Bookends

[jere7my]

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.

The Fountain of the Moor at the south end, with the Palazzo Pamhpilj and Sant'Agnese on the left. I wrote about the interior of Sant'Agnese earlier.


Sant'Agnese and the obelisk of the Fountain of the Four Rivers.


The Nile. His head is covered — and I am not making this up — because in 1651, when the fountain was constructed, nobody knew where the head of the Nile was.


The Danube. Arty!


The Río de la Plata, representing Argentina and the New World. Legend has it that Bernini designed the Río de la Plata to look like it was cowering beneath his rival Borromini's façade of Sant'Agnese, as though afraid that it would fall. Sadly, the fountain predates the façade — the river is really cowering from the snake above its head (see below) — but it makes a good picture. The fourth great river, not shown here, is the Ganges.




Thirsty lion.


A crocodile, to go with the Nile. (We weren't quite sure what a crocodile looked like in 1651.)


A less...focused view of the Fountain of Neptune. Note the cute little tail on the hottie nereid.


The view from the north end of the Piazza Navona, taken on our last day, when the light was a bit more amenable. This is one of my series of "Where's Kendra?" photographs, which, like the "Where's Waldo?" books, can lead to hours of fun for the whole...kids.

More Navonaness here.