Archive for 2000
21 December 2000 – Rome
21 December 2000, around 19.35.
Tumbled out of the train station in a daze, only to find myself in the Piazza di Spagna, surrounded by people, tourists and Romans, worse than any cliché; and such noise and such bustle. The Spanish Steps and Keats’s house caught at a cross-glimpse. By sheer good fortune I managed to find my hotel within […]
22 December 2000 – Rome
22 December 2000, around 19.37.
Spent the best part of the day sitting in and ambling through the Pantheon; one wonders what it must have been like before the later Romans came with their god and their saints, tearing out the older deities and the bronze rosettes for the baldacchino at St. Peter’s. The Pantheon is on such a scale, […]
23 December 2000 – Rome
23 December 2000, around 19.40.
To the Musei Vaticani in the morning; the streets were deserted and trees cast pale shadows onto the Tiber. Having not the faintest clue of a suitable direction, I wandered vaguely Vaticanwards and found I needn’t have worried: one can’t miss it. Waited in a rather long line for admission, then darted away to see […]
24 December 2000 – Rome
24 December 2000, around 19.43.
At the Protestant Cemetery, in the company of numerous over-attentive cats. I cannot help but feel, porter aside, that the cats are the guardians of the place, keeping the pigeons away, trotting amicably among the tombs. It is a strange place, calm, yet with a curious access to something else. There is the flutter of […]
26 December 2000 – Rome
26 December 2000, around 19.44.
Wandered to the Villa Borghese, a rather large park containing such interesting things as the British School at Rome and the Galleria Nazionale d’ Arte Moderna. It being a sunny day, I didn’t much mind getting lost, and wandered past and around the Temple of Faustina with much amusement before finding the Viale delle Belle […]
27 December 2000 – Rome
27 December 2000, around 19.49.
Saw a double herm of Epicurus and Diogenes the Cynic at the Museo Capitolino, which pleased me much in my soul. At the Palazzo dei Conservatori, saw a herm of Alcibiades, which I thought particularly appropriate and a Roman statue of a toga’d man holding a scroll, whose expression was wonderful, though ineffable. Later — […]