Very nice, Michelangelo. Now what about the floor?

Holy cow! I just did a quick scroll back through this diary and discovered that this is actually the 16th update on this summer’s Italy trip.

I said – “WAKE UP! when I’m talkin’ to ya’ boy. (Nice kid, but as thick as a whale sandwich.)” – I said this is the 16th update about this trip!

I’m not sure, but I think Caesar conquered Gaul in less time than it’s taken me to get to this point. But fear not, brave hearts… I plan just three more – this one and one more to wrap up the trip with the rest of the amazing things we saw in Rome (with a few food and drink digressions, of course) and a generic last entry devoted exclusively and in somewhat more detail to several of the unique tasting experiences we enjoyed throughout this trip. (“Tasting” won’t just mean food, either. They even make orange pop way better over there than we do over here.)

So, where are we?

According to my notes, we have reached the day where we had to rise extra early in order to get to a particular staircase close to a special tour entrance into the Vatican Museum and, beyond it, the Sistine Chapel. It was another Dark Rome tour. Plug: if you’re going to be in Italy for a few days, check out Dark Rome’s choices. Despite their name, they’re not all about 2500-year old sub-basements and catacombs (and neither, for that matter, are they only about Rome).

In this case, we were promised a “small-group” exclusive pre-opening visit to the Chapel and it turned out to be one case where the box delivered exactly what the label said it would.

Because we actually departed the Hotel Britannia before their breakfast service began, they had prepared a box breakfast for us and as much as we had to stoically accept the fact that bacon probably would not have travelled well in a paper bag, we were more than compensated by the fact that several delicious little pastries, a couple pieces of fresh fruit and a small bottle of juice did.

After a few introductory remarks by our guide, we were each given one of those antenna “whisperers” – a small receiver that you sling around your neck and listen through earphones to the guide’s comments. It was actually my first experience with such a device and it really is quite remarkable. It gives you the sense that the guide is standing right beside you while permitting him / her to make comments in a low speaking voice so as not to disturb any other groups in the vicinity.

A couple things about the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel that might seem obvious. Other than finding yourself cribside in Bethlehem in the Church of the Nativity or atop Golgotha, the hill in Jerusalem upon which Christ is said to have been crucified, when you are in St Peter’s, indeed almost anywhere in the Vatican, you are in the single most sacred site in Catholicism. The Basilica, after all, is named for the Apostle to whom Christ is said to have given the mission of carrying on His Church on Earth. And the Sistine Chapel is where they elect the Popes, for heaven’s sake!

So we weren’t surprised at all to be advised by the guide that when we actually reached the entrance to the Chapel, three things were absolutely forbidden: normal voice-level conversation; the presence of a guide’s commentary, and photography. Even before we got there, our guide had gone to considerable lengths to explain these rules and to advise us she would be collecting the “whisperer” devices at the entrance.

The no-photography rule, as it turns out, is actually largely capitalistic. Our guide explained that a consortium of US and Japanese companies, between them, have recently spent tens of millions of dollars on a multi-year restoration of the Chapel’s interior artworks, including its famous ceiling, and in exchange have been given exclusive rights to all images of the Chapel’s interior.

(Now, was there anything in the preceding paragraph difficult to understand? We certainly didn’t think so. But I’ll come back to that no-photography rule a few paragraphs farther along.)

Getting to the Sistine’s front door was accomplished by travelling along what felt like a couple miles of interior corridors through the Vatican Museum where photography was indeed permitted. Here are a few of the visual highlights of that walk:

The Galleria delle Carte Geografiche almost doesn’t need a translation. One is hard-pressed to pick which is more impressive: the 120m long corridor of maps of almost every part of Italy, or the corridor’s stunning ceiling. The maps – 40 in all – are frescoes commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII and painted between 1580 and 1583. (Here we go again; I haven’t been in the Museum for 15 minutes and we’re already strolling 120 metres along past 40 500-year-old maps!)

This close-up is in the album for two reasons: first to show the detail of the maps, and second because pretty much dead centre in this shot on one of the hills to the left of that large lake is the hilltop location of that beautiful Umbrian Villa where we pre-emptively ended our trip to the country last Fall with my sciatic back.

It’s hard to imagine, but this was actually considered a lesser assignment once Michelangelo received the commission from Pope Julius II to do the entire Sistine ceiling. The assignment was to decorate four rooms that, at the time, were intended to serve as part of Julius II’s private quarters. Their collective name today, the Stanza di Raffaello, will give you a clue about the name of the young artist from Urbino commissioned to do the work around the year 1508. Raphael’s star at the time was only just on the rise but today his work in these four rooms is considered, with Michelangelo’s famed ceiling, to mark the “High Renaissance” in Rome.

I won’t turn this diary into a history lesson at this point, but if you want to read a great story about the building of St Peter’s and the often chippy relationship between Julius and his two centuries of successors, and their chosen artists and architects, this one is excellent. It’s not intended as an academic study of the 200-year process required to complete the Basilica, but rather as a darn good yarn. And that it is.

I’ve already described the almost overwhelming feelings that arise when one is actually inside the Sistine Chapel, so I won’t repeat myself here. But I can’t let my Sistine story go without recounting a brief feeling of a decidedly UN-christian sort that I experienced while we were there.

You recall my earlier recitation of the guide’s rules, and the reasons for them. Well no sooner had we ten people (that’s right – we were exactly ten people with the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel entirely to ourselves for an hour, but I digress) when this friggin’ little weasel of a twerp happily pointed his camera at the ceiling and started furiously clicking away.

Much to my delight, our guide – who had come into the Chapel with us – swiftly moved to his side and I watched for a couple minutes while she clearly made him work back through his memory card and delete the pictures he had taken. Good.

Leslie and I then sat side by side for a time on one of the side wall benches that bracket the full length of the Chapel until a crick in my neck from almost a half hour of gazing upwards forced me to lower my head momentarily. And I couldn’t believe it! The same little jerk was sitting opposite us on the other bench, now with his camera carefully positioned in his lap with the lens pointed ceiling-ward as he continued to add to his memory card.

By now, the guide had left so he clearly felt confident enough to move back out into Chapel-centre and resume his interrupted photo shoot. He hadn’t reckoned on Leslie, however, who strolled out beside him and politely reminded him of the no photography message we’d all been given (thus interrupting my briefly much less polite desire to walk over, pop his camera open, extract and stuff his memory card down his throat). Later, she told me his response had been to express an “Oh really?” reaction as though he had somehow been unaware of the rule.

Anyway, we both resumed a pattern of therapeutic breathing and got our heads back to where we were. Suffice to say it is one of the few places I’ve been in my life that allows me to say – and be grammatically correct to boot – that it is literally awesome. In fact, now that I think of it, even awe-SOME falls a little short, but given the absence of a word like awe-ALL, it’ll have to do.

One of the downsides – or upsides if you believe rules are for other people – of being in a small exclusive tour is that it plainly is not policed as carefully as during the hours when the Chapel is officially open to the public. Later that morning, as we were exiting the Vatican, we opted for a path that took us once more through the Chapel. This time, even before we joined the sea of humanity inside, a guard at the door ordered me to put my camera, which I had simply slung around my neck, inside the shoulder bag I was also carrying. And several dozen of the people crowding the floor inside inside were guards. No doubt looking for insufferable little twerps.

Even given that most of what is most important in the Chapel is straight overhead so that even in a close crowd there are no bad views of any of the staggering 5,000 square feet (!) of Michelangelo’s frescoes some 65 feet overhead, it adds something very special to be there in the company of so few people that even a soft-soled shoestep seems to echo.

Leaving the Vatican behind, we decided to take a leisurely walk back to the hotel by way of a delightful sidewalk café, a cool draft Peroni beer for me and a glass of house white for Leslie and a lunch consisting of (for me) a ball of Buffala mozzarella the size of a baseball, with prosciutto and bread, and for Leslie another specialty pizza, called the pizza quattro stagione (four seasons pizza). We had earlier encountered this particular topping where the pizza is garnished in quarters, with each quarter representing a season of the year. We didn’t quite grasp which season was which, but the customary toppings on the respective quarters of a pizza quattro stagione are black olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and prosciutto.

After about an hour’s battery-charge at the hotel, we took a taxi to another of the places on Leslie’s art history bucket list: the Villa Borghese. One of the advantages of travelling with someone like Leslie in an art-intensive environment is that it never becomes, “Oh ho hum, another magnificent old painting / sculpture / architectural marvel… whatever.” Instead, it’s typically a fascinating flow of information on just why what you’re looking at is so important.

The Villa Borghese is considered the place to visit if you’re a student or scholar of an artist named Caravaggio. And what I learned in the Villa Borghese was just how amazingly audacious Caravaggio was for his time.

Caravaggio’s period in art is known as the “baroque” but Caravaggio was a rebel, so much so, in fact, that when his influence finally garnered the recognition it deserved, he was pretty much declared to have been the father of “new baroque” (and vis-à-vis baroque, clearly an artistic version of what my daughter used to call “Opposite Day”).

Prior to Caravaggio’s unleashing his own take on the style, baroque’s major hallmarks were variations on ornate decoration. You see it in its architecture and statuary, but especially in its painting where pretty much every little space in the painting is filled with something. In fact, baroque is to art what record producer Phil Spector’s renowned “wall of sound” was to rock-and-roll music. Phil left nary a moment when the ear wasn’t being assailed by either voice or instruments, exactly what “wall of sound” suggests.

In the same way, a typical baroque painting could charitably be called “busy”, like this example (again by Raphael in another of his Vatican rooms). Notice how even the spaces between each individual section are filled either with decoration or even more, smaller images.

But now take a look at how Caravaggio utterly rattled the art world.

This is David with the head of Goliath. Literally, David, and Goliath’s head. Period. No heavily populated battlefield of Philistines running away in terror; no pastoral background of trees or clouds. In fact, no background at all.

Actually, since a picture is worth a thousand words, indulge me for a quick momentary digression that is hundreds of thousands of words’ worth of illustration. When you go to Google Images and search “Caravaggio paintings” – like here – notice how the first thing to hit you is how dark your computer screen has suddenly become. It’s a sea of faces and people, but almost all of them are surrounded by black.

In fact, you almost wonder if the poor guy wandered into a huge sale of black by the bucketful, or could only afford teeny amounts of all the other colours. But that was Caravaggio. Love him or hate him, he rocked the art world of his day and the Villa Borghese (pronounced bor-GAY-zee) is home to several of his works.

See? Every day’s a school day… oh shut up, me.

It’s rare that Leslie and I come to any agreement when it comes to art (except if my point is, “You know a lot; I know nothing”; on that we have no dispute) but it seemed that almost to the second we agreed we were “arted out”.

So we stepped out into what was left of the waning daylight for a leisurely walk through the Villa’s magnificent gardens (an attraction all their own for lovers of things green) to one of Rome’s most famous bars and not too far beyond it, the restaurant we had booked for dinner.

That’s where we’ll pick up next time with “Arrivederci Roma”.

Times Roman 2

Our second call in Rome was at no less delightful a hotel than our first visit. The Hotel Britannia is also centrally located, just off the Via Nazionale, a major central Rome boulevard that marched straight downhill from our hotel on the Via Napoli to the wing of Trajan’s Forum that is marked by his namesake column and, immediately beside it, the previously mentioned and still hideously garish “wedding cake” that is, officially, the Monument to King Victor Emmanuel II.

The hotel also offered a complimentary limo pick-up at the Rome airport but because it was so close to the train station – where we arrived in the city – we simply hopped a cab. (Leslie had previous secured a “no problem” message from a hotel representative when, before we even left Ottawa, she had asked if we could swap out the airport pick-up for a ride TO the airport when we checked out. As it turned out, that would figure as, whoops, NOT a “no problem” after all when we checked out, but more about that later.)

The Britannia is another of those properties where you have the distinct feeling of being welcomed by a family, rather than by whoever happens to be working the front desk when you arrive. (As it turns out, this is hardly surprising if you consider it began life as a lavish multi-storey private home.) And of course we were welcomed by another Francesca. (I think it may be a requirement that if you are a woman working in the hospitality industry in Italy, you pretty much have to be named Francesca.)

Not being a boor, I didn’t start snapping photos of the hotel’s wonderful self-described “neo-classical” public spaces, but their website provides a nice shot of the front desk lobby, among others. How could you not feel welcome stepping into this foyer? (Photo source: http://hotelbritannia.hotelinroma.com)

I confess that when I saw our room, I got the distinct feeling that Italians take “neo-classical” to mean “modern tribute to Pompeii’s brothel”, as this shot of our bed, its pillows and the room’s window coverings would seem to suggest. But it was wonderfully comfortable and came with a well-sheltered patio and a fridge stocked with Italian beer in addition to the usual contents you find in hotel room fridges of assorted soft drinks and mineral water – the difference being it was entirely complimentary.

Having begun the day in Paestum and now finishing it, it seemed, a bazillion hours later in Rome, we pretty much just collapsed. Day 2 would see me turned loose while Leslie attended Day 1 of the conference that was the “official” reason for this trip in the first place.

The Britannia’s breakfast – included in the price of the room – was among the best yet. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a breakfast item that wasn’t to be found somewhere among the offerings on either their hot or cold buffet. The carnivore in me was especially delighted because the variety of meat choices was astonishing – from the expected bacon through an array of traditional Italian cold cuts such as prosciutto, several salamis and capicollo, complimented each day with three or four different cheese options as well. By the time you added the baked goods, cereals and fresh fruit, we inevitably left so well-fuelled that we pretty much bypassed lunch each day.

For Day 1 on my own I opted for a lengthy morning walkabout and a planned afternoon visit to the inside of the “wedding cake”. I’d read that it included a military museum and Italy’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, exactly the sort of thing that the Air Force brat in me always finds interesting.

Early on in my walkabout, I grabbed what has to be one of my all-time favourite unplanned travel shots.

Rome’s tourist areas are stacked with sidewalk vendors who seem to want to sell you anything you may be dumb or naïve enough to buy.

In fact, as an aside, one of the most puzzlingly popular this visit was something I dubbed the “snotball” as soon as I saw it demonstrated. All around the Trevi Fountain, for example, literally every two or three metres some forlorn looking fellow (and it was always a fellow) would be standing with a shiny surface like a small whiteboard sitting atop a fruit crate. As you approached, he would listlessly make a Price-Is-Right style pose and then slam a golf-ball sized blob as hard as he could onto the whiteboard. It landed with a huge “splat” and, depending on how it was coloured, it briefly resembled a fried egg, or a bloodshot eye, or Jackson Pollack tribute before reforming into its spherical shape.

But not only that, it would also emit the most pathetic whine – like the sound of a stricken cat – as it reconfigured itself. At a slow walking pace, you could experience the questionable joy of three or four such splat / whines before you got beyond range.

But I never once saw money delivered up for one of these. Not by anyone. The whole time we were in Rome. Although we met a family from BC in Orvieto who confessed they bought a couple for their kids and, sure enough, they died (the snotballs’ whine, not the kids) the very next day. (*Phew* sure glad I resisted the siren call of a snotball as a souvenir of my Italian vacation!)

Hmmm… digression within a digression. This is getting almost Zen. How in the world did I get onto a dissertation about snotballs?

Oh yes – another of the odd things that Italians seem to think tourists will pay for is the opportunity to take your photo standing beside a “re-enactor” decked out like a gladiator or Roman Army centurion or simply someone’s interpretation of a Hollywood-ized version of either costume. And although less populous than the snotball vendors, they are numerous – even to the extent of assembling in groups around major attractions like the Colosseum. (The tourist is usually given a plumed helmet – if a man – and a curly wig with a tiara – if a woman – so that his Hawaiian shirt or her sundress would blend right in with the sweat-drenched faux leather of a Christian-killing competitor fresh from the arena.)

This guy was completely oblivious to the fact that he probably had more photos taken of him as he stood on the Spanish Steps engaged in a vigorous cellphone conversation than he likely would experience in a week of trying to cajole tourists into posing with him. Along with about ten other equally amused visitors to the Steps, I fired a couple quick distance shots and then we all pretty much realized he was so wrapped up in his conversation that short of actually bumping into him, we could get into perfect portrait range.

Leslie and I both agree it’s a classic.

Oh, and a snotball P.S. Apparently, they’re officially called “splat balls” (quelle surprise) and not surprisingly at all, the Internet actually has a short clip of one in action, in slow motion no less. Here it is, but you’ll have to imagine the pathetic death scene whine because the video is silent.

I also note that it’s offered for sale on a site called “Office Playground” in multiple colourings, including the fried egg and eyeball, which makes me fear for my former work colleagues. Because it’s just the sort of thing that could turn up in the loot bags at some future team-building exercise. Keep an eye out (Haw!) for snotballs, you guys! You’ve been warned. 

Back to the "wedding cake".

I actually have to temper my observations about the hourly changing of the guard that takes place at the exterior part of Italy’s Tomb of the Unknown at the top of the steps leading to the "wedding cake"'s front door, because I have seen one of the best – the US ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington’s Arlington National Cemetery. It is a masterpiece of precision, with not a single wasted or casual motion and drill movements so sharp and meticulous they seem robotic in their perfection.

But this shot pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Italian army’s adherence to ceremonial “precision”. The guard pair on the left is supposed to be precisely in synch with the pair on the right and clearly they are anything but. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. While waiting for the “ceremony” to begin, I noticed that one of the two guards let go with an unabashedly gape-mouthed yawn before his shift’s replacements arrived. That sort of thing would have made the national embarrassment news in the US.

(At Arlington, even the occasionally required guard order to a loud or laughing individual among the crowd of observers is a request to “assume an attitude of RESPECT” throughout the ceremony, delivered in tones ranging from a polite request to a fearsomely bellowed reprimand.)

In sharp contrast to its blinding white exterior fronting the rather gaudy Emmanuel Monument, Rome’s Unknown tomb, deep in the Monument’s interior, is sombrely understated and moving. Like such hallowed places everywhere (and I have also seen France’s and Canada’s, in addition to the US and Italian “Unknown” memorials), it always trips a feeling of respect and genuine grief over the millions of lost young lives they collectively honour. Nowhere in my own family – so far as I am aware – is there a military relative with no known grave, but my lifelong readings have referred time and time again to the sobering, indeed the staggering numbers of “no known grave” casualties in the histories of the world’s wars.

The Monument’s museum, in addition to the expected battlefield experiences of the past couple centuries, also pays tribute to Italy’s historical military role in disaster relief.

This shot, for example, is intended to illustrate a typical earthquake relief centre, where emergency supplies are distributed to survivors – in this case in the wake of two May 2012 earthquakes (magnitude 5.6 and 5.8 respectively) in the northern part of the country where relief was co-ordinated by the Army’s 6th Engineers.

Another highlight was an elevator ride to the Monument’s rooftop observation level, which offers sweeping views of the city, such as this one that includes the Dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the distant centre of the photo.

And continuing my policy of never passing up an opportunity to enter an ancient basilica, this is the view that greeted me when I went through the front doors of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, whose entrance is atop a mighty climb of steps from the street, or a simple crossover from an upper level link of the "wedding cake".

Santa Maria in Ara Coeli (St Mary of the Altar of Heaven) is one of the oldest in Rome. Its foundation was laid down on what had been a Byzantine Abbey dating back to at least 550 A.D., although the church itself was completed in the mid-1200s.

And it is a survivor. Because when the Victor Emmanuel II Monument was built, you may recall from an earlier note in this trip diary that a vast section of the Capitolino Hill was hauled away before the construction began in the early 1900s,requiring the demolition of several other churches and mediaeval structures, something that countless classical Roman historians and archaeologists still consider to have been a travesty.

When I got back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon battery re-charging, Leslie had returned from her scintillating (sarcasm mode on – more about that later) conference and was ready to go just about anywhere else rather than back to it.

So off we went for a wander that took us past the Presidential Palace in the Piazza Quirinale, whose daily military honour guard could give lessons to the rather casual unit serving at the Tomb of the Unknown. The different branches of the service rotate the honour of augmenting the Palace’s permanent guards and, on this day, it was the Navy’s turn.

For beautiful military uniforms – and no, that’s not a contradiction in terms – you’d be hard pressed to beat or even match (although England’s Household Cavalry gives them a run) the ceremonial kit worn by the Presidential Palace permanent guard. Unfortunately, the few guards we spotted were tucked well back into the palace grounds safely out of public and camera reach, but the internet, once more, comes through very nicely.

Here’s a full mounted unit of them in ceremonial dress escorting the Pope. The cost of silver polish alone must have its own line in the Army’s annual budget!

After the late afternoon walkabout in what had been a scorchingly hot sun, Les and I decided that the day merited an early evening return to the cool shade of our hotel room’s patio and we decided to make a picnic dinner out of it after finding a fantastically well-stocked convenience just a block away on Via Nazionale. (In Italy, we also discovered that “convenience” means ready access to high quality gourmet foods, wines, beers and just about anything you can think of!)

There are worse ways to wind down a day in Rome than with a bottle of wine and an almost endless antipasto platter that included some outstanding olives, meats, cheeses and sinfully freshly baked crusty rolls.

Up next: the Vatican and the Villa Borghese.

Prowling Paestum's Past and Present

“The ancient city of Paestum (originally Poseidonia)… was founded at the end of the 7thC B.C. and is one of the last of the Greek colonies established in southern Italy. The Greeks had [actually] begun colonizing the area in the 8thC B.C… [but] it was during the 6thC B.C. that the city began to take form and annex the surrounding territories. Ever since its beginnings, it was destined for [the] farming that proved to be the source of its great wealth. The importance and riches that the city had acquired by the last quarter of the century led to intensive building projects and the construction of its great temples (Basilica, Athenalon). It was also during this period that the city was carefully laid out with proper streets and the great temple of Hera… During the first half of the 5thC B.C., Poseidonia enjoyed a period of great splendour [and…] aspired to play a leading role in trade with the rich inland regions.” (from “The Temples of Paestum”, by John Robert Cozens, quoted in “Paestum: The Temples; the Museum”, a generously-illustrated, tourist-focused set of brief notes I bought for 3.5 Euros at a shop just outside the entrance gate.)

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. How come I never have heard of this place until the first set of itinerary notes that Leslie drew to my attention when she started putting this trip together?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Paestum (pronounced PICE-tum) late in the day after we departed Ravello, the end of a long drive. And true to form, Back-Roads Tours had arranged our accommodation in yet another gorgeous hotel / restaurant called Il Granaio dei Casabella. Its name suggests almost all of its history as a granary and silo until it was renovated in the mid-1990s into the beautiful 14-room hotel and high-quality restaurant it is today.

Il Granaio’s front door. Our room was at the left corner on the second floor, where the windows bracket that coach light mounted on the upper corner of the wall. If this side doesn’t say “welcome and relax”, then maybe a wander into the backyard space will do so.

Il Granaio’s backyard, viewed from one of several tables under a sheltering weather cover.

The owners have done a wonderful job keeping the rustic feel both inside and out.

Here, for example, is a massive blacksmith’s bellows that has been put into an honorable retirement service as a coffee table in the foyer that leads to the breakfast restaurant.

The only flaw, at least from Leslie’s point of view, was the excessively firm mattress… perhaps not quite the unyielding stone beds we saw in Pompeii’s brothel, she said, but “damned firm” nonetheless.

After settling in and freshening up, we assembled for a last group dinner together where, aided by Back-Roads’ surprising discovery that there was enough money left in the budget to pay for several bottles of wine (that, at least, was Sharon’s story and she was sticking to it!), the evening became one of convivial hilarity.

And much to my surprise, the group presented me with a just-slightly-belated birthday card – actually a postcard showing two of Paestum’s three temple ruins – that everyone had signed. When I asked how the news had leaked out, Sharon said I’d let it slip when I had previously explained what the occasion was that took us to la Caravello in Amalfi for our special dinner for two. (I actually don’t remember doing that… which might have been the residual effects at next morning’s breakfast of the evening wine and afternoon Limoncello we’d imbibed that day. That’s MY story and I’m sticking to it!)

Sometime over the course of the evening, Sharon also told us that the temples were beautifully lit at night and the three of them were no more than a 15-minute walk away from the hotel’s front door.

So after dinner, Leslie and I did exactly that and it turned out to be well worth the stroll into the warm Italian evening.

The Temple of Ceres is the most brightly lit of the three and easily throws enough residual and reflected light to give one a feel for the grounds leading up to it.

A moodier feel is projected by the Temples of Hera and Neptune. (Neptune’s has the roof peak.)

The three together very much left us with a great sense of anticipation about the next day’s visit to the overall site. But not without a small sense of wistfulness, because it would also be our last day with a group whose company we had very much come to enjoy in only the short week we had spent together.

Again we were ready to entrust ourselves to the very well-informed tutelage of Eliana. Once inside the gate, however, we had a (quiet) collective group laugh as she led us over to an open patch to deliver her introduction to the site as a whole, completely oblivious to the fact that just as she was about to start, no fewer than three large groundskeepers’ lawnmowers simultaneously fired up not ten yards away from where we were gathering. No doubt mindful of the previous day’s episode among the Villa Rufalo’s bells, Sharon pointedly escorted us all over to the far side of the nearest temple to put it squarely between us and the mowers. Today, at least, we’d get to hear Eliana.

Briefly, Paestum actually changed hands over the course of its history, hardly surprising since it was a Greek colony located in Italy. A combination of brutal military conquest followed by political unrest and upheaval saw its Greek roots supplanted by Roman domination, specifically by a powerful subset of Rome – the Lucans. In a most Big Brother-y conquest, the Lucans systematically sought to erase all things Greek about the city and remake them into all things Roman.

Oddly enough, the Poseidonians moved past any lingering resentment and Paestum became one of Rome’s most loyal allies through the Punic Wars with Carthage during the 3rdC B.C., even to the extent of offering Rome the gold from its temples to support the war effort. The Senate, however, declined but never forgot the gesture.

What this means when it comes to naming the features of Paestum, is that they can take on an aura of near schizophrenia, especially its temples, whose names depend on whether your source is Greek or Roman. The Roman god of the sea, Neptune, for example, was known to the Greeks as Poseidon; the Romans’ Hera was the Greeks’ Athena and the Greeks’ Zeus was Jupiter to the Romans. Even the temple to Athena was at one time thought to have been renamed to honour Ceres, the Roman goddess of the harvest, fertility and grains (the source of our word, cereal).

My point is that it’s possible, if you decide you want to delve into the City’s history beyond what I do here, you might start to think there were six or even seven major temples; but as you’ll see, there were, in fact, just three.

One of the reasons that Paestum is so well-preserved has echoes of the Pompeii story, but with a “catastrophe” much less spectacular than a volcanic eruption as the cause. As Paestum grew, the surrounding forests were pillaged for building materials, a deforestation that caused the rivers running through the nearby plain gradually to fill up with silt and eventually stop flowing altogether. The resulting marshland became a vast mosquito hatchery and malaria grew rampant in the city. This had two effects: the population eventually moved away and the City’s reputation as a centre for deadly illness made it no bargain for ransacking and pillaging by potential conquerors either.

I also discovered one much more recent and no less fascinating sidebar to the Paestum story when I happened to browse a massive coffee table book in the foyer of Il Granaio – the story of WWII’s Operation Avalanche. The code name applied to the landing of the Allied armies – officially at Salerno, just a few miles away, but in reality at Paestum and the ruined city was among the first pieces of real estate through which the invasion force swept as they moved inland. The book featured a panoramic two-page black-and-white American aerial reconnaissance photo that took in the beach, the ruins and even what was then the farm and granary that in the mid-1990s was to become our hotel.

Fortunately for the sake of those with a passion for antiquity in their histories, Paestum did not become the major Salerno battlefield and the ruined city suffered no significant WWII battle damage. (Although also in the book there were several sobering photos of dead German soldiers on the road that ran right past what, 60 years later, would be our hotel.)

Minutes after wading ashore at the beginning of WWII’s Operation Avalanche, US soldiers found themselves walking past Paestum’s Temples of Hera and Neptune, while others following actually camped in the shadow of the structures. (Photo source: nuke.montecassinotour.com)

Here’s another fascinating then-and-now photo composite created by a photographer named Erwin Jacobs showing US clerks working in an administrative Operation Avalanche “office” hastily set up inside the Temple of Neptune and, on the right, that same spot as it looks today.

The temples are no less imposing in the light of day. One of the fascinating things we learned from Eliana relates to this particular temple, known as the Temple of Hera (or possibly Juno) to the Romans and the Temple of Athena to the Greeks. Almost without exception, classical temples have an even number of columns across the front but a quick count reveals that this one has nine.

This has led scholars more recently to suspect that this particular temple was, in fact, intended to be shared equally by the seniormost male and female gods on Olympus and the odd number of columns creates an absolutely perfect centre line so that neither Hera nor Zeus (nor Juno nor Jupiter) would have even a centimetre of interior temple space more than his or her counterpart on the other side of the line. Looking at the temple absolutely dead on from the front is a view resonant of several scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s movie, “The Shining”, which also featured countless left / right symmetrical framings used by the Director to provide rock-solid visual anchors for his film of Jack Torrance’s growing and deeply unsettling insanity.

When I asked Leslie why it was she knew about Paestum with her liberal arts education while I’d never heard of it with mine, the answer lay in the simple fact that her degree included the study of the architectural side of art history, which formed a large part of her university curriculum. And even a cursory read of most modest tourist guidebooks to the site reveals content replete with references to Doric, Ionian and Corinthian (columns), colonnades, pediments, cornices and entabulature. But since this is a trip diary and not a fourth-year study of classical architecture, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that Paestum – especially in its temples – has superbly preserved examples of all of the foregoing, and dozens of other classical building features.

What is especially wonderful about Paestum, as you’ll instantly note from this picture, is the utter lack of crowds – unlike Pompeii which daily hosts thousands of visitors – and the obvious freedom given to visitors to wander the site largely unfettered by fences or barricades of any kind – the temples being the only significant exceptions to this freedom of access.

This shot shows a tiered circular structure called the Bouleuterion, within which political assemblies of up to 500 members of the city’s most important council could be (and regularly were) held. (Sheesh, and we thought we had an unmanageable Senate in Canada with 105, or thereabouts, occupants!)

Like Pompeii, Paestum still hides a great many of its secrets in large zones that are yet to be excavated.

This shot shows two arches of a structure leading towards the temples (out of sight to the left), which very much intrudes into the modern pedestrian sidewalk and motor vehicle road on which I was standing when I took this photo.

Apparently aerial photos have revealed a meticulously laid out pattern of city blocks that extend well beyond the present excavations. (The mapped area in the illustration shows the present-day excavations and the city boundary wall. The unmapped, unexcavated white space shows just how much remains to be explored. Source: sights.seindal.dk )

The buried Greek and Roman history that eventually will be unearthed is something that no doubt will keep archaeologists and antiquities scholars happy for hundreds of years to come.

Our final Back-Roads group event was a last lunch together in The Basilica Café, directly across the road from its namesake temple (The Temple of Neptune / Poseidon is also known as the Basilica) with yet another round of complimentary wine and beer -- augmented by an old family dessert recipe made by the owner's mother -- to ease us off to our various points of departure in a cheery mood. (Luigi thoughtfully said he would make all the requisite stops on the way back into Naples.)

Ours was the rail station. Other group members were deposited at the airport and even our pre-Amalfi hotel – the Turchini – for one or two more nights before saying goodbye to Southern Italy.

Leslie’s and my destination was, once more, Rome. Leslie was booked to attend a conference (which she later confessed was one of the most dismally administered academic gatherings she had ever attended). For my part, I would be opting for some solo wanderings before we reunited for one of the most profound experiences of our whole trip – an almost exclusive (eight people; I call that “almost” exclusive) one-hour visit to the Sistine Chapel, and the most authentic Italian lunch in Rome! (Oh, the lunch wasn’t actually “profound”, but it was great.)

All to come in what will probably be two or three more entries, along with a final wrap-up report on some of the amazing tastes of Italy (some of which will be new; others will be reminders of things you’ve already met in earlier diary notes).

So hang in there! The end is in sight.

Amalfi: one more host of coast postcards

(Say that five times real fast with your mouth full of bubble gum!)

Somewhere along the road between Positano and Amalfi is this house. As we wound our way past it, our driver mentioned almost casually that it is Sophia Loren’s. He was not, however, the least bit amenable to pulling over while I checked to see if she was at home. What kind of Italian man is he, I wondered? (Photo source: Leslie, who was sitting on the right side of the bus to grab this shot as we went by.)

= = =

The day after Leslie’s and my Amalfi dinner, the group went for a walk up the hill from the hotel into Amalfi’s beautiful town square. One side of it was a lengthy stairway to the main entrance of the town’s Duomo.

Amalfi’s wonderful piazza pretty much invites to pause over a cappuccino while you ponder your climb up the steps leading up to the Duomo’s front door, which are just visible on the far side of the square.

The Amalfi Duomo is another reason why sometimes a small group tour in the hands of an informed tour organizer is definitely the way to go for at least part of a trip. Before we entered, Sharon had said to us repeatedly – be sure you go down to the crypt – something we might not have been disposed to do had we simply been touring unguided. But we did – and we’ll get to that amazing place just a couple photos farther on.

Amalfi – like Orvieto – has a stunning Duomo that seems out of all proportion to the relatively small size of the town.

Here is a closer view of the Duomo’s staircase and front entrance, seen from the street level in the piazza.

You can be forgiven if you think this is a shot of the main part of its interior – but it is, in fact, the crypt.

And here is one of the principal wall decorations inside the crypt.

At this point, some of the more astute among you might have started to put a few clues together as to who is the most significant resident in the crypt’s tombs. I confess I only clued in when I asked another woman visiting at the same time who the figure is standing to the left of Christ. Her reply left me with a bruise on my forehead when I slapped myself and muttered, “Well of course it is!”

One more clue?

Recognize this?

I guess the fact that one doesn’t immediately connect wild rocky island highlands and bone-chilling lowland mists with the balmy climate of southern Italy might cause you to overlook any consideration that buried deep beneath a Duomo in the town that gives the Amalfi coast its name is Scotland’s patron saint. But the Amalfi Duomo crypt is indeed the final resting place of the bones of St Andrew.

The huge wooden “X” behind him in the crypt’s wall portrait, and its somewhat more stylized presence on the flag of Scotland also commemorates his death on an X-shaped cross.

So… a brief history lesson (because we’re about so much more than just pretty pictures here).

The original Amalfi Duomo was built in the 9thC (that would be when years were rendered in only three digits and the first would be an “8”) specifically as a dedication to Andrew, one of Christ’s apostles.

In addition to its interior and remarkable crypt, the Duomo is also the site of the oldest bronze doors in the entire country to have been cast after the Roman era. (History records they were cast in Constantinople “sometime before 1066”.)

Here are the full doors.

And here is a much closer view of the upper part of their frame, and the graphic symbolism that is repeated across them from top to bottom, framing four portraits in the middle: of Christ, his mother and the Saints Andrew and Peter. (Guess who that is represented in the solo portrait in the upper arch over the doors.)

So at this point, we’ll leave the spiritual elevation to be found inside the magnificent Amalfi Duomo behind and move on to the physical vertigo-inducing elevation of the next stop on our tour: Ravello.

Getting to Ravello involved – something I would not have thought at all possible – navigating a road even more winding and narrow than the laughably named Amalfi coast “highway”. It wouldn’t be the last time I would mutter a silent message of appreciation for the fact we were in driver Luigi’s capable hands.

Here’s a view from the bus as we climbed. The lighter green patches on the hillside terraces are groves of lemon trees while the darker squarish patches are vineyards. Whatever the harvest, you have to appreciate the fearlessness of the people who routinely go into these areas to pick the fruit when it is ripe!

When most tourists planning a trip start looking for highlights of the Amalfi coast, Capri always comes up, but so too does Ravello and for Leslie and me, the latter far outshone the former as “worth a diversion”, as the Michelin Guide writers would say.

By the time you reach the astonishing heights of this place, you’re not the least bit surprised to discover that it was originally built (in the 5thC) as a place where waterside residents could seek shelter from the many ship-borne barbarian invasions that ravaged the coast after the Western Roman Empire fell.

One can almost imagine the barbarians landing in a howling horde along the rocky coast and then casting their eyes upward… WAY upward to the structures perched on the cliff edge of Ravello more than a thousand feet above them. “Alright men…” would bark the invaders’ commander, “There’s the hill; TAKE the hill.”

After a short, sharp chorus of however one said “Screw that!” in the invaders’ tongue, the commander would desultorily wave his sword, guide his less-than-enthusiastic hordes back to the boats and off they’d go in search of easier pickings.

A view from Ravello, literally from cloud level. 6thC villagers probably gathered at this very spot to laugh at the barbarian hordes on the beach more than a mile below and then cheer as they re-embarked in search of a conquest that did not require mountaineering skills to attack.

Once its safety was generally accepted, Ravello became an important centre of wool production about 400 years later and drew the attraction of many of the region’s noble families, probably for no more reason than it was a stunning holiday getaway among the mountaintop breezes. Many of the old family names are today preserved in the names of several Palazzos that dot the town.

We were visiting two today: the Villa Rufolo and the Villa Cimbrone.

In the late 1800s, the Villa Rufalo was visited by Richard Wagner and he himself claimed that it was the source of inspiration for the stage design he proposed for his three-act opera, Parsifal.

I didn’t know beans about the story of Parsifal. I still don’t. But Eliana, our intrepid archaeological graduate guide, did and she was bound and determined she was going to share it with us. The problem was that the very moment she began the story in a gorgeous courtyard in the shadow of a bell tower, a thundering peal erupted from the tower and continued for pretty much the entire 15 minutes or so it took Eliana to regale anyone who was standing right beside her… because the bells utterly drowned her out for anyone who was a foot or more away.

I’m sure it is a fascinating story. Clearly it is of sufficient renown, and the connection to Wagner held in such high regard, that Ravello is home to an annual Wagner music festival. Meanwhile, I will have to Google the Parsifal story sometime. (Apparently, the name is Wagner’s spin on Percival, a knight who quested in vain for the Holy Grail.)

Eliana clearly was enthusiastic about it and had we been competent lip readers, I’m sure everyone in our little group would have been equally enthused, but since Eliana and the carillon finished at about the same time, her take on the story will remain forever unheard – at least by our ringing ears.

Villa Rufolo’s ancient bell tower. As we discovered, the bells still work beautifully.

I’ve mentioned Eliana and Back-Roads Tours’ Sharon often enough that you might like to have faces to attach to their names. Here they are, an appropriate enough addition at this point in my narrative because this shot shows them in the Ravello sunshine. Sharon is on the left.

Our second villa, Villa Cimbrone’s, highlight is its incredible garden, which ends at a breathtaking overlook of the coast and a huge swath of this part of the Mediterranean. The feeling you can see forever was clearly the inspiration for the name the builder gave the garden’s overlook: the Terrace of the Infinite.

Although the site was first built in the 11thC, it fell into decay when it was abandoned in the late 1800s. It did not remain unknown, however, and when Ernest William Beckett (Lord Grimthorpe), a well-educated and widely respected English traveller, fell into a deep depression after the early death of his wife, friends suggested a trip to Ravello. The cure worked its emotional recovery so well that he bought the nearly-ruined estate in 1904 and set about bringing it back to life, accentuated with a combination of gardens and sculptured artworks whose design and placement was worked out with some of the finest landscape architects of the day.

The site has since provided inspiration for the likes of Gore Vidal, Vita Sackville West and the Bloomsbury Group, to name just a few.

Here’s why:

The gardens.

Leslie and I – soaking up some of the inspiration in the company of our new-found marble-faced friend at the edge of the Terrace of the Infinite.

Another view from the Terrace. On the other side of that rail is a direct plummet of about a thousand feet.

Sharon let us have some free time to wander about Ravello and both Leslie and I agree it is probably among the best places in the world to engage in people watching. Staking out a piazza café, we saw several wedding parties and had great fun watching as the various groups set up for photos. One of the things that amazed us most was the choice of unbelievably lofty stiletto heels on the shoes of the young women – even on cobblestoned streets. Later, Sharon told us that Italian women’s penchant for walking arm-in-arm has nothing whatsoever to do with affection – it’s to help them keep each other from toppling over!

I wish I were exaggerating, but this was typical of the style and perilous height of the ankle-busters we saw on the feet of many of the wedding guests wobbling around the cobblestones as we watched while enjoying an al fresco lunch in one of Ravello’s piazzas. (Photo: trendhunter.com)

We’re going to leave the Amalfi coast now. But not without a last wistful look over our shoulders.

We’re also winding down to the end of the group portion of our tour – with just one more stop before we go our separate ways. But it is no less amazing than the many sights we’ve visited so far, and if you can recall back to my first trip note – the general overview – then you’ll recall the name Paestum. That’s where we’ll start the next update.