Wandering around Rome

I've spent most of the past two days in Rome just wandering around.  I like to do this to learn a little more about a city, without mediation from guidebooks or the demands of another person. 

Yesterday, no camera, so the eyes were sharp.  I got off the train at San Giovanni and went inside for a minute, then wandered about the Esquiline area, some of which was very Brooklyn-like, and not in a good way.  I liked via Merulana, that famous street of Gadda's great novel.  Everyone not on holiday was walking around, crowding the few bars and restaurants that were open.  I had a tramezzino (white bread sandwich with the crusts cut off, just like the kind Rupert Bear's mother makes) and a huge glass of white wine for 2.50.  You couldn't buy a crumb around the Excelsior's neighborhood for that.

Then I went to the Baths of Caracalla (redefines the word "enormous") and spent an hour walking along the outside of the Aurelian wall to the Aventine.  This too was for me a new side of Rome, quiet and sort of suburban. Without a guidebook or more than a vague idea, I got myself to San Saba, a church founded, it is said, by Palestinian monks fleeing Arab invasions (plus ca change), and it was a very beautiful, strange little church; after all, there aren't that many Dark Ages churches around, not even in Rome.  There were bits and pieces of artwork from many centuries on the porch of the church, and the most interesting contrast was between a Roman sarcophagus of the Imperial era (I'd guess 3rd century AD) and a Dark Ages relief of a man on horseback with a spear in his hand, very crudely but energetically done.

I could live in the Aventine area.  It's green, quiet, beautiful, yet close to things.  Not that I could afford to live there, but it's fun to think about anyway.

Today I took the camera and did even more wandering.  The first stop was the Piramide area, where I took the obligatory shots of the Pyramid of Caio Cestio.

Ah, Rome, where the old and the new peacefully coexist...

I wandered around several areas today: Piramide (charming), Garbatella (like Queens, in a nice way), Basilica S. Paolo (some of it's nice, like Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, but the part south of the Metro stop like more like da Bronx), and EUR, Mussolini's dream city of the future that has effortlessly assumed the look of an American Edge City. 

I walked around there somewhat at my peril, because it is designed for cars first, then people on foot.  I kept  wondering if I had stepped into a new version of Fairfax, Virginia or maybe it was Washington itself.

Sobering thought: Fascist architecture and modern corporate architecture are versions of each other.  Maybe this was obvious to others, but it took EUR for me to realize it.

Then I hopped on the subway again and ended up at the Baths of Diocletian.  But even I, mad for Roman ruins, couldn't do it.  I was tired and hot and needed to take a break.  Which is what I'm doing now, dear reader. 

Here are a few of the pics I took.  Sorry if they need cropping.  No decent photo editor yet. 

By the pyramid

Looking down the via Ostiense

 

Garbatella

Detail from Trajan's column

The grandeur that was Fascist Italy...

And the glory that is consumerist Italy...

Comments

[Fredric Koeppel]

If you were so close to the Pirimide, did you go to the old English cemetery and pay homage to the graves of Keats and Shelley?

[Terry Hughes]

No, because I didn't have a guidebook. Indeed, I wandered lonely as a cloud.

[Fredric Koeppel]

we don't actually KNOW if clouds are lonely or not, do we? There's Wordsworth, exercising his pathetic fallacy.
i was there years ago and being in the afternoon at siesta, i couldn't find a florist shop open or even a flower vendor on the street, so i stopped by a little grocery store and bought three oranges, which i placed on Keats' grave. and i guess that's just the kind of guy i am.

[Lizzy]

I miss Rome, my mother's city. Happy you like it.Enjoy for me too!

Lizzy

[Terry Hughes]

FK, you're deep, man. Well, Helen Vendler once brought me a bookmark from the Keats house, so that's as far as I'm going in my poetolatry.

Lizzy, I've enjoyed Rome a lot but I miss you all in Veneto. Cheers!