Get Ready for Rome: Recent Episodes
Wayne Ambler
Get Ready for Rome helps the thoughtful traveler prepare to visit the Eternal City by introducing the city’s main monuments and the sometimes acrimonious dialogue they imply. Add value to your visit to Rome by getting to know in advance the ideas and history that stand behind St. Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel and other familiar but put poorly understood sites of one of the world’s greatest cities.
After two episodes on the Forum Boarium, we move up to the Palatine Hill. At the same time, we move from Rome’s distant prehistory and Aeneas to its founding by his descendant Romulus, the son of Mars. Later still, Caesar and his adopted son Augustus presented Aeneas and Romulus as precursors of the Caesars.
The two temples in the Forum Boarium as illustrations of Rome’s cultural flux over the ages.
There is scant evidence regarding the prehistory of Rome, but the Romans supplied this defect by handing down and codifying engaging myths. Today we visit the Forum Boarium, where Rome’s distant ancestors met and began to form the people from whom the Romans would descend, or so at least Livy and Virgil tell us.
Today is March 17, the anniversary of the proclamation of the birth or making of modern Italy. It seems strange to me that this anniversay is largely overlooked, so I invite listeners to think for a moment about its meaning.
If the Sistine Chapel reflected the moral vision of Christian Rome, is there any such coherent view in Modern Rome of how we humans should understand our purpose and live our lives?
Popes have frequently attacked the moral, political, and intellectual developments that gave birth to modern Italy. On the occasion of the death of Pope Benedict, we today review his controversial Regensburg Address to see what it says about modern Rome.
We return today to the "secular" or non-religious character of modern Rome in order to see more clearly how much the Rome of the People has changed from the Rome of the Popes.
Today we introduce Michelangelo's "Last Judgment," his vast fresco painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
The four Pendentives of Michelangelo's Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel represent four different dramatic stories from the Old Testament. What are these stories, and what do they teach?
We know that Michelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was an extraordinary achievement, but what subjects does he represent and what teaching do they convey?
Michelangelo used painted architecture and numerous nudes to divide the Sistine Chapel ceiling into separate panels and give it a complex design. Today we summarize the elaborate arrangement he came up with.
Michelangelo dominates the Sistine Chapel, but the chapel's walls feature twelve frescoes by the previous generation of great Florentine artists. We look at two by Botticelli as an introduction to all twelve.
We return for a second introduction to the Sistine Chapel and outline some of the main challenges Michelangelo had to overcome in painting the ceiling.
This episode introduces the twelve frescoes on the side walls of the Sistine Chapel, which invite a comparison between the lives and laws of Moses and Jesus.
We today make a first visit to the Sistine Chapel and look generally at the three different waves of Renaissance frescoes that decorated it. Two of these are by Michelangelo.
The difficulty of seeing Ancient Rome is that not much of it exists. The distinguished archeologist Rodolfo Lanciani documents this, and today we compare his ways of explaining its disappearance with those of Edward Gibbon.
American troops liberated Rome from German occupation just 2 days before D-Day. What made it possible, and why did the liberation occur when it did?
We have taken an introductory look at the reasons Paganism was replaced Christianity, but why have so many of the magnificent buildings the pagans built simply disappeared? Was it simply the work of time? We begin today with Gibbon's answer to this question.
We today consider Gibbon’s explanation of how the Christians of Constantine’s century advanced their faith by taking active measures against paganism. As he makes his case, Gibbon also extends his unflattering portrait of the followers of the new faith, perhaps to weaken their successors in his own day.
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire advances five causes for the early Christians' triumph over their pagan and Hebrew rivals. This podcast discusses them.
After noting the contradictory ways Constantine is remembered in Roman art and architecture, we turn to the main policies of this first Christian Emperor.
This short podcast reviews our goals and announces the beginning of our second season on April 21. The subject will be Rome, Constantine, and the Christianization of the Roman Empire.
I today announce that I've begun taking a break that I hope will also help me get ready for a new season of podcasts, and I summarize the topics and issues that lie ahead.
Travel can be educational, as our many study abroad programs affirm, but my recent return to Venice got me wondering whether it can also be misleading.
This short Mini Pod makes five points based on a recent trip to Rome and towns in northern Italy.
In this second report on my return from three weeks in Italy, I consider some evidence suggesting Rome is as postmodern as it is modern.
Today we venture beyond the central core of Rome to survey the most important sites on Rome’s periphery.
I've just returned from a three-week trip to Italy, and I here begin a retrospective look at our travels, which were not much affected by COVID.
Today we survey the main sites to visit in Trastevere and in the area around the Vatican, an important step in preparing for a visit.
Centered on the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, the Campus Martius is for good reason Rome’s most popular zone. Today we note its main sites to visit.
Today we review the sites on the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills, which are not so much hills as ridges that meet in the area of the Termini Train Station. They offer a rich mix of Ancient, Christian, and Modern monuments.
Today we inventory the main sites in the area near the Capitoline Hill, including the Forum and the Colosseum. This is an essential first step toward choosing what is most important to visit in this zone of Rome.
I offer here a few thoughts on how to plan a visit to Rome, from places to stay to the need to decide what sites you want to visit.
Having a big picture in mind helps you find your way around Rome. I offer one here consisting of a Fixed Point, Four Roads, and Five Zones.
We return to the Hall of Constantine, one of the four Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums. Its main frescoes show crucial episodes in the life of the Emperor Constantine, but did they ever happen?
After an overview of the three Raphael Rooms that followed the Stanza della Segnatura, we focus today on the Hall or Sala of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor.
We devoted a couple of Mini Pods to the greatest of the Raphael Rooms, but what about the others? This overview should help get us ready for the Room of Constantine, coming up next.
Raphael's famous "School of Athens" is in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, but what else is in this room, and are its several parts brought into a harmonious whole?
While the beauty of Raphael's School of Athens is widely appreciated, we today probe the controversial idea behind it.
The Vatican Museums can boast the world's most beautiful frescoes, but just what is a fresco?
We begin our look inside the Vatican Museums with an introduction to the deservedly most famous fresco of the four Raphael Rooms. In the background, I wonder whether modern universities are still moved by the ideal it represents.
Friars are not monks, and the Catholic Church includes many different sub-groups or orders. Does this matter?
The Warrior Pope was also the first patron of the Vatican Museums. Why would a pope want to make public the nude statues of pagan artists and the books of pagan thinkers?
We here take a quick look at the moral questions raised by Pope Julius II's outrageous conduct.
We make a second trip to the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains, this time to focus on Michelangelo's sculpted Funeral Monument to Pope Julius II.
This Mini Pod reviews the big questions that always lurk in the background of this podcast series and also introduces a new interactive map.
We today review the conflicts that divide Ancient, Christian, and Modern Rome, with special attention to the various monuments used by Modern Rome in its struggle to bury the Rome of the Popes. Can we find, notwithstanding these many quarrels, something identifiable as Western Civilization?
We move from one basilica devoted to St. Peter to another, and this one requires that we get to know better the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance and a pope who wore armor into battle and also promoted the finest art of the Roman Renaissance.
Today we investigate two tombs under St. Peter's Basilica, one of a saint, the other of a sinner, or so at least the saint would say. But this sinner defends himself.
We have already examined five of Augustus's major building project in Rome, but we have not yet considered how he changed the beating heart of Ancient Rome, the Forum. Today we do.
One way Mussolini tried to make Italians proud of their nation was by acquiring an empire in East Africa. After conquering Ethiopia, he brought an obelisk back to Rome and likened himself to the Ancient Romans. Today we review Mussolini and the monuments celebrating the imperial efforts of modern Italy.
When Constantine built the first St. Peter’s Basilica, he buried a burial ground that was not excavated for over 1,500 years. It included tombs of both Pagans and Christians, perhaps including that of St. Peter himself. We visit it today.
Augustus and his imperial successors erected Egyptian obelisks in ancient Rome, and 13 of them are landmarks in the city today, though no one of them stands in its original location. Why were they so important for Augustus and his successors?
1932 was the tenth anniversary of the Fascist March on Rome and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the death of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the most lionized leader of the movement to unite Italy under liberal political principles. As a major part of his attempt to associate his Fascist Blackshirts with Garibaldi’s patriotic Redshirts, Mussolini added a statue of Anita Garibaldi to the Janiculum Hill and hosted three days of celebrations as her mortal remains were interred in the base of her statue. But would Garibaldi really have thought the Fascists were good representatives of his principles?
From week to week, my topics jump from Ancient Rome, to Christian Rome, to Modern Rome. This rapid leaping across the centuries may lead to a sort of "historical vertigo," so why don't I just march through Rome in chronological order?
Recent episodes have followed Bernini as a preliminary guide to the spirit of Christian Rome in the time of the Counterreformation, when the new St. Peter’s and the Galleria Borghese were built. But what about the earliest Christian Romans? Today we survey their burial places, the catacombs, to begin to learn how they understood the world and their duties in it.
Augustus boasted that he turned Rome from brick to marble, and I think he did. But did he also turn it from a republic to an empire and, if so, did his architectural projects help? We consider his majestic Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill.
Mussolini wanted to identify Fascist Rome with Ancient Rome, but more than this, he wanted to associate himself with Augustus, the first and founding emperor of the imperial period. To see how he did this in architecture, we today visit the Piazza of Augustus the Emperor.
We return to the Galleria Borghese to consider the remaining two of Bernini’s four masterpieces, his Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanias, and his David. Both statues may represent the virtue of piety, one based on a Roman story and the other based on the Old Testament, though Bernini’s David looks well equipped to defeat Goliath even if he should fail to receive God’s support.
Today we visit the Forum of Augustus, the second of the five Imperial Forums of Ancient Rome. Apart from providing a general overview, I hope to show another case in which Augustus used art and architecture to advance his political ends.
Mussolini represented a revolutionary change in Italian government, and he sought to transform the look of Rome as well. He did this partly by the structures added but also by what he stripped away. We consider today two of his main “eviscerations” of Rome, which added roads and made ancient monuments more visible but also displaced thousands of Romans.
We visit the Galleria Borghese and focus on two sensual statues sculpted by Gianlorenzo Bernini, both based on stories told by the old Latin poet Ovid. Both were commissioned by the Borghese family which then also held the papacy and was helping to build the new St. Peter’s Basilica. How do Ovid and these two statues fit into the Catholic worldview that was then being expressed in the new basilica? Or don’t they?
On this six-month anniversary of Get Ready for Rome, I review the goals of this podcast series. They are partly straightforward: to introduce Rome's main monuments, churches, and works of art. Beyond this, they are to show what might be gained from a study of Western Civilization rooted in Rome.
Today we discuss the Mausoleum of Augustus, the huge and once-beautiful funeral monument Augustus built for himself and his family. As the Altar of Peace was an apt symbol of Augustus’s claim to have brought the blessings of peace to Rome, so the Mausoleum is a visual reminder that he became Rome’s first Emperor and passed that power down in the Julio-Claudian Dynasty.
We saw that Mazzini believed that the spread of ideas was the first and most important step in starting the revolution he wanted to transform Italy. It is attractive to think that history moves by ideas, not mere force. But does it move by true ideas or, sometimes, merely meretricious ones? What does a society need to judge well the alternative ideas that are set before it?
Giuseppe Mazzini prepared the soil for the unification and eventual democratization of Italy by forty years of high-level writing urging Italians and other Europeans to support these goals. Since he also furthered them by revolutionary activity, he lived his life in exile and had to have his powerful words smuggled into Italy. Even after Cavour, the King, and Garibaldi had transformed Piedmont into Italy, Mazzini continued to attack the new country as insufficiently democratic. Eventually, his contributions were recognized, and in this episode we visit his statue, which is perched above the Circus Maximus on the Aventine Hill.
Our subject is the Villa Borghese, a sprawling park on the north side of Rome and home to Rome’s most wonderful museum, the Galleria Borghese. Unscrupulously assembled by Scipione Borghese, nephew to Pope Paul V, the art collection in the Galleria includes several of Bernini’s finest statues, as well as works by Caravaggio, Canova, and the greatest Renaissance artists. In moving from St. Peter’s to the Borghese, we again move from halos to nudes and so have another chance to see the dramatic changes initiated in the Renaissance.
The Altar of the Peace of Augustus lay buried in the muck of Rome for over a thousand years, but it is now recognized as one of the best examples of classical relief sculpture. It is also important evidence of the way Augustus wanted to present his achievements to the people of Rome. But who was Augustus, and what can his altar tell us about him?
A glow surrounds leaders remembered by monuments, as it generally should, but it is still instructive to look closely at the hard choices they had to make to achieve what they did. Here is another peek at how Cavour enticed France into helping unify Italy.
The Count of Cavour was one of the Four Fathers of Modern Italy, but this fact becomes interesting only if we know what he did and how he did it. The first part of an answer is that he got the help of France to drive Austria out of northern Italy, which increased Italian independence and took a step in the direction of unification. But did France do this out of love of justice? How did Cavour secure France’s help?
We return today to St. Peter's Basilica and do an inventory of the contents of its nave, aisles, and transept. Do its many chapels, altars, statues, and funeral monuments have a unifying theme? I think so. It is the Triumph of the Catholic Church, which then draws our attention to the Protestant Reformation, then raging in Europe as St. Peter's was being built.
Constantine is the central figure in the transformation of the entire Roman Empire from pagan to Christian in the fourth century, but why he initiated this dramatic change is still disputed both by historians and in the art that remembers him. Today we examine the Arch of Constantine to see what it might be able to tell us about the mystery man it honors.
Of Garibaldi's many military adventures and many contributions to the unification of Italy, none was more dramatic or more consequential than his conquest of Sicily and all of southern Italy in 1860. We discuss it in this episode.
Today we visit the Portico of St. Peter's Basilica, and find there--again!--the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Rome's greatest and most prolific Baroque sculptor and architect. We also encounter the emperors Constantine and Charlemagne, who did so much to create Christian Europe.
The famous Roman Historian Tacitus is critical of a Roman emperor and of the Roman people for their enthusiasm for the gladiatorial games held in Roman amphitheaters. We here explore his reasons, which turn out to be very different from those of modern critics of the Romans' cruelty.
We previously looked at the Colosseum as a major and impressive work of ancient architecture, and then reviewed the events the Romans staged in it. Today we raise the difficult but essential question of whether and how we can and should judge the Romans for their bloody games. Can one culture ever judge another, should the Romans be condemned on humanitarian grounds, are the games even more deserving of criticism for their degrading effect on the spectators? These are among the questions we take up.
Today we return to Garibaldi’s statue on the Janiculum Hill and review the events that are summarized in the bronze sculpture group on the front of the statue. They represent Luciano Manara and the battle to save the Roman Republic of 1849. But what was this Republic, and what became of it?
We begin with the total destruction of the Old St. Peter’s and then visit the center of the Renaissance and Baroque Basilica that replaced it. We find there the Confessio, the high altar, and Bernini’s soaring Baldacchino. Surrounding these central elements Bernini placed four huge statues and four associated relics, and nearby he situated a massive “Chair of St. Peter,” so important as a defense of papal authority, and matched statues of two powerful popes.
We’ve discussed the Colosseum as a building, but we have not yet explored the ways the Romans put it to use. Today look at the three main activities staged in Roman Amphitheaters around the Empire, animal hunts, prisoner executions, and gladiatorial combat. We’ll also consider their history and the reasons they were important for the actual and aspiring leaders of Ancient Rome.
Pope Francis recently inaugurated a new statue in Piazza San Pietro, the first new statue there in four centuries. Called Angels Unawares, it calls attention to the plight of refugees and migrants and summons us to the virtue of charity. What, I wonder, is its relation to the piazza in which it has been placed? Does it duplicate the aesthetic judgment of Bernini’s baroque piazza? Does it summon us to a similar understanding of Christian virtue? Does it advance a political agenda?
Of the Four Founders of Modern Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi lived the most colorful life and—at least on the field of battle—made the greatest contribution to the new nation. He fought tirelessly for freedom for four decades, not only in Italy but also in South America and France. He was so dynamic a leader as to attract followers ready to fight to the death, the so-called Red Shirts or Garibaldini, and he even led them against the pope in Rome, only to be turned back by the nation he had helped to create. The names of bridges, piazzas, and streets remember him all over Italy. Today we visit the most important Monument to him in Rome, his statue on the summit of Rome’s highest hill, the Janiculum.
I here preview four different podcasts I’m working on at the moment. The most pressing is on Garibaldi, and I hope to have it ready to go by December 8, but it is challenging, for his life was so full of action and his political views were so pleasing to the people but so annoying to the New Italian government. A second is simpler and is on the new statue in St. Peter’s Square, called Angels Unawares. A third asks how the Catholic Church raised the money to pay for St. Peter’s Basilica, which takes us directly to the various sparks which ignited the Protestant Reformation and split Europe. And the forth will identify and discuss “presentism,” which is the approach to history which uses today’s standards to condemn the past.
After 1200 years, the first Roman basilica dedicated to St. Peter was torn down, and then began the slow process of building a new one on the same location. We discuss why it took so long to build the basilica, what the main features of its beautiful piazza are, and how it differed from that of the old one.
Today we glance at why the Flavian Emperors may have built the Colosseum and how they put themselves in a position to do so. What did such vast public works projects have to do with the rise and fall of Roman Emperors?
This podcast discusses the Colosseum as a building, including its overall shape, the huge awning that protected the spectators from the hot Roman sun, the foundations needed to support it, and its decorative elements. Our next episode will take up the kind of events that were staged in it.
Although its exterior is utterly devoid of Christian symbols, the Monument to King Victor Emmanuel II has a Christian chapel deep within it. Why is it there, and how does its message relate to that of the monument’s neoclassical exterior?
Modern Italy’s largest, most expensive, and most eye-catching monument goes most often by its nickname, the Wedding Cake. It is huge, bright white, and covered with a wide variety of allegorical statues. This podcast finds in these statues Italy’s intention to break away from the long traditions of Christian Rome, while at the same time reviving Italian pride, unity, and dedication by evoking the glories of Ancient Rome.
Ancient Rome had, and Christian Rome still has, lots of buildings called “basilicas.” But this important word is used in two senses. So just what is a basilica? This pod explains both the architectural and ecclesiastical senses of the term.
We here survey and introduce the main sites of Vatican City and Saint Peter’s Basilica. These include the Sistine Chapel, the Raphael Rooms, and other parts of the Vatican Museums; the Vatican Necropolis, an ancient cemetery in which St. Peter may have been buried; the Vatican Gardens; the Apostolic Palace; and the Grottoes, main floor, and dome of St. Peters.
Where did the Flavian Dynasty get the resources needed to build the Colosseum? The sorry condition in which Nero had left Rome and epigraphical evidence suggests it had to have come from the looting of Jerusalem and its Jewish Temple. This event is celebrated on the Arch of Titus, just uphill from the Colosseum. The crucial but difficult question is how to judge the Romans for their imperialistic actions. Considering their possible motives takes a small first step toward the beginning of an answer.
This first of four pods on the Colosseum offers a general overview of the structure, including its architecture and the materials used to build it. We also consider why the Flavian Dynasty of Emperors chose to build it where they did, right where there had been a beautiful water feature of Nero’s sprawling “Golden House.” We raise but do not yet address the question of what to think about those who took such delight in the cruel events staged in the Colosseum.
The art in Rome’s churches and museums includes many characters with halos and many without clothes, but these two groups rarely overlap. This pod first encourages visitors to Rome to observe when and where we see halos on the one hand and nudes on the other. It then draws on examples from the Galleria Borghese and Sistine Chapel to suggest that in the Renaissance, we see many fewer halos and many more nudes. This raises a difficult and interesting question: “Why?”
Italy was not unified until 1860, and even then it lacked Rome, which remained under papal rule until 20 September 1870. Why did the supporters of the Risorgimento want to change Rome, and how did they do so? We here prepare to visit the monuments of Modern Italy by learning a little more about the main failures and success of the Risorgimento and the contributions of Garibaldi and Cavour.
We here observe several places in Rome that offer dramatic evidence of how much ground level has changed over Rome’s long history. Doing so deepens our understanding of how much time has passed since antiquity, of how transient some human achievements are, of how depopulated Rome became during the Middle Ages, and of how much we need to use our mind’s eye if we are to going to see Ancient Rome well. The effect is especially noticeable at lower elevations and near the Tiber, whose flooding was an important contributor to the rising level of debris that filled the city. The Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Roman and Imperial Forums, and San Clemente offer clear evidence of these changes. Markers on the sides of buildings indicate the levels reached by the Tiber during memorable floods. My main goal is to help you imagine a once-great imperial capital becoming so neglected that it fills up with mud.
This pod presents a quick overview of how Rome changed after it became Christian, both in its prevailing art and architecture and in its soul. It notes that at the same time as official Christianity took over Rome in the fourth century, there was a precipitous decline in Rome’s prominence, wealth, population, security, and political order. Rome then became a city of churches and of fortifications within the city walls. The tough question concerns the relationship between these developments.
Rome is home to Pasquino and five other “Talking Statues,” which are exceeding popular with tour guides. For the last three centuries of Papal Rule in Rome, the statues were used like social media bulletin boards, but with anonymous postings pinned up at night. They were often witty and irreverent toward the established authorities, and what is more delightful than irreverence toward authorities we don’t revere!
We identify these statues and give samples of their messages, but I conclude by suggesting that all Roman statues have much to say, even if they are more difficult to interpret.
This pod introduces the features that most identify Ancient Rome, especially in her differences from Christian and Modern Rome. These include the extent of her empire, her long-lasting rule, her ability to turn human beings into citizens, her reception and imitation of Greek culture, and her pagan intermixing of politics and religion.
When you feel like a break from the hubbub of Rome, the Castelli Romani offer several good options. Today we make our first visit to Castelgandolfo, which is one of the dozen hill towns known collectively as the Castelli. Among its claims our attention are these: It sits on rim above a beautiful crater lake. It is the site of Alba Longa, and this is the very ancient town from which Rome descended, at least according to the legend of Romulus and Remus. Later, it was the site of summer villas enjoyed by the wealthy Romans of the Republican Period, and later still the Emperor Domitian built a villa here that included the entire volcanic lake and surrounding area. Meanwhile, the Romans had built a tunnel over a mile long that penetrated the crater and enabled them to limit the rise of the level of the lake.
So different from the pagan Romans in other respects, the popes followed their example when it came to choosing locations for summer residences outside of Rome. We thus can visit a papal palace, papal gardens that—though narrow—are over a mile long, and a beautiful church built by Gianlorenzo Bernini, thanks to the patronage of Pope Alexander VII.
This charming little town is also a good place to discuss World War II in Italy, since it was caught in the crossfire for four long months between Germans in the hills and Allies down on the beaches near Anzio and Nettuno. The summit of Monte Cavo was also occupied by the Germans for its advantages as an observation and communication post.
The town also invites a discussion of the relationship between science and religion, since it turns out that it is the home of the Specola Vaticana, the astronomical observatory run by the papacy, and one of the most striking features of the Papal Palace is that it has two beautiful telescopes on its roof. Perhaps surprisingly, even before the condemnation of Giordano Bruno, scientists had figured out how to move away from the lunar calendar, according to which Christmas could turn up in the summer.
Cities are distinguished by their geographical location, but I here use historical and cultural differences to divide Rome into three radically different cities. Doing so helps to organize Rome's many sites and the art we see at them and makes them participants in fascinating theological and ideological quarrels. This episode explains this approach and begins to identify the differences of opinion that divide Christian Romans from the ancient pagans, and modern Romans from the the popes who ruled Rome for centuries.
The Street of Reconciliation, the Via della Conciliazione, honors an agreement that welcomed the Church back into Italian society and recognized it as a legitimate sovereign state. Along with the contrasting statue of Giovanni Bruno, it raises the questions of the relationship between Church and State, and Reason and Revelation.
My reading of the statue of Bruno is influenced by the speech which inaugurated it, which was given by Giovanni Bovio.
The Via della Conciliazione is also an example of a particular kind of street: streets that take aim at something to rivet our attention on them.
A dozen streets converge on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and put it in squarely in view. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway takes direct aim at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Mall in Washington DC also uses streets, paths, and bridges to call attention to its monumental architecture.
The channeling effect of the Street of the Reconciliation in Rome is more obvious than in most other cases. But there are also other cases in Rome. The Via Nazionale has large “targets” at both of its ends. There is a “trident” of streets that converge on the obelisk in Piazza del Popolo.
In facts, the obelisks in Rome are generally placed in relation to streets, or streets created to show off existing obelisks. Pope Sixtus V erected four obelisks in four years, from 1586-89. Three of them were aligned with streets from the get-go; the fourth was not. This is the one in front of St. Peter’s, and Mussolini added the street of reconciliation to show it off, too and, of course, the basilica that stood behind it.
As for Rome’s most central street, the Via del Corso, it had a focus but not much to focus on. The new Italy took advantage of this opportunity and built the huge and boastful Monument to Victor Emmanuel the Second.
The Bruno statue in effect declared ongoing war against the Roman Catholic Church and thus represented the anticlerical sentiment that helped to fuel the revolution that created modern Italy; but the next sixty years brought new circumstances, interests, and ideas, and both Italy and the Church grew ready to settle their differences. They did so especially in the Lateran Pacts, which normalized relations. To celebrate this new state of affairs, Rome built a new boulevard the Via della Conciliazione or “Street of Reconciliation,” and its meaning and its architecture are both important for Rome.
To find, we must seek, but what should we be looking for in Rome? I here propose that you keep your eyes peeled for evidence of various kinds of strife as you walk the charming streets of the Eternal City. I offer a preliminary list to get you started.
The Statue of Giordano Bruno was erected not to add to the considerable charm of its surroundings in the Campo de’ Fiori but to accuse the popes of cruelty and injustice. The statue thus marked a deep change in the attitudes of the ever-changing Eternal City. But was this change permanent?
Why we need to get ready for Rome before we find ourselves in the midst of Rome’s chaos and how to organize this chaos on the basis of Rome’s two most important transformations, from Pagan to Christian and from Catholic to Modern.
Help stamp out uninformed travel and Get Ready for Rome! This trailer explains who we are and how we hope to do this, with the help of our website at getreadyforrome.com.