Bookends

Friday, June 26 and Sunday, July 5 - Rome

In my honeymoon photo posting schedule, I seem to have broken the Piazza Navona out into its own photoset. I'm not sure why, but if I had to guess I'd say it was because of the photo above, a detail from Antonio Della Bitta's Neptune Teabagging an Octopus. It's really quite an excellent octopus.

I'm finding it hard to think of a place in Rome more crass and crowded and touristy than the Piazza Navona, to say nothing of the Angels & Demons connection, but I can't hold that against it. It's a permanent art fair and performance space, filled with street artists selling luggage-packable art, living statues, puppeteers, musicians. (All expertly mercenary — Michael Jackson died the day we left home, and by the time we reached the Piazza Navona the next day one puppeteer had incorporated a Michael Jackson finger-puppet into his act.) I can and do blame it for being difficult to photograph — the western side of the plaza is dominated by the Palazzo Pamphilj and Sant'Agnese, which cut it off from the sun beginning in midafternoon. Next time, morning light.

We visited the Piazza Navona on our first day and our last day, so it serves me as memory bookends — from masterpiece overload to harried souvenir-shopping, from homebody uncertainty to globetrotter confidence, from being ready to devour all of Italy to being ready to go home.

( Cut for further nudity! )

More Navonaness here.