Journal of Italy Tour

Evansville Philharmonic Chorus

June 1st through 9th, 2002

By David Scott Coker

INTRODUCTION

           In the early months of 2001, the leadership of the Evansville Philharmonic Chorus proposed a nine-day tour for chorus members, spouses and friends to Italy.   The tour package was being offered at a relatively modest cost to chorus members and was similar to several others that had been taken by chorus participant in previous years.   Reservations and payments for the tour were made in installments during several months throughout 2001 so more of us could afford to pay for the tour. 

            At the time I was quite skeptical of my ability to afford the tour but was eventually able to pull together the money for the  installment payments for the tour.  

            During October, 2001, I met Janene Greene,  who at the time was working as an assessment field case worker for Dulous Ministries which administers the Healthy Families program in Princeton,  Indiana.  We proceeded to fall in love and became quite close. 

            As the date of the tour approached, it was with deep regret that I left Evansville the first week of June, 2002 and was unable to have Janene accompany me on the tour.   A couple of weeks prior to the trip, she purchased a small white hard-bound journal book and gave it to me.   It is inscribed,  "To my love, Always in my heart.  Have a wonderful trip to Italy,   Janene."

    This journal, therefore, is dedicated to Janene Rose Enochs Greene,  with all my special love,  whose life has brought  new meaning to mine and touched my life indelibly.

*       *      *  

June 1, 2002, Louisville Airport, 1:28 p.m.

             It is now 2:00 p.m. and we are awaiting departure for Detroit in about 45 minutes. On the bus ride over here I chatted with Darla Olberdink, a retired school teacher who taught David Eissler when he was a student at North High School. Everyone on the bus and here in the airport are simply giddy -- like a bunch of little children.

            On the way over here we were treated to some orientation remarks from Al and Kitty Salvia, Dan Scavone, a retired professor at U.S.I. who possesses vast knowledge of Italian history, and Chorus President Phil Fassett who was responsible for putting together much of the tour with the Intropa people who made many of the arrangements.

            Upon arriving at the Northwest ticket counter we stood in line for almost 45 minutes waiting for a couple with restless children clear the ticketing counter. There were apparently problems with their reservations which required keeping what looked to be several hundred people in line waiting. Finally, another agent directed us to go around the counter to move forward in the process toward the first of many security checkpoints.

            I was randomly selected by the authorities to have my bag searched. The Sky Marshals with their badges gleaming were very courteous about the whole ordeal but it was a bit invasive and somewhat of a nuisance. I suppose I should not feel too bad, Al and Kitty had their baggage searched as well and Kitty is carrying her violin!

            Our first segment goes to Detroit via DC-9 and then we transfer to a big Northwest DC-10 for the trans-oceanic portion of our excursion.

June 1, 2002, Detroit International Airport, 4:43 p.m.

    Relatively uneventful flight although getting to the plane proved to be a bit of a chore. My checked baggage was searched at the counter and then after I passed through the metal detector and my carry-on bag was X-rayed, my bag was physically opened and searched after I was assigned a boarding pass for my segment to Rome. Again, Alfred and Kitty went through the same ordeal so I did not feel too badly. Upon boarding the plane I asked Alfred "How does one say ‘slow boil' in Italian?"

    I am starting to get very tired as I did not sleep on the first leg of this journey. I spent much of the time looking out the window at the beautiful green and brown expanses of planted row crops and tiny rural villages throughout Northern Indiana. Our plane leaves at 5:25 p.m. -- this leg we will get a meal and drinks but we will not be able to move much for over 8 hours. It is a DC-10, don't guess the seats will be any bigger than the DC-9 we just left.

June 2, 2002, 3:15 a.m. Rome time

Somewhere over the North Atlantic

        We just ate our on-board meal and the food was great! Some of the best airline food I have ever eaten -- everything was hot and fresh. I ate chicken, new potatoes in a sauce and green beans, garden salad, cheese and crackers, several hot rolls and apple cake for dessert. James Gish, my seatmate, ate a pasta concoction that looked pretty good.

        The aircraft cabin has a big screen at the front that has a moving map on it showing flight progress of the plane over a colored globe. This is interspersed with charts which show the current speed, altitude, distance traveled and time remaining in the flight. We are presently over St. John's Island in the Atlantic, just East of Nova Scotia. The screen says we are traveling at 621 mph ground speed at over 41,000 feet and are approximately 2,974 miles from Rome -- still over six hours away. When we started in Detroit it was something like a 7,800 mile journey.

           It has been dark for over two hours. Earlier, during and just after dinner the plane was one huge party! But it has calmed down quite a bit as we are starting to experience some turbulence.

         This seems like a fairly stable airframe despite all the buffeting about in all of this chop. I am very tired but cannot sleep due to the roar of the engines. I reset my wristwatch several hours ago for Rome time.

            Everybody is having one hell of a lot of fun.

Rome

In route to downtown Rome

June 2, 2002, 12:00 p.m. noon

            About an hour ago we arrived at the Hotel Villa San Guisto on the Via Del Podere Di San Giusto. This is located northwest of central Rome near what amounts to their beltway. It is clean, the water is OK to drink and the room does have towels and wash cloths contrary to what the Intropa people told us during our orientation sessions. I went upstairs to my room, # 305, on the second floor. It was a reasonable sized room with two single beds and a desk. The shower works well but it does leak all over the floor. I took a shower and changed clothes for the coming day.

            I discovered that a pen had leaked in the corner of the pocket of my new shirt -- I have it soaking in the sink. We are taking the bus as I write this to go downtown to a fashionable district near what is called the Spanish Steps. Years ago, apparently many British and American expatriate literary figures gravitated to this region of Rome during the 1800s. I was later to learn that many famous writers from various European countries lived in this region for a time during their lives.

Rome, In route to Hotel, June 2, 2002, 5:20 p.m.

            Our entire group that flew in from Louisville (another group is flying in from St. Louis laterthis evening) took the tour bus from the hotel to the Cornelia subway stop and was told by the tour guides that our off-loading point was a taxi cab stand. Later, we were to learn that since this was Sunday, cabs in this part of the city were few and far between.

            We were all supposed to take the subway to the Flamino subway exit, however, Mary Sowders, her brother Steven Eckman, Sharon Waltrip and I got separated from the rest of the group by getting on the platform for trains going in the wrong direction. At the next stop we transferred to the correct train, and soon caught up with the rest in our group on the way to the Piazza del Popolo, several blocks North of some of the main historical attractions of downtown Rome.

            They were huddled around one of over a dozen Egyptian obelisks one finds around the city. These ancient monuments were looted from the African cradle of civilization during the first century B.C. and transported by galleys over the 2,000-mile journey to decorate the many piazzas located all over the ancient "City of Light. This particular obelisk was taken from Heliopolis in lower Egypt during the reign of Caesar Augustus, about the time of the birth of Christ.

                                                                                                                            The Heliopolis Obelisk on the Piazza Popolo

 Enormous in stature and usually adorned with cast bronze crosses at the very top -- the decorative additions seem a bit out of place juxtaposed against the more ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic carvings on the faces of the enormous carved monument.

            Looking toward the southern edge of this large piazza, I snapped a picture of the almost identical domes of Santa Maria di Miracola and Santa Maria di Montesanto, two churches which flank the Via del Corso at the end of the piazza.

                                                                                                                    Santa Maria dei Miracola and Santa Maria di Montesanto

                                                                                                                                              The "Twin Churches"

                Instead of proceeding directly to the Spanish Steps, the four of us walked straight down the Via del Corso, a street which is primary an upscale shopping area flanked by dark little side streets with sidewalk cafes and the entrances to dark Trattorias. There are numerous historical churches along this street which joins the northern aspect of the Piazza Venezia.

                I remember looking up on the side of one of the buildings we passed and discovered an unlikely symbolic reference to an interesting period of Italian history -- the double-headed eagle symbolic of the Hapsburg dynasty.

                Medieval history teaches us that at one point during the 1300s for a time the Papacy was moved to the south of France at Avignon. Italy was a war-torn mess with wealthy families paying for standing armies. Henry of Luxemburg was destined to become the new Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of all of Italy.

                   Henry became quite popular in certain circles and was supported by no less a passionate loyalists as Dante Algeheri who attempted to argue his case to many princes and political leaders at the time.

                Henry not only received the Lombard crown (northern Italy) at Milan but also the Italian imperial crown in Rome. Soon, turning his eye toward the King of Naples the king contemplated a campaign towards the southern capital to unify all of Italy. But it simply was not to be. Henry died in Siena in 1313 attempting to raise an army.

            It's hard to imagine that this very brief footnote of Italian history can still be symbolically memorialized on the side of a building in downtown Rome -- but there you are!

            Diverting our walk for a moment, I stopped to take a picture of an ancient, dark gray row of columns that were pock marked, looking rather like they had once been the sight of a vicious machine gun battle.

                                                                                                                            Columns from the Temple of Hadrian

This structure, just to the left of the street we were on I later learned was the Temple of Hadrian on the Piazza de Petra.

            As the steep elevation of the street leveled out, we passed through the Piazza Venezia in front of the Victor Emanuel Memorial and proceeded around the right hand side of the monument. We were now approaching the ancient portion of the city.    We passed the Piazza de Campedoglio on one of the prominent seven hills of Rome, and finally arrived at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, an ancient church originally built in the 6th century but destroyed and rebuilt several times.

        This place houses the Bocca della Verita – the "Mouth of Truth" sculpture in the entrance foyer of the building (Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn filmed a scene in Roman Holiday at this location).

                                                                                                                      The intrepid tourist gaging the Bocca della Verita

There is an ancient story extending from medieval times  -- apparently a priest kept a scorpion in the mouth of the carved structure to sting the hands of anyone caught lying. Other legends have it that money offerings were placed inside the mouth of this enormous carved stone disc to support the church.

        We stopped short of actually entering the ancient Forum area further south but we could see where it was from the front of this little church. We decided to proceed back the way we came. I noticed on the other side of the street that scaffolding had been erected and there was some restoration work being performed on the front of an enormous building.

                Walking back up the hill toward the taxi stand at the Cornelia station, we passed the Victor Emmanuel II Memorial, a monumental structure dedicated to the man responsible for first unifying all of Italy in 1860s. This monument covers most of the Campagdolio, formerly one of the most sacred spots in all of ancient Rome.

                                    Memorial to Vittorio Emmanuel II

        We stopped for a drink in the shaded park across the street. Steve said that we would be returning to these streets as a portion of our guided tour of Rome within the next two days.

            Proceeding North along approximately the same route we took into the city, it was a very long walk to the subway stop which took us back to the taxi stand from whence we came. We began seeing several taxis zooming past us on their way back to the hotel. It was a little hard to find an empty cab as this was Sunday afternoon and due to a patriotic parade commemorating the Italian liberation from the Nazis in World War II earlier in the day, those that were available were quickly called for by waiting passengers. We finally found one which cost us 9.75 Euros for the return trip.

            When we arrived back at the hotel, we learned that another group comprised of Darla Olberding, June Taylor, Mike and Elaine Musgrave had a strange and somewhat unnerving comeuppance -- when they showed the cab driver the address of the hotel in which we were staying, he politely told them to get out of the cab as he did not know where the hotel was located! He assured them they would soon find another, more knowledgeable driver which they did.

            We ate a hearty dinner of baked chicken, braised potatoes, pasta and flan for dessert. The wine flowed freely and many in our party celebrated our first night in country.

June 2, 2002, Rome, Hotel Villa de San Guista, 7:55 a.m.

            Woke up at 6:45 with no wake up call. Late last night I learned that all of the channels on the television in this hotel were in Italian and had trouble getting the television to turn on and off. 

            I had a little trouble getting to sleep last night as the crew downstairs were quite loud and I could hear them through the balcony door in my room (the veranda of the hotel was right below my balcony).

            Later, there was a hotel room occupant directly below me who snored very loudly with the television on all night long. The walls and floors of this building are quite substandard compared with American building construction -- there is apparently no insulation between floors and/or walls of this building as would have been required by U. S. building codes.

            We have a full day of sight seeing planned for today, including visits to the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel.

June 2, 2002, Rome, Hotel Villa de San Guista, 10:35 p.m.

            My legs are so sore from walking so many miles and climbing so many steps -- I hope I can stay awake to finish this journal entry.

            The day began with a long, circuitous bus ride through intense city traffic -- all the notorious stories one hears about the frenetic nature of traffic in Rome are absolutely correct. At times it reminds me of traffic in Washington, D. C. although there is a greater diversity of vehicles negotiating the tiny streets here. Buses, trucks, small cars of every nationality except the U.S., the new "SMART" cars which are not available in the U.S. (seems they might be popular with college students), motorcycles, and two-cycle scooters of every size and description are darting everywhere, in and out of lanes regardless of the oncoming hazards. It is a miracle there are not more traffic fatalities but the average Italian motorist seems rather oblivious to it all; most are mainly preoccupied with his or her destination and the next tiny space into which to shoehorn their vehicle.

        We entered the ancient Vatican wall through the Porta Portese, an arched portal on the southeastern aspect of this 108 acre state -- the smallest independent nation on earth. The bricks in this wall were apparently laid by the Romans almost two thousand years ago. The bus dropped us off and it was a brief walk through a shopping district before we found our first attraction, Trevi Fountain in a piazza with the same name.

                                                                                                                                              Trevi Fountain

It is located in a small, public opening in the crowded business district. Hemmed in by boutiques, antique stores, cafes and crowded by throngs of nicely-dressed Italians rushing to get to work on time, the fountain is not operating and currently drained of water to remove the coins. Regardless, I tossed a few small coins in for good luck and with the hope of returning to this place again one day.

        We were given a few minutes to get a cup of coffee or do some very quick shopping before we were to move on to our first major building attraction, the Pantheon, the oldest standing domed structure in Rome.

    This was one of the ancient buildings I was most looking forward to seeing. An older temple was originally built on this sight by Agrippa in 27 B.C. but what we now see was rebuilt in modified Corinthian style by edict of the Roman Emperor Hadrian during his reign from 117 until 138 A.D. Originally a vaulted-roofed temple dedicated to all of the Roman gods and goddesses (hence the name Pan-theon, to all of the Gods), this building is 142 feet tall and 142 feet across --

                                                                                                                               Hadrian's Pantheon

a perfect sphere inside a cylinder. It has a relatively small, 18-foot oculus at the apex of the dome which allows a circle of light to shine down upon the interior walls and marble floor of the structure. It is said you can tell time from the position of the light circle inside this enormous domed expanse.

        About 125 years ago it was discovered that Raphael's tomb was discovered here (some admirers of his work still bring flowers) as are those of King Victor Emmanuel II and his immediate successor, Umberto I.

        In the year 610 A.D. this edifice was consecrated as a Roman Catholic Church (what major building wasn't?) and has since been called the Santa Maria della Rotunda. But my preference would be to still think of it as an ancient Roman temple in spite of all the statues of apostles within the alcoves above us.

        After a brief walk-through, we were directed by our guides to the Campo de' Fiore, a huge open public square surrounded by bars, restaurants, clothing stores and other buildings. In the center of this square there is a huge carved fountain with an enormous Egyptian obelisk in the center of it.   -- I took a picture.

                                                                                                                 Obelisk fountain in front of the Pantheon

            In a few minutes I saw Kitty Savia along with Liz Mumford, Lynn Carrie and Deb Ballard sitting on a bench eating gelatoes they had just bought at a nearby café. I had to have a picture of them as well.

                                                                                                                         Gelato -- Breakfast of Champions!

    From this point we proceeded North to a long street leading up to a bridge across the Tiber River, the Ponte Saint Angelo. At the very end of this beautiful bridge adorned with numerous carved statues (a dance taking place on some barges docked beneath this bridge were  used by Billy Wilder to film a memorable escape scene in the movie Roman Holiday) stands a huge drum-shaped building with crenellated towers called the Castel Saint Angelo.

                                                                                  The Castel di Saint Angelo from the other side of the bridge across the Tiber River

        This huge structure was originally a memorial tomb also built by Hadrian for himself when he was still alive.  We were later to learn that many of the structures both in this part of Rome as well as in the Forum area South of our current position were the work of this most prolific Roman emperor.  He apparently traveled all over the Roman empire building bridges, roads and all sorts of monumental structures, including El Djem, a 45,000 seat amphitheater in Tunisia, a enormous temple to Zeus in Athens and a Roman spa in Bath, England. "Hadrian's wall," built in 122 A.D., is an enormous 74-mile long fortified structure which extends from coast to coast near the present Scottish-English border through the hilly country of Northumberland. To thwart the advances of the barbaric Celt and Pict tribes of the northern reaches of the peninsula, the wall was built in less than three years by three Roman legions of some 5,000 men. It is frequently compared to the Great Wall of China which was built much later.

        The more I learn about him the more I think he would have been fun to hang out with for a while -- that is if you could get beyond his relationship with Antonious, his young lover for several years of his life.

        Alfred told us that this famous round structure is the building from which the title character Tosca in the opera by Giacomo Puccini plunged from the top to her death at the end of Act Three. It is hard to imagine anyone ever surviving a fall from that height. The building looks much more like an ancient Roman fortress than a modern-day Catholic church.

        To our immediate left from this position between the bridge and the medieval towers, a little over a mile away we could see the enormous dome of Saint Peter's Basilica towering over all the other buildings of the Vatican complex. I snapped a quick picture showing the Tiber river in the foreground with St. Peter's on the horizon.

                                                                                      St. Peters from the railing of the Ponte Saint Angelo. Hadrian's Tomb is on the far right.

We would soon be walking up that way but first there was a short break for lunch.

        We ate at a little cafeteria-style restaurant on two levels on the Via Christens, a large street with many art galleries, restaurants and more fashion shops. I had turkey slices, fresh tomatoes, eggplant maranara, spinach and fresh bread. Earlier in the day during a break in the guided tour I ate my first gelato, a very smooth, rich, creamy ice cream treat unique to Italy. It is very high in butter fat and quite yummy.

        After lunch I bought a plastic folding map of Rome and we proceeded up the same street to the entrance of the Vatican museum on the far north side of the building complex surrounding Saint Peter's.

                                                                               Bernini's Colonnade, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and built from 1656 until 1667

 One must enter the museum on this side to gain access to the Sistine Chapel. We were given tickets by the tour operators, and proceeded to a small courtyard surrounded by figure statues on pedestals near an adjacent wall adjoining this small enclosed green space. The tour guide talked us through the history of Bramante's Belvedere Corridor which opens onto the Niccione della Pigna  (large niche of the Pine Cone)  which surrounds a huge bronze carving which was

                                                                                                 The Pine Cone and Peacock Fountain of Bramante's Belvedere Corridor

originally part of an ancient Roman fountain from the first or second century A.D.  On either side are copies of two bronze peacocks which date from the time of Hadrian -- the originals are in the Braccio Nuovo gallery which we did not visit.

        In the center of this statuary park is an enormous, shiny modern globe with a huge gash carved into the side conceived by Italian sculptor Arnoldo Pomoder in 1990.

                                                                                                                             Another view of the Belvedere Corridor

Karen Yancey remarked that this looked like a bronze facsimile of the partially destroyed Death Star space ship from the original Star Wars trilogy. I have to agree that it looks oddly out of place amidst all the antiquities surrounding the outer walkways of this courtyard.

        We re-entered the building complex and were given instructions from a Vatican employee on viewing the Sistine Chapel. I bought a beautifully illustrated book about the Vatican City from a vendor located just outside the next stop in our journey.

    We proceeded down the long corridor called the Gallery of Maps, an indoor walkway with many windows between the Tower of Winds and another building leading to the entrance to the Sistine Chapel. The gallery of the even larger Vatican library has a very open feeling with lots of light inside showing to good affect the intricate frescoes, statues, amphora on pedestals, marble floors and mosaics which adorn the walls between the maps. In all there are some 40 maps reproduced from cartoons by the astronomer Ignazio Danti. The intricate stucco and fresco decorations on the ceiling of this long hallway were executed in 1583 by a group of artists working under the direction of Cesare Nebbia and Girolamo Musiano.

        Alfred directed our attention to one of the hand-painted maps and showed us the small island where some of his relatives live. These were apparently some of the most detailed maps in the entire civilized world during the late-1500s and clerics and monks from distant lands would frequently make pilgrimages to Rome to copy the maps in this gallery for use by the residents of their home monasteries.

        Upon entering Cappella Sistina, this modest-sized, dimly-lit chapel, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Tears poured from my eyes as I looked at Michelangelo's masterpiece. Not only did he paint the vaulted ceiling, but also all of the corbels and lunettes which flank the massive panels in the center. After finishing this portion of the room, the master was yet again commissioned by Pope Julius II to complete the work by painting the vertical surface behind the alter in similar style -- the massive Last Judgement of Mankind fresco containing over 400 human figures in all. The entire work took over four years to complete from May, 1508 until November,1512.

        While it is a relatively small holy space compared with others I have seen, the vaulted ceiling soars to over 60 feet above the marble floor -- an even greater tribute to the scaffolding skills of the master craftsman.

        A controversial restoration of this room was performed in 1980 when some serious problems were identified with the glue which had been systematically applied to the surface of the frescoes over the centuries. The glue, made out of animal proteins, had darkened with age.

        Also, the lamp black and candle soot from years of use had deposited on the surfaces over the hundreds of years. They also used the glue to hide numerous deposits of salt efflorescence produced from the infiltration of rain water that evaporated on the plaster surfaces over the centuries.

        All of this old glue was removed using a weak solution of ammonia bicarbonate, followed by sodium bicarbonate and several other chemicals the colors were painstakingly reapplied to mimic the artists true brush strokes.

        The colors today are very bright and true -- aptly preserved for even more swarming tourists during the next 400 years!

    As I told several people before I left, I took along my silly little paint hat that I used to wear when I restored houses back in D.C. many years ago -- having painted a few restored ceilings in my time, I felt I owed the old master at least that much! Then, before we went inside the chapel, we were told to remove all head coverings -- so I carried it with me into the chapel.

    After leaving the chapel and proceeding down a narrow staircase to some public restrooms, we proceeded as a group to the main event on the menu of Vatican properties, Basilica de San Pietro --

                                                                                                                                            Basilica di San Pietro

Saint Peter's Cathedral.

    While everything about this building is enormous and magnificent -- the 400-foot dome designed by Michelangelo, the tiny brass votive candle holders, the six-foot tall letters in blue mosaic surrounded by gold which proclaims "Thou Art Peter and Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church" around the inner base of the dome and the sculpture of the Pieta (carved by Michelangelo from 1498 to 1500 from a single block of Carrara marble) just inside the soaring bronze doors -- I was not so emotionally overwhelmed as I was by the incredible beauty of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The smaller chapel excels in color on flat and curved surfaces to impose an awesome impression of the majesty of God and his kingdom. The same affect is attempted in three dimensions within the Grand Nave of the cathedral. In the middle of all this artistic opulence, the bronze Baldachin with the ornate, gilded corkscrew pillars was completed in 1633 by the famous sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini under commission from Pope Urban VIII. 

    It flanks the sacred alter upon which are sanctified the communion bread and wine -- a solid block of white marble consecrated by Clement VIII in 1594, it came from Nerva's Forum in the ancient portion of the city. The affect can be viewed as a bit ponderous and almost overwhelming. How does one pray in this place? There are so many distractions!

    I walked around and looked at every altar, mosaic, carved statue and chapel in an attempt to make a visual memory somewhere in my brain of the entire edifice. I soon discovered that it was impossible -- there was simply too much to see and digest in the short time we had to walk through this enormous holy space.

    After quickly touring the lower portion of the Nave, Alfred took a small group of us up the elevator and some 304 steps (Teresa Cheung counted them) to the cupola on top of the 400-foot dome. From this vantage point I took a series of panoramic pictures all the way around    city and will hopefully have most of Rome on film.

                       Three views from the top of the dome at Saint Peter's Cathedral

    Alfred attempted to point out to Teresa all of the various stands of pine trees which inspired Ottorini Respighi when he composed "The Pines of Rome."

            Climbing up to the top of this place was a feat of considerable physical endurance, but all the while Richard Sidener, one of the older basses in our chorus, stayed with us all the way to the top and back down again. I trust there are others who are much younger who might not make it all the way to the top of this building.

            Since we had all been to the top of the building, it was agreed that we would quickly go to the lower level of the cathedral and see the crypt in which the apostle Peter's remains are buried.

            Although the entire building can be viewed as an architectural memorial to Peter, the Nicchia dei Pallii is the actual memorial to the first father of the church. It is a small, arched, inset alcove carved into a lower wall.

                                                                                              The Crypt of Saint Peter beneath the alter of the Cathedral

It contains a 9th century mosaic of Christ and a small casket in which are stored the white, woolen stoles which are worn by new metropolitan archbishops as soon as they are consecrated.

            Next to Peter's tomb, both in the Vatican grottoes and above in the Basilica itself, are interred the remains of 147 popes including all those who have reigned in this century.

            One would have thought that after a sensory double whammy of this magnitude (back to back Sistine Chapel and Saint Peter's) would be enough for one day -- but a small group of us followed Alfred on to yet another walking adventure of which I will write more in my next installment.

June 4, 2002 Rome, leaving Villa San Giusto, 8:00 a.m.

            We are leaving this terrible hotel -- I am very pleased to be getting away from here! The walls are paper thin and again I could hear snoring and a television left on all night. I got a total of about two hours sleep and I am exhausted.

        The trek with Alfred yesterday was interesting but very tiring. He has a late-in-the-day energy level that is admirable. Those who had just left the front entrances of Saint Peter's assembled outside on the square. A few of us took a drink of the pure water flowing out of a fountain located near the obelisk. It was crystal clear and very cool. We were told that this water proceeds from the nearby mountains through one of the ancient Roman aqueducts that still provides water to the city.

        After our brief rest period we ventured out for a subway ride up to the Church of Santa Maria Concezione Imacolata located on the Via Veneto. This is a rather odd place to be going to so much trouble to see. In the ante-rooms of this church off of a long, rather dark corridor, there were small rooms decorated with various constructions made out of the bones of the deceased Campochin monks. In one of the displays, in the back was a figure of the Grim Reaper himself -- a large cycle in one hand, the scales of justice held in the other -- all fashioned out the ribs, leg and arm bones of Lord knows how many dead monks over the ages.

        Around the edges of some of the displays you can see where vandals have stolen some of the bones -- the empty nails remain which show the outlines of where the pilfered bones were originally located.  This place was macabre -- kind of grotesque actually. All the skulls stacked up on top of one another reminded me of scenes from the Cambodian massacres which took place shortly after the Viet Nam war.

        Soon we were able to proceed to a much more appealing place -- the Piazza Barbarini where one finds the Fountain of Triton, another beautiful creation of the gifted Bernini -- the man whose greatest contribution to the Vatican were the two arched, semi-elliptical colonnades which flank Saint Peter's Square where we had rested just a few minutes ago. The 140 statues of the saints which adorn the roofs of the colonnades were carved by several of Bernini's assistants.

        Triton is a mythological figure -- half man and half fish. Alfred told us that this was one of the fountains which inspired Respighi when he wrote "The Fountains of Rome" in the early years of the last century.  We rested by this beautiful fountain for a few minutes and then proceeded over to the Scalinata di Spagna, the Spanish Steps. 

Proceeding up what is known as the Pincian Hill (one of the highest elevations in the city), this beautiful stairway was built between 1721 and 1725 by Allesandro De Santis and Francisco Specchi. The place takes its name from the Spanish Embassy which used to be located here. Together with the twin bell towers of the Church of the Trinita dei Monti (one of the most familiar  scenes in of all of Rome, the clock in the left tower still keeps accurate time) and the lower piazza and fountain create a very pleasant masterpiece of baroque urban architecture.

            Ironically the church which is so closely associated with the steps below, was originally underwritten by the French crown of Charles VIII in 1495. The church was destroyed during the French Revolution and then rebuilt by Louis XVIII of France in 1816. For many years this region became the residence and gathering place of many expatriate writer and romantics from other

                                                                                                                    The festive and colorful Spanish Steps

countries -- such famous literary figures as Stendahl, Goethe, Lord Byron, Shelley and Keats all lived in this area at one time or another. When Charles Dickens visited Rome, he reported that the Spanish Steps "were the meeting place for artists'  models, who would dress in colorful costumes, hoping to catch the eye of a wealthy artist," -- must have been a rather heady place at the time!

        Many years later under much darker circumstances, a poignant story about this area is recorded in one of my Time-Life books about the Italian campaign during World War II.  At 9:00 p.m on June 4, 1944 a young woman named Vera Signorelli Cacciatore witnessed the last of the German troops that had occupied Rome evacuating the town in a great hurry. The moon was full and the evening was quite warm. Suddenly a Jeep full of American G.I.s drove up and one soldier shot some windows out of the house next door to announce their arrival to any  potential Germans lingering in the area. For about a half an hour all was quiet, when suddenly someone said "The Americans are coming!" Soon, the Spanish Steps and the piazza below was filled with war-weary troops who marched into the city like robots.

    When a column of the tired soldiers came to a halt, Italian civilians approached to embrace them and offer them water, food and wine. When they had their fill, they apparently collapsed on the cobblestones below.  Mrs. Cacciatore wrote "they slept on the street, on the sidewalks, and on the Spanish Steps, some of them climbed into The Old Boat which had been empty since the aqueducts were bombed ( she was referring to the fountain called La Barcaccia at the foot of the Spanish Steps carved in the 1620s by Pietro Bernini, the father of the more famous Giovanni) .  .  . before, Rome had always smelled of cooking, wine, dried fish and garlic. Now suddenly it was Chesterfields," referring to the cigarettes being smoked by American G.I.s.

        She went on to write about an American soldier named Leonard Rosenburg who was detailed to guard the house where she was staying -- it was the Keats-Shelley house. John Keats died there in 1821. The house, apparently a tourist attraction before the war, contained the manuscripts and relics of Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and other foreigners who lived in the area, along with about a 10,000 volume library. Rosenburg apparently asked to go up into the room where John Keats lived and while standing there in the dark Cacciatore saw tears coming from his eyes. "I never saw him or heard from him again," she wrote, "I hope he lived through the war."

        At the top of the steps we encountered several street artists who sell their paintings to tourists at an observation point on the top of the steps. I stopped and took a picture of an attractive young a girl named Sissy who was selling her paintings -- she told me she was a singer in a nearby nightclub.

        We walked down the steps and passed through the busy traffic on the street in front of the piazza. We proceeded down the Via con Dotti -- a very fashionable, up-scale shopping area -- and followed a circuitous route that only Alfred knew for sure (the rest of us were completely lost at this point). Teresa Cheung found a purse she really liked -- I went inside to inquire about the price and the clerk showed me a tiny label in the window -- only 650 Euro!

        After walking a long, circuitous route (only Alfred knew for sure where we were going, the rest of us were completely lost) we ended up at a beautiful baroque church, San Andrea della Vale Bascillo. Alfred said this was the church depicted in the first act of Puccini's opera Tosca.     We all stopped for a moment to take pictures. 

                                                                                                                                    San Adrea della Vale Bascillo

        From here, we walked back to the Campo di Fiore just a few blocks away. By this time it was filled with people cooling their heels from the busy day just passed or eating dinner in one of the numerous restaurants located around here. We grabbed a drink at a bar with an American theme and was waited on by a beautiful young Irish girl who said she was an art history student.

        A short walk away from this sidewalk café, we had a traditional Roman dinner (17 of us) in the back room of a restaurant called Osteria a Galletto. Dinner included purscuitto ham, eggplant vinaigrette (very popular here), mozzarella cheese balls, hard crust bead, thiy bread sticks, linguini topped with sautéed portabella mushrooms, and a main course of veal shanks and potatoes.

        The proprietor of the restaurant was quite a showman. During the meal Pam Doerter accidentally spilled something on her blouse. Before we knew it, the elderly restaurateur was over at the table beside her sprinkling powder on her blouse. In a few minutes, as we were figuring out how much money each of us owed for the meal ($38 Euros), he returned with a clothes brush and began comically brushing the powder away from the top of her breast. The entire table howled with laughter -- and it was quite apparent that Pam was not the first patron to receive such special treatment!

        After dinner we walked over to a nearby coffee shop, Sant' Eustachio, which Alfred claimed was "the best café in all of Rome." I bought a 500 gram bag of the rich, whole beans for mother and then went outside to look around.  Soon, Jennifer Stevens, a friend of one of the  chorus members, decided to hail a cab. She was apparently just as tired as I was. In spite of the protests of her friends, the two of us returned to the hotel.

June 5, 2002, Bolsena, by Lake Bolsena. Hotel Loriana, 9:18 a.m.

        Wow! Where do I begin to tell the entire story of what happened yesterday!  It seems as if each day of this trip becomes more memorable than the day before.

        We packed our baggage into the bus for a swift departure from this dreadful hotel -- we will be spending this evening in another location. We took a beltway road around and entered the city from the southeast near the ancient Roman ruins. En route we saw some of the original aqueducts built by the ancient Romans up to the nearby mountains and saw lots of other small businesses along the way into the city. Again, I did not sleep well last night -- the combination of the snoring and the television set were a chronic irritant all night.

        We met up with our guide Alexandro at the Veale Dello Donus Aurea, a park which sits on the former site of the Golden Palace of Roman Emperor Nero. Our guide began his talk with an historical discussion of this place, the beautiful Palatine hill which we could see on our left and the Colosseum a short distance away. He also talked about some of the powerful Roman rulers who had been associated with the ancient structures in this part of the city -- again, Hadrian figured prominently in his discussion!

        The "Collusseo" as it is known in Italian, was built by Vespasiano in 72 A.D. upon what was once the bed of a private lake on the grounds of Nero's palatial estate. The lake was drained and this explains why there are several levels of the Colosseum below grade -- the structure was built on the excavated lake bed.

                                                                                                      "Collusseo" site of the legendary Roman entertainments

In the year 1500 there were apparently numerous excavations around the site where archeologists found golden coins and other ancient artifacts from the Roman period.

        Alexandro discussed the "grotesque style" of architecture and told us that there are three stories of eighty (80) arches around the inside of the ancient structure making it the largest amphitheater throughout the Roman Empire. The whole place was built of brick and covered over with white marble when it was used for the infamous games and Gladiator battles.

As we were walking from the sight, Dan Scavone made the observation that because the Colosseum was built after Nero, there is little evidence to suggest that many Christians were slaughtered within these walls despite the myths that have been passed down for centuries. He says he has a slide show which explores the details of this little-known fact.

        We were told that there was a gigantic curtain that was pulled over the top of the entire structure. It routinely required the efforts of over 2,000 men (probably slaves) to erect. As many  as 16 people would be pulling on each rope during this elaborate procedure.  The total seating capacity of the Colosseum in ancient times was around 75,000, making it about the same size as many of the larger college and professional football stadiums here in the U.S. As it was configured in ancient times, the wealthy sat in the lower tiers near the floor of the structure while those less well off sat in the upper tiers (sounds very familiar!).. Alexandro told us that in the underground galleries those preparing the circuses would hold animals, gladiators, and other innocent victims who were unfortunate enough to be condemned to the fortunes of the games. They would include animals vs. animals, gladiators vs. animals and finally gladiators facing each other to the death as the final events of the daily card. He said that at one time the games when on for over 100 days consecutively -- an orgy or gore and bloodshed to appease the maddened Roman crowd. Such were the spoils of the incredible wealth generated by this enormous Mediterranean empire.

        In around 1770, Pope Clement XIV issued an edict allowing Italian stonemasons to plunder the intricately carved marble facades and decorative appointments covering the walls throughout the Colosseum for use in cathedrals and churches elsewhere. Hence, all that remains is the brick substructure -- one can only imagine how beautiful this place would have been clad in glistening white and colored marbles which have been found elsewhere to decorative affect in other Roman excavations.

    We spent about 25 minutes on our own taking pictures, visiting the gift shop, and wandering through the endless passageways in which one can get lost within this enormous structure. It is truly a remarkable feat of ancient Roman building techniques -- the arched passageways through the various levels were all uniformly constructed of brick with no keystones at the apex of the arches. Such incredible craftsmanship dedicated to such gruesome entertainment!

        We reorganized ourselves into a group at the end of the Colosseum adjacent to the Roman Forum for our next portion of the walking tour.

June 5, 2002, On bus in route from Orvieto to Monticatini Terme, 1:15 p.m.

            Throughout this part of the tour I got kind of separated from Alexandro but I do remember him pointing out what was left of the Temple of Saturn, the Arch of Septiminus Severus, the Arch of Titus, the emperor who sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D. in response to the regional uprising of the Jews. The trophies of this emperor's conquests in the holy land such as the golden menorah and other sacred artifacts from the sacking of the Temple in Jerusalem are depicted in heavy bas relief carvings on the sides of this enormous structure. The Romans were apparently quite proud of their adventures of plunder.

        The Arch of Constantine is the largest and closest to the Colosseum.

                                                                                                                                               The Arch of Constantine

        The Temple of Venus Genetrix is also there, inside the even larger Forum of Julius Caesar -- all that remains are three columns and a fragment of an enormous travertine entablature.. There are another three, lonely columns -- all that remain of the temple to Castor and Pollux, the Gemini children of Leda and the Swan, a masquerade which concealed Jupiter's true identity. The two mythological figures apparently joined the travels of the mythological Jason and the Argonautic expedition in their quest for the Golden Fleece.

        We are presently on the bus traveling from Orvieto to Montecatini Terme the location of  the Hotel San Marco, our resting place for the next couple of nights. We also have a performance tonight at the Hotel Astoria, another hotel located not far from where we will be staying. To resume our progress, after spending a thoroughly inadequate period of time to get a solid feel for where and what we were observing at the Forum, we proceeded up a large, recently paved thoroughfare which connects the area of the Colosseum with the Victor Emanuel II Memorial in the Piazza Venezia (I had been here on Sunday afternoon with Steve, Mary and Sharon).  It seemed a bit warmer today than it had been the previous two days.