go by.

A bit further away we tried a restaurant recommended to us by the hotel, called Hostaria “Al Monumento” da Giulio which promised typical Roman cuisine. Going by the presence of tripe on the menu, this was probably true, as Romans are great offal-eaters. There were however other options, and it being spring, I had Carciofi alla Giudia which is Jewish-style deep-fried artichoke. Lou had abbacchio which is roasted milk-fed lamb.

Being close to a metro station it was fairly simple to get into the centre of Rome, which was its usual self, heaving with tourists and touts. In the evenings, we found we preferred just hanging around Nomentana, where the voices around us were mostly speaking Italian, rather than – as they would have been in central Rome – Mandarin, Japanese, German or Dutch, or English in the various accents of Tucson, Toronto, Tunbridge Wells and Toowoomba.

The next morning we travelled in to Termini to visit a nearby museum called Museo Romana Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. The terme in question are the baths of Diocletian, close by.

Rome, not surprisingly, has a lot of museums. I do my best, but I have to confess that my heart sinks a bit when we turn a corner and see yet another corridor lined with several dozen marble busts, all helpfully labelled either Portrait of a Man or Portrait of a Woman (gosh thanks, I would never have guessed). I usually manage to give the first few a conscientious examination, after which it all becomes increasingly cursory. Strange – if any one of them were the only surviving example, one would sit and stare at it for hours.

The reason we were going to this museum is that it offers more than statuary – it features mosaic floors and, even better, frescoed walls from various excavated buildings.

I always find it a bit miraculous when I see a surviving fresco from ancient times – plaster being inherently brittle and friable – but I must admit that when good conditions and good luck combine, the results can be startling, especially in the case of some Etruscan tombs.

One of the highlights of the museum is a set of restored frescoes recovered from a Roman villa near the site of the existing Villa Farnesina on the western bank of the Tiber between the Gianicolo and Trastevere areas of Rome. Then as now in a very desirable area, the villa may have been built by Octavius (later the Emperor Augustus) for his daughter Julia, and was abandoned at some point due to flooding from the river. It was buried and forgotten for centuries until rediscovered at the end of the 19^th Century when the modern river embankments were being built. The frescoes are displayed in representations of the original rooms.

I regret that the only photos here were taken on our smartphones – museums in Rome usually insist on bags of any size going into a cloakroom and I’m reluctant to risk my Hasselblad equipment in there, so I didn’t take it.

Museums in Rome - Fresco from the Villa Farnesina in the Museum Palazzo Massimo — Fresco from the ancient Villa Farnesina, with trompe-l’oeil effect. (click to enlarge)

Fresco from the Villa Farnesina in the Museum Palazzo Massimo — Is this a contemporary view of the the Tiber outside the villa? (click to enlarge)

Impressive as they are, those frescoes were not the high point of our visit to the Palazzo Massimo.

When I was at university two of my favourite books were I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. I remember devouring them when I should have been wading through my set texts. Graves’s story is not short of villains, but surely the worst is the evil, scheming, murdering Empress Livia, the wife of Augustus and grandmother of Claudius. Then a couple of years later we were treated to the superb BBC adaptation with Derek Jacobi in the title role, and many other brilliant actors. One of the best of them was Siân Phillips as Livia, who demonstrated the truth of the old theatrical adage that it is more fun to play villains than heroes.

Graves was a highly educated man who based his historical novels on classical sources – ancient historians like Suetonius who inevitably had their own axes to grind. Needless to say there are modern historians who advance plausible arguments as to why Livia probably wasn’t as bad as she is made out to be by those sources. One such article is here.

Of course historical fiction needs villains and heroes and it would not have made such a good story otherwise. I note that Graves’s other great villainess, the Empress Theodora from Count Belisarius, had a similarly bad rap from contemporary sources, but both she and Livia still sound pretty scary. Theodora looks scary too, in the mosaic portrait from Ravenna. Something else for the list of future posts (edit: I have now posted on Ravenna and Theodora).

Livia Drusilla was a wealthy aristocrat and had property of her own before she married Augustus (her second husband), including a country villa. It was a few miles north of Rome on the Via Flaminia, on a hill looking back down the Tiber towards the city. The villa was rediscovered in the 16^th Century, but not recognised as the Villa of Livia and properly excavated until the 1860s. These days the site lies near the flyovers of the junction between the Rome Ring Road and the Strada Statale 3 (SS3), the latter still called – bless the Italian Ministry of Transport – the Via Flaminia.

One room, south-facing and thus probably intended for use in winter, was decorated with beautifully realistic frescoes of trees and birds. A fresh breeze agitates the leaves and birds fly to and fro. These frescoes, after cleaning and restoration, were moved to the Palazzo Massimo where they are on display in a room of the same size as the original. If there were nothing else in the museum, I would recommend you go there and see them. We will definitely go there again.

Museums in Rome - The garden of Livia — The garden of Livia (click to enlarge)

The garden of Livia: opposite wall (click to enlarge).

Not only are they beautiful, but it is almost certain that those actual frescoes were looked upon by Livia and Augustus. They could have strolled about in front of them discussing affairs of state. If you believe Graves’s depiction of Livia, she might have despatched her poisoners from there.

We got to the museum relatively early and had the luxury of a period alone in Livia’s garden, and a relatively undisturbed visit to the rest of the exhibits. Then, around mid-morning, that scourge of Italian museums arrived, in the form of several school groups. The younger children did at least seem to be partly listening to their teacher. The adolescents behaved as they always do – after fanning out to occupy every single seat in the place, they then stared at social media on their smartphones, while ignoring everything the teacher was saying. At least it keeps them quiet, I suppose. Doubtless when the time comes to write a report on their visit, they will use those same smartphones to share material cut and pasted from Wikipedia.

In my post on The Paradox of Old and New Italy I criticised the implicit attitude of Grand Tourists of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries that “Italy is wasted on the Italians”. Nevertheless, it is a bit depressing to see young people so determinedly impervious to their own culture. Hopefully it’s just a phase they are going through.

The Interior

The Doors

Later History

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Santa Maria Maggiore

Santa Pudenziana

Santa Prassede

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The Mausoleum of Santa Costanza

Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura

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The Farnese Family

Caprarola

The Villa

The Royal Staircase

Deeds and Maps

The Gardens

After the Farnese

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Como, 2017

Buon Compleanno, Roma, 2015

Festa di San Fortunato, Todi, Umbria, 2018

Archery Competition and Sbandieratori, Todi, Umbria, 2019

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The Villa d’Este

The Town

The Villa di Bruto (Villa of Brutus)

The Villa Adriana (Hadrian’s Villa)

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