Look up

The advice, “don’t forget to look up,” was the best tip I got before I spent a month cruising the Louvre in 2014. It changed my traveling art pilgrim’s perspective. It made my heart open and my soul expand.
It was a euphoric experience in Rome. I was awed and seduced by the glory overhead, revelations just waiting to be noticed. When artistic geniuses put forth their best effort into visual redemption, they deliver. Spare a thought for what it takes to create this work, the skill and dexterity that has to be married to the physical challenge of working upside down.
Sometimes it’s a specific element, like trompe l’oeil, that makes the magic happen.

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Sometimes it’s pure pattern, color, and light.

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Sometimes it all about showing off temporal power and might; the doves from the coat of arms of the Doria Pamphilj dynasty or the battle victories of the Colonna.

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I am partial to the stories of gods and goddesses rollicking in sylvan glades, Hercules in action, and astrological symbols (hey, I’m a former hippie).

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It’s different from works on canvas. I never warmed up to Vasari (painter and author of Lives of the Artists) until I saw his frescoed ceilings in the Vatican. It was a revelation. The stiff pomposity of his large canvas works was nowhere to be found in the gauzy-edged, joyful overhead renderings. Biblical stories are a favorite theme. I don’t know how much time the popes spent on their back, but I am sure their mistresses were grateful.

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I’ve always associated the notion of heaven with gazing up whether it’s a view of blue skies, sunlight streaming in ribbons through the clouds, or a night sky strewn with stars.
We instinctively raise up that which we venerate. There’s reason for thrones and podiums and altars; to remind you that you are in the presence of something greater than yourself. There’s a reason people cram the Vatican Museums to bursting and all surge in one direction; the Sistine Chapel. Imagine, in a world lit only by fire you could look up and see light and color and beauty instead of darkness.

Mirrors and binoculars don’t work for me, but I have a few successful strategies for the ubiquitous crick-in-your-neck issue.

1. Stop, look down and to the left and right. Pause. Go back for more.
2. Take photos where permitted. Your phone on selfie mode works great! You can take excellent photos without doing a backbend.
3. Lean on a stone wall or marble pillar, arch your back, and tilt your chin up. If the wall surfaces are frescoed, don’t do this.
4. Find a pew, slide down until your neck is supported, and stare to your heart’s content.

Sometimes the painting overhead is a culmination of a space entirely given over to beauty and inspiration. Visual hope. When it’s done right, it’s full immersion, like when the Baptists go down to the river, and you are forever changed.

Rome: The Good, the Bad, the Heartbreaking.
The Heartbreaking
Look down.
I know I’ve insisted on looking up. Having your breath taken away by the extreme beauty of Italian ceilings is an experience that never gets old.
But one day I happened to look down as I opened the front doors of my apartment on Via Germanico, 96. I saw three brass squares the size of cobblestones, set slightly askew in the sidewalk.
Curious, I looked closer. A few minutes later, I felt my heart crack. A teaspoon of information was on each one; a name, three dates, two places.

Qui Abitava
Giuseppe Efrati
Nato 1880
Arrestato 16.10.1943
Deportato
Auschwitz
Assassinato 23.10.1943

I can only recognize a few words in Italian, but I understood this immediately. Arrested, deported, assassinated. I barely needed the dates to know what I was looking at. Auschwitz is synonymous with Hell in every language. In one blink, I’d seen a Holocaust memorial, powerful and painful. Here, right here, these people lived, just as I lived here now, and they were taken from here to be slaughtered.

Qui Abitava
Clara Baroccio Efrati
Nata 1891
Arrestata 18.10.1943
Deportata
Auschwitz
Morta
in luogo ignoto
in data ignoto

I had to Google Translate the ending of Clara Baroccio Efrati’s brass square

Dead
In an unknown place
On an unknown date

The third square belonged to their son.
Qui Abitava
Augusto Efrati
Nata 1916
Arrestata 16.4.1944
Deportata
Auschwitz
Morta 19.3.1945
Gross rosen

It ended with another phrase I didn’t understand; Gross rosen. Big Roses? What could that mean? Google knew. It was the center of an industrial complex and the administrative hub of a network of at least 97 subcamps. If you saw the movie Schindler’s List, it was set there.

What did the writing on the three brass squares tell me? A 63-year-old man and 52-year-old woman – husband and wife (most likely) and their 29-year-old son, who shared the name of an emperor of Rome. The couple was arrested in October 43, he first, she two days later. The young man was not captured until April 44, seven months later. I wonder, was he in hiding, or in denial? Unable to escape or unwilling to leave his home? The father died a week after deportation, the mother’s death is at a place and at a date unknown. The son survived for 11 months after his arrest.

I don’t know which fragment of information is more devasting. The two days the wife is left behind, or the day they knock at the door again? The mother’s anonymous death and unmarked grave, or the seven months the son spent in grief and dread? Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets Jan 27, 1945 but not soon enough for the son. He dies two months after that date, after eight months of forced slavery and unspeakable misery, exterminated by the Nazi regime.

I began to see these brass plaques in memoriams in front of doors in other Roman streets. They never failed to crack my heart wide open.They commemorated  Jews and patriots. The memorial for Don Pietro Pappagallo was a Resistance priest killed in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre in 1944 and whose character featured in Rossellini’s movie Open City

I learned more about the origins of these miniature memorials, called stolpersteins, via Google, Wikipedia and NPR.

“The stolperstein art project was initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, and is still ongoing. It aims at commemorating individual persons at exactly the last place of residency—or, sometimes, work—which was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror,  euthanasia, eugenics, was deported to a concentration or extermination, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. As of 31 January 2017, over 56,000 stolperstein have been laid in 22 European countries, making the stolperstein project the world’s largest decentralized memorial.”

Rome: The Good, The Bad, The Heartbreaking.
The Bad.
Roma è schifoso. Seriously. Rome is not just dirty, it’s nasty.  It’s filthy. Dumpsters overflow with garbage, stinking puddles of ooze spreading out from the base.I don’t know why my souvenirs of Rome didn’t include Cholera. Bags of garbage are left on street corners for city pick up that may or may not happen. Seagulls, dogs, and other scavengers* rip them open and scatter the contents. I’m not bitching about graffiti or pollution. Litter is everywhere. People drop wrappers, cigarette butts, cans, bottles, and half-eaten pizza on the sidewalk and walk away. Rome’s parks are weedy, trashy and unkempt, overgrown pastures for the homeless. Don’t take my word for it. Watch this April 2017  footage of poor neglected Piazza de Vittorio. If you want to cut to the to the rubbish chase, start at 2:43.

Locals tell me it’s an intractable situation created by city employee corruption and/or the Mafia. The whole system needs to be scrapped and redesigned. Good luck with that.

In April, Rome mayor Virginia Raggi, elected on a promise to solve the garbage crisis, announced a 12-point plan to clean up the eternal city.
My favorite unintentionally hilarious point is redefining garbage as “post-usage materials.” Poof! Garbage no longer exists, so there’s no longer a crisis.
One glimmer of hope – recycling is a fundamental Roman skill. Roman builders scavenged ‘spolia’ (reusable materials) throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the church re-purposed temples into churches and recycling is the centerpiece of Raggi’s plan.

I doubt a Keep Rome Beautiful PSA will do it, even if they made Michelangelo’s David cry.
However, in a world where smoking can successfully be banned from Italian restaurants, anything is possible. Maybe divine intervention is the way to go. Pray for a miracle. 

*rats

Another spin of my travel wheel of fortune (think Tarot card, not TV game show). For my last day in Rome, I Ubered out a ways, to Basilica Papale San Paolo Fuori le Mura, or Saint Paul Outside the Walls. I pictured a small, remote edifice haunted by the past, quiet enough for footsteps to echo in the nave, and rustic enough to hear the hum of bees in the cloister. I’d seen photos of the mosaic over the entry, but this was off the beaten track of the Centro Storico by miles. And I somehow edited out the meaning of basilica. In retrospect, I realized the image in my mind’s eye was a partial view of the mosaics across the front and perhaps a part of the cloister. I had the scale all wrong.  Uber drove me past an immense structure when the scudi dropped. This was no humble, drowsy rural church, this was one of the heavy hitters.

As soon as I saw the security tent, up by the road and away from the building, I took my iPhone and the Altoids tin that holds my cash out of my pockets and put them in my bag. I know the drill. It didn’t take long. For all the great size of this place, there were few people in line. I appreciated the very visible presence of security at these sites.  Though I have no faith that it would stop a determined suicide bomber, I’m glad they stand guard over humanity’s heritage.

I buzzed in and followed the sign to the museum and cloister section. I loved the rotini twirl of the slender columns and the wink of delicate mosaics.The cloister, created between 1220 and 1241,  was modest in size compared to the one in the Baths of Diocletian, but no less tranquil.  There was a shallow pool in the center and I saw the orange flash of a koi tail beneath the water plants. A pair of young priests walked briskly through the covered arcade.**
I turn a corner, step into a small room, and there before me was a niche of reliquaries. They were still in service, that is to say, the bone fragments of skulls, arms, fingers were still inside. There was a notice to the effect that this was a chapel, not a museum exhibit.

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There was a list matching a reliquary image to a list of who’s who inside; St. Stephen, St. Laurence and St. Timothy among them. I took photos and notes on the style and construction of the boxes. I felt lucky and blessed.
There’s a small museum of Saint Paul Outside the Walls-related artifacts: letters from popes pertaining to the basilica,  accounts of the rebuilding after near total destruction from an 1823 fire, painting of disciples writing their gospels,  illuminated manuscripts, but the glare off the glass cases was such I have no photos to share.
I thought it was funny when I realized I had to exit through the gift shop. Shades of Banksy! Turns out they sell Vatican stamps and had a post box for them. Decision made, I bought a handful of postcards, took my pastry and sat in the sun on a bench outside a cafe.
Nearby me 22 college students sat around a long table. The café rolled out a trolley with a bowl of steaming pasta and two kinds of sauce, and a server dished it up for them.  The kids burst into snatches of song. There was intermittent giggling and banter. They reminded me of Camp Merrimac counselors out for dinner at My Father’s Pizza.

I pulled out the postcards and my pencil stubs and drew for a couple of hours. I needed to finish them in time to post them, but it was a pure pleasure. This was as close as I got to my fantasy idea of this site;  scribbling away absorbed and happy, a little drowsy from the sun, in an atmosphere that was both lively and calm.

After a while, I dropped my cards from today and yesterday in the Vatican box. I have faith they will be delivered.
It was time to enter the basilica. As huge as I now knew this place to be, my jaw dropped. I was staggered by the sheer size.  It was the definition of monumental. The maybe 50 tourists at the other end were dwarfed into insignificance, barely visible.  It would have been utterly impressive if the chairs set out for worshippers weren’t blue molded plastic. That put a dent in the grandeur.
There were three main spaces, with 80 columns delineating them. Here’s one side, minus the blue plastic chairs. Triple it, making the central one twice as wide in your mind.

Outside, I asked a kind tourist to take my picture, as far away he could get, to give you an idea of the scale.

So far, St Peter’s in the Vatican is the only church I visited that hummed with life. There are worshipers in some of the other churches, but they are there to pay obeisance to the art.

Ubered from there to Quetzalcoatl Chocolatier, Via delle Carrozze, 26, Roma for some of the best caramel and chocolate I ever put in my mouth. I am somewhere between a connoisseur and a fanatic when it comes to that combination. Pricey? Well, yeah. but worth it. I get eight pieces to take home, and a few pieces of dark chocolate dipped ginger. Intense, packing some heat, spicey-sweet. Back to the hotel to finish packing, and let me praise the marvels that are E-bags. I was done in record time. Though my plane doesn’t depart until 12:30pm tomorrow, I’ll be hauling it to the airport at 9:30***

Around 8pm I walked to Valentino’s. It was the first time  I’d been for dinner, though I’d been many times for lunch. I said my goodbye to Rome over a plate of pasta Amatriciana, in a place that had consistently shown me patience and kindness. I thanked them, most sincerely and they wished me safe travels.
** I’ve seen nuns on every street in Rome and I’m always surprised when I catch them window shopping. They are seldom solo, mostly women of color, and wear a wide variety of habits. I’ve seen more priests in churches than on the street, and even a couple of men in rough brown or white robes with cowls whom I presume are monks. They have backpacks like all the tourists, and rosaries hang from their waists.

*** I left at 9:45. Delta had moved my flight earlier by 15 minutes. I sprinted from the curb the .98 distance to the gate. Fortunately, there was no line for security. I made it there only 15 minutes before it started boarding.

Arrivederci, Rome.

It all funneled down. Forty-eight hours in Rome left to spend, and it was getting harder, not easier, to decide what to do with my last two days. Revisit favorites? Too many candidates, an embarrassment of choices. I had some entry mileage left on the Barberini ticket and my Vatican Patron privileges, but I just wasn’t feeling it.
Instead of bid farewell to La Fornarina, or St George, I chose to do something I haven’t done  – a walk through the Jewish Ghetto, a scrap of Roman real estate where the Chosen people survived despite the best efforts of a hostile world and the machinations of the pope.
The weather was ideal, and I walked and listened to the RomeWalks audio tour; to the stories of persecution, resistance, fortitude, and pride. S Angelo in Pescheria, in the center of the fish market from the 12th century until 1880, was the official church of the Confraternity of Fishmongers. Pope Gregory XIII forced Jews to attend the church and listen to denunciations of their faith. That went on for 200 years.

The octagonal dome of S Maria del Pianto caught my eye.

The Jewish synagogue was built in 1904, after the Papacy fell as a temporal power and the Italian State was created. Assyrian and Babylonian motifs deliberately distinguished it from the domed churches. Palm trees and flowers grew in its verdant side gardens. Sadly for me, it was closed to visitors, along with its museum. No reason was given, and no day when it was expected to reopen.
I watched this row of hydraulic pilars raise and lower like a reverse portcullis. Something both chilling and comforting, guard houses at the entry points, for protection from terrorist activity.

I ducked into Limentani’s, a warren of rooms below ground, filled with crates of Baccarat and Waterford,  Christofle and Spode, Meissen and Portmeirion. I was hoping to find a nice linen tea towel, but no luck.

Ubered to a delicious lunch from Mordi & Vai at the Testaccio market.  I also downed a glass of fresh pressed juices. I bought a handbag/tote, made in Florence, in a muted taupe that matched the suede belt.

Consulted my GoogleMap, and having a few hours to spare, I walked to the Protestant Cemetery, Cimitero Acattolico. I almost didn’t because I was in a melancholy frame of mind. Not the best mood for a city of the dead, even if famous foreign poets (Shelly, Keats) were interred there. But it was so close by, just a few minutes walk away.

Of course, it was one of my favorite places. A tidy, quiet terraced garden protected by ancient Aurelian walls, with wonderful inscriptions on the stones on one end, and the Pyramid of Cestius on the other. Terraced levels, like a vineyard of marble, Someone was sculpting a stone in a small workshop built into the wall. I heard the tapping of a chisel and hammer all afternoon.  Cypresses and pines, orange trees, palms, and wisteria in graceful bloom.  It was more expressions of love and esteem than cries of grief, though there was some of that too.  It makes you want to live so those you leave behind will think this highly of you.
Some of my favorite epitaphs:
Wise, magnanimous, tenderhearted

Let come what will come
God’s will be well come

Excellent in his profession
Modest in self-estimation
endeared to friends by his social virtues
beloved by his family as a
kind husband and tender father

Let the earth be light for you.

Marvelous statuary. I loved both sculpture and inscription of a young Scotsman “Devereux Plantagenet Cockburn…beloved by all who knew him, and most precious to his parents and family, who had sought his health in many foreign climes. He departed this life in Rome, aged 21 years.”

Yes! There’s Maddy! Just what I’d like for my tomb, except I’d be sitting up in bed, leaning back on a pillow and reading. What? They don’t sculpt like that anymore? Right. Back to fabricating reliquaries. Maybe I can work in an etching.
I was surprised to find a marker for a soldier of the Confederacy.

The pyramid was more monumental than I had grasped from photos, and gleaming from a recent cleaning.

I sat down on a bench near the pyramid and drew what I saw – the edge of the monument, the iron and brick fence, the redbud tree in bloom. One of the most restorative and peaceful hours I’ve spent in Rome. I came here to soak up history and art, and here they were, in spades. Plus, English! As I left, I saw a middle-aged couple stood before Keats stone, holding hands, her head leaned on his shoulder in silent reverence. Nice.

Ubered back, day well spent. Time to start packing.

**Thomas Jefferson Page (1808-1899), American explorer, commander of United States Navy expeditions mapping Argentina and Paraguay. He moved to Argentina and then Europe following the Confederate defeat in the Civil War.