Rome / Home II

When I’m travelling, I always search for the book that will be a fine companion for that place.  One of the best I’ve ever found is David Mayernik’s Timeless Cities: An Architect’s Reflections on Renaissance Italy. Rome, Venice, Florence and Pienza are his focus.  During a February trip to Rome with my husband, Ed, and our friend Alberto, an architect, we read this aloud to each other as we sat in ruins, churches, and as we had our coffee at a different bar every morning. We all got a new sense of the city.

Mayernik starts with Romulus plowing with a cow and bull the outline for Rome’s perimeter walls, teaching us how to experience the city as a palace of memory.  (The memory palace was a mental technique of storing knowledge before books were printed. These techniques have a fascinating and stirring history way too involved to go into here.) He explores connections among major building programs and monuments.  The shape of Augustus’s tomb reflects the older Etruscan mounded tombs.  Later, the shape of Hadrian’s tomb (now called Castel Sant’Angelo) echoes and remembers both.  Even the massive dome of the Pantheon links to the Etruscan memory. In the renaissance, the echo still resounded.  Bramante’s perfect tempietto, little circular temple built on the legendary hill of St. Peter’s martyrdom, cunningly recalls the Pantheon because  Bramante built the tempietto in the exact diameter of the great oculus.  It was a rainy day when the photo above was taken.  That’s Alberto in front. Soon we will sit down with cappuccino and our book in the quintessential Roman bar where a vase of mimosa gathers to it what sun there is. At night, we’ll dine on little veal meat balls with artichokes, melted tomatoes, and grilled polenta.  February is Rome for Romans–and lucky travellers. Such a feast, this city. For the mind, body, spirit.

Bramante went on to design St. Peters by overlapping, blending, and assembling components from the past.  I wish I could paste in here the whole saga of Bramante.  But if this intrigues, read the book. There’s an excerpt on www.davidmayernik.com

Knowing architectural connections, not just landmarks and their individual histories, gives you the power “to begin to read the whole city as a comprehensible story.”  The city as a book—I love that concept.

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Rome—the best rhyme of Rome is home.  Of all the great cities of the world, Rome has the big heart.  When my husband first got off the plane and took a bus into the centro, he alighted and said out loud, I’m home.  He has no Italian ancestors and had, prior to that, never set foot in Italia.  Such is the power of the city.  On my first visit, I was wound up tight with all the sights I wanted to see. I was moving through the city like the girl in the red shoes.  Three exhausting days later, I simply loved to sit in a piazza and sip a limonata and watch the swirl of gorgeous people and the choreography of daily life.

I love the velocity of movement, the closed-to-traffic streets, and the many utterly charming places to dine outside (even on New Year’s Eve once) elbow-to-elbow with Romans who really know how to eat.

A life lived where there are roof gardens overlooking domes, pines of Rome, and distant villas seems the epitome of civilization.  Five lifetimes and you can’t know Rome, but paradoxically, you can know it in a day—a morning for the colors and light, the rhythm, the wild cats, the astonishing style you can try on, even in the least expensive shops, the robust food, the splash of fountains, the clacking dialect, and sublime gelato—pistachio, melon, hazelnut all on one cone. The afternoon for a walk along the Tiber when the sycamores are breaking into new-green bud or curling their leaves and striking a somber note of sepia light in early fall.  Evening for an aperitif in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, dinner at a righteous trattoria, and a late espresso under the stars in some hidden piazza.  There’s Roma!

Today, as often happens, a friend wrote: “My brother and his wife are spending three days in Rome. Where should they stay?”  Sometimes it’s “I’m taking my grandson to Rome for graduation. Any recommendations?”  Or, “I’ve got to get away, girlfriend. Really away.  Where should I go in Rome?”

Good question. The possibilities are limitless.

En route to our house in Cortona, we fly in and out of Rome, always spending a night or two.  My visits are quick and intense.  Over the years, we’ve stayed in all areas of Rome and I could not choose a favorite. Since we’re in Rome often, sometimes popping down just for a night to see a concert or exhibit, we tend toward neighborhood places. Once we rented a small apartment full of books—that was the best.  The fantasy that we lived there lasted a whole week.

Friends coming and going, usually on big trips commemorating a significant birthday or anniversary, stay in the pleasure domes such as the Hassler (www.lhw.com) or La Russie (www.rfhotels.com).  They eat in the starred, guidebook restaurants and have a fine time.  I love to travel that way myself, it’s just not the way I happen to know Rome. We do sometimes stay at D’Inghilterra (www.hotelinghilterraroma.it) for it location on Bocca di Leone near the Spanish Steps and for the Henry-James-stayed-here atmosphere.  Friends of ours love Art Hotel (www.hotelart.it) on Via Margutta, which always makes me long to live in a painting garret.

Hotel Campo de’ Fiori

Usually, we like to stay in old-world ambience in Trastevere, the Ghetto, or the Campo de’ Fiori.  Here are four suggestions in those neighborhoods—for you, your best friend, sister-in-law, or your college roommate:

Hotel Campo de’ Fiori (www.hotelcampodefiori.com) right off that lively piazza.  The rooms are chic, with bronze and mossy taffeta bedspreads and draperies and chandeliers even in the bathroom.  Each is a little jewel box. The three I’ve stayed in all were quite small. I especially like the top floor with quick access to the roof terrace.  Rates seem to vary.  I suggest calling.

Relais Le Clarisse (www.leclarisse.com), a discovery that formerly was a convent of the Santa Chiara order. Very friendly owner and only five simple rooms, all of which open to a courtyard.  A short stroll to the heart of Trastevere, this quiet spot is very inexpensive.

Hotel Santa Maria (www.Htlsantamaria.com) is another convent redone as a peaceful refuge where rooms open onto a courtyard of orange trees and small tables for writing in your notebook.  Rooms are quite large and plainly furnished.  You can take one of the hotel’s bicycles out for a bumpy ride over the cobbled streets. I love the location, right in the middle of all the enticing Trastevere streets, but hidden down a pedestrian vicolo.

Hotel Ponte Sisto (www.hotelpontesisto.it) in the old Ghetto, right near the Sisto Bridge over the Tiber—a perfect location.  I like the leafy courtyard and the large rooms and baths.  The décor is nice—see their photo gallery on-line—although it does not resonate Roma in any way.  Prices are very reasonable here.

Supplications in Santa Maria, Trastevere

Street of Dear Life

Afternoon in Roma

Looking for this information, I came across a note I wrote in the taxi as I was leaving Roma this fall:

The sycamore leaves do not blaze into glory; instead they dry, darken, and fall.  But they do lend their autumnal scent, so complementary to the sepia, ochre colors of the buildings, to the ancient woman with scary red hair lifted by a breeze that shows broad white swaths against her scalp.  She is buying one orange. Yesterday’s rain pools in the uneven cobbles; the pale sky is a color a painter might mix then decide to add another dollop of cerulean. I am leaving Rome—the impossible sweetness of fall, the odd nostalgia for a life never lived in this mother-city.

I’m flipping through my agenda.  When can I go back?

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A good skillet is worth its weight in gold–and you almost can pay that much.  I’m fond of my Le Cruset and All Clad ones. But by my lights, the best  in my kitchen are cast iron.  These instant heirlooms cost around $35  from Lodge Cast Iron, made here in the South in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee.  See www.lodgemfg.com

I remember my mother wiping bacon grease out of hers (now mine) with a paper towel.  Although she sometimes ran hot water on crusty remains, she never scrubbed it with dish soap because that ruins the “seasoning” of the pan.  The Lodge website explains this simple process that prepares your pan for the next hundred years or so. Besides skillets in several sizes, Lodge makes a useful nine quart Dutch oven with a lid and a spiral metal handle on the pot. This is handy for stews, gumbo, soups and for deep frying, if you have muscle enough to hoist it.  I’m glad to see that they still make old-fashioned cornstick pans .  I have my mother’s and although I seldom use it, I like seeing it propped up in the cabinet, reminding me of the toasty cornbreads that mimicked an ear of corn and came to the table whenever we had baked ham or smothered quail with cheese grits.

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