Ten years ago in Rome

Tags

Capena, Dr Massimo Buzzanca, Italy, Rome, Wire hair

Today on FB I had a reminder of 10 yrs ago, showing a photo of two little puppies about 6 weeks old.

The 26 April 2009 we drove to Capena which is 30 minutes North of Rome. It is pretty straight forward taking Via Nomentana going North from our house on Via Dei Villini and then joining the SS-4 which is the ancient Via Salaria (Salt Road) on the way we will past some interesting site like the old Rome Airport of the 1920’s Roma-Urbe and then joining the old Via Tiberina at Prima Porta and going North still until the round about second exit and Capena is just further down the road. At this point we are in the countryside and it is green and dotted with nice houses.  Our destination was the farm of Dr Massimo Buzzanca and his wife Tiziana.

Via Tiberina is a very ancient Roman road from 396 BC and don’t be surprise to see around Settebagni and Capena a lot of prostitutes all decked out sitting on a sofa by the side of the road. We would learn later that a lot of those prostitutes were in fact nuns trying to make ends meet. Many came to Italy from far away impoverished countries and the Cardinal who runs the convents for his National congregations often don’t have the money to supplement all the needs of their priests and nuns, so they get a night job. Pretty amazing because the Vatican does not help them financially. Prostitution is illegal in cities but not on the highway between towns. But I digress…

We had met them some months prior when Nicky and Nora were just a few days old. In Italy when you buy a pet they are microchipped by Law at the point of purchase and this being Italy, the government department responsible for the registration of all animals has forms to fill out and a few months down the road, you will have to go collect the formal registration etc. You cannot name your pet whatever name you choose this is Italy and Style comes into play, by Law letters are assigned to a group of days in the year and so in our case that day the letters were F and E. So Nicky was christened Fantastico Nicky and Nora, Eleonora di Capena.

Nicky and Nora are very different in character, Nicky is a week younger than Nora and he is a show dog by pedigree and family lineage. Nora is a tracking and hunting dog on her family lineage. Meaning that Nora has always been our guard dog and early warning system whereas Nicky is a beach boy loving the sunshine and going through life as if he is on a walkway with lots of paparazzi.

On the drive back, Will sat on the back seat with Nora and Nicky. Nora was nervous about leaving the farm and her relatives whereas Nicky whined non-stop in his little whiny puppy voice. We discovered quickly that we could not take them together to the Vet clinic. We could walk them together in Rome but once in Canada that became impossible.

Imagine 10 years already, how time flies.

This photo was taken in our den at home on Via dei Villini. Nicky is on the left. They do not have their signature collars yet sent to us as a gift by our friend Cecilia H.

 

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Happy Birthday!

Tags

Birthday, Capena, dachshunds, Rome, Via dei Villini

This week marks the 10th Birthday of Nicky and Nora, born in Capena, Italia in Febbraio   2009. Capena is a little town famous for a place of exile where the great Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote letters on Friendship and Old age in 58 BC. It is also the area where Livia wife of Augustus lived in old age in her great palace.

Nora was born 5 days before Nicky and they both have different sets of parents.  Nora comes from a line of European champion hunting/tracking dachshunds and Nicky from a line of champion show dogs like his father.

Here is Will in February 2009 in Capena in the room where they were born at the house of Dr Massimo and his wife Tiziana. See how small they both are, their eyes are still closed.

We saw them at 10 days and they came to live with us at 7 weeks. As we drove back into the City, Nicky was in the back of the car with Will and Nora and he was whimpering all the way.

They lived the first 2 years of their lives in Rome on Via dei Villini and then immigrated to Canada when we left.

Nicky on the sofa in our den at home in Rome

Nicky at 2 in the morning Sun on Via Dei Villini

Nora 

Nora in Ottawa, always keeping an eye out, just watching

Left to right, Nicky and Nora on the sofa

 

Left to right Nora and Nicky 

Reading again

Tags

Acadia, Faragher, Josephus, Kneale, Maritime, Palestine, Rome

Well I have been reading some more, reading usually in the evening before bedtime or until Morpheus comes to take me to the land of dreams. Lately I have been reading the Essential Works of Josephus compiled by Paul Maier.

Titus Flavius Josephus born Yosef ben Matityahu יוסף בן מתתיהו‬, was a first-century Roman-Jewish scholar, historian, born in 37 CE in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of  priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.

He initially fought against the Romans during the First Roman-Jewish War as head of Jewish forces in Galilee, until surrendering in 67 CE to Roman Forces led by Vespasian after the six-week siege of Jotapata. Josephus claimed the Jewish Messianic Prophecies that initiated the First Roman-Jewish War made reference to Vespasian becoming Emperor of Rome and founding the Flavian Dynasty. In response Vespasian being superstitious  decided to keep Josephus as a slave and presumably interpreter. After Vespasian became Emperor in 69 CE, he granted Josephus his freedom, at which time Josephus assumed the emperor’s family name of Flavius and lived with them on the Palatine.

Flavius Josephus having defected to the Roman side and was granted Roman Citizenship. He became an advisor and friend of Vespasian’s son Titus, later Emperor, serving as his translator when Titus led the Siege of Jerusalem. Since the siege proved ineffective at stopping the Jewish revolt, the city’s destruction and the looting and destruction of Herod’s Temple (Second Temple) soon followed.

Josephus recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the first century CE and the First Jewish–Roman War (66-70 CE), including the Siege of Masada. His books provide valuable insight into first century Judaism and the background of early Christianity.

The works on Jewish history presents God or Yawveh יהוה as a vengeful god who thinks nothing of ordering the slaughter of entire cities over and over again simply to let his people win. His people turn against Yawveh many times but he is willing to forgive and forget if they do his bidding, more conquest and more killing. He always rewards his male followers by giving them fertile wives bearing many sons. Reading this reminded me of the book by José Saramago, The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, in this book Saramago present Yawveh has a rich Jewish merchant who is quite willing to do anything to get his way, unscrupulous and sadistic.

Josephus is interesting to read because it is the only account of that period to survive and can be used to compared to what you read in the Old Testament and the Gospels. Josephus wrote for his patrons the Flavian in Rome presenting their point of view.

The other book I read was a history of Rome in 7 sackings by Matthew Kneale. It is a different approach since it speaks directly of the ups and downs of Rome as a city as invaders come and go, from the first in July 387 BCE when the young city became embroiled in a conflict with a band of Gallic Celts led by the warlord Brennus to the last being the Nazis occupation in 1943-44.  Lots of details on daily life of Romans through the ages and what life in the city was like.

I am now reading a book I picked up during our trip this September in Nova Scotia entitled A great and Noble Scheme, the tragic history of the expulsion of the French Acadians from their homeland by John Mack Faragher a professor at Yale.

The history of the Acadians is one that touches all French speaking Canadian families in one way or another. Though officially the Acadians are forgotten in the history of modern Canada. Their deportation from the region that is today the Maritime Provinces of Canada happened in 1755 at the time this part of the world was still a band of colonies being disputed both by France and Britain, a pawn in Imperial gamesmanship. It is a complicated history yet fascinating to read, a civilian population at the mercy of two great powers who did not think much of the people.  The book is also interesting because Faragher present how France managed or we should say mismanaged its colonies overseas and how Britain was already involved in free market experiment and parliamentary consultation with colonists a concept totally foreign in France and seen as dangerous to Royal authority.

Faragher writes about social mores and how Acadian men often coming to the colonies alone would take native Mikmaw wives and become in the process assimilated into native culture though retaining their European heritage.  Speaking French and integrating Mikmaw words and expression into daily conversation. There was also amongst the Acadians a mix of Protestant Huguenots and Catholics fleeing the wars of religions in Europe, many showed litte religious fervour, everyone was in North America to trade and make a better life than what they left behind in France. On the other hand the social life of the New England Puritans was vastly different, no such mixing of races, lots of religion and horrified curiosity towards these Acadians with whom they did a lucrative commerce between Boston and Port Royal, the Puritans found the Acadian amusing, scandalous and rough.

Faragher’s book does away with the romantic notions and the often partisan presentation in most history books. It brings clarity to a confusing but compelling tale.

Memoria

Tags

2 june, Italy, Rome

On June 2, 1946 Italy became a Republic after a referendum to abolish the Monarchy, King Umberto II of the House of Savoy left for exile in Switzerland where he died in 1983. So today is la Festa della Repubblica Italiana.  An event we witnessed while living in Rome. Highly ceremonial and done well with a great military parade on Via del Foro Romano. The Italians love uniforms and parades and we discovered that the Italian Navy has a cavalry regiment probably the only one in the world. This video is about the ceremony at the Altar to the Nation on Piazza Venezia, the centre of Rome and before the military parade which takes place moments later behind this giant white marble monument amongst the ruins of the Roman Empire. The Ceremony is presided by the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella accompanied by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

Books I am reading

Tags

Cato, philosophy, Republic, Rome, Stoic

Periodically I write about what I am reading. I just finished a biography of Cato by Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, the title is Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato.

Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, commonly known as Cato the Younger to distinguish him from his great-grandfather, was a statesman in the late Roman Republic, and a follower of the Stoic philosophy. Born in Rome in 95 BC and died by suicide in 46 BC in Utica, Tunisia.

He was the last of the Republicans, defending the old Roman Republic against the attempts by people like Pompey the Great and Julius Cesar to impose a dictatorship. To note that Pompey became the enemy of Julius Cesar and was assassinated by the men of the Pharaoh of Egypt, brother of Cleopatra and Julius Cesar himself would be assassinated in 44 BC while attending a sitting of the Senate of Rome. His death will open up the flood gates of a long Civil War amongst the Senate class which will engulf the 1% in massive killings largely amongst themselves only to see the end of the Republic with the death of Cicero in 43 BC and the rise to power of Octavian Augustus the nephew and adopted son of Julius Cesar become the first Emperor of Rome or Princeps as his office was known.

The book is about Cato’s life and what a dangerous life he led from childhood in what was a very brutish Rome. We have to remember that the nice filters of Judeo-Christian morality did not exist, Romans had very different values and culture and their own morality was based on myths and superstition on the survival of Rome as ruler of the known world.  The constitution of the republic embodied term limits; separation of powers; checks and balances; due process; habeas corpus; the rule of law; individual rights; and elected, representative legislative bodies, including the famous Senate. All of this was hanging by a thread in the first century BC.

Before the age of 30, Cato had become a supremely disciplined individual, a devotee of Stoicism in every respect. He commanded a legion in Macedon and won immense loyalty and respect from the soldiers for the example he set, living and laboring no differently from day to day than he required of his men. He first won election to public office (to the post of quaestor, supervising financial and budgetary matters for the state) in 65 BC and quickly earned a reputation as scrupulously meticulous and uncompromisingly honest. He went out of his way to hold previous quaestors accountable for their dishonesty and misappropriation of funds, which he himself uncovered.

Later he served in the Roman Senate, where he never missed a session and criticized other senators who did. Through his superb oratory in public and deft maneuverings in private, he worked tirelessly to restore fealty to the ideals of the fading Republic.

It was Cato’s fierce and relentless opposition to Julius Caesar that made him most remarkable. He saw in the ambitious, power-hungry general a mortal threat to the republic and tried to block his every move. He filibustered for hours on end to prevent a vote on Caesar’s bid to attain Rome’s highest office, the consulship. Caesar eventually got the job, but while in office, Cato vexed him more than any other senator. Caesar even ordered Cato dragged from the Senate in the middle of one of his orations, whereupon another senator declared, according to historian Cassius Dio, that he “would rather be in jail with Cato than in the Senate with Caesar.”

Cato stood in the way of Caesar’s ambitious agenda but couldn’t prevent his postconsulship appointment as a provincial governor. In that post, Caesar mustered his forces for an assault on the very republic he had governed as a consul. In 49 BC, he famously crossed the Rubicon River and headed for Rome to seize power.

As a sign of strength and magnanimity, Caesar might have pardoned his old foe. Some contemporaries and present-day historians believe that was, in fact, Caesar’s intent and would have been a politically smart thing to do. Quoting again from Goodman and Soni:

But Cato would not give Caesar the gift of his silence; he had scripted his own scene. He would not recognize a tyrant’s legitimacy by accepting his power to save. As Cato saw it, Caesar broke the law even in offering pardons, because he offered them on no authority but his own. To accept forgiveness would be conceding Caesar’s right to forgive, and Cato would not concede that.

So in April 46 BC in Utica, using his own sword to do the deed, Cato committed suicide rather than live under the thumb of the man whose power lust was about to extinguish the old republic. While Cato lived, “every Roman who feared that the traditional virtues were guttering out, who saw the state’s crisis as a moral crisis — as the product of terrifyingly modern avarice or ambition — looked, in time, to Cato.”

Putting ambition in the service of principle instead of one’s own glory or power or wealth: now that’s a virtue to which every man and woman in public office — in any walk of life, for that matter — should aspire today.

A very good book on Cato, ambition in the service of principle.

 

The controversy over a tree

Tags

Christmas tree, Piazza Venezia, Rome, Vatican

With the Christmas Season all manners of public Xmas trees are going up in various cities. Some cities go for the big display and a giant tree with loads of lights strategically placed as a symbol of the City, a kind of tourism promotion.

This week in Rome the giant Xmas trees have been unveiled, one at the central Train Station TERMINI by Piazza della Repubblica and another one in the centre of the City at Piazza Venezia. In years past the tree at Piazza Venezia which is located in front of the Altar to the nation was a natural tree, this year it is a metal contraption looking like a big cone. It did not take long for people to criticize the decision of the city, newspapers carried editorials and reporting. In Rome everything is about style and look, it is so important to the Romans.

Xmas tree at the entrance of the Termini Train Station, this one is liked by many, not a natural tree but looks more traditional.

Here is the natural tree at Piazza Venezia in 2016.

Here is the 2017 version of the Xmas tree at Piazza Venezia in front of the Altar to the Nation. It does look like a giant metallic snow cone. Few like it, not stylish and not traditional. After all this is the central piazza of the city, who could be so gauche as to make this choice. You can see how big it is if you look at the people. I really don’t like it much.

Now across the Tiber river on the Vatican hill in the Papal State of the Holy See in Piazza San Pietro in front of the basilica is the Roman Catholic Church’s version of their annual Christmas tree unveiled tonight. For the occasion the bells of St-Peter peal and the Papal band plays military marches, there is usually a pretty good crowd. The ceremony of the unveiling is presided by Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, Governor of the City State of the Vatican.

The tree this year is a gift of the Archdiocese of Elk in Poland.

A more dramatic shot from the colonnade of Bernini looking into the Piazza.

Photo

Tags

Bernini, Borromini, Canadian Club of Rome, Hotel, luxury, Rome

Last week i received the newsletter of the Canadian Club of Rome, a few years ago while living in Rome, I was the V.P. of the Club and we organized quite a few nice events. One being the beginning of the Season usually in September after the Summer vacations when everyone returns to Rome. Usually it was a cocktail party in a out of the ordinary place, that is not difficult to find in Rome or Italy for that matter.

This year the opening party is at a new hotel on Piazza Navona, the old palace known as Palazzo Pamphilj was once the home of the Princely Pamphilj family around 1644. It has become the Eitch Borromini Hotel.

The hotel seen here next to the Church of St-Agnes in Agony is located on Piazza Navona which was the former stadium built by Emperor Domitian for chariot races which explains the design of the piazza to this day. Originally this palace was a college built by Cardinal Pamphilj then when he was elected Pope in 1644 taking the name of Innocent X he converted the college into a palace for his family, every Pontiff did that at the time, they would reside at the Lateran Palace seat of the Bishop of Rome but have another Palace built to show off the grandeur and prestige of his own family. It was called a lay palace and because this was the Baroque era, the Age of Princes, would be decorated by the finest artist of the time in this case Francesco Borromini a Swiss from the Ticino. The Church of St-Agnes in Agony was the private chapel of the Pamphilj family and Pope Innocent X did not want you to forget whose palace it was, asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to help him redecorate and re-structure Piazza Navona in what you see today with the enormous Egyptian obelisk standing above the Four Rivers fountain ( Nile, Danube, Ganges, Rio de la Plata) to the greater glory of his family and the Universal Catholic Church, an age of excess but also of art and refinement. Today the Pamphilj family live in one of their other far larger palace on Piazza Venezia and Prince Jonathan Doria-Pamphilj has opened his family’s art gallery to the public. It is composed of treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque era by of course the greatest artists of the time.

Imagine having an elegant lunch on the rooftop of the Palace with this view.  The dome you see in this pictures is San Andrea della Valle, known as Tosca’s Church because of its association with the Opera by Puccini. Brings back lots of memories.

 

 

ROMA

Tags

Italy, life, memory, Rome

To think I lived in that fantastic city once not so long ago. Today September 2, the weather is sunny and 26C. Though this Summer has been far too dry and created a water emergency in the City. The images I recognize as the old places where I lived, funny to see those images as a resident of the City instead of a visitor, there is so much more to remember. Many of the shots at the beginning are of early morning at sunrise when there is no traffic and no one about.

 

2 June

Tags

Canada., Elizabeth II, Italy, June, Louis XIV, Republic, Rome

Today is June 2, in Italy it is the Anniversary of the Italian Republic 2 June 1946 when by referendum the monarchy was replaced by a Republican system. Festa della Repubblica Italiana.

The giant pine cone from the Villa of Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli, seen here in the courtyard of the Vatican Museum.

Our old neighbourhood in Rome with its beautiful gardens

June 2, 1953 is also the day Elizabeth II became Queen. She is now the longest serving monarch in British History, longer than Victoria. Elizabeth II celebrates in 2017 her Sapphire Jubilee. In Canada the only other monarch to have reigned longer is King Louis XIV a total of 72 years.

Photo of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II taken on her Coronation day 2 June 1953.

Architecture

Tags

Basilica, Cornelia, Italy, Rome, St-Peter, Vatican

There is a lot of beautiful architecture in this world, old and modern and then you get the crap that developers impose to make a fast buck by proposing buildings designed by a computer program. Here is one example of decorative architecture which followed a plan, an idea and involved the beauty of art in the Baroque Era.

View of the bronze baldacchino of the Papal Altar in St-Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The bronze came from the coffered ceiling of the pantheon. Designed and built by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) who was chief architect and decorator of the Basilica with his arch competitor Francesco Boromini.

Truly an impressive monument amongst many in St-Peter. The Basilica is probably the least used church in all of Christendom, used only for Papal Masses and State occasions at the Holy See. On most days it is seen by thousands of tourists and does have the feel of a museum.

The bronze and gilded baldachin was the first of Bernini’s works to combine sculpture and architecture and represents an important development in Baroque church interior design and furnishing. The canopy rests upon four helical columns each of which stands on a high marble plinth. The columns support a cornice which curves inwards in the middle of each side. Above this, four twice life size angels stand at the corners behind whom four large volutes rise up to a second smaller cornice which in turn supports the gilded cross on a sphere, a symbol of the world redeemed by Christianity.

The four columns are 20 metres or 66 feet high. From the cornice hangs a bronze semblance of the scalloped and tasselled border that typically trimmed the papal baldacchino. The structure is decorated with detailed motifs including heraldic emblems of the Barberini family (Pope Urban VIII was born Maffeo Barberini) such as bees and laurel leaves.

There are many things to see inside St-Peter’s Basilica but this one element is well worth looking at in detail. The other part of the Basilica is the ruins of the original St-Peter’s from the fourth century immediately beneath the Papal Altar and the Via Cornelia Roman cemetery which dates backs to Republican times. Entrance to that site is by reservation only on specific days. A fascinating place and the highlight of any visit to Rome.