Buon compleanno, Via Giulia

The site visits are my favorite part of the curriculum at the Rome Study Center, and on Wednesday we toured our neighborhood along the Via Giulia. The Via Giulia is “the first example of a perspectival street” cut into the medieval urban fabric exactly 500 years ago. Think of it as the Rome’s version of Roger’s Pinnacle neighborhood, only more exclusive and a good deal more expensive than anything that Wal-Mart executives could either imagine or afford.

That said we’re living on this street, ironically, directly across from a palazzo that Chuck and Davide once considered as a potential site for the Center. We’re on the southwest side of the street, arguably the more posh side since our giardino would have offered a view of the river. We share the street with our Church of Death (S. Maria dell’Orazione e Morte—see the picture with the skull capitals) and the Judiciary for Mafia trials. There’s also an espresso bar up the street where the house specialty includes a little Sambuca with the espresso shot. This is not where we go for our morning espresso, I should add. Overall, the Via Giulia is a relatively sleepy street compared with other vias in the vicinity but despite its appearance we find it surprisingly noisy at night.

In addition to the Via Giulia, our visit also took us past Borromini’s Torre dell’Orologio next to the Chiesa Nuova. Along the way we saw S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini which, incidentally, is across the street from my design site three years ago (and where Borromini was laid to rest). We passed a church designed by Raphael (S. Eligio degli Orefici). Next we crossed the Tiber on the Ponte Sisto, a lovely little footbridge.

Trastevere is across the river from the ancient city of Roma. At the heart of Trastevere is S. Maria in Trastevere. Perhaps you are beginning to see that our tours are filled with many points of interest. Arguably, you could get a sense of what we see from any tour book. And, yes, I must confess that in the course of writing this essay I have been referring to Holy Rome, a book given to us by Rob and Roberta, in order to get the names of the churches correctly spelled. In addition, Emilio Del Gesso is one of its contributing authors.

Both Davide and Emilio conducted this particular tour. It is easy to marvel at the knowledge each of them has of their “hometown.” Moreover, they balance each other very well, feeding off of each other’s talking points, effortlessly, as always. These site visits, however, provide more than opportunities for pretty photos and data acquisition. The professors respond not only to the sites and to each other but to the students themselves, and we respond in kind.

Davide and Emilio were in particularly playful moods on Wednesday. At the crypt at S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Davide poked his head through one of the oval “windows” along the staircase, arguably for pedagogical reasons to demonstrate the theatricality of baroque architecture. However, Emilio mirrored Davide’s behavior on the other side. We stood below and between them in the crypt proper and looked up at the two of them as they puckishly appeared from stage right and stage left almost like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets show. Later while standing in the piazza in front of S. Maria in Trastevere, two musicians, one on an accordion and the other on a bass fiddle, played songs like O Sole Mio and the theme from Zorba, the Greek. It was good toe-tapping music, but while all of us managed to keep our feet planted on terra firma, Davide could hardly contain himself. I think he would have taken flight were it not for gravity! Despite gravity and decorum, there were a few waltz steps feigned right there on the piazza—with Emilio!

So you can see our education here is a very lively one. We walk (I lost one kilo already), we listen, we talk, we sketch, and we even dance a little. Quite simply said, this is one birthday party I’m glad to have attended. Happy 500th birthday, Via Giulia!