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Europe 2007 2008 Thursday, December 20, 2007 I spent the last couple of days roaming the streets of Firenze in ever wider concentric circles. The old city is fairly compact, but there are quite a few neighborhoods further from the center of the city with great architecture and interesting shops. I passed a Japanese restaurant on a small side street. The restaurant had a smoked glass door with an amazing saying written on the glass. It said: “Nothing Lasts. Nothing is Finished. Nothing is Perfect.” One of the Japanese people in the restaurant told me the saying was attributed to Wabi Sabi, a philosophical movement related to Zen Buddhism that forms the basis for the Japanese artistic aesthetic, i.e., the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Wabi Sabi is very different from our western view based on the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection. South of the center, on the other side of the Arno River, a large plaza has a sign commemorating the liberation of the city during the Second World War. I walked along part of the old city wall with towers and old arched gateways. One of the gateways had huge carved wood doors at least twenty feet tall. Several streets had antique stores called “antichita” that sold incredibly beautiful copies of museum sculptures; the owner of one store explained that he owned a workshop in Carrara, where much of the best marble is mined, and he employs master craftsmen. Each of his sculptures is an “original” in that sense that it is not mass-produced. The workshop also has large bronze casting facilities, and in some sense, the bronze statues are mass-produced in limited numbers. The beautiful Basilica of San Croce, like the larger cathedral, has a façade of multicolored green, white and pink marble. Many small wooden Christmas stalls selling souvenirs covered the large plaza in front of the basilica, and directly in front of the church steps a group of musicians played. Their instruments included a large hammered dulcimer, a bass, and a drum; they called themselves “Romm,” and as you might guess, they were Gypsies, playing folk melodies from all over Europe. I wound up buying two of their CDs. Friday, December 21, 2007 I have spent two weeks at the Berna Pension in Ferenze, and I made friends with Francesca, the Berna’s young receptionist. To my delight this morning, as I left for the train station, Francesca kissed me on both cheeks, Italian style. Oh, these Italian women! Roma! I took the somewhat more expensive Eurostar train out of Firenze in the morning, and in two hours, nonstop, arrived in Roma. The train with a less expensive fare would have taken four hours. My hostel in Rome is only a five-minute walk from the train station, and after checking in, I wandered into the streets to roam about Rome. From the hostel, I headed over to the Piazza della Republica where a great fountain forms the traffic circle, or “round about” as the English, and most Europeans, say. 
Then I continued down a major avenue, called the Via Nazionale, to the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier, an imposing memorial that takes up an entire city
block. Soldiers in dress uniforms, carrying rifles, stand guard, and two
eternal flames burn in large bronze pots. The memorial constructed in white
marble has police at the entrance gate; the memorial is an impressive sight,
and it is one of the recognizable “postcard” images of Rome. Behind the
memorial is the Roman Coliseum that I plan to visit tomorrow. The hostel here in Rome has a small kitchen, and quite a bit of “free” food. Guests have left a lot of the free food at the hostel, but, daily, in addition to the free left over food, the hostel staff serves breakfast and they serve a pasta dinner to guests. The hostel has a free hot drink machine that offers about eight kinds of coffee, hot cocoa and tea. The machine has a sign on it that says: “Drink Coffee – Do stupid things faster with more energy!” The name of the hostel is the Legends Hostel, and I found it on the web. The Legends had high ratings from those who had stayed there. The hostel guests include an Australian family who currently lives in England, a group of Brazilian college students traveling in Europe on holiday, and guests from other countries. My roommates include two Americans from California; they are Ph.D. students studying biomedical engineering in Cambridge. Two other Americans at the hostel are from Michigan. They are working on their Master’s; one is doing a specialization in naval history, and the other is studying labor relations. At dinnertime there is a cacophony of different languages all going at the same time. Needless to say, conversations sparkle, and the discussions cover a wide range of topics. Everyone speaks English too, so it’s easy to talk to the people. Saturday, December 22, 2007 The Roman Coliseum is the largest amphitheater I have seen during my travels, but it is essentially just like others in Turkey, Greece and Italy. You may recall that a theater is a half circle, and an amphitheater is a full circle (actually an ellipse). The Greeks almost always built their theaters on hillsides, but the Roman theaters, built on flat land, could occupy a prominent place in the center of a city. Theaters were built for plays and shows, and theaters differed from amphitheaters that were built for sport competitions like Gladiator combat. The emperor Titus opened the Roman Coliseum with a hundred days of spectacles. The crowds literally got to see thousands of African animals slaughtered by gladiators when the Roman Coliseum opened. It took about five centuries before the blood combat ended.  From
the Coliseum I walked over to an area called the Palatine where wealthy
Romans once had great homes. Today, the Palatine serves as the main
archeological site in the city. It took several hours to explore the nooks
and crannies of the Palatine, but after scrambling around the ruins, I found
myself in the plaza of the Musei Capitolini, one of several metropolitan
museums of the city of Rome. Popes and other wealthy people have donated
works of art to the city since the fifteenth century, and the Capitolini’s
collection is housed in a couple of palatial buildings that I stumbled upon.Sunday, December 23, 2007 I have come to understand that the Borghese family is to Rome what the Farnese family was to Naples and the Medici family was to Florence. The great estate of the Borghese’s, the Villa Borghese, now houses the Galleria Borghese. The park has quite a few other attractions, including Rome’s Zoo. The Galleria Borghese has a great collection of sculpture and painting including six works of Caravaggio, the “bad boy” of Italian art. Caravaggio worked during the early 1600’s, and his art scandalized people of his time. He painted religious and mythological scenes with extreme realism; in fact, he used peasants, and street children as his models. Church leaders rejected some of his paintings because the saints in the paintings had dirty feet and hands. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, cleverly, bought many of the rejected paintings at bargain prices, and today I saw some of the works acquired this way. Caravaggio’s dramatic painting of the boy David holding Goliath’s severed head kept me spellbound; it has to one of the most dramatic paintings I have ever seen. Caravaggio led a turbulent life, and died early, at 36 years of age; during his short life, Caravaggio even exchanged paintings for a papal pardon for murder! In addition to the permanent collection in the Galleria Borghese, I got to see a special exhibition of the sculpture of Antonio Canova in the galleria. Many of Canova’s marble statues have been brought to the Gallaria from countries all over the world. Canova lived and worked 250 years ago, during the time of Napoleon, and he used Pauline Bonaparte as his model for statues of Venus. Canova’s sculpture is on a par with the best I have ever seen. The Galleria also has works by Bernini, one of the architects of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. I walked through the park to see several other fine museums including the National Museum of Modern Art, and the Etruscan Museum, then I took a tram to see a collection of archeological finds in an old electrical power generating station. I did a lot of walking today, and expect to do a lot more walking while here in Rome. Monday, December 24, 2007 Today, I visited Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican along with many other people here for the Christmas holidays. I got there early, and did not have to fight the crowds as I toured the church. Saint Peter’s tomb is here, and many Popes have crypts here too. Michelangelo’s famous marble sculpture, the Pieta, occupies a place of honor just to the right of the entrance.  Despite
the immense size of Saint Peter’s, it actually felt comfortable inside, not
overwhelming. They say that the Statue of Liberty could easily fit inside
the dome.After visiting the basilica, I had planned to visit the Vatican museums, including the Sistine Chapel, but the lines were just too long, and, changing plans, I opted to come back after Christmas. So, from the Vatican, I headed back across the Tiber River, and got to see some other Roman sights including the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. The legend says that you should throw three coins with your right hand over your left shoulder into the Trevi fountain. The fist coin will insure that you return to Rome, the second coin will insure your fall in love in Rome, and the third coin will get you married. I decided to throw only one coin into the fountain because I wouldn’t mind returning to Rome, but I was a little hesitant about love and marriage! Back at the hostel, we had a small Christmas Eve party. The staff offered everyone some traditional Italian Christmas cake called Panetoni, or Pani D’Oro, and some Asti Spumante bubbly wine. Some people opted to head back to the Vatican for midnight mass, but most decided to stay put. Those who went to the midnight mass told us that it was not really crowded, but it was quite cold standing in the piazza watching the large monitors. Tuesday, December 25, 2007 Merry Christmas! After staying up late last night with the other guests at the hostel, I slept a little longer this morning, and decided to head to the Jewish Museum and the Grand Synagogue of Rome. 
I got there just in time for a walking tour of the former ghetto. The Jewish
Ghetto of Rome occupied only a small area of perhaps four blocks around the
current synagogue. The ghetto was situated on lowest land of an island in
the Tiber River, and it was subject to flooding regularly. Essentially, all
of the old ghetto buildings were demolished after emancipation in 1870 when
Italy became a country. The land was filled in, and today, expensive
apartment buildings and small shops and restaurants occupy the area. The
Ghetto of Rome was the last Jewish Ghetto in Europe; it ceased to exist only
after the Vatican lost its secular authority to rule Rome. For three
centuries, the Popes of Rome insisted on maintaining the Jewish Ghetto in
the city; they hoped that by making life miserable, the Jews of the ghetto
would convert. The ghetto In Rome had gates, but it had no walls as ghettos in other cities had; the buildings formed the walls of the ghetto in Rome. Guards allowed Jews out of the ghetto during the day. They had to leave the ghetto to get food and other necessities that simply did not exist in their tiny enclave. Jews had to wear yellow cloth identification badges, and for most of the ghettos existence, Jews were limited to only two occupations: money lending and selling used clothes. The Church forbade Christians from lending money. Additionally, the Jews of the ghetto had to pay the salaries of their guards, and since they could own no property, the Jews had to pay rent to live in the ghetto. Christians owned all of the houses in the ghetto. I also saw the ruins of the old fish market, just outside one of the ghetto gates. The fish market backs onto an ancient church where Jews had to go to listen to clerics berate them and try to convince them to convert. The ghetto was a very sorry place to live; disease, filth and poverty marked life in the ghetto, and it was kept that way purposefully for more than three hundred years. Five synagogues, on different floors of one apartment building, formed the only bright spot in the ghetto. After emancipation, the Jews of Rome anxiously planned to build the Grand Synagogue to show their new status as free citizens of Rome, and to mark the place they had been persecuted for three centuries. Many of the sacred objects like Torahs, embroidered cloth and silver objects, and marble arks from the old ghetto synagogues have been preserved. These objects are either in one of the twelve modern synagogues in Rome, or in the Jewish Museum. In fact, the museum boasts having more than eight hundred embroidered Torah covers, and I saw at least fifty in display cases. The Jewish community of Rome is quite well organized. Jews pay their dues to the central community association that in turn maintains the twelve synagogues, pay the salaries of Rabbis, and run other religious service organizations. There are about fifteen thousand Jews in Rome, and they can attend any of the synagogues. None of the individual synagogues have their own membership, per se, and all twelve of the synagogues in Rome are orthodox. In 1980, terrorists killed and wounded people leaving the Grand Synagogue on Yom Kippur. Today, there are police kiosks around the synagogue, and access to both the Jewish Museum and the Synagogue is controlled. The Grand Synagogue building is quite beautiful; inside, the ceiling is painted blue and has small stars like in the sky, and the dome has a rainbow of colors made out of rows of petals. There are many large bronze and silver menorahs, and the Torah Ark is made of marble. The bimah is in the front, not the center, and women’s galleries are high on the two sides. The building’s exterior is beige stone with some ornamentation. It is a large building in an impressive setting that includes palm trees. Wednesday, December 26, 2007 I spent the day continuing to roam about Rome, and I visited several of the less well-known galleries. The palace of the Pamphilj family houses their private art collection. Their famous ancestor, Pope Innocent X, appointed his nephew, Camillo Nepontini, to the post of a high-ranking cardinal. We get our English word, Nepotism, from Camillo’s last name and his uncle’s behavior. Another out-of-the-way palace houses the collection of the Corsini family, whose famous ancestor was Pope Clements XII. The collection includes a room with several paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. One painting called the Head of an Old Man looked like a photograph. The old man’s head is turned sideways, and the most prominent aspect of the painting is the man’s hair and beard. You literally can see every individual hair depicted in the painting. It’s amazing. The letters “S.P.Q.R.” can be seen all over Rome. They are on manhole covers, lampposts, mailboxes, buildings, and on a lot of other things. Each letter of “S.P.Q.R.” comes from the first letters of the Latin words “Senatus Populus Que Romanus,” which is a phrase that means “The Senate and the People of Rome.” Therefore, “S.P.Q.R.” means “officially.” Thursday, December 27, 2007  I
finally got into the Vatican Museums and to the Sistine Chapel. My plan had
been to wait until after Christmas in the hopes that the lines of people I
encountered before the holiday would be smaller. However, everyone visiting
Rome must have had the same idea because the line of people was even longer
than it had been before Christmas. It is possible to purchase an expensive
guided tour of the museums and get a scheduled entry time, and feeling
frustrated, I passed the crowds of people on line to the entrance area where
I thought I would evaluate spending the money, about $75.00, to take a
guided tour. On a lark, I approached and struck up a conversation with a
tour group from Detroit, Michigan. The group from a Catholic boarding school
consisted of two priests and about a dozen boys. After a short conversation,
they agreed to let me join their tour, and I spent the next couple of hours
with them learning some of the intricacies of the paintings in the galleries
leading up to the Sistine Chapel and I learned a lot about Michelangelo’s
masterpieces, the Pieta, and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. When the
school group left to visit Saint Peter’s Basilica, I remained behind to
wander through the museums for another four and half hours!The story of Michelangelo is fascinating. He was thirty-six when the Pope asked him to “paint” the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. To Michelangelo, a great sculpture, painting was a degrading art form compared to carving marble. Michelangelo left Rome and went to Milan, but his friends in Milan convinced him to return and apologize to the Pope, and they convinced him to accept the commission to paint the chapel. It took Michelangelo four years to complete the ceiling. When he started, he had never done a fresco, and was quite unsure of himself. The technique involves applying paint to wet plaster and letting the work dry. If there is a mistake, or if the section is incomplete, the plaster has to be totally removed and the work has to be done over from the beginning. Michelangelo did not paint lying on his back; he stood on scaffolding looking up to paint. The Sistine Chapel is a long rectangular space, and at the time, about a third of the chapel was open to ordinary common people who stood behind a large ornate iron fence and gate. The upper-crust of society and the clergy had the remaining two-thirds of the space. Being new to painting frescoes, Michelangelo started at the end of the ceiling over the common people. His scenes at first included as many as six figures and as he got comfortable and worked toward the regal end of the ceiling, his scenes included only two people. The most famous scene is that of the creation of man with G-d and Adam. Their two fingers reaching out to touch are incredible. I learned, however, Michelangelo, who secretly studied anatomy, enveloped G-d in a human brain. Twenty years after Michelangelo completed the ceiling, a new Pope asked the now sixty-year-old artist to return to paint the story of the Judgment Day on the wall behind the altar. It’s an amazing painting depicting scenes of people rising from their graves and going back into their bodies. Saints and sinners rise up to heaven where the sinners are turned back and wind up being assigned to various levels of the underworld by Minos. Among the figures near the center is Saint Bartholomew, depicted as an old man sitting on a cloud holding his skin in a lowered hand like a dangling cloak. In life, Saint Bartholomew was skinned alive! The old man in the painting is a self-portrait of Michelangelo. The Pieta also has a story. Michelangelo was in his twenties when he carved it, and people could not believe he really was the sculpture. Rumors that other people had carved the masterpiece started circulating, and to quell the rumors, Michelangelo carved his name in the statue on a belt-like strap that goes over Mary’s shoulder and crosses her chest. If nothing else, that young man had chutzpah. Philip Sternberg Scoutmaster, Troop 1131 |