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At the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona I had my first in-the-stone encounter with Bernini, one of the greatest sculptors of his age and possibly more responsible for the “look” of Rome than any man since ancient days. The shining white unpainted classical marble Renaissance artists were so fond of, we now know, isn’t anything like what the fun-loving ancients actually had (though one hopes the painted originals looked slightly less cartoonish and bonk-eyed than current reconstructions). But the fanfiction version has almost completely eclipsed the original. Not that I’m complaining, because the Baroque aesthetic is absolutely fantastic. The fountain is an eerily organic creation, four legs of marble littered with flora, fauna and gods, surmounted by a genuine ancient Egyptian obelisk. The density of political and mythological allegory the fountain presents is too much to easily take in (Wikipedia it) and so I simply appreciate it as gorgeous.

We had gelato. Fran may have spent an entire evening reading gelato review blogs, finding a bunch of lists of the top 10 gelateria in central Rome and seeing which were on multiple lists. She might’ve noted their locations on a map and had me plot out our journeys so she could see if gelateria were en route or nearby. I might have asked if she was overdoing it a bit. She might have looked at me very seriously and said “this is important”. All I remember for sure is, we ate a lot of gelato, and it was very good.

The Pantheon is impressive in three entirely separate ways. One, that its monolithic, unreinforced concrete dome is something modern engineering still hasn’t equalled (the unbelievably complicated efforts of Brunelleschi in trying to create the same effect with Florence Cathedral’s dome, 1300 years later, are fascinating). Two, its basic amazingness as a building (gigantic and open-topped but oddly intimate; entirely unlike any other ancient building, but clearly from a classical mindset and ruleset; original Roman interiors from the second century). Three, that it has survived thousands of years more or less intact, saved from greater vandalism by consecration as a Christian church. Victor Emmanuel and his son are buried there, but their caskets are tucked in awkwardly behind the columns with an uneasy sense of being latecomers.

Through the packed alleys, the Trevi Fountain. Rome has more fountains than any other city, partly because they served as the delivery point for water (aqueduct or otherwise) for most of its history: they were public utility as well as public art. Photos do justice to the Trevi’s craftsmanship but not its scale, white marble swarming with nymphs and tritons pouring down as fluidly and convincingly as the gushing water. Even in this off-season, tourists gather like flies round a cow’s eye. As tourists, we had our fill of moisture and then buzzed off to the Piazza di Spagna. The Spanish Steps are really just a large and somewhat fancy staircase, turned into a large tourist park by dint of partial shade and relative benchiness, and we rested up a bit chatting about Romantic poets (Keats died in a house nearby.)

There are so many irritating touts about St Peter’s trying to flog queue-jumping tickets and guided tours to anyone looking remotely interested that we developed an active distrust and hostility towards anyone trying to be helpful, including the probably-legit city-run info booth which would have saved us fifteen minutes of traipsing around trying to find where the museum entrance was. The Vatican is massively fortified, the edges of its trace-italienne bastions coincidentally being ideal for lining up queues.

“There are so many women of the cloth here they should call it Nunsuch Palace.”
“Go away.”

And so, the treasure house of the richest and most powerful organised religion in the world.  Classical imagery everywhere, original and replica, heroes and monsters and muses, all with dicks and tits hanging out in something of a mockery of the strict dress code. There is, to me, a bizarre tension between the place’s status as the Holy See and the reams and reams of obviously non-Christian iconography (not helped by ads for a temporary exhibition on, of all figures, Sekhmet). I suppose it’s that spirit of the Renaissance thing: the scions of Rome obsessing with the ruins of the substantially more advanced, more creative and more all-around impressive civilisation all around them and striving to emulate it by imitation. It fits in the ever-popular narrative of the decline of Man: see the glories of a past age, see the debased state to which our race has been reduced, pay your indulgences and pray for a higher life everlasting.

I grew up among the half-dead leftovers of a humourless, flat Victorian Protestant godliness; the idea of a fun, inspiring, living faith filled with vigorous symbolism and sympathetic characters (saints seem an excellent way of getting the perks of polytheism without the concomitant lack of overall focus) is something I’ve only read about. Acknowledging that blind spot, I still find it hard to reconcile the head office of the theocracy being a museum of pagan idolatry. But it’s far, far preferable to the cold, ascetic Lutheranism of the north or the violent outbursts of iconoclasm that characterised both early and middle Christianity, and, let’s be honest, in a gigantic golden palace complex raised in the name of the messiah of the meek and the poor, it’s not the biggest hypocrisy going.

Simply naming highlights of a Greatest Hits of pre-industrial southern Europe would take a while, but: the map corridor, with all its rigorous depictions of forts and ports of the era; the sarky Raphael caryatid working a broom; the trompe l’oeil everything, better shaded than real life; the enormous painting of Jan Sobieski bringing the Polish-Lithuanian winged lancers to the field in 1683; and a set of vellum maps from 1530 which give a decent layout of Tenochtitlan but not Scotland. The Sistine Chapel was good, but too busy and too overwhelming to really be appreciated on its own terms. And, of course, there were about five thousand gift shops through the complex.

 

Rome feels oddly militarised, especially near St Peter’s; there are army jeeps everywhere guarded by pairs of handsome men with ugly rifles, as well as the beat cops and the gorgeously outfitted carabinieri on their motorbikes. We had already become wary of the modern Romans’ relaxed interpretation of street lights, dodging the clouds of scooters and smart cars. The Tiber is heavily silted and half dried up in early autumn, its ancient bridges seeming overkill for a dribble that couldn’t handle anything with more draught than a kayak. We found dinner at a lovely local where we were the only tourists (always a good sign) – deep-fried stuffed olives and a fantastic crisp pizza, scattered with meat and drowned with rocket, eaten under awnings as the trams sparked and rumbled by.

And then, of course, more gelato.

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