The Mad Poet of the Aventine

[jere7my]

Saturday, June 27 - Rome

The Aventine felt to me like Rome's back porch. It's quiet, and shady, and green, with birds flitting about, and in many places you can sit back and look out over the rest of Rome spread out in front of you. It used to be a city hub — for fans of HBO's Rome, it's the hill Vorenus's gang took control of — but construction and shifting traffic patterns have made it a pleasant residential backwater.

I led adfamiliares up the Aventine on our second morning in Rome, seeking a particular keyhole. The little shaded avenue pictured above, the Clivo di Rocca Savella (Slope of the Savelli Fortress) tempted our feet to stray from the main street. Just as we passed that corner, in the shadow of the fortress wall, a plummy English voice declaimed to us from a clump of shrubbery:

When the grand horses come, we will move in circles
Not to be dancing the jig, but jumping up and down.

There was a young woman up there at the base of the wall, peering at us, crouching and crab-walking behind the bushes in a nest of unpacked camping equipment. When we passed her again on the way back, she continued:

And the young men arrive at the gates
in their beautiful suits and long cars
to meet us spinning in our summer frocks
and invite the children to go away with them.
(pause)
What are you, anyway?

It was exhilarating, to be addressed so madly — in English! — on such a quiet, flowered path, beneath a sunny sky, in Rome. Does such a thing happen, outside of novels? It's one of the things from the trip that I hoarded into myself, to unpack on gray days that are soaked with normalcy and routine. We didn't respond, or answer her question; it was too suddenly weird for us to react, too hard to imagine what role she hoped we would play. I wish I had — I'm obsessed with discovering her story, while remaining half-convinced that any true thing that I learned would crack the seal of the magic.

That particular street is also home to the Priory of the Knights of Malta and two excellent churches — Santa Sabina, where preparations for a wedding were underway, and Sant'Alessio — which will be featured in the next post. We ran ourselves ragged for the rest of the day — we saw the Palatine, the Capitoline Museum, the Forum, and the Colosseum, all of which will get or have gotten their own posts. For now, here are some pictures from the Aventine and other interstitial bits of Saturday.

The Temple of Hercules Victor in the Forum Boarium (the Roman cattle market), dating from a brief period of architectural experimentation.


On our way up the Aventine, we passed a monastery. This remarkable tree was peeking over the wall, presumably to ask "Is it Christmas yet?"


A fountain in the courtyard of Santa Sabina.


These coats of arms hung side-by-side on Sant'Alessio, along with a few others. On the older one, you can make out "SPQR" painted across the shield. The newer is the crest of Cardinal Eusébio Scheid, a Brazilian cardinal who is the ordinary of the church. ("Deus é bom" means "God is good" in Portuguese.) You can see the six-pointed star they painted over for Scheid — the arms of the previous cardinal?


The Priory of the Knights of Malta, one of the few orders of knights remaining from the Crusades. They have a lot going on, insignia-wise — don't miss the unicorn! The door in the arch contains this keyhole:


If you peek through the keyhole, this is what you see:


That's St. Peter's, in the Vatican, two miles away. From the Parco Savello down the block, you can see three more domes almost perfectly aligned:


Left to right, they are Sant'Agnese in Agone, San Carlo ai Catinari, and Sant'Andrea della Valle.


A door in the Rocca Savella, a family fortress from the middle ages, also on the same street on the Aventine.


The Circus Maximus in bloom.


The Tullianum (the basement of the Mamertine Prison, aka the Carcer) is a cold, stony hole in the ground near the Forum. Jugurtha and Vercingetorix were imprisoned there before being executed, and some say Saints Peter and Paul were as well. This is an altar to them. It was very affecting to stand in a cell that had held so much history.

Here's the whole set (41 pictures).