Busy Saturday

This morning I set out on my grand tour of Trastevere. My first stop was the Villa Farnesina, the house belonging to the wealthy Renaissance banker Agostino Chigi. Raphael and his school frescoed a loggia with the story of Psyche and Cupid, and according to the story, Raphael kept running off during the painting process to visit his mistress, so the clever patron finally had her installed in his villa so that his painter could concentrate on the work at hand. It really is a marvelous work, although I'm so used to thinking of Raphel in terms of Madonnas and portraits that seeing his narrative work was definitely an alteration. I particularly loved the fruit-laden bowers that separated all the scenes, which were assigned to his pupil Giovanni da Udine.

Next I headed to San Pietro in Montorio, which is a hilltop church where, according to Christian legend, St. Peter was crucified upside down. In the early 16th century, Isabel and Ferdinand of Columbus fame commissioned Bramante to erect a little temple on the site, and thus today we have the jewel-like Tempietto, which according to the wall panel is considered the first architectural moment of the Renaissance (but don't quote that). I couldn't go in the actual church, however, because there was a wedding going on. I lingered, but as soon as the rice had been thrown, the priest locked the doors, so that was annoying. The next church on my list was Sta. Maria in Trastevere, which had a steady flow of tourists in and out as I walked up. I entered, only to find out that there was actually a wedding in progress--as in, the bride and groom were kneeling at the altar, and there were all these tourists in the back of the church taking photos! OK, I was one of them. It was just so amusing. Hey, if you choose to get married in June in one of the most touristy churches in Rome, on your head be it. Still, I didn't stay more than a minute because I felt bad, and I could tell that this would be going on for a while, so I went to Sta. Cecilia, which was a little difficult to find. When I entered the courtyard and found yet a third wedding party waiting outside the doors of the church for the couple's grand exit, I started to get a little annoyed. I was determined not to miss yet another church, so I parked myself with a couple of Asian tourists and waited until the bride and groom exited and got pelted with more rice (they are not shy about that in Italy, it's really like bullets--at San Pietro, the groom had his jacket protectively over his head as he exited) and then dashed inside to see Stefano Maderno's sculpted version of Sta. Cecilia's body under the altar, which was pretty cool for being a unique representation of what her supposedly uncorrupted corpse looked like when they dug her up.

After these three nuptial encounters, I was done with churches for the day. I grabbed some lunch, with happened to be pizza with fresh tomatoes and arugula that, while good, was a far cry from Naples, and then went to the Orto Botanico. It was magical! Flowers and plants and trees from all over the world, particularly massive specimens of palm trees, a forest of bamboo, a terraced rose garden...this place had it all, but it wasn't manicured or tightly controlled. Rather, there were winding paths and whimsical little stone staircases all over the place. It was also rather unpopulated, and--most unusual for Rome--totally quiet, save for the rustling of branches and the ocassional cry of birds. I saw bright blue dragonflies skimming over a pond in the Japanese garden, jewel-like salamanders darting away in the underbrush, and not one, but two sets of ducklings. In the end, I found a bench where my head was in the shade but I could put my terribly pale legs in the sun and sat for about an hour. Indeed, if I'd had a book, I could have stayed all afteroon, but eventually I had exhausted my abilities of rumination, and regretfully took my leave of the garden. For 4 euro, that was easily the best valued site in this city so far!

It was only about 2pm by that time, so I crossed the river and checked out Palazzo Altemps, which houses the Ludovisi collection, mainly ancient statuary. The palace is grand in scale, but the rooms were rather sparsely populated with objects, which I appreciated after a museum like the Borghese, where everything is crammed together; also, all the panels were bilingual, and a diagram of each piece showed you, with shading, which parts were later restoration and which original. The Suicide of the Gaul is probably the most famous piece. In its room I encountered a French tour group listening to a pair of musicians, a female singer and a man playing a strange, medieval-looking lutelike instrument with a very long neck. I listened to them for a bit, and congratulated myself on stumbling across this little concert. Only when the tour guide got up and said something in French and then conducted the musicians, and the group, into the adjoining chapel, where they proceeded to perform a hymn, did I realize that the musicians were not with the museum, they were with the group! It was odd, but still pleasant, as the rest of us museum-goers benefited from it.

After all of this, I finally headed home around 4pm. Alice and Caitlin went to the beach today, but I received a facebook message from Alice indicating that apparently it was much further off than they'd expected, so it's unlikely they'll make it home for dinner--which is disappointing, as we were going out for our weekly 'fancy dinner' tonight! Ah well, there's always Sunday.