Rome, The Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica

“From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.”                                                          Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Sant’ Angelo like time travellers we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time for the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church and is a place where some of the most important decisions in the history of Europe and the World have been made over the centuries.  (A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves).

The route took us past the Castel Sant’ Angelo, which was the Pope’s ‘safe house’ in times of danger and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people seemed to snake forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it shuffled quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the world that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting and even Micky overcame his usual reluctance to visit the inside of a religious building and joined us.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the atmosphere as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artefacts.

 

Outside we saw the Swiss Guards in their striking medieval uniforms of blue, red and yellow and the Vatican post office doing a brisk trade in post marking letters and postcards.

The Vatican is the third smallest state in Europe after Monaco and San Marino and its status is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Church and State, who had been squabbling since Italian unification, finally thrashed out a compromise deal that was marked by the building of a new road the Via della Conciliazione which, I have to say, to me seems rather sterile and lacking any real character.  It is expensive however and from a street side stall we bought the dearest water I have ever had at €4 for a small bottle.  We weren’t going to fall for that again so later on Kim refilled it from a public fountain by the side of the road.

The Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II took us back over the River Tiber and not unsurprisingly onto the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II which leads inevitably to the Vittorio Emanuele monument at the other end.  As it stretched out in front of us there was about a kilometre and a half to walk and all of a sudden my itinerary looked for the first time to be overly ambitious.  We had seen everything that we had planned to see but now there was a long walk back to the train station and everyone was hot and tired.

 

This long road is flanked with Palaces and Churches and Piazzas but our feet and legs were leached by the effort and aching and it was desperately hot so all we wanted was a bar and a cold drink even if it did cost another eye-watering €25 for five drinks.  We found a place about half way along the road and stopped for half an hour to rest and recover in the comfort of an air-conditioned bar and yes, sure enough it cost us €25.

Italian Unification and a History Degree

The plan was to spend two days in Rome and today we would visit the northern classical part of the city and the areas that are predominantly Renaissance and Baroque and it was approaching midday as we started at the Piazza della Republica where I spotted the Hotel Massimo d’Azeglio. Massimo d’Azeglio (b. 24^th October 1798) was an Italian politician who made an early contribution to the unification of Italy, the 150^th anniversary of which was being celebrated in Rome this year (2011).  It stood out to me because Massimo d’Azeglio helped me pass my history degree exams because I wrote my thesis about him and his part in the Risorgimento.

  

We could see the huge Victor Emmanuel monument now but before we reached it we took a turning left that took us past the Quirinale Palace built by the Popes on one of the original of Rome’s seven hills, previously the home of the Italian Monarchy and now the official residence of the President of Italy and to our first site-seeing destination, the famous Trevi Fountain.

There was no need for a map to find it, we just followed all of the people, because this has to be one of the busiest places in Rome with the huge fountain almost completely filling the tiny Piazza with people crammed in and shuffling through as they squeeze slowly past the crowds.  Thirty-five years ago, on my first visit, people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

Next we made our way now to the most famous and most crowded of all Rome squares, the Piazza di Spagna, shaped like a bow tie and surrounded by tall, elegant shuttered houses painted in pastel shades of ochre, cream and russet red and in the centre a fountain shaped as a leaking, sunken boat at the foot of the famous Spanish Steps that were swarming with people making their way to the top and back under the shade of cheap parasols sold on the streets by the illegal traders.

To the right we saw the house, now a museum, where the English poet John Keats lived and died and to the left the Babington Tea Rooms which was opened in 1896 by two Englishwomen who spotted a market for homesick British tourists with a yearning for a traditional afternoon tea and a pot of Earl Grey.  We turned our back on this and walked along Via Condotti, which is Rome’s most exclusive and most expensive shopping streets where the major designers have their shops and where prices were way beyond our budget!

At the Via del Corso we turned left and walked back towards the Victor Emmanuel Monument at it southern end but turned off half way down and in a matter of minutes passed through hundreds of years of history, first through Piazza Colona and the column of Marcus Aurelius, then skirting past the Italian Parliament building, the Palazzo di Montecitorio, and after that the Temple of Hadrian with its huge columns which is now the façade of the Italian stock exchange.

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael.  Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona in the blistering heat of the afternoon as the temperature reached well into the thirties and it was all becoming a bit tiring and overwhelming so we found somewhere to rest before tackling the walk to St Peter’s and the Vatican.

Rome the Eternal City

In July 2003 I visited Rome with my son Jonathan, taking advantage of some of the earliest Ryanair 1p flights.  Rome Campino airport is quite a way out of the city so we took a coach to the main train station and then a metro train to the station Colosseo.

The exit to the station is close to the site of the ancient city and as we emerged blinking into the sunlight I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  Although this was my second visit to Rome (the first was in 1976) the sight of the amphitheatre felt just as exciting and dramatic as the first time.  It had been hot underground and I had had a sweating problem so the first thing to do was to have a cold beer and a change of shirt at an adjacent bar on the Piazza del Colosseo before walking the short distance to our hotel, The Romano on Largo Corrado Ricci, which was conveniently close to the Forum.

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking.

And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original.

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago, on my first visit,  people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael.  Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona and it was all becoming a bit overwhelming.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves.  We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  After joining the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.

After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope John Paul II today, most likely because at eighty-four years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the hotel.

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Other posts about Ancient Rome:

Spartacus the Gladiator

Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

Istria 2011 the Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Grand Tour of Europe

The Aqueduct of Segovia

Segóbriga

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Garibaldi and the Unification of Italy

At university I studied Italian Unification and one of the heroes of this achievement was Giuseppe Garibaldi, who died on June 2^nd 1882.  He was an Italian military and political figure.  In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and afterward returned to Italy as a commander in the conflicts of the Risorgimento.

This handsome swashbuckler, with the regal bearing, long hair, full beard, burning eyes and trademark red cape cut a swathe through European politics during the mid-19th century.  For three decades, Giuseppe Garibaldi was involved in every major battle in Italy, provoking revolution in Sicily, bringing about the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy, the retreat of the Austrian empire, the overthrow of the Papal States, and the creation of the Italian nation.

After the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 the state worked hard at making sure Garibaldi would be remembered and the number of streets, piazzas and statues named after him makes him probably the most commemorated secular figure in history.

Such was the romance of his story that Garibaldi was at one point possibly the most famous man in Europe.  In London in 1864 people of all classes flocked to see him as he got off the train. The crowds were so immense it took him six hours to travel three miles through the streets. The whole country shut down for three days while he met the great and the good.  Literary figures including the poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott lauded him as the “Italian lion” and “the noblest Roman of them all“.

The English historian A.J.P. Taylor made the assessment that “Garibaldi is the only wholly admirable figure in modern history.”

Statues of his likeness stand in many Italian squares, and in other countries around the world.  A bust of Giuseppe Garibaldi is prominently placed outside the entrance to the old Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, DC, a gift from members of the Italian Society of Washington. Many theatres in Sicily take their name from him and are ubiquitously named Garibaldi Theatre.

Five ships of the Italian Navy have been named after him, among which a World War II cruiser and the former flagship, the aircraft carrier Guiseppe Garibaldi.

The English football team Nottingham Forest designed their home kit after the uniform worn by Garibaldi and his men and have worn a variation of this design since being founded in 1865. A school in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire was also named in his honour. The Garibaldi biscuit was named after him, as was a style of beard. The Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy has been awarded annually since 2007 within the Six Nations rugby union framework to the victor of the match between France and Italy.

Other places and things named after Garibaldi include:

Mount Garibaldi, British Columbia

Garibaldi, Oregon

Garibaldi, Victoria Australia

Garibaldi, Brazil

Hotels in Naples, Palermo, Venice, Milan, and a bed and breakfast in Rome

In England, streets and squares in London, Scarborough, Grimsby, Bradford and St Albans

A station on the Paris metro

A cafe in Madrid

An area in Berlin

A restaurant in Vienna

A Street in Moscow

A Museum in Amsterdam

and

A block of high-rise Council Flats in Grimsby

Rome in a Day

It was about a two hundred and fifty kilometre drive to Rome which took just over three hours and with a full day to pack in the coach picked us up before breakfast so we collected food parcels and set of for the Italian capital, which is the third most visited European city after London and Paris.  The coach took the road towards Naples and then swung around the base of Vesuvius and picked up the A1 Autostrada that runs all the way from Naples to Rome and then on to Milan.

The coach dropped us off near the site of the ancient city and I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  I had studied history for the last six years but this was the first time that I had visited any of the exciting places that I had delighted in reading about.

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking.  And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and joined an official city guide who took us through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder on 15^th March 54BC and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument, erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy, we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original.

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome so we did this and it must work because I went back in 2003 and then again in 2004.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael and after that it was the Baroque Piazza Navona.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves.

We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.  After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope Paul VI today, most likely because at seventy-nine years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the coach.  Before leaving the city the driver did a whistle stop drive around some of the sights that we had missed earlier in the day including the window where the dictator Mussolini used to make his animated speeches from.

A Year in a Life – 18th November, Rome, The Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica

“From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.”                                                         Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Sant’ Angelo like time travellers we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time for the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church and is a place where some of the most important decisions in the history of Europe and the World have been made over the centuries.  (A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves).

The route took us past the Castel Sant’ Angelo, which was the Pope’s ‘safe house’ in times of danger and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people seemed to snake forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it shuffled quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the world that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting and even Micky overcame his usual reluctance to visit the inside of a religious building and joined us.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the atmosphere as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artefacts.

Outside we saw the Swiss Guards in their striking medieval uniforms of blue, red and yellow and the Vatican post office doing a brisk trade in post marking letters and postcards.

The Vatican is the third smallest state in Europe after Monaco and San Marino and its status is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Church and State, who had been squabbling since Italian unification, finally thrashed out a compromise deal that was marked by the building of a new road the Via della Conciliazione which, I have to say, to me seems rather sterile and lacking any real character.  It is expensive however and from a street side stall we bought the dearest water I have ever had at €4 for a small bottle.  We weren’t going to fall for that again so later on Kim refilled it from a public fountain by the side of the road.

The Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II took us back over the River Tiber and not unsurprisingly onto the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II which leads inevitably to the Vittorio Emanuele monument at the other end.  As it stretched out in front of us there was about a kilometre and a half to walk and all of a sudden my itinerary looked for the first time to be overly ambitious.  We had seen everything that we had planned to see but now there was a long walk back to the train station and everyone was hot and tired.

This long road is flanked with Palaces and Churches and Piazzas but our feet and legs were leached by the effort and aching and it was desperately hot so all we wanted was a bar and a cold drink even if it did cost another eye-watering €25 for five drinks.  We found a place about half way along the road and stopped for half an hour to rest and recover in the comfort of an air-conditioned bar and yes, sure enough it cost us €25.

A Life in a Year – 24th October, Italian Unification and a History Degree

The plan was to spend two days in Rome and today we would visit the northern classical part of the city and the areas that are predominantly Renaissance and Baroque and it was approaching midday as we started at the Piazza della Republica where I spotted the Hotel Massimo d’Azeglio. Massimo d’Azeglio (b. 24^th October 1798) was an Italian politician who made an early contribution to the unification of Italy, the 150^th anniversary of which was being celebrated in Rome this year (2011).  It stood out to me because Massimo d’Azeglio helped me pass my history degree exams because I wrote my thesis about him and his part in the Risorgimento.  

We could see the huge Victor Emmanuel monument now but before we reached it we took a turning left that took us past the Quirinale Palace built by the Popes on one of the original of Rome’s seven hills, previously the home of the Italian Monarchy and now the official residence of the President of Italy and to our first site-seeing destination, the famous Trevi Fountain. 

There was no need for a map to find it, we just followed all of the people, because this has to be one of the busiest places in Rome with the huge fountain almost completely filling the tiny Piazza with people crammed in and shuffling through as they squeeze slowly past the crowds.  Thirty-five years ago, on my first visit, people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

Next we made our way now to the most famous and most crowded of all Rome squares, the Piazza di Spagna, shaped like a bow tie and surrounded by tall, elegant shuttered houses painted in pastel shades of ochre, cream and russet red and in the centre a fountain shaped as a leaking, sunken boat at the foot of the famous Spanish Steps that were swarming with people making their way to the top and back under the shade of cheap parasols sold on the streets by the illegal traders.

To the right we saw the house, now a museum, where the English poet John Keats lived and died and to the left the Babington Tea Rooms which was opened in 1896 by two Englishwomen who spotted a market for homesick British tourists with a yearning for a traditional afternoon tea and a pot of Earl Grey.  We turned our back on this and walked along Via Condotti, which is Rome’s most exclusive and most expensive shopping streets where the major designers have their shops and where prices were way beyond our budget!

At the Via del Corso we turned left and walked back towards the Victor Emmanuel Monument at it southern end but turned off half way down and in a matter of minutes passed through hundreds of years of history, first through Piazza Colona and the column of Marcus Aurelius, then skirting past the Italian Parliament building, the Palazzo di Montecitorio, and after that the Temple of Hadrian with its huge columns which is now the façade of the Italian stock exchange.

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael.  Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona in the blistering heat of the afternoon as the temperature reached well into the thirties and it was all becoming a bit tiring and overwhelming so we found somewhere to rest before tackling the walk to St Peter’s and the Vatican.

A Life in a Year – 24th August, Mount Vesuvius, Naples and Pompeii

Mount Vesuvius is an active stratovolcano situated to the east of Naples.  What that means technically and geologically is that it is a tall, conical shaped volcano composed of many layers of hardened lava and volcanic ash laid down over the centuries by previous eruptions.  It is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years and that was in 1944 when it destroyed a handful of communities and an entire United States bomber squadron, which makes you wonder why they didn’t just take off and go somewhere else!

It is difficult to be precise but scientists think that Vesuvius formed about twenty-five thousand years ago and today the volcano is rated as one of the most dangerous in the world not because of its size but because of the proximity of millions of people living close by and if it was to go off again with a similar eruption to the one that destroyed Pompeii over two days beginning on 24^th  August 79 it is estimated that it could displace up to three million people who live in and around Naples.  The volcano has a major eruption cycle of about two thousand years so the next eruption is dangerously imminent.

The Italian Government and the City of Naples have emergency evacuation plans in place that would take nearly three weeks to evacuate the entire population to other parts of the country but as Pompeii was destroyed in less than three days or so they might want to work on speeding that up a bit.  Many buildings exist ludicrously close to the summit in what is called the red zone and there are ongoing efforts being made to reduce the population living there by demolishing illegally constructed buildings, establishing a National Park around the upper slopes of the mountain to prevent the erection of any further buildings and by offering a financial incentive of €35,000 to families who are prepared to move away.

When I visited in 1976 it was twenty years before the creation of the National Park and the route up the mountain was via a narrow, steep, winding road through some of the poorest residential areas in Naples.  These were people who have chosen to live in run-down houses and shacks, many of which still had evidence of the damage inflicted by the 1944 eruption. They lived in the potential danger zone making the most out of the highly fertile volcanic earth to make a living out of growing fruit and vegetables and selling these at local street markets.

The coach wheezed its way up the narrow road and around the hairpin bends to a coach park about three hundred metres from the top of the one thousand, three hundred metre high crater.  This was as far as it could go but there was still a considerable way to go up a dusty path of loose volcanic ash and clinker so it was a good job that we had taken the pre-excursion advice to wear stout shoes and suitable clothing.  The track would almost certainly not have met current health and safety regulations because there was very little to stop careless people slipping and falling over the edge and tumbling down the mountain because every so often the track had slipped away down a massive vertical drop and occasionally had been propped up with a few bits of insufficient wood held together with scraps of string.  I understand that it is a lot safer now however.

It took about half-an-hour to reach the top and that wasn’t much safer either with a path with a potential vertical fall into the six hundred and fifty metre wide crater if you didn’t keep your wits about you.   It was worth the climb however because it was a clear day and the views from the top were simply stunning.  To the west was Naples laid out before us and beyond that the Bay of Naples and then the Thyrrenian Sea liberally punctuated by tiny islands and islets, which looked as though they were floating on the water like precious jewels set in a priceless braclet.  To the east was the countryside and the vineyards of the region of Campania and the mid morning sun shone brightly on both land and sea below us.  The path around the crater was made of the same ash and pumice and on the way around I collected some pieces of curiously shaped lava that caught my eye and put them in my pocket and I still have these on show at home even today.

Apart from the spectacular views there wasn’t really a great deal to see at the top except for the great yawning crater and a big hole full of rocks waiting to blow up again sometime soon.  I suppose the point of going to the top of Vesuvius is simply to say you have been there and not because there is anything special to see.  In the sunshine the colours however were fascinating, the rocks were black, brown, purple and umber and all over there was scraggy green vegetation clinging on to life in a highly improbable location.  There were little wisps of smoke and every so often a smell of sulphur and a little bit of steam drifting across the path just to remind us that this was a living and active volcano.  At the top an old man demonstrated how hot the rocks were by lighting a cigarette by bending down and igniting it on the rocks.  I think he must have got through a lot of cigarettes in a day and we were all impressed with this and left a small contribution in his collection pot but I have always wondered subsequently if it was some sort of trick.

A Life in a Year – 3rd July, Rome the Eternal City

In July 2003 I visited Rome with Jonathan, taking advantage of some of the earliest Ryanair 1p flights.  Rome Campino airport is quite a way out of the city so we took a coach to the main train station and then a metro train to the station Colosseo.

The exit to the station is close to the site of the ancient city and as we emerged blinking into the sunlight I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  Although this was my second visit to Rome (the first was in 1976) the sight of the amphitheatre felt just as exciting and dramatic as the first time.  It had been hot underground and I had had a sweating problem so the first thing to do was to have a cold beer and a change of shirt at an adjacent bar on the Piazza del Colosseo before walking the short distance to our hotel, The Romano on Largo Corrado Ricci, which was conveniently close to the Forum.

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking. 

And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

 In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original. 

 

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago, on my first visit,  people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael.  Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona and it was all becoming a bit overwhelming.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves.  We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  After joining the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.

 After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope John Paul II today, most likely because at eighty-four years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the hotel. 

Spartacus the Gladiator

Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

Istria 2011 the Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Grand Tour of Europe

The Aqueduct of Segovia

Segóbriga

A Life in a Year – 7th June, The Fall of the Roman Empire

The 7th June 1453 is the formal end of the Roman Empire.  Here are some of the places that I have visited:

Rome

Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Aqueduct of Segovia

Segesta, Sicily

Segóbriga

Split

Pompeii

Merida Extremadura

Carmona