Between Memory and History - Trying to “Capture” Rome
Remembering and reliving the second place that I lived in Rome, Piazza Epiro, and environs.
How we remember Rome is a fascinating subject. Artists for centuries have sketched, painted, made music and used every conceivable art form to try to capture some aspect or aspects of this city. This past weekend, we went with friends to the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden House, which was first discovered during the Renaissance adjacent to the Colosseum. The tour ends with a virtual reality segment where you don goggles and have the environment around you reconstructed. This serves as a portal to a virtual tour of part of the entire complex. One experiences the ruins being “drawn over” and thus rebuilt. Because you can look up and around it is an immersive experience.
As impressive as this virtual reality is—it is not reality—it is just another representation of what might have been. Years ago, I saw an amazing performance of Aida staged at the Baths of Caracalla and while the Baths do not have anything to do with the story of Aida, I found the use of the monument as a frame extraordinarily powerful. The staging made one viscerally understand the scale of this amazing complex.
The joy of being in Rome is that you are always measuring it—you experience it in relationship to your body—you feel this city in a powerful way. So how to “capture” it?—I guess these posts are in fact a way just as painting and drawing is.
I wrote in one of my early posts about the impact of my history teacher Mr. Nowe— and his use of Piranesi etchings to convey Rome. The power of these etchings continue to be one of the best examples for me of “capturing” this place. 40 years ago when I lived in Rome at the Contessa Fersen’s (subject of an earlier post), I found at an English book store a then recently published guide to Baroque Rome by the recently disgraced Sir Anthony Blunt (it had been discovered that Blunt, who was in charge of the British Royal Art Collection, had been a Soviet Spy). Blunt’s book was my companion as I spent that summer going from Baroque Church to Baroque Church. Interestingly\, Blunt had illustrated the book entirely with seventeenth century etchings, including some by Piranesi.
In the eighteenth century Luigi Rossini produced a series of over 100 etched views of Rome. These views are less dramatic than those of Piranesi—but they capture the city at that moment in time. While our daughter Liesl was here several weeks ago, we happened by the old print market adjacent to Palazzo Borghese, and I spied a copy of a print I had never seen—it was of Porta Latina from the inside looking at the walls and the Alban Hills in the distance.
I had lived on the other side of these walls for the academic year 1991-1992. The print captures something special about this part of Rome and so the next day I went back and purchased it. I think what speaks to me is that it conveys the presence of nature and history in this portion of the city. There is also the presence of San Giovanni in Oleo, a small chapel in the center of the image. This chapel - renovated by Borromini is a touchstone. Oddly, it is not accurately depicted. This led me to another set of images—the wonderful black and white photographs by the architect and historian Paolo Portoghesi in his book on Borromini. So, with all of these images in my mind, I have gone back to this part of Rome several times over the past few weeks.
I taught architecture for the University of Notre Dame here in Rome. Notre Dame sends its junior class of its five year BArch degree to study in Rome. It is an amazing program as it allows the students to be in Italy for an entire year—a year in which they get to learn so much about this great city, and through numerous field trips learn the history and traditions of Italian Architecture. For me, it was an experience somewhat like that of the American Academy Fellows have here. As we are beginning to wind down our time here—I am so conscious of the luxury of the time.
Notre Dame gave me an apartment on Piazza Epiro just outside of the walls on the southeast side of the city not far from San Giovanni in Laterano. It was owned by a woman who at the time worked for the Academy. I remember delivering some mail here that was incorrectly delivered to the apartment. Initially I had been disappointed that I was not in one of the apartments the University had near the Campus Martius, but I grew to love Piazza Epiro.
The building was probably built just after World War I and was part of a group of buildings that surrounded a large common garden. Through the gaps in the buildings one can see the Roman Wall—so there was a clear sense of the presence of history even though it was a twentieth century building.
In those days the long Piazza Epiro was converted daily into a great outdoor market. In the years since, a market building has been constructed over a large parking garage. The building is largely inward facing and not particularly beautiful.
I would take the bus to Notre Dame, which at that time was housed in a Palazzo on Via Montorio near Largo di Torre Argentina, from Porta Metronia. On weekends I would explore the gardens inside the walls through Porta Latina including the Parco degli Scipioni and the Via Appia Antica outside the walls which headed out toward the Alban Hills from the neighboring gate to the south, Porta San Sebastiano. These green park areas with their majestic umbrella pines gave one the sense of what Rome must have been like prior to the establishment of the city as Italy’s modern capital in 1871.
Returning inside the walls at Porta Latina is San Giovanni in Oleo. I regarded this chapel as my special place in Rome as it is not much visited and is a real gem.
The chapel that is there now was ascribed to Bramante, but it is now thought to have been the work either of Antonio da Sangallo the younger or Baldassare Peruzzi. In 1658 it was remodeled by Borromini who added the frieze and the elaborate finial.
The chapel is located across the street from San Giovanni a Porta Latina and commemorates the place where in 92 CE under Emperor Domitian, the apostle John was immersed in a vat of boiling oil from which he emerged unharmed. Having failed to execute the apostle, Domitian exiled him to the island of Patmos where John wrote the Book of Revelations.
I love this chapel for both its scale and the way that Borromini elaborated on a very simple building—in a way that keeps its simplicity and makes it iconic.
I had fallen in love with Borromini when I studied at Syracuse in Florence 40 years ago. In many respects the opportunity to really get to know his work is what drove me to work in Rome that summer. Paolo Portoghesi’s book on Borromini, Borromini, Architettura Come Linguaggio, published in 1967 was my guide. Portoghesi’s book features Borromini’s original drawings along with Portoghesi’s detailed black and white photographs which capture the sculptural quality of Borromini’s work. This is true of San Giovanni in Oleo. Note that Rossini depicts Borromini’s frieze as far more deeply inset on the roof than it actually is.
The power of Rossini’s etching for me is that it pulls so many things together for me by evoking this place—a place that has both evolved and remained over the past 200 years. Portoghesi’s magical photographs made me search out the original finial which I had never seen before. Images trigger and reinforce our memories and provoke us to remember history.
Fabulous. And that cake was delicious.
Grazie for the introduction to Portoghesi’s work, which is beautiful. And I remember that wedding!