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NEW! - Click here to read my latest article in Italian about an Irish dynasty in Northern Lazio! - NEW!
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Searching for the Stuarts
by
Mary Jane Cryan
copyright 2007
Click here for the Italian
version
The Stuarts
, exiled royal family of
Together with their sons
Charles (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and Henry (later Cardinal & Duke of
To mark the 200th anniversary of the death of
Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807), the last of this royal dynasty,
here is a guide to the heraldic monuments and mementos dedicated to the Stuarts
in central
Our gallery of images shows objects conserved in various Italian
localities; in
We begin this journey in
The funerary monument in St. Peter’s Basilica is the best known Stuart memento due to its
setting and sculptor, Antonio Canova, who set portraits of the three Stuarts
(left to right James III, Cardinal Henry and Charles) and above them, the
royal arms .
Looking down upon this monument is that dedicated to Queen Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of James III and mother of Cardinal Henry and Charles, one of only three women buried in the Basilica. In the Vatican Treasury many objects donated by Cardinal Henry Stuart are conserved.
In the Basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere one can admire three large coat of arms of Henry
who was titular Cardinal there even after he moved to Frascati.
The Cardinal-Duke of
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A cross reliquary in rock crystal donated in
1761 and its leather carrying case with his royal arms can also be admired
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Palazzo Muti, on Piazza Santi Apostoli, has a plaque inside the entrance way reminding passers-by that this was the building used by the royal English court in exile and the birthplace of Henry, the last of the Stuart dynasty.
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Nearby in Piazza Pilotta, the Palazzo Muti-Papazzuri today home of the Biblicum Institute, was decorated thus for the festivities of the Cardinal’s crowning in 1747.
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The former Scots College (now a bank) on Via Quattro Fontane, just off Piazza Barberini, has windows decorated with Scottish symbols, royal arms and busts of the Stuarts along its roof.
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Frascati’s Duomo has several monuments with royal arms surmounted by the Cardinal’s hat among which this monument and a marble sink located in the Sacristy.
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In Velletri the Cardinal’s arms can be seen over the doorway of a school founded by Cardinal Henry in 1804 and precious sacred vestments embroidered with the royal insignia donated by the Cardinal are kept in the Basilica.
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Other mementos of Cardinal Henry-Duke of York are scattered among the Castelli Romani: Albano Laziale, Castle Gandolfo, Colonna, Frascati, Grottaferrata, Lanuvio, Monte Porzio Catone, Montecompatri and Rocca di Papa.
North of Rome other sites testify to the presence of the Stuarts during the first decades of the 1700’s: plaques on a doorway in Caprarola
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and a palazzo in Civita Castellana where the queen mother visited, and on the Castle in Soriano nel Cimino
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where we find a marble plaque recalling James III‘s
first visit as guest of Cardinal Albani in
In 1719 James III and Maria Clementima Sobieska
were married in the Bishop’s Palace in Montefiascone
overlooking
Montefiascone ‘s Santa Margherita church conserves
an important collection of sacred vestments donated by the Polish-Scottish
queen in memory of the happy days spent there. The vestments, embroidered in
silver and gold thread, show the crowned lion passant (symbol of the English royal family), the thistle (symbol
of their beloved
. 
A marble plaque decorates the room (now the dusty archives of the diocese) where the Stuart wedding and baptism of the first born, Bonnie Prince Charlie, took place.
In his diaries, recently discovered at the British Library, and the basis for the book “Travels to Tuscany & Northern Lazio” (Davide Ghaleb Editore, Vetralla) the 1776 visit of Cardinal Stuart to Vetralla is described meticulously along with the gifts and banquets the community offered to him.
In memory of this significant day, in
The coat of arms of two other English: King Henry VIII and his ambassador Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge along with that of Pope Julius II Della Rovere, can be admired on the stairway of the city hall: a further proof that Vetralla is the only city in Italy and the world, outside England, to be granted the protection of the English crown since 1512.
Continuing
into .jpg)
In Santa Croce Basilica, next to the burial places of great Italians such as Michelangelo and Galileo, stands the funeral monument of Louise Stolberg (died 1824) Charles II’s wife (and poet Vittorio Alfieri’s mistress), complete with the royal coat-of-arms, the lion and the unicorn.
Palazzo Guadagni-San Clemente, today
One of many palazzi
that hosted the Stuarts in
A visit to San Petronio and other moments of
the Stuart life (weddings, birthdays, baptisms, visits to 
Many thanks go to fellow Stuart specialists in different parts of the
world for information and photos : Noel
McFerran (
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A Roman
Bestiary
By M.J. Cryan
Most visitors to Rome recognize the she-wolf and twins: the mother-substitute who suckled the city’s founders, Romulus and Remus. This is only one of the animals that make up a medium-sized menagerie sculpted as symbols in noble families’ coats-of-arms or emerging from the waters of a Roman fountain.
Some are mythological beasts while others are real animals that over the centuries have found their way into the city’s history and transitions.
In St. Peter’s Basilica alone one can count a rooster, an owl, a hedgehog, several lions, doves and dragons but how many of us notice them, know why they are there and what they signify?
Here is a guide to spotting some of these furry, slimy, ferocious and tame creatures that make up Rome’s Bestiary.
Aesculapius –The Tiber Island has always been the site of an important medical center since the early days of Rome when a serpent, said to be the incarnation of Aesculapius, the god of healing, swam ashore there prompting the Romans to build a temple in his honor. The Fatebenefratelli Hospital now takes the place of the pagan temple. The next time you enter a Roman pharmacy look for the snake motif in the décor.
Bee- The symbol of the Barberini family, three bees, can be seen in the coat-or-arms of Pope Urban VIII Barberini (1623-44) and therefore on any of the buildings constructed by this important Papal family. Especially noteworthy is the baldaquin or baldacchino which rises high over the main altar in St. Peter’s. Urban VIII as a “thank you” for the survival of a favourite niece during a difficult birth, had faces –first of a woman in pain then of a smiling baby- carved along with the family bees on the marble pedestals that support the huge bronze baldacchini.
On a delightful fountain at the corner of Via Veneto and Piazza Barberini, other gian stone bees are sculpted on the basin’s rim as if they were drinking.
Bear-The symbol of the Orsini family (orso=bear) . A standing bear holding a shield can be seen at the entrance of the palace built into the back of the Theatre of Marcellus reminding us that the Orsini were once its proprietors. A shield-bearing bear also greets visitors at the Odescalchi Castle in nearby Bracciano, a lakeside town perched above the deep lake of the same name.
Cat-The Roman street cats are a breed apart for they have proliferated among the ruins of the Colosseum, Largo Argentina, the Theatre of Marcello and the Pyramid of Caio Cestio since the time of the emperors. Romans treat them well, protecting and feeding them, perhaps in memory of how their presence helped stave off starvation in the darkest days of the last war. Via della Gatta (gatta=cat), instead, is a testimony of the temple dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian deity, which once stood on this site near Palazzo Doria Pamphili. A small cat of white marble peers down from a ledge where Via della Gatta meets Piazza Grazioli.
Dragon- A symbol of the Boncompagni family that gave Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85) to the church. He in turn had several monuments and side altars built in St. Peter’s. Note the huge dragon, now without its claws, crawling out from under his funerary monument and a smaller dragon which decorates a fountain placed in the wall of the Palazzo dei Penitenziari (now Hotel Columbus) just down Via della Conciliazione from the Basilica.
Elephant –“ La Pulcin della Minerva “, a corrupted form of “little pig of Minerva” is the nickname given to the statue of an elephant balancing an obelisk on its back which stando in front of the S. Maria sopra Minerva church near the Pantheon. The statue, a work of Bernini, was inspired by the 15th century story Hypnerotomachia, about a journey through a sort of fantasyland. The inscription on the base reads to the effect that it takes a robust intelligence to uphold solid wisdom.
Fish- Portico dì Ottavia in the Ghetto area was the city’s fish market for many centuries as the plaque picturing the once common sturgeon shows. Its Latin inscription, applied to the Portico’s wall, announces that of any fish over one meter in length, the head was to become the property of the Conservators of the city, proof that the Romans considered fish heads a great delicacy.
Horse- Horses are everywhere in Rome: real ones ridden by smartly uniformed pairs of Carabinieri, bronze ones of equestrian statues. Thje largest of the latter is certainly that on which King Victor Emanuel sits overlooking the white marble Altar of the Fatherland monument in Piazza Venezia. Before the final fusion of the bronze horse’s parts and dedication in 1911, the architects and their assistants, about 20 men in all, enjoyed a celebration dinner sitting comfortably at a trestle table inside the horse’s belly.
Lion –Lions also abound in Rome, from those with crossed paws that spit water in the Moses fountain in Largo S. Susanna to those almost identical ones at th4e four corners of Piazza del Popolo’s obelisk. In St. Peter’s, Canova sculpted two giant lions to guard the funerary monument of Pope Clement XIII (1758-69), in memory of his Venetian origin. Winged lions symbolizing Venice and St. Mark appear in the coat-of-.arms of two other popes: Pius X (1903-14) and John XXIII (1958-63), since both had been Patriarchs of Venice.
John XXIII’s emblem is modernly interpreted using stainless steel and inlaid marble on the floor of the entrance portico. A dramatic marble sculpture of a lion attacking a deer is inserted on a house front in Portico d’Ottavia along with other bits of Roman statuary found by the 16th century owner .
Monsters –Walking down Via Gregoriana just at the top of the Spanish Steps, one comes across a very unusal house built at the end of the 16th century by Federico Zuccari. It is number 30, now a part of the Hertziana Art Library, and is reminiscent of the Park of the Monsters in Bomarzo about 100 kms. north of Rome, for its windows and doors are framed by monster mouths and eyes.
Naiads- The frolicking ladies who wrtstle with marine monsters in the large circular fountain in Piazza Esedra (also called Piazza della Repubblica) made quite a stir when the fountain was inaugurated in 1911. Among the stories told about this fountain are that seminarians were forbidden to look at or approach the provocative fountain and that every Sunday evening two elderly ladies, the sisters who posed for the naiads in their stormy youth, came to reminisce at “their” fountain. The sculptor Rutelli, was an uncle of Rome’s former mayor, Francesco Rutelli.
Owl – Symbol of wisdom and therefore of Athena, a tiny owl peeps out from behind the goddess’ flowing garb on the right-hand side of the funerary monument of Pope Pius VII (1800-23). This is the only work of art by a Protestant artist, the Dane Thorwaldsen, a sign of the Pope’s ecumenical spirit.
Ox- The Borgia popes, Calixtus III (1455-58) and his nephew Alexander VI (1492-1503) both had a red ox or bull in their coat-of-arms which shows up often in the beautiful Borgia apartments in the Vatican. Many frescoes by Pinturicchio also decorated these cozy rooms showing us the members of this extravagant family: Lucretia, the infamous Cesare or Duke Valentino and the unfortunate Duke of Gandia.
Porte – The five huge doors porte which open onto the portico of St. Peter’s Basilica are a collection of symbolic and mythological animals and their stories. The oldest porta is the central bronze door by Filarete dating from the 1400’s and besides the myriad of animals on its front, the back holds what is perhaps the world’s first comic strip “signature”. In the lower right-hand corner, Filarete pictured himself and his workers, some carrying their tools, others astride horses or camels.
Sculptor Giacomo Manzù was the author of the last door to the left, called the Door of Death which has many parallels with the ancient Filarete door. Note the hedgehog, the turtle, the bird and other mini-sculptures applied to the outside of the door and the scene of the tall African cardinal greeting Pope John XXIII on the door’s reverse side.
Rooster- Another modern art work in St. Peter’s , the pair of bronze candlesticks flanking the 13th century statue of St. Peter, narrates the apostle’s life. We can see the keys of the kingdom being given to Peter, various miracles he performed and the rooster that crowed thrice when Peter denied Christ. Another bronze rooster which stood on the bell tower during the Middle Ages is conserved in the Sacristy.
Salamander- This mythical lizard which can live in fire without harm was the personal badge or symbol of Francis I of France so it is fitting that a salamander decorates the Renaissance façade of S. Luigi dei Francesi, the French national church in Rome famous for its Caravaggio paintings.
Sow – Just down the stret from S. Luigi dei Francesi we run into Via della Scrofa (scrofa=sow) named after an inn that existed there about 1450. A marble relief of a scrofa is set into the wall of the nearby Augustinian convent, S. Agostino.
Sphinx- The side walls enclosing monumental Piazza del Popolo are resting places for several haughty sphinxes designed by architect Valadier.
Turtle-Piazza Mattei’s delightful Fountain of the Turtles is a most romantic spot to pause during an evening’s walk and even more so when the origins of the fountain are known. When young Duke Mattei lost all his fortune gambling, his future father-in-law backed out on the planned marriage; his daughter would never go to such an irresponsible fellow. The Duke was still powerful, however, and to prove it he had the Turtle Fountain (designed by Giacomo della Porta and executed by Taddeo Landini in 1585) set up overnight and then invited his father-in-law and fiancée to view it from a palace window. Of course they lived happily ever after and in memory of the occurrence the window facing the fountain was (and still is) walled up.
Wolf-The original Etruscan statue in bronze dating from the 4th or 5th century B.C. can be admired in the Capitoline Museum. The twins were added by Antonio Pollaiolo at the end of the 1400’s. The statue’s back legs were corroded when lightning struck the Temple of Jove where the statue stood in ancient Roman times. A copy of the famous statue is set on a pedestal at the left-hand side of the Campidoglio square and an actual she-wolf once lived in a cage located between the two monumental stairways leading up from Piazza Venezia.
Istituto Luce archives
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Rome’s Irish Connections
By M.J.Cryan
There is no green stripe down via del Corso, nor does the beer flow green on March 17th, but Rome does have plenty of Irish connections to remember on St. Patrick’s Day. The Eternal City’s Irish population, about 2,500 strong, celebrates the day in a subdued manner still in touch with historical reality, recalling the saints, scholars and soldiers who lived here before them.
Irish itineraries about Rome may include a visit to one of the Irish churches: St. Patrick’s, St. Isidore’s, San Clemente, San Silvestro or the Irish College where members of the community gather wearing the traditional shamrocks flown in for the day.
At the Franciscan church of St. Isidore’s on Via degli Artisti visitors are greeted at the entrance by paintings depicting the patrons St. Patrick and St. Brigid. Graves of many scholars and patriots who died in exile are to be found in the crypt while the church houses a funerary monument to Amelia Curran erected by her friend, Lord Cloncurry. Most touching is the monument to Octavia Bryan who died in 1846 on her wedding day and at whose funeral Cardinal Newman preached his first sermon as a Catholic priest.
The earliest Irish connection however is visible in the ancient, circular church of St. Stefano Rotondo immersed in the quiet green of the Coelian hill. This 4th century basilica has been undergoing restoration for so long that even a pluri-decaded Roman resident like me has seen it just once, and then by chance. March 17th would be a perfect day to try one’s luck and ring at the convent where one of the sisters may let you in to admire the venerable Roman columns set in a circle after the fashion of the Temple of Vesta. On a bit of the curved wall that is not embellished with frightfully realistic scenes of martyrdom is a white marble plaque with a Latin inscription surmounted by a 7-pointed crown. It commemorates Brian Boru’s son, King Donnchadh of Munster, who came to Rome on a pilgrimage when already in his late seventies and who died here in 1064.
San Clemente Basilica located between the Colosseum and St. John Lateran is another church of great interest for Irish and all other visitors to Rome for it is a compendium of art, archaeology and architecture: a true layer-cake of history. To enter the quiet church from the roaring traffic of Via Labicana and to hear the lilting voices of white-robed Dominicans puts one in the prefect frame of mind for a refreshing plunge into the past.
Irishman Father Leonard Boyle was a well-known figure at San Clemente and at the Vatican Library where he was Prefect. In his "San Clemente Miscellany I” he described the vicissitudes of the Irish Domenicans’ 300 years in Rome. An exciting section of the book is dedicated to the 19th century prior, Father Joseph Mullooly and how he excavated the basilica, renowned for its Comastesque pavements, bringing to light an earlier 4th century church and, on a still lower level, a pagan Mithraic temple and Roman houses.
The archaeologist-priest Mullooly was also an important figure in a little-known chapter of international military history. In 1860 he acted as mediator between Austro-Irish officers and the papal government during the formation of the St. Patrick’s Irish Brigade which fought several battles of the defense of Pius IX and the Church’s temporal domains.
About 1000 Irish volunteer soldiers came to Rome, the papal cities of Macerata, Ancona and Spoleto in May and June 1860 in what has been called “The Last Crusade”, fighting against the Italian unification forces of King Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi. The diarist Gregorovius described the “eggs and spinach” colored uniforms of the Irish he saw on Via del Corso that spring although archival sources tell us that only a few officers found the time and money to have such uniforms tailor-made before the battles began in September.
The Austrian army promised 500 greatcoats and guns for the regular troops but many Kerry farmer lads had to try and stuff their 6-foot frames into uniforms designed for much smaller Italian soldiers.
While in Rome the Irish volunteers were housed in barracks on Via Cimarra near St. Mary Major’s where several Irish pubs flourish today.
In the festival town of Spoleto in Umbria, the 14th century Rocca built by Cardinal Albornoz still dominates the heights once defended by these Irish soldiers under the command of Major Myles O’Reilly. A monument nearby commemorates the Italian forces who, due to superiority in numbers and artillery, won the battle of Spoleto in September 1860, thus ending the Irish Brigade’s participation in the Risorgimento battles. The huge castle, for many years a prison, has undergone complete restoration. Hopefully a plaque records the Irish volunteers who, far away from their homeland, fought for a cause in which they believed.
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Garibaldi’s Blue Jeans
By M.J. Cryan
How many teenagers who wear blue jeans every day know that they are continuing a fashion that began about 140 years ago with the rugged hero of the Risorgimento movement?
A Times correspondent wrote from the south of Italy on September 13 1860 when Garibaldi was busy uniting the country,
“I had my first interview with the disinterested a brave liberator of Italy in his red shirt, a dirty pair of jean trousers and worn out boots. Combing his long, thin hair at the glass stood the greatest patriot since Washington”.
It must be remembered that this patriot was originally a Ligurian sea captain who dressed, as his colleagues did, in trousers mad of that indestructible blue cloth named “blu de Gene”, blue of Genoa, from whence the appellation, blue jeans. However blue jeans as a fashion phenomenon was to lie dormant for another hundred years, and surely the leader of the Mille would turn over in his grave to see young girls and grown women, instead of port workers, miners and sailors, wearing them.
Garibaldi was also the unwitting sponsor for other merchandise, especially in England where the ladies sported blouses modelled on the Red Shirts, called “Garibaldis”.
There were Garibaldi tie pins for the men and ads in t The Illustrated London News offered Dumas’ “Memories of Garibaldi” as the perfect book to read on the beach or train”.
The English love for souvenirs coupled with their adulation of the handsome, daring General, especially after his surprise invasion of Sicily in May, 1860, spawned an avalanche of commemorative objects, some of doubtful taste.
Besides the well-known Staffordshire figures of Garibaldi on horseback, there were Garibaldi silk scarves and bookmarks with portraits, and perfumes named after the hero were described as “irresistible”. There were sweets known as “Garibaldi balls” and raisin-studded “Garibaldi” biscuits which are still enjoyed throughout Europe today.
Garibaldi rose to such a height of popularity in England that the satirical magazine Punch always treated him with respect and near reverence, not the fate of other Risorgimento figures such as Pius IX, who was shown as a dribbling old man with a crooked tiara, or Napoleon III with patches and broken shoes, or King Ferdinando II of Naples who was pictured in Inferno in one cartoon soon after his death.
This hero-worship sometimes turned to persecution of Garibaldi by his English fans, as this extract from a contemporary English diary narrates: “Some ladies who sought an interview with him later at the Hotel d’Angleterre, asked him for a kiss a-piece, and that each might cut off a lock of his hair. Gen. Turr looked somewhat out of patience standing guard over Garibaldi with a comb and raking down the curls”.
The craze for Garibaldi produced many poems in honor of the brave General. Authors included Elizabeth Barrett Browning who penned her Poems before Congress in the quiet of her Florentine Casa Guidi, where she was visited by British envoys who considered her a reference point on the Italian situation. Alfred Lord Tennyson showed his respect and friendship for Garibaldi in Memoirs, remembering the General’s visit with him on the Isle of Wight where they planted a pine tree together.
A striking contrast to the English hero-worship of Garibaldi can be found in the poetry and ballads published in the Irish press of the time. In one lively street ballad the Italian general is admonished, implying that his troubles - Anita’s death, his wound at Aspromonte and his exile on Caprera- were brought on as punishment for his having fought against the Pope.
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The First Canadian Saint
By M.J. Cryan
Rome is the only city in the world with a double number of embassies and diplomatic missions- one to the Italian state and one to the Vatican City State, or Holy See. It is also the only city where one can assist at a canonization ceremony, the proclamation by the Catholic Church that a person lived a saintly life and is a model for others to follow.
During the impressive rite in St. Peter’s Basilica an official decree is read at the main altar while outside in the piazza a huge tapestry draped from the central balcony is unveiled, revealing the figure of the newly acclaimed saint.
On December 9th, 1990 thousands of North Americans converged on St. Peter’s to celebrate the canonization of Marguerite d’Youville, the first Canadian-born saint. Born over 235 years ago outside Montreal, Marguerite d’Youville was an 18th century Mother Teresa who dedicated her life and work to the poor, the ill and the destitute. This foundress of the Sisters of Charity, like her American counterparts Mother Cabrini and Elizabeth Seton, played a marginal but extremely important part in the history of North America and it is fitting that she is remembered in Rome as well.
Pope John XXIII called Marguerite d’Youville the “Mother of Universal Charity” at her beatification ceremony in 1959 for the sacrifices she made to alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate.
The early years of Marguerite’s life read like a soap opera: orphaned at seven, she helped support and educate her younger brothers and sisters until her marriage at 20 with a young man from Montreal-Francois d’Youville. The marriage turned out to be a difficult one and the young bride was often left alone for long periods with a miserly, domineering mother-in-law.
When Francois died it was discovered that he had been following in his father’s footsteps, dealing in illegal trade with the Iroquois Indians and exchanging alcohol for their precious furs. Marguerite, widowed at only 28, became a single parent with two sons (four other children had died in infancy) and also her husband’s debts to pay. She was able to raise her sons and make a living by running a small shop and eventually found time and money to help the poor of Montreal.
Three other women joined her charitable work in 1727 forming the nucleus of a community that became known as the Sisters of Charity. Some citizens of Montreal looked unfavourably on the women for sharing their home with the poor and derisively called them “Les Soeurs Grises” or “the tipsy nuns” in memory of the public scandal caused by Francois’ dealings. Humbly, Marguerite adopted the mocking name as a nickname for the little congregation.
Humility, however, did not keep her from contesting the religious hierarchy and civil authorities of Quebec when she felt that the poor, sick, homeless were endangered. Crossing the barriers of nationality and religion the sisters cared for both the English and French wounded during the war (1756-9) that saw the colony change hands and flags. The Indians, and later also the Eskimos, found that no one was ever turned away at the Grey Nuns’ door.
Today the legacy of Marguerite d’Youville is continued by the Grey Nuns or Sisters of Charity who work in hospitals education, social services and parishes in Canada and the United States. Notable is D’Youville College in Buffalo, NY. Missions are found in S. America, Japan, the Caribbean and s. Africa as well as the hospitals and schools for Indians and Eskimos in the Canadian North Country.
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Rome as the Writers Saw Her
By M.J. Cryan
What better companions for a sentimental visit to Rome than the English and American writers who lived here before us and learned to love what Hawthorne called “the city of all time and of all the world”.
Anglo-Saxon travelers have been coming to Rome for a long time, at least since the 8th century when King Ina began the Schola Anglorum as a hospice for English pilgrims. Among the important guests there were King Macbeth-later made famous by Shakespeare’s pen-who visited Rome in 1050, and the son of Ireland’s Brian Boru, King Donnachadh of Munster, who came as a pilgrim when already in his late seventies and died here in 1064. Since the large and important English community lived in the Vatican area, a stretch of road running along the Tiber was and still is, named for them: Lungotevere in Sassia.
In 1154 an English cardinal, Nicholas Breakspeare, arrived to the highest position in the church when elected Pope and took the name Hadrian IV.
Not much written about Rome by these early travelers and pilgrims has come down to us except a guidebook written for the Holy Year of 1450 by John Capgrave entitled Ye Solace of Pilgrims.
In the 16th century, Spencer and Milton praised classical Rome in their poems and England was fascinated with all things Italian, such as Shakespeare’s plays and the Palladian style country houses and Italian gardens.
The founders of the Romantic
Movement, Wordsworth (in 1838) and Coleridge (in 1804-6) both visited Rome.
Shelley wrote beautiful lyrics inspired by the Italian sky while living on Via
del Corso but his private letters showed his disgust with Rome.
Lord Byron also had ambivalent feelings about the city: enthusiastic and
rhetorical in Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage (“O Rome!
My country, city of the soul!”) while he criticized Italy and Italian customs in
his private letters.
Poor Keats, who came to Rome seeking relief from the tuberculosis that was killing him, died after a year here.
When Charles Dickens arrived in Rome on January 30, 1845, by way of Genoa and other northern cities, it was a rainy, muddy day at the beginning of Carnival time. His impressions of St. Peter’s may be close to those of other first time visitors since St. Peter’s has not changed except perhaps for the approach along the monolith-lined Via della Conciliazione that Mussolini had built after razing the late medieval quarter of Spina di Borgo.
“The beauty of the Piazza in which it stands, with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing fountains –so fresh, so broad and free, nothing can exaggerate…The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory, and most of all, the looking up into the Dome, is a sensation never to be forgotten”.
Dickens described his wonder at the Easter illumination of St. Peter’s dome, when scampering workmen, the Sampietrini, risked their lives to simultaneously ignite long-burning flares which outlined the cupola against the night sky.
“…the whole church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture and winking and shining all round the colonnade of the piazza..every cornice, capital and smallest ornament of stone expressed itself in fire and the black solid groundwork of the enormous dome seemed to grow transparent as an eggshell”.
From St. Peter’s Dickens had his coachman bring them to the Colosseum arriving there in a quarter of an hour, much quicker than we could do it with today’s traffic.
“To see it crumbling there…its walls and arches overgrown with green, its corridors open to the day, the long grass growing in its porches, young trees of yesterday springing up on its ragged parapets and bearing fruit..to see the peaceful Cross planted in the center, to climb into its upper halls and look down upon ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it…is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod.”
Also Nathaniel Hawthorne describes his visit to the Colosseum in the pages of The Marble Faun written after his 1858 stay in the Eternal City. The author of the Scarlet Letter and House of Seven Gables found himself in quite a different element during his evening visit to the great amphitheatre.
“As usual of a moonlight evening, several carriages stood at the entrance of this famous ruin and the precincts and interior were anything but a solitude…There was much pastime and gaiety just then in the area. On the steps of the great black cross in the center of the Colosseum sat a party singing scraps of songs with much laughter and merriment between the stanzas. It was a strange place for song and mirth. That black cross marks one of the special blood spots of the earth where the dying gladiators fell thousands of times over”.
His remarks on the pacific co-existence of religion and merriment also bring him far from his themes of Puritan New England.
“In accordance with an ordinary custom, a pilgrim was making his progress from shrine to shrine upon his knees, and saying a penitential prayer at each. Light-footed girls ran across the path along which he crept, or sported with their friends close by the shrine. The pilgrim took no heed and the girls meant no irreverence, for in Italy religion jostles along side by side with business and sport and people are accustomed to kneel down and pray, or see others praying between two fits of merriment or between two sins.”
Hawthorne had a love-hate relationship with Rome for he had caught cold upon arriving by carriage from the port of Civitavecchia and his daughter Una almost died with a flu she caught staying out late to sketch in the Forum. In his notebooks he pondered on the mouldering palazzo, the filthy streets, the beggars and ragged children but when the sun came out Rome became for him “a poetic fairy precint” where he gained inspiration for his new novel while exploring the Borghese gardens and wandering among the marble statues of the Capitoline Museums.
He found Rome growing on him.
“No place ever took so strong a hold of my being, nor ever seemed so close, so strangely familiar”. After having kept himself aloof during the Carnival that first year in Rome, he fully participated in the next year’s festivities and he began wondering how he and his family would live back in their New England village where “there are no pictures, no statues. Rome certainly does draw into itself my heart as I think even London or even little Concord or old sleepy Salem never did and never will “.
While Italian writers were complaining about Papal censorship Hawthorne enjoyed freedom of expression, “Rome is not like one of our New England villages where we need the permission of each individual neighbour for every act that we do, every word that we utter, and for every friend that we make or keep. In these particulars the papal despotism allows us freer breath than our native air.”
Together with the author of Moby Dick, Herman Melville, he snobbed the artistic gathering place, the Caffè Greco, for they both disliked the smokey, bohemian atmosphere. Melville, however did frequent the Lepre trattoria across the Via Condotti, where the foreign artistic colony ate economically and met friends. How envious we are when we discover that he dined at the Lepre for 19 cents and how we sympathize with his remark that he was “fagged out completely” after a first cursory visit to the Vatican galleries.
Trattoria Lepre,unfortunately, no longer exists and Via Condotti has become one of Rome’s most expensive shopping streets but the Caffè Greco and another historic landmark, Babington’s Tea Rooms, are still there at the bottom of the Spanish Steps serving out cakes, tea and atmosphere. Betwen 1863 and 1868 the American Legation was located in the back room of a private banking firm on the same premises now occupied by Babington’s.
Because of the area’s concentration of Anglo-Saxon creative people it was known as the English Ghetto and signs of the passage of many well-known writers and artists are still to be found there.
The Brownings, Robert and Elizabeth, lived at number 41 Via Bocca di Leone; Keats in the house that is now the Keats-Shelley Memorial at the bottom of the Spanish Steps; the painter Turner had rooms at number 12 Piazza Mignanelli and James Joyce, still an impoverished bank employee, lived on Via Frattina with his family.
In 18678 Mark Twain visited the city that he called “a museum of magnificence and misery”. Slowly he learned to like Rome and adopted the Romans’ life-style as he “began toi comprehend what life is for”.
Henry James, a very international American author, made his way to Rome in 1869 and paused at the D’Inghilterra Hotel, which is still thriving on Via Bocca di Leone, just long enough to leave his bags. Then he ran out, criss-crossing the city on foot for about five hours “in a fever of enjoyment” and at the end of this first day in Rome wrote to his brother back in Boston, “At last - for the first time - I live!”
What better companion for the traditional day-trip out of Rome than traveler extrordinaire D.H. Lawrence who in Etruscan Places described his visit to Cerveteri and his impressions upon entering the Etruscan tombs there. By the time he came to Rome in the spring of 1927 he had already seen a large slice of the world: Mexico, New Mexico, Ceylon, Austria, Sicily, Capri and the Italian Riviera. He and his companion left Rome on a brilliant spring day riding an early train the few kilometres north of Rome to the station of Palidoro, today a bleak summer watering place for working class Romans. After walking a few kilometres down an avenue lined with tall Mediterranean pines to Ladispoli, Lawrence caught a ride on a donkey cart with a local farm boy.
Upon arrival in Cerveteri they made a stop at a wine shop for mid-morning refreshment and then pursued the road to the Banditaccia necropolis by foot.
“We went down the few steps, and into the chambers of rock within the tumulus. There is nothing left, it is like a house that has been swept clean, and the inmates have left. Now it waits for the next comer. But whoever it is that has departed, they have left a pleasant feeling behind them, warm to the heart. The tombs seem so easy and friendly, cut out of rock underground. One does not feel oppressed descending into them. There is a simplicity combined with a naturalness and spontaneity. Death to the Etruscans was a pleasant continuance of life with jewels and wine and flutes playing for the dance.”
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Women in Roman History
By M.J.Cryan
History is nothing more than the stories of men and women who made things happen; and Rome, perhaps because it has one of the longest histories of any city, has an abundant share of these interesting stories.
Official guides and textbooks emphasize the deeds of men, of the generals and politicians who attacked, defended or governed the Eternal City over the centuries, but what about the women who made things happen?
Just to set the record straight here is a panorama, often romantic, sometimes slightly scandalous, of women who made history in Rome, a guide to the places that saw them protagonists, where they lived and died and sometimes changed the course of history. After admiring the architectural and artistic highlights and the well-known monuments of the city, take time to follow in the footsteps of these famous and infamous ladies.
Cleopatra (69-30 BC)
Our historical panorama begins not with a Roman woman but with a royal tourist from Ptolemaic Egypt, Cleopatra, and the first of a long line of visitors to Rome for the sake of love. Her meeting with Julius Caesar during his Egyptian expedition blossomed and four years later she took up his invitation to come to Rome along with her son, aptly named Caesarion. They lived in a villa across the Tiber where, according to writer Svetonius, they feasted all night and generally carried on much to the shocked delight of the e city’s gossips.
Remains of Egyptian-style stucco decorations discovered in the Farnesina villa’s gardens in 1879 and now kept in the Terme Museum were probably part of the villa’s decoration. Another memento of Cleopatra’s stay in Rome is a statue in the Vatican Museums, a copy of a gold one in which the princess’s prominent Egyptian nose and large eyes are evident, that Caesar had set up in the Forum in her honor.
Caesar’s mistress stayed on in Rome for a month after the dictator’s assassination hoping that their son might be designated heir to the throne, but then she returned to Egypt where she later met another fascinating Roman, Mark Antony.
Agrippina (15 -59 AD)
According to Fabio Pittoru’s biography of Agrippina, this Roman matron, mother of Nero, wife of Claudius and sister of emperor Caligula, was the victim of bad press and her surroundings and not really a husband-poisoner nor as viciously depraved as her contemporaries, Messalina and Poppea. The physical aspect of this strong-willed empress is expressed by a monumental head still to be seen in Trajan’s Forum. It reminds us that Agrippina attained the highest honor ever granted to a woman in ancient Rome, that is to be carried into the Forum on a litter.
Not only did this ambitious woman survive the palace intrigues and struggles for succession, but she wielded the imperial power during the reigns of her senile husband, Claudius and of her son, Nero. She was outwitted only by Nero’s growing persecution complex and insanity, succumbing to his hired assassins at her seaside villa near Naples at the age of 44.
Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519)
Salita dei Borgia is a steep, gloomy stairway leading from busy Via Cavour to one of Rome’s major tourist attractions, the Church of St. Peter in Chains. It takes its name from the Borgia family, once owners of many buildings in the area that gave history two popes, some saints and several sinners. With its sinister atmosphere this passageway induces the visitor to believe most of the bad things that have ever been written and said about the Borgia family.
Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) probably spent some time here during her unhappy life as a pawn in her father’s politics. In fact, between 1492 and her death at only 39 years of age in 1519, the beautiful but maligned Lucrezia passed from one marriage to another as alliances with different states were made and broken. First the wife of a Sforza of Milan, she was then married to an Aragonese prince, but when this union became inopportune e, the husband was eliminated by her brother, Duke Valentino, and the young widow was forced into a new marriage with the Duke of Ferrara. The unhappy heroine was portrayed as Saint Catherine in Pinturicchio’s frescoes of the Sala dei Santi, one of the rooms which make up that little jewel within the Vatican Museums, the Borgia Apartments, where the family resided during Rodrigo’s eleven years as pontifice.
Beatrice Cenci (1577-1599)
In the ghetto neighbourhood a piazza and block-large palazzo are named after another unhappy young lady, Beatrice Cenci, who with other members of her noble family, was accused of having murdered her monstrous father. Imprisoned in the Tor di Nona prison, the 22 year old Beatrice, her stepmother and brother Giacomo were condemned to death in the square in front of Castle Sant’Angelo on September 11, 1599, tortured, killed with a mace and then drawn and quartered. Her terrible death wrung the hearts of her contemporaries and inspired many writers –among them Shelley, Stendhal, Dumas and Moravia- to tell her tragic story. Later given a decent burial, her tomb can be found under the steps of the altar in St. Peter in Montorio on the Janiculum Hill.
Pauline Borghese (1780-1825)
Napoleon’s favourite sister, the beautiful Pauline, took Rome by storm upon her arrival as a young widow of 23 in 1803. She so enchanted Prince Borghese that he asked for her hand in marriage and Pauline became the mistress of what is today Villa Borghese. <her extreme vanity was legendary: she used her ladies in waiting as footstools, had a huge black servant carry her to her bath and, to show off her beauty, happily posed nude for the sculptor Canova’s famous statue which her jealous husband kept under lock and key while he was alive.
Today the statue of Pauline as Venus forms the centrepiece of the Borghese Gallery collection while the Napoleonic Museum in Palazzo Primoli proudly presents, protected by a glass showcase, a mold of one of Pauline’s breasts.
Also Napoleon’s mother, Maria Letizia or Madame Mère as she was known, spent many years in Rome where she died of melancholy and old age in 1836. Towards the end of her life she spent the better part of the day peering from behind the green shutters of her enclosed balcony on the corner of Piazza Venezia and Via del Corso. Standing in the piazza with your back to the huge white marble monument you will still note Madame Mère’s shuttered balcony running around the façade of the corner palazzo.
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