Rome Journal

PANTALICA RULES!!!!!!!

2006-07-12T03:44:00.000+02:00

Okay, in honor of July-- Sicily Month-- here's a post about the rockinest ancient in all of Sicily. PANTALICA is in eastern Sicily, not too far inland from Syracuse, on the limestone plateau that rises up from the sea. It's most famous, of course, for having inspired the names of the bands Pantera and Metallica (though some rogue metalologists claim Matelica, in le Marche, as the origin of the name). And it ROCKS, DUDE!

Literally, as it turns out. The archaeological site is an isolated canyon with really dramatic limestone cliffs, into which are carved thousands of tombs:

This isn't such a great picture, but trust me, it's one of the most beautiful sites in Sicily. And one of the oldest: the oldest tombs date from the Bronze Age. As in, pre-Greek, pre-Roman, pre-just-about everything. I know basically nothing about Sicily at that period. Fortunately, I'm in good company: there's a structure there (not a tomb, a building) that either dates from the Bronze Age or the Byzantine period. Which gives you a good idea of the mystery that is Pantalica.

But even at that early date, the Pantalicans had a good idea of the majesty that is Pantalica, and the majesty that IS. ROCK. AND. ROLL. And to those who were about to rock, we salute you!

arrivederci, Roma

2006-07-12T03:27:00.000+02:00

I've been putting off this post for two weeks- the two weeks since I got back from Rome. The year's over, and I'll end it as I've mostly spent it: as the man said, no hugging, no learning. Italy won the World Cup, I've eaten some good Vietnamese food, and there you go.

I'll keep the blog up for a while; heck, I've still got several thousand photos to sort through, and maybe I can write something semi-coherent about Italy, for at least the rest of the summer. Rock!

El Jem is truly Outrageous.

2006-06-22T11:33:00.000+02:00

(Okay, I admit that I've been waiting to use that title since I visited the place. Sorry. Though if you recognized that, you're the one who should be sorry, probably.)

El Jem is not much of a town nowadays. But in Roman times, Thyrsus was a wealthy place, wealthy enough to build a truly huge amphitheater. It's something like the third largest in the empire (after the Colosseum and Capua) and is very well preserved. You can see here how it dominates the teeny tiny modern buildings:

And a view of the inside of the amphitheater:

It's big! Really big! And what's cool is that, like so many Tunisian sites, they just don't really care where you go: climb all you want, they figure...

Kairouan

2006-06-22T11:08:00.000+02:00

Kairouan is, according to the Tunisians, the fourth holiest city in Islam. That's maybe a debatable point- while everybody agrees on the top three cities, there are evidently a bunch of places competing for the #4 spot. Still, it's been a pilgrimage center for a long time, and I figured I'd pay it a visit.

It's okay. The Great Mosque is very interesting: its courtyard is filled with hundreds of mismatched columns taken from various Roman places around Tunisia. There's even one incongruous column whose capital has a big ol' cross on it: presumably taken from a church somewhere.

The medina is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It's actually quite nice: it's walled, and filled with twisty little streets. It's also, unfortunately, a good place to get hustled. Kairouan is the center of the Tunisian carpet industry, and everybody will try to get you into their store to buy a carpet. They have all kinds of ways of doing this: letting you know of a very very special exhibition of Berber carpets, which is ending (surprise!) today! Or you'll be invited to the roof of a building to get a view of the Great Mosque or the medina or whatever... the roof, of course, belongs to a carpet store, and as long as you're there anyway... This last one worked on me. I didn't buy a carpet, though, which didn't endear me to anybody.

Anyway, here's a less hustling-and-bustling shot of the medina. This is the street of the leather workers:

Just one other picture from Kairouan today. This one is a little odd:

I saw these signs in a few different places in Tunisia. I presume it means that cars can overheat and explode? But I'm not really sure.

the 'burbs: Carthage and Sidi Bou Said

2006-06-22T10:51:00.000+02:00

It's sort of funny to go visit Carthage and discover that the capital of a world-spanning empire is now a suburb of Tunis. You get there by taking the local train; it takes about half an hour. Unfortunately, there's not all that much to see there. It's worth it to go to the museum up on Byrsa Hill, if only for the wonderful view. And the Antonine baths (oh those Antonines with their baths) are pretty cool.

But my favorite site was actually the tophet cemetery. It's a small place, filled with these stelae (tombstones to you and me) marking the graves of infants and small children that were sacrificed. The tophet, and the question of whether the Carthaginians practiced human sacrifice, is somewhat controversial. There are a lot of people who want to ascribe it to anti-Punic propaganda on the part of the Romans (who preferred to watch humans getting killed in the arena). But if you look at the evidence, it's pretty clear that it was a real deal.

Anyway, here's an Indiana-Jones type shot from the tophet:

Most of the stelae aren't in a tunnel like this, just outside and sort of crammed together. But this one is piu suggestivo, you know?

The tophet also had some cactuses that were in bloom, something I hadn't seen before:

Getting back on the train, I headed out to Sidi Bou Said, a lovely little town up on a rocky cliff overlooking the water. It's all very quaint and Mediterranean. Everywhere you go, there are views:

I had a late lunch at Au Bon Vieux Temps, the fanciest place I ate in Tunisia. Even so, it was pretty laid back; the food was good (fish couscous, yum) and the view was just tremendous:

taking the sbeitla

2006-06-21T16:05:00.000+02:00

This set of photos is from Sbeitla, yet another of the sites that's an hour or two away from Le Kef. This one I actually visited from Kairouan- it's not too far from there, either.

Sbeïtla is a beautiful site, and very well maintained, with gardens and a great visitor center. The Tunisians have clearly made the decision to invest in the site... do I need mention that there wasn't anybody else when I was there? Too bad, because it's terrific.

It's the spot where the Byzantine army first met up with the Muslims in the West. (You can guess how that went.) Anyway, it's a great place for getting a sense of what life in North Africa was like under the Byzantines. Mainly, it was somewhat... less than pleasant; "nasty, brutish and short" comes to mind. Evidence for this sense comes from the fortified houses on the site that look like bunkers: thick walls, cramped quarters. They also built a ton of churches, most of which haven't survived too well; the main draw are the remains of the classical city.

Here's the arch of Diocletian, at one entrance of the city. I really dig the columns- it's surprising that they managed to last so long without getting nicked for some mosque:

The forum complex, seen from a ways off. At some point, somebody put a wall around the forum- I presume that this was another example of late antique things falling apart:

The Byzantines went so far as to build a new bath complex in the city (bless their little hearts); here's a detail of one of the mosaics there:

The fish motif is a constant in Roman baths, but I kind of like these particular fish. They're a little cartoony, but I think they're kind of charming.

makthar daddy

2006-06-20T21:31:00.000+02:00

Mactaris (the modern Makthar) is another of these sites that's an hour away from Le Kef. It's up very high (3000' or so) and was the only place I felt chilly in Tunisia.

I visited from Kef, as a stop on my way to Kairouan. My bright idea was to take the first bus there... which left at 5:30 AM. I took it, and arrived at 7:10, almost an hour before the site opened. Such an eager beaver, I am.

I was hoping for some nice morning light, but as it turned out, I just missed the rain. Here's the forum with its monumental arch of Trajan at one end:

One of the bath complexes at the site:

This is the schola iuvenum, a building I've seen alternately described as a place for educating young men in Romanness, and as a "paramilitary headquarters". Take your pick:

And finally, the other baths in Mactaris. I'm pretty sure that they haven't been fully excavated; this big arch should be a lot higher than it is:

The modern town of Makthar is pretty grim, and I wasn't too eager to stick around any longer than I had to. Unfortunately, after an hour or so at the site, I'd missed the next louage out of town and the next bus wasn't until midafternoon. But I persuaded another louage driver to drop me off in Kairouan: he charged me 8 dinars (about $6), which made everybody standing around snicker about how the American was getting ripped off...

everything's happy underground

2006-06-20T21:06:00.000+02:00

Bulla Regia isn't far from Le Kef; it's a Roman city notable for its underground villas. They're not completely underground, but they have underground courtyards with bedrooms leading off of them: basically a standard atrium layout, moved ten feet lower. They're warm in the winter and cool in the summer; I could feel the temperature drop by a few degrees as I went down into them.

This is from the House of the Hunt. Check out the cool hexagons:

This is another site that was pretty much empty except, oddly, for a couple making out in one of the houses.

tunisian high plains drifter

2006-06-20T18:28:00.000+02:00

I spent two nights in Le Kef and really enjoyed it. It's a small- to medium-sized town with a great location, about an hour away from a good half-dozen sites, including Dougga and Bulla Regia. There's not all that much to do there, and so it's pretty empty of tourists, just a relaxed, laid-back kind of place.

Le Kef is on a ridge that overlooks the high plains of the northwest. When the sun goes down, it gets all purty and stuff: here are some photos I took then.

It's a very steep walk up to the casbah:

The main mosque in the old part of town. The piazza in front has a nice cafe and as you can tell from all the people, is a pleasant place to hang out in the evenings:

These kids were playing soccer, but when they saw me taking pictures, they switched immediately to showing off their ninja moves. A dangerous bunch:

The mosque at sunset. You can see the fields in the background; this part of Tunisia has been the breadbasket of the country since Punic times, growing grain and all kinds of fruits and vegetables. (When I was there, watermelons were in season, and everywhere I went, there were huge piles of melons for sale. They looked really good, but I was backpacking; what was I going to do with a watermelon?)

Dougga-E Fresh

2006-06-20T18:12:00.000+02:00

So I'm back from Tunisia, basking in the cool cool air-conditioned goodness of my office, and enjoying food that I know won't send me to an all-afternoon session on the john. Hooray for the First World!

A great trip, one that I'm still processing a little bit. I've got some notes that I'll try to write up into something coherent, but in a meantime, I want to post a big ol' mess of photos from the trip, beginning with Dougga. It's a crazy-cool site, up on a ridge in the hill country of the northwest. Most of what's there is second century CE; the place did very well for itself under the Antonines and Severans. Later on, not so much.

I got there mid-morning, spent about four hours there, and had the place almost completely to myself: for the first three hours, I saw one other visitor. After that, a German tour group showed up and I had to share the place; sigh. But it's really shocking just how empty a lot of these sites are, especially after coming from Rome (or Florence, or Venice) in June... rock!

Anyway, here are some photos, with minimal commentary:

This is the temple of Juno/Tanit, which to my eye looks like a crazy mix of Punic and Roman architecture: it's peripteral, and on a platform. But the columns just seem to have enclosed a sanctuary, with only a little teeny tiny cella, something that (I think) is more Carthaginian than anything else. Anyway, it's cool:

The scaena of the theater:

This arch is from the Antonine baths (built by Caracalla). They're very well-preserved, down to the access tunnels running underneath. I think that this is the palaestra, but I'd have to check:

And the capitolium:

It's definitely the most impressive building at Dougga, parked right in the middle of the forum at the top of the hill. The city is sort of bracketed between two temples to Carthaginian gods: the Tanit/Juno temple I showed above, and on the other side of town, one to Baal/Saturn. They're both kind of non-standard Roman temples; but right here in the middle is as canonical a Roman temple as you could ask for:

Only the finest for Jupiter and the symbol of Romanitas...

Thugga Life 4-evah

2006-06-10T18:07:00.000+02:00

So here I am in Tunisia (and wrestling with a Tunisian keyboard; apologies in advance for typos). Tunisia couldn't be more beautiful, and the Tunisians couldn't be more friendly. I,m having a blast.

So far, the visits have been just about all Roman, all the time; today I went to the city of Dougga (the ancient Thugga): an absolutely amazing site sort of in the middle of nowhere, in the hill country of north-central Tunisia. I should have some good pictures when I get back; in the meantime, here is one of the highlights (not my photo), the 'Libyan-Punic' tomb:

This bad boy is pre-Roman, probably the cenotaph of a Numidian king. Outrageous Hellenistic architecture (I love the chariots and lions) even if it's not so subtle in its message...

Lots more cool stuff at Dougga, and the best part wqs that the site was almost completely empty. In fact, I've seen hardly any tourists at all outside of Tunis; I asked the caretaker at the casbah of Le Kef, and he said that it wqs because of the World Cup... the only people traveling are old people, folks who don't like sports and Americans...

send lawyers, guns and money

2006-06-06T18:51:00.000+02:00

Italian intellectual property laws seem to be... somewhat more flexible than in America. Or at least they aren't enforced with the same vigor and enthusiasm that you see in the US. Lots of products over here are advertised with the unofficial help of various fixtures of American pop culture; for example, there's a brand of orzo espresso (a nasty drink made from grain) that has Bugs Bunny on its machines. Somehow it seems unlikely that Warner Brothers okayed that...

Anyway, here are a couple of examples that I thought were particularly interesting. First, on the side of an orange truck that we passed on the road going through Calabria:

Because nothing says oranges than turtle ninjas. Though if I remember right, they preferred junk food: still, we're all watching our health nowadays.

Here is another one, seen on the street in Naples:

Okay, this is maybe less a case of trademark violation and more one of WHAT THE HELL CAN THEY POSSIBLY BE THINKING? The O' Talebano (that's either Neapolitan dialect or an Irish affectation) snack bar? It's unlikely that Osama is going to file a cease and desist order any time, but really... My favorite part is that they deliver to your house; because who wouldn't want a visit from O' Talebano?

a tale of two fish markets

2006-06-04T21:01:00.000+02:00

I've been thinking a lot about fish lately, prompted by a project I'm beginning on fish in Roman culture and literature. It's not a bad thing to work on here, since it gives me the excuse to do some research on fish in modern Italy. By "research", of course, I mean mostly "eating"-- but I've been looking into fish in other ways as well.

You wouldn't think it from visiting coastal Italy (or, for that matter, an inland city like Rome), but the Mediterranean is actually relatively fish-poor, at least compared to the ocean. Modern fishing techniques mean that it's not too hard to get a variety of fish to market. But some parts of the peninsula have historically had better access to fish than others, and that access is reflected on a consumer level by the presence of large fish markets. I'm going to look at two of these, from opposite ends of Italy.

The first of these is pretty famous, the Rialto fish market in Venice. Venice's lagoon, with its shallow, brackish water, is a great environment for attracting the wide variety of fish that are the hallmark of Venetian cuisine. The importance of fish for Venice is highlighted by the elegant architecture of the market.

The structure, built in 1907, is a wide portico with room for two rows of stalls, facing onto the Grand Canal. It's easily the loveliest fish market I've ever seen (okay, not that much competition there...) The column capitals along the outside are all in the shape of different fish, boats, etc.:

I didn't see any turtles for sale at the market! But these guys are pretty cute. The architect (whom my guidebook lists as the painter Cesare Laurenti) was clearly having some fun, while maintaining a traditional Venetian appearance.

As the city of Venice has shrunk (there are about 60,000 people in central Venice, down from 200,000 a century ago), the importance of the market has decreased. Restaurants buy a lot of fish, of course, but they mostly get it from the wholesale market, and while tourists might buy an apple or cherries, a whole mackerel or bag o' shrimp doesn't tend to fit well into a suitcase! As a result, when I was there (late May), the market was only about half-occupied by stalls, and many of the people walking around were (like me) tourists with cameras, rather than shoppers.

Too bad, because the seafood there is absolutely gorgeous. I'm pretty bad with seafood names (in English or Italian)- so please feel free to help me out in comments... Here's one I do know, some nice looking red mullets:

They're particular favorites of mine, both because the Romans loved 'em (as pets and as food), and because, hey: "red mullet". hee!

There's a lot of care put into displaying fish (it helps that I arrived at around 8 AM, when things were just starting to gear up):

Here are some canocce: alien-looking crustaceans that are very characteristic of Venice. I don't know if they live elsewhere:

I love those "eyes". This is a close-up, obviously, but lots of the vendors stack them up like so much fishy cordwood. We had canocce for dinner that night (at Alle Testiere); they're sweet and tender, sort of between really fresh Gulf shrimp and crab.

Here's a bucket o' eels:

Still alive: that one in the center was flapping its gills and glaring balefully at me. I have to admit something here and say that eels squick me out a little, and this guy didn't really change things for me...

The fruit and vegetable market is right next to the fish market. There's a nice selection, but it didn't strike me as especially distinctive:

Hey you! Get back to the piazza San Marco! (And memo to shoppers: be sure to wash that eggplant well!

The other fish market I've visited that really impressed me was way at the other end of Italy, in Syracuse. Sicilian seafood is of course famous, and rightly so. Like Venice, Sicilians have been able to exploit their environment to get access to lots of different kinds of seafood. In this case, the straits of Messina provide naturally good fishing grounds. The small space creates a difference in temperature between the western and eastern Mediterranean, something that attracts fish. And the narrow straits funnel fish, making them easier to catch.

The market in Syracuse is on the island of Ortygia, steps away from the temple of Apollo and next to the small harbor. It stretches for about two or three blocks on a small street. Not as picturesque as the Venice market, but with at least as good a selection of fish, and with a more vibrant atmosphere.

Here are some anchovies. Or maybe sardines. I'm not really sure, actually:

To misquote Maurice Chevalier, "thank heaven for leetle feesh!" I've really come to love the miniature members of the scaly tribe: alici sott'olio? Oh yeah. It's a real shame that Americans are so fixated on steak fish (salmon, tuna, etc.); I'm sure whether I'll be able to get them back in the US. Anyway, it's an excuse to eat as many as possible now...

I don't know what this thing is. But it kind of scares me. Probably it's delicious, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with it. Other than back away slowly...

Again, not really sure what these are. I just think they're really beautiful. As with these:

Let's just call those last photos "two studies in stripes."

Finally, the biggest fish in the market that day, a nice-looking tuna:

Everybody is impressed (and rightly so), even that kid in the corner. Yum!

I love Syracuse; it's a beautiful, friendly city with wonderful food and a fascinating history. One of my fantasies-- once I win the lottery, you know-- is to move there and just cook fish every single day. Someday, maybe...

more fun with Italian

2006-06-03T12:36:00.000+02:00

Four months since my last post. Dang.

Okay, here's something that has been going through my head lately. For the last couple of months, I've been collecting regional Italian cookbooks-- I have this fantasy of becoming zee great Italian chef, you know?-- and getting a crash course in culinary Italian. For the most part, it's pretty straightforward. "Chop" or "peel" translate pretty well, and technique is technique, you know? There are some differences that seem somehow cultural-- phrases like "wash the fish in the appropriate amount of water" isn't something you'd see in English-- but they only add to the charm.

The vocabularies are different, though. Sometimes this makes sense: where we have "anchovy", fish-loving Italian has both alice and acciughe. And don't get me started on sardines: sardine and sarde to begin with, plus the puzzling mascoli (no, they're not "masculine"; actually, as was explained to me in Syracuse, mascoli are more tender and smaller than your average sardine.)

And most recently, I've noticed that there are no fewer than three words to describe "stuffed" foods (as in stuffed vegetables, etc.): ripieno, farcito and imbottito. As far as I can tell, there's no real difference between the three. It's like that business about the Eskimos and snow...

la piccola villa di Orazio

2006-02-02T12:57:00.000+01:00

Here are some photos from Horace's villa, located near the town of Licenza in the Sabine hills to the east of , right near the border of Lazio and Abruzzo. Really, though, we should give its name in scare quotes: "Horace's villa", since it's not certain that this is actually where the poet lived. The deal is, we know-- or think, or feel we know-- a whole lot about Horace's villa from his poems. He writes about it in over twenty poems, often very affectingly, describing it as an idyllic sort of place, ringed with low hills, near a river, and cool in the hot Roman summer. Here's a link to a translation (by Steven Willett) of Ode 1.17, in which he offers an invitation to come visit his villa; you can get a sense of the appeal of the place- even the gods come by in the summer!

Whether or not this particular villa belonged to Horace isn't certain (these things don't usually come with labels...) But it fits the description well and is an absolutely lovely place. Here's a shot of part of the villa-- okay, there's not much above knee-height here-- with the town of Licenza in the background:

And here's a close-up of Licenza, a typically gorgeous little Italian hill town:

As I said, there's not too much left of the villa above knee- or waist-level. But you can get a sense of it from the floor-plan:

and an axonometric view (a little small, sorry- you can click on it to see it full-sized):

The section at the top of the plan (that's to the west) is a pretty extensive bath complex. Horace may have written about the simple life that he enjoyed up in the hills, but it's clear that he basically lived like a rock star. The baths are actually the most impressive part of the architectural remains. That oval-shaped building is a laconicum, a sort of sauna that could fit at least a dozen people, but the baths extended for almost the length of the residential part of the building. Appropriately enough for the poet laureate of Rome, it comes complete with a throne:

(Here, no doubt, Horace composed his famous ode, Here I sit, broken-hearted.)

More sublime is the little fountain just up the hill from the villa. If the villa is in fact Horace's, it's hard to avoid the suggestion that this is the Fons Bandusiae: the "Spring of Bandusia" that is the subject of Ode 3.13. Here's a translation of the poem, and two terrific parodies of it, written by the Algonquin Round Table fixture, Franklin P. Adams in the 1920s).

I don't know who the goofy-looking guy blocking view is; but you can get a good view of the architectural elements around the fountain (the pool in front, concave wall behind, and structure on top), which were added by the Orsini family of Rome in the 15th century; a great example of the tendency in the Renaissance (following the same tendency among the Romans) to "fix up" nature by adding man-made details. Here they've done a great job of making the spring fit more closely to Horace's description: enclosed by hollow rocks, topped with shady trees and offering cool, clear water.

a little knowledge

2006-01-29T21:50:00.000+01:00

When it comes to speaking Italian, I seem to have reached a tipping point: I know enough to get myself into trouble, but not enough to get myself out. Okay, that's a little too strong... but I've been in the neighborhood long enough that I've gotten to know some of the locals, but not long enough that I can chat at higher than a five-year-old level...

Tonight, I stopped at the neighborhood rosticceria/tavola calda for dinner (eggplant parmigiano, roasted artichokes, a little bread). While I was waiting for them to heat it up, the owner started up a conversation, talking about the weather (I was okay on that: it's warm! and humid! Non mi piace!) and so forth. Then he asked me to translate the words of the music video that was playing... I did my best: "um, he's saying that he lives in a big city...? it's, um, difficult? and there are a lot of... people?" His response was basically, yeah, I got that much, but thanks for trying... Well, one does one's best, I guess.

back from the dead!

2005-12-07T17:10:00.000+01:00

You KNOW you really haven't posted a blog entry in a while when people start emailing you to ask if you're okay. (I mean, besides your mother. Not that I only keep in contact with my mom via blog. Seriously. Hi mom!) Anyway, I'm fine; I've been overwhelmed with work for the last month or so, but things are clearing up a little bit.

So I'm not dead; but it's a good time to talk about death, and specifically my recent trip to Isola Sacra. Which, I'd like to point out, isn't an island, nor is it especially sacred. What it is, is an area that runs along the ancient road between Ostia (at the mouth of the Tiber and the ancient port of Rome) and Portus (the slightly less ancient port of Rome, built by the emperor Claudius and expanded by Trajan). Romans didn't like to put tombs inside their cities; instead, they'd string them out, along the roads leading out of town. That's what Isola Sacra is: a necropolis, or city of the dead.

Here's a shot from just off the main road, sort of a byway of the necropolis. You can see how the tombs are built like little houses. And like any other city, some neighborhoods are pretty ritzy, others a little more down-at-the-heels. Really poor folks just popped a body in the ground and marked it with an amphora.

This is the family tomb of a guy called Tiberius Claudius Eutychus. It's a decent sized tomb, with lots of niches inside for ashes: as the inscription says, he spent eternity with his wife, kids and slaves. Family togetherness, how nice.

Here's a closeup of one of the reliefs on the tomb. It shows a horse driving a grain mill (why it's crossing its legs, I don't know. Maybe it's just bashful.) There's a guy on the right who looks like he's maybe carrying a whip.

Presumably Eutychus was a miller, or involved somehow in the grain trade. From his name (Greek for "Lucky"), we can presume that he was a freedman, and he must have done at least pretty well for himself; this ain't a bad tomb. But it's nothing compared to this tomb, outside of Porta Maggiore in Rome:

This is the famous "Tomb of the Baker"- Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, another freedman made good, who set up this huge, bizarre-looking tomb on a major road leading into the city. He made his fortune as a baking contractor, and celebrated his life with this tomb, which has a relief showing scenes of people making, delivering, and selling bread. Eurysaces was obviously proud of his life's work, and had the confidence to design this tomb that (while it anticipates the style of Fascist modernism) isn't like anything else out there. Eutychus was a little less successful, and a little less showy. But he obviously wanted passers-by to know what he did for a living.

Unfortunately, he seems not to have done a very good job of undead-proofing his tomb. Moments after we arrived, we witnessed this horrible, horrible scene of a zombie attack. The carnage was really quite dreadful: brains spattered all over the place. (Fortunately, the Centro staff come equipped with shotguns and chainsaws, in case of just such an event. Whew!)

coffee coffee buzz buzz zzzzzzzz

2005-10-26T17:47:00.000+02:00

Let me be clear: I love caffe. Pound for pound, there's no doubt that Italians know their coffee better than Americans do. I've had espresso that was absolutely ethereal: smooth, full of richness without a hint of bitter, the sort of coffee that fills your mouth and wraps your tongue in a loving embrace that tastes as wonderful as this metaphor I'm writing is turning out to be disgusting. Anyway, I'm not knocking what the Italians do with the bean.

Still, I miss American coffee. That's probably what I'm missing the most from the US: not good Chinese food, not the ability to easily to go to Target and buy stuff for the house without it being a huge hassle: just having a nice mug of coffee at my right hand, a trusty, constant companion against cold and fatigue. As fall is coming on, I'm wishing more and more for the good ol' travel mug; making a run to the corner bar when I need caffeine just isn't cutting it. Whether it's a desire for a more efficient caffeine-delivery system or just an oral fixation, I don't know, but there it is.

split, um, banana?

2005-10-21T22:09:00.000+02:00

Here's the last batch of Split photos, showing all manner of zaniness:

Beth and I spent a lot of time walking around the center of the city. There are no cars, and the streets, as you can see, are paved with marble: a nice touch! Classy.

Beth is doing some window shopping here. Split is a very touristed city, and there are a ton of stores selling all kinds of stuff. We didn't do a lot of shopping, but I was impressed by the helpful advice our guidebook gave. It listed the Croatian phrase for "do you have any..." and then a list of vocabulary: "toothbrush", "comb", and, strangely, "chainsaw." Oh, how we laughed at that, thinking it was a joke! But then we saw a man walking down the street with a chainsaw (no hockey mask, though)... so maybe it's a Croatian thing, and I wouldn't understand...

Here's the Riva at night, taken from our ferry. The city is as beautiful as our cabin was tiny, smelly and disgusting. (Now let us never again speak of our ride on the Ferry of the Damned.)

Finally, the sight that greeted us on our return to Italy:

Sunrise over Ancona, welcoming us back to the good ol' boot. Hooray!

split infinitive

2005-10-21T21:56:00.000+02:00

Here are some more random photos. First, here's me about to get medieval on somebody, I don't know who. (You can tell by the murderous gleam in my eye):

That was at the Museum of the City of Split. More exciting for me, in a geeking out kind of way, was the archaeological museum. It's a surprisingly good museum, well laid out, with a collection that's particularly strong on daily life sorts of things: a tessera used as a theater ticket, a little lamp shaped like a gladiator, makeup kits, tools, you name it. What I like about this sort of museum is that I always see something I've never seen before. In Palermo it was a cheese grater (looks pretty much like a modern cheese grater, only made out of bronze.) Here it was this thing:

This is a Roman branding iron, for branding livestock. (At least, I refuse to think about what else-- or who else-- it might have been used on. Ouch.) Evidently the owner's name was "Mut". (And no, I don't know where Jeff's ranch was.)

I'd never seen anything like this mosaic before. It shows a tombstone that reads "Here lies Aurelius Aurelianus, a most dutiful son. He lived for nine years."

This is the campanile of the cathedral, which is built into Diocletian's mausoleum. I'll bet that ol' Diocletus-- no friend of Christianity-- is spinning in his grave over this. (Well, he would be. Except that nobody knows what happened to his body...)

And this cat was hanging out in the imperial triclinium. He seemed pretty tough, though; maybe the emperor would approve.

split decision

2005-10-21T21:42:00.000+02:00

I've finally gotten around to sifting through my Split photos. Here's a selection, with associated commentary...

We took the train from Rome to Ancona, and an overnight ferry to Split. That meant we arrived bright and early, at about 7 AM, with a full day of seeing the city.

Here's a shot of center-city Split. The old town is formed out of the palace of the emperor Diocletian, who was a local boy, from the neighboring city of Salona. When he got done reorganizing the empire after the chaos of the third century (no small accomplishment, setting up a new order that lasted until a guy called Constantine came along and mixed things up again), he retired (also no small accomplishment) to a massive palace he built on the coast in 305. The row of buildings that face the water (behind the palm trees) are built out of the front wall of his palace.

Here's a closer view, from the Riva, the pedestrian boulevard that runs in front of the palace. You can see how the colonnade has been blocked up as the wall was turned into houses. (And people are hanging their laundry between the columns. That makes me giggle.) I was pretty excited to see this; it's something I've wanted to visit ever since I took a fateful Roman archaeology class, fall term freshman year.

The red awning, by the way, belongs to the restaurant Bobis, a bar/cafe with great pastries.

The peristyle of the palace has become one of the central squares of the city.

Croatian food-- or at least Dalmatian food-- is pretty good. We had a lot of seafood (they bring out a tray of fish and you pick the one you want), and there's a strong Italian influence on the cuisine. Risotto? Yup (we had a very solid seafood risotto, in particular.) What's the word for bean soup? Fazul! That sort of thing.

Strangely enough, there are relatively few restaurants in Split. Every corner had a couple of "bar/caffe" type-places, where people would go to drink coffee or beer, but you'd never see them actually eating anything there. And there were plenty of fast-food restaurants, but not so many for sit-down eating.

Still, we found a couple of good restaurants, our favorite being Konoba Varos, just west of the old town. Great fish (especially a fish carpaccio), terrific grilled meats, and a fine rendition of... um, er, a traditional Dalmatian dish whose name I can't remember. But it involved braising veal in wine, and it was great. A slow food extravaganza, though: I think we spent three and a half hours at dinner.

The photo above isn't from Konoba Varos; I picked it to show three local specialties. That's octopus salad, lightly marinated with some basic vegetables (onion, celery), Dalmatian ham (aka prsut, softer and smokier than prosciutto), and a cheese from Pula, up the coast. Slightly tangy, slightly nutty, like a mix between cheddar and pecorino.

crash bang boom!

2005-10-21T14:25:00.000+02:00

It's funny just how familiar you can get with a particular sound, in this case screech! then bang! then the fat shatter! of glass. Yup, another car wreck in the neighborhood. I'd like to blame it on the setup of the corner, which features the winner of the Most Ignored Stop Sign in Rome contest for the last seven years,* but no, it's just a byproduct of Italian driving.

Just heard Ol' Smashy again a minute ago, this time followed by yelling and screaming. Good times, good times.

*note: contest is a figment of my imagination

101 Dalmatians

2005-10-14T17:48:00.000+02:00

When I was a kid, they told me that a sign of maturity was the ability to listen to the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. With the onset of old age (if not maturity), I've realized that that's a load of dingo's kidneys; or as any literary critic will tell you, blah blah intertextuality blah death of the author blah blah blah means never having to say you're sorry about making connections.

Still, I've been in Split, on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, for three days, and I keep on thinking about those spotted dogs. Which is pretty clearly a sign of my immaturity, because Split has a lot else going for it.

Number one, the palace of Diocletian, which now makes up the core of the old town. Probably the emperor would break down in tears at the sight of people hanging their laundry in his monumental triclinium (that's "living room" for you folks playing along at home). But what are you gonna do? It's cool.

Number two, the streets are paved with marble. That's also cool.

Number three, Dalmatian prsut, aka Dalmatian ham. Oh man, this stuff is good: like prosciutto, only smokier, softer and somehow more earthy. Worth the trip in and of itself.

Number three and a half (don't know if it rates a four) are all the cats roaming around. Lots of cats. Mostly healthy cats... though I can't help but think that a few spotted dogs might help thin their ranks a little.

See, there I go with the immaturity again. Ah well. Probably enough then, until I get back to Rome in a couple of days. Pictures will follow, from Croatia and Sicily...

gone fishin'

2005-09-28T18:30:00.000+02:00

I haven't written about food for a while, so here's a write-up on a big ol' dinner we enjoyed a couple of weeks ago, at Da Franco Ar Vicoletto. This is a fish restaurant, in the San Lorenzo neighborhood on the east side of town, behind Termini. San Lorenzo gets its name from the church of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, one of the seven pilgrimage churches in the city, but at this point it's dominated by the gigantic University of Rome. The neighborhood is one of the hippest in the city, with lots of energy and lots of young people. It's not one that I've spent a lot of time in, but there's plenty of interesting stuff there to explore.

Da Franco is on the small via dei Falisci (a street named after one of the ancient tribes from Latium. All the nearby streets have names like this: there's the Via dei Marsi, via dei Volsci, and so on). When I say it's on the street, I mean it's on the street: the restaurant occupies two storefronts on either side of the street, which they pretty much fill with tables. The tables, in turn, are completely filled by eight o'clock or so, and as I don't think they take reservations, it's worth it to show up early to avoid a wait.

The food is defiantly old-school and defiantly affordable. There's a menu with various dishes of pasta, et cetera, but it's to be avoided: instead, head directly for the prix fixe. For a measly 25 euros, you get a massive feast of six courses of fish, plus water, plus wine, plus a nice lemon gelato for dessert: enough for a ship of pirates (and their booty). Friends who have been there repeatedly say that the dishes basically don't change: you'll get the same things whenever you're there. Which is fine, because it's terrifically good.

We started off with a salad of marinated octopus, carrots, celery and olives. It's a shame that the picture is blurry (at this point in the evening, I was trying to get away without using the flash: fool!) because it's a really lovely dish, with lots of colors. The octopus was shockingly tender; marinated like this is a good way to go, I think. Oh, and it answers the question I had at Antico Arco: the octocylinders are indeed tentacles, not some sort of weird octoanatomy that had me so octoconfused. (Hooray for research!)

Next, a plate of some of the best mussels I've ever had. Nothing fancy: just steamed with white wine, garlic and parsley, but they were tender and juicy and perfect with a squeeze of lemon. I've had problems with mussels in the past-- after a bout of food poisoning, I couldn't eat them for a few years-- but these definitely got me back on the ol' horse.

This was followed by a dish of deep-fried sardines and shrimp. Basic stuff, but again, very simply and very well prepared. You can debone the sardines, or be like me and count on them to provide some calcium in your diet.

And then, spaghetti with shellfish. Here the mussel makes a triumphant reappearance, flanked by its fearless allies, the clam and the tiny clam. I can't remember the name for the little clams: vongolini? Something like that; anyway, I've never seen them in the US, and only sometimes seen them in Italy, but they're terrific: each one has just a tiny dot of meat, packed with intense flavor. And they're just so cute and widdle, like teeny tiny babies: the veal of the shellfish world, raised in miniature underwater cages...

The next two courses brought us into the world of the secondo. These were a little controversial (well, "controversial" in a very very limited way, as in "our table was in disagreement", not "afterwards we all wrote letters to our senators and Amnesty International.") We started with a sort of bean, pasta and shellfish porridge. (sorry, no photo.) I couldn't exactly figure out what was supposed to be going on with it: it reminded me vaguely of Manhattan clam chowder, only beanier. Not terrible, and certainly worth trying, but not wonderful, either.

After that, a seafood lasagna, again with shellfish. Our table was split on this one. Either you buy into the cheesy oozing seafoody goodness or you think that putting fish into cheesy oozing lasagna is kind of gross. I know which side I take in that epic debate, but I'm not telling. (So there.)

One more course, of pan-fried seafood. There are a couple of fish in there, surrounded by those crawdad-like crustacean-y critters you see in Italy but that I've never seen in the US. Their claws look too fearsome for them to be prawns, and they're too long and skinny for them to be crayfish, so I don't know exactly what they are. But they're awfully tasty once you've scooped the meat out of their tails. The fish, too, hit the spot; another basic, tasty dish.

Some lemon gelato finished dinner up, as we sat and enjoyed the last of the wine (a pretty decent Castelli Romani), and then stumbled off to find a cab home. Good stuff all around.

(Speaking of gone fishin', I'll be leaving in a day or two for Sicily, and then for Croatia, so no blogging for a couple of weeks. Just an explanation, in case you'll, y'know, miss me. (Sniff.)

our animal friends, part 3

2005-09-28T09:35:00.000+02:00

I've never before lived anywhere that featured lizards; they've always been sort of alien, unknowable creatures to me, sort of like armadillos or Phil Collins fans. But as it turns out, there are lots of lizards in Italy. You'll see them scuttling up the walls or perched on a sunny spot, keeping warm and, I suppose, on the lookout for flies or whatever it is they eat. I always get absurdly happy to see them. Beth, Savannah girl that she is, doesn't really understand (plenty of lizards down there), but I just like them.

Here's a highlander lizard (you can tell by the li'l kilt and bagpipe) from Palestrina, in the hills of Lazio, not too far from Rome. (He was, of course, not harmed in the making of this blog post.) This particular lizard was from the site of the temple of Fortuna at Praeneste, which has one of the most spectacular settings of any ancient site I know of, built into a hill way above the town. Here's a link to a reconstruction of the temple complex: ramps! arches! a theater or theater-like dealie at the top! It's the best. You can get a sense of what it looked like from the (relatively modern) building at the top, where the museum is now:

Mr. Lizard came from the big open rectangular space near the top, which is now a grassy field. There's also a tremendous view from there:

I believe that those are the Alban hills in the background; at any rate, not a bad spot to build a sanctuary to Fortune, and not a bad spot sit and catch some bugs. (Which I did. and they were dee-licious.)

herc-u-les! herc-u-les!

2005-09-25T00:38:00.000+02:00

We paid a visit to the Capitoline museum (really, museums; there are like two or three) this week, and it got me thinking about bad art. (Maybe I should capitalize that: "Bad Art". Appropriate capitalization makes all the difference between an aesthetic theory and random, incoherent ramblings, no?) The museum is the oldest public museum in the world, and a great place to, among other things, see what a 15th or 18th century idea of a museum looks like.

It's also, of course, a great place to see some Roman and Greek art. In fact, the quantity of quality art gets a little wearisome: I find myself muttering, "oh look, yet ANOTHER masterpiece of ancient art. Whatever, dude." Which is maybe why I found myself thinking, not about good art, but about lousy art.

Because there's plenty of lousy art at the museum, too. There's some stuff that's just bad quality-- sloppy or disappointing-- but not so much of that, and what there is isn't very interesting. What I like is the art that is technically accomplished, that was obviously expensive, and that was designed for a particular market, but that still (to use a technical term) stinks. I think that three examples will suffice to prove that what Tolstoy said about unhappy families is true about unhappy art: every piece is unhappy in its own way.

First off is a statue of the emperor Commodus (reigned late 2nd century, and if you want to know the exact dates, you can Google as well as I can, slacker) as Hercules:

What makes this an example of bad art isn't the technical qualities at all. In the abstract, it's a beautiful piece of sculpture. Whoever made it was clearly a master at knowing how to handle textures: the way that the lion skin is set against Commodus' skin, for instance. This is at a level of excellence that you don't see again until Bernini.

No, this is bad art because of external factors, because I know about what Commodus was all about. The idea of dressing up as a god and expecting to be taken seriously is ridiculous, for starters; and the skill of the sculptor just reinforces that. It just reminds you that this is a guy who fought as a gladiator (you'll be shocked to know that he had a perfect record: who'd have thunk that they might let the emperor win?) and would shoot ostriches with broad-headed arrows and decapitate them. So when I look at the statue- those half-lidded eyes- it's hard not to shudder. Or laugh. Or, um, ludder? shullaugh? Something like that.

Exhibit #2 is a statue of a first-century Roman matron as Venus:

With this statue, I just wonder: what was she thinking? The statue isn't especially good quality (the body is sort of blocky-looking, and doesn't fit together, but it's not awful. What makes it so terrible is the obvious: the inconcinnity between the goddess body and the middle-aged woman head. It's a terrible, terrible car crash of a statue, bringing together the worst of Hellenistic idealized sculpture with the Roman veristic tradition.

It's hard to imagine that it would have looked better to an ancient audience, but there you have it. I'd guess (without any really firm evidence) that it's a semi-mass-produced product, with the body sculpted in advance and the head made to order: the head is a little small, and the neck is a little too long, which makes it seem as if it was done later. But that raises the big questions, which I can't answer: who wanted this thing? Where would it go in the house? Did she think it would fool anybody? What do you say if you're a guest and the proud host shows off her new purchase? I just don't know.

Finally, another example of bad art, which is more like the second than the first. This is a statue of a baby Hercules, found at the baths of Decius, and so probably from the third century:

This is one of the most horrifying pieces of sculpture I've ever seen. First of all, it's a baby, okay? But it's on a strangely elongated body, and it's way bigger than any baby (maybe five feet tall). And the face! The face is bizarre:

It's a mix of stylized elements (the eyebrows, the blank, blank eyes, the mouth with that sort of archaic smile) and veristic ones (the exaggerated chubbiness of the cheeks, the curly hair). It looks alien. But again, this is a quality production. It's made out of Egyptian green basalt: expensive stuff, unusual for Roman sculpture, and, as far as I know, hard to work with.

As with Commodus, it's technically excellent but deeply disturbing. How do you explain it? Again, what's the market for this thing? Is it camp? Did the Romans have a concept of camp? Can you have camp when something is as expensive as this? I truly don't know the answer; all I know is that this is a terrible mix of elements. It's as if you broke into a serial killer's house in the middle of the night, and crept up the creaky stairs, fearing for your life. Then you turn the corner, and in front of you, there's a painting of a crying clown. On black velvet. That's what this statue reminds me of. And I shudder when I see it. (But that's part of the charm, too...)

rainy night in Roma

2005-09-18T00:37:00.000+02:00

Tonight, as I write this, the third annual Notte Bianca is going on in Rome. They borrowed the concept from Paris, I believe: the idea is that everything in the city is open, in the words of Lionel Ritchie, all night long. Museums, shops, restaurants, archaeological sites, theaters: everything. There are all kinds of cultural-type stuff going on, and some less highbrow entertainment, too; most events are open from 9 PM to 7 AM or so. They don't screw around with the late night thing here!

The problem is that Rome seems to have had some bad luck with this sort of thing. On the first notte bianca, there was a blackout that hit all of Italy. People were stuck on the Metro, crowds were left in the dark- exactly the sort of thing for which the Italians invented the word fiasco. Tonight, the power is still on [he writes. on his computer. reinforcing the obvious.] But it's pouring rain, making it more of a notte grigia than anything else.

I'd intended to go check out the Markets of Trajan, which are closed for restoration, but which were supposed to be open tonight as a sort of preview. These are a structure built up on the hill behind Trajan's forum, and while there's some controversy about exactly what they were supposed to be, the leading theory is that they were basically a mall. Spencer Gifts over there, Orange Julius in the food court, and lots of second-century mallrats skipping school and hanging out with their togas hiked up... Anyway, it's a pretty cool site, since it's extensive, well-preserved, in Rome, and not a temple.

But as I was heading over there, the thunderstorm struck. I got completely soaked (and you know what I learned? If you're tall, and surrounded by shorter people with umbrellas, their umbrellas will funnel all the rain right on to your chest. It's... unpleasant.) And to make matters worse, I couldn't figure out where the entrance to the markets was. So it was kind of a bust; but you know, I can just head to Franklin Mills when I get back to Philadelphia, right? Sigh.

What made up for it was walking over to the Pantheon afterwards. The Pantheon is the best place in the city to wait out a rainstorm: you can watch the rain pour through the oculus and splash all over the marble floor, bringing out the colors of the stone and making it all shiny. (I took some pictures; if they turn out well, I'll post them in a day or two.) That made it it worthwhile: the wet clothes, squishy shoes and all. Even if I missed the mall...

ricotta di bufalicious

2005-09-17T17:43:00.000+02:00

There's mozzarella di bufala, of course. Everybody knows about that. Not so easy to get in the US (though not super-difficult, either), but something you see all over the place in Italy. There's a dairy up the street from me that trucks great mozz in from Campania every morning, and I've been picking up a ball or two every so often. Who doesn't like buffalo mozzarella? Nobody, that's who.

As far as I knew, mozzarella was the only cheese you could really make from buffalo milk. That is, until this last week when I had the ricotta as part of a cheese plate at Vinando, a great wine bar in the Ghetto of Rome. I thought it was some sort of mild goat cheese at first: pure white, firm but ever so slightly creamy. Then I tasted it.

In general, my feeling is that people who describe food as "a revelation" should be stoned to death with the collected works of Elizabeth David. It's such a stupid cliche. But it's a stupid cliche I'm trying hard to avoid when describing this cheese. Creamy, yes, but with a slight graininess on the tongue. A little bit sweet, not sugary, but with the unctuous sweetness of really good pure milk that hasn't been sissied down by taking out all the fatty goodness. And-- this is the part that just blew me away-- a fruitiness to it (seriously, like apples) that isn't like any other cheese I've tasted before.

My complaint is: why was I not informed of the existence of ricotta di bufala until this week? I demand that the entire nation of Italy be called to account for keeping me in the dark until now, condemning me to decades of pointless buffalo-free existence, and leading me to believe that ricotta had to be a bland, dull, flavorless mush, fit only to live in a tub and only emerge when it's pimped up with sugar and stuffed in a pastry, or slapped between layers of watery lasagna. Damn you, Italy! (But bless you, too.)

oh you silly Etruscans

2005-09-14T21:55:00.000+02:00

If I ever get a gig writing a Discovery Channel program about the Etruscans, I'm going to be faced with a serious problem of rhetoric. Either you have to describe the Etruscans as mysterious, cryptic and inscrutable (a riddle wrapped in an enigma, draped in a toga). Or you have to announce that they weren't so odd after all: why, they were just like us, with the eating and the drinking and the dancing and the weird obsession with sheep livers! But on the whole, I'd rather go with inscrutability: after all, that way any precious bits of knowledge that come dripping from my lips will seem all the sweeter.

Still, there are all kinds of reasons why the Etruscans were cool. For starters, their head god (equivalent to Jupiter) was called "Tina". Second, those sheep livers, which were not only a tasty snack but also a reliable way of predicting the future (check out the Piacenza Liver-- a model of a liver used for this sort of haruspicy.) And there's Etruscan tomb painting, which represents a large percentage of all the surviving painting from the classical world.

We went on a field trip recently to Tarquinia, the town in Lazio (an hour or two from Rome) where most of these paintings have been found. It's changed quite a lot since I'd been there last (not the paintings, duh). When I was there last, you needed a guide to show you the sites; now it's a park, so you can go down into the tombs yourself. Here's a shot of what the site looks like above ground:

The vast majority of these tombs haven't been excavated yet. But it should be pretty easy to find them, right? Just look for the huts with the stairways leading into the earth. (I so should have been an archaeologist.)

The tombs themselves are gorgeous. Even though Murphy's Law (with the Italian Bureaucracy corollary) means you'll never get to see the particular tomb that you really want to see most, we were able to get into about a dozen. You CAN take pictures, but the light is lousy, and there's glass in front of them, so most of mine are pretty lousy. Instead, here's a photo from a website about the tombs:

This is the Tomb of the Leopards (which are elsewhere), one of my favorites. The colors are gorgeous, and I love the scenes of partying. Other tombs have different sorts of, um, amusements: there's a scene of a dude tied to a stake, with a bag over his head, fighting a dog. (Poor doggie? Poor dude? Take your pick.) And there's the "Tomba della Fustigazione", which has scenes of kinky sex. Whichever sort of entertainment you prefer, there's a tomb for you, and it probably looks pretty cool.

I was glad to learn, in the town of Tarquinia, that the art of painting hasn't died out. Here's a sign from a salumeria there:

"Here they do me right!" I always thought that kitschy pig iconography was a purely barbecue thing; but it turns out to be a porchetta thing too. Tina bless those Etruscans!

our animal friends, part 2

2005-09-12T20:59:00.000+02:00

I have to say that on the whole—with one big exception—I’m pretty impressed by Roman dogs. Let’s get that exception out of the way, first: I’m of course referring to those big steaming piles of exceptions that litter the streets of my neighborhood. Pooper scoopers haven’t caught on, I’m afraid; it’s the rare dog owner you see following his pooch around, plastic bag in hand. They do exist: more common than Bigfoot (if not by much); seeing one is a National Geographic-worthy occurence.

Leaving that aside, though, dogs you see in Rome mostly seem to be a well-behaved bunch. Lots of them are off-leash, and it’s rarely a problem: they pad along in front of their master, sniffing at the occasional tree, but mostly heading in a straight line to wherever they’re going. They’re pretty much all business: I mean, I’m not in the habit of dangling pork chops in front of dogs’ noses, but as far as I can tell, it’s hard to distract them. For the dogs, it's all about getting the job of doggitude done, and to that I say: kudos!

I took this photo a few weeks back, in front of one of the bakeries near my house. I’d gone in to get a little snack, and when I came out, saw this pack of dachshunds parked outside, leashed to a ring in the wall. Also a couple of boys playing with them; I thought it was cute, and snapped a few photos, as the kids mugged for the camera. It was only after I got home that I realized that they weren’t hugging the dogs; they were sort of, um, strangling them… Still, I’ve seen both the dogs and the boys since them, so everybody seems to have survived okay.

seriously, dude, non e un foodblog

2005-09-09T08:48:00.000+02:00

Here in Rome, the two supporting columns of my stately snacking edifice have been pizza bianca and pizza rossa. In the US, I'd always seen pizza bianca as just a white pizza: that is, cheese no sauce. Roman pizza bianca is just flat bread plus oil and salt (usually coarse salt, maybe sea salt if it's a little fancy). Pizza rossa = ditto, with a little tomato sauce topping it.

Now, if there's a more perfect afternoon snack than a hot slice of pizza bianca, please let me know about it, so that I can pack up and move to wherever it's to be found (Do you have space on your couch? Thanks.) In the meantime, here's a shot of Beth enjoying some:

This particular pizza is from the Forno Campo De' Fiori, located at the west end of... well, I'll let you figure that one out, Sherlock. It's thin, light, a little bit crispy, and for my money, is the second best pizza bianca in the city. The third best pizza bianca is not far away, on one of the little streets near the Campo, at Paneficio Roscioli. Roscioli's pizza is thicker and chewier; a slightly different style, and almost as good. (I should point out that Roscioli is probably a better bakery overall; they have a wonderful selection of pastries and cookies, as well as breads. So they're worth a stop if you're in the neighborhood: and as long as you're there, hit their salumeria on the other side of the street.)

But the best pizza bianca I've had is from Fratelli Beti, on Via Dezza in Monteverde. They have a razor-sharp understanding of just how much oil and salt to put on the pizza. It's salty, a tiny bit greasy, and something that slips the surly bonds of mere bread-ness to touch the face of snack heaven.

Now at this point, you're probably saying, "yes, yes. This all sounds very nice. But how great can a snack be if it lacks any sort of cured pork product?" And you'd be right, of course. Fortunately, somebody has boldly stepped up to the plate to resolve this dilemma: yet another bakery in the Campo dei Fiori area. I can't remember the name (it's something like Fornaio Baullari), but it's on the Via dei Baullari, a street that runs between the Campo and the Corso Vittorio Emmanuelle. I promise that you won't miss it; just look for the place that has a mortadella the size of a telephone pole, thrusting proudly into the street:

Here you can see a couple admiring the sausage. (Well, she was admiring it. He was a little nonplussed. I can't think why.) I can't remember whether they went into the bakery, but if not, they missed out. What they do there is take a piece of pizza bianca, cut it into half, and pile on a few slices of mortadella. They do it with prosciutto, too, but I haven't yet tried that: the siren song of that mortadella has just been too hard to resist. That is one heck of a sandwich.

our animal friends

2005-09-07T17:10:00.000+02:00

I've been super-busy with work lately, so haven't had time to commit to blogdom any of the delicacies of Italian cuisine I've been enjoying, the fantastic adventures in Etruscanland that have been occupying my days. (Let alone the hours spent in the library, researching the next lecture. Woo!)

Still, I want to share a picture of one of the turtles that lives in the Centro garden. He (she? it? what do you expect me to do, turn it over and check?) has a fellow-turtle, who mostly stays hidden, and has to share the fountain with a school of ill-tempered goldfish. Sometimes the turtle hides underwater or paddles around, but when it's sunny out, you can see it chillin' on this rock above the pool:

On a hot day, who could ask for better? A nice mossy rock to sit on, sunlight filtering through the trees, a jet of water shooting up your tuchis: this must be something close to turtle paradise.

what this needs is... more elephant!

2005-09-02T17:29:00.000+02:00

We began our Italian film series last night with Scipio Africanus. This is an epic (though at less than 90 minutes, a short epic) film, financed by the Mussolini regime, about the Roman vs. Carthaginian smackdown at the end of the Second Punic War, culminating with Scipio's invasion of Africa and the battle of Zama.

To the extent that it's a famous (or infamous) movie, it's because of its connection with il Duce: his son was the executive producer, and the film won the Mussolini Cup at the 1937 Venice Film Festival (purely on artistic merit, no doubt.) And no surprise; it's a blatant propaganda piece, designed to justify Italy's invasion of Ethiopia a year or so before. (It's also known for some pretty embarassing goofs-- you can see telephone poles in the background in a couple of battle scenes, and I'm told, but didn't notice myself, that there's a legionary wearing a wristwatch in another scene.)

It's not what you'd call a great movie. Okay, it's not what you'd call a good movie, either (though I've seen worse). But it definitely has its moments. For one thing, it unquestionably marks a high point in elephant-based cinema: the scene of Zama features about twenty elephants (including a baby elephant, which is about the most adorable widdle cutie pie I've ever seen) charging at the Romans, charging down a hill, charging up another hill, and generally being pretty damn cool. Like another shot, with two cavalry detachments plunging at each other, it's an amazing sight. When you watch it, you know you're watching real elephants doing real stuff, not some sissy CGI confection. And there are some moments that look like something out of a Sam Raimi movie: elephants getting spears in their eye, soldiers getting swords in their necks, all kinds of cool gore.

It's also clearly a movie that was made by people who knew their Roman historians: the paired speeches before the battle of Zama, delivered by Scipio and Hannibal, could have been lifted from Caesar (and for all I know, were lifted from Livy: this is why I will probably never make a historical epic movie.) And it's worth a look if you're interested in that sort of thing, or just interested in a movie that's become such a strange historical footnote.

(And this all reminds me: what's the deal with dictator/movie buffs? Kim Jong Il, of course, is a huge film fanatic. And there's that anecdote about Saadi Qaddafi-- Moammar's son-- approaching Harvey Weinstein about making a biopic about his dad. The response from Weinstein was evidently that he'd do it, if Libya would recognize Israel. There seems to be some sort of connection between the desire to be an absolute ruler who holds the lives of others in the palm of his hand, and the desire to make quality film entertainment-- which, if what I know about Hollywood is true, works both ways.)

ceci n'est pas un foodblog

2005-09-01T19:00:00.000+02:00

Since Beth was out here last weekend, we celebrated with a meal at an upscale kinda restaurant: Antico Arco, located on the Gianicolo not too far from home. Antico Arco is usually ranked in the top of the Roman restaurant listings; they do modern versions of Roman cuisine. The decor is similarly non-traditional, as you can see from this photo:

This is the one picture I took at dinner; after taking it, I felt instantly self-conscious and decided to let Mr. Camera hide in his little pouch for the rest of the evening. Instead, I will use the magic of my descriptions paint a picture of the dinner…

We ordered the degustazione; seven courses (54 euros), and titled “Seven Steps Through Gianicolo Hill”. We also ordered a few glasses of wine, but I didn’t write them down, and I didn’t know what they were (there was something white from Puglia that I liked a lot) and so they have completely skipped my mind. Sorry…

The amuse-bouche (hey! the obligatory amuse-bouche has spread to Italy! Now if I could only remember what the Italian term, if any, is…) was a chilled pea soup with tomato cream and teensy-tiny little croutons. Nice for summer.

Course #1 was a pan-seared, slightly crispy red mullet fillet with sauteed diced vegetables (eggplant, asparagus), a thin pesto and balsamic vinegar. This may have been my favorite dish of the night; as with the amuse, it was pretty light and very satisfying.

This was followed by a little panzanella (bread salad) topped with fresh octopus: cylinders, each a half-inch or so in diameter, and about the same height, that I guess were cut from the tentacles. (I think. Actually, I have absolutely no idea where they come from, never having had the chance to dissect an octopus. For all I know, they could have been cylindrical octopus testicles, or sections from the eyestalks of an Mediterranean red-footed octopus. But the next time I take off on one of my Captain Nemo-esque undersea adventures, I’ll be sure to save the bodies of the octopuses I fight in a desperate battle to the death, and not just dump them off the side of my submarine for the sharks to devour.) Anyway, whatever part of the octopus it was, it was tender, if a little bland. It occurs to me just how rarely I’ve eaten octopus; it’s usually been smoked, or in sushi, and has always- including at ‘Gusto- been at least a little bit rubbery. This wasn’t at all; an interesting experience. The pesto from the fish course made a reappearance here, which was a little surprising. But in a good way: pesto isn’t Tuscan like panzanella is, but it was a nice match with the mild octopus.

More fish in the third course, a “gnocchi” with tiger prawns bisque, sea bass and sauteed chicory. I’m not sure why “gnocchi” “was” in “scare quotes”; as far as I could tell, they were pretty standard gnocchi shaped, nice and light and quite good. I hope that this doesn’t signal the creeping invasion of unnecessary quotation marks (OK, scare arrowy thingies that Europeans use instead of quotation marks) that has given grammarian such fits and made Lynne Truss such a wealthy woman. The fish was cut into small chunks, about the same size as the gnocchi, so the whole dish had an even appearance.

I’m not really sure what the chicory was doing in the dish. Chicory is funny stuff. I don’t think I’d ever had it before arriving in Italy this time around, but it’s all over the place, and I’ve been eating it a lot. You’ll see it at the rosticceria or tavola calda in a big plate, sauteed with garlic and just crying out for a little squeeze of lemon. (Heck, one night I made just chicory for dinner, sauteed until just soft, with some shavings of pecorino to give it some body. It was shockingly good.) I don’t know if it’s just that it’s in season now, but man: it’s all over the place. This version of chicory was fine, good, great, but again, what’s the idea of putting it in the gnocchi? Inquiring minds want to know.

Course numero quattro was another, more substantial pasta dish: manichette alla gricia with broccoli. This dish was not only tasty, but also a gastrolexical eductation on a plate. I didn’t know what manichette would be—as it turns out, the word is the diminutive of manica, “sleeve”. And sure enough, manichette are little sleeves; tiny pasta tubes. I don’t know if there’s a pasta that’s named after the regular form of manica, but of course there’s the, um, embiggenative form manicotti, “big sleeves”. (Unless the –cotto part is from “cooked”. But I don’t think so, because then it would mean “cooked hands” and that’s just gross.)

I’d never had gricia sauce before. It turns out to be the cousin (or more likely, ancestor) of amatriciana: a pancetta-based sauce with white wine and pecorino, native to Lazio. In some ways it’s like carbonara: no eggs, but very rich. This was quite good, and I managed to keep my membership in the Clean Plate Club in spite of starting to fill up.

(The broccoli, you’ll be glad to know, was plain ol’ regular broccoli, cut up into tiny florets that absorbed the sauce oh so very well. And I knew what it was, you bet. Didn’t have to look that one up in a dictionary or google it or nothin’. Go me!)

The final non-dessert part of the meal was a rabbit fillet- or maybe a saddle? again, I’m betraying my lack of anatomical knowledge- cut into a sort of a round and served with a olive sauce (taggiasche olives, which I guess are from Liguria- yeah, I did have to google that one) and potatoes. I enjoyed this, and amazingly, so did Beth. She claims never to have eaten rabbit before, and that sounds about right: when we were in Italy back in the day, they’d sometimes serve it, but nary a slice of Thumper would cross her plate. So that’s a good thing.

After that pummeling of richness, Antico Arco lightened things up a little bit with a white peach grattachecca. Subtle, refreshing, wonderful. And finally, another dessert course: a sort of crepe stuffed with creme Chantilly and sliced strawberries. (This is one course I really wish I’d photographed: it was arranged like a horn spilling berries and cream; very pretty).

All in all, I was impressed by Antico Arco. It’s not cheap, but it’s also not outrageous for how good it is (you don’t have to get the tasting menu, and the a la carte selections are less expensive). And there aren’t that many Roman restaurants that serve modern food of this kind; it’s definitely interesting to see something like panzanella or gnocchi tweaked in this way. Also a good contrast with ‘Gusto, which has the same sort of idea, but is somewhat less successful; the cooking at AA has a level of confidence that lets them really pull it off.

ara of not so pacis

2005-08-24T17:14:00.000+02:00

I mentioned, in yesterday's post about 'Gusto, the new museum designed by Richard Meier to house the Ara Pacis (the Altar of Peace, dedicated by Augustus) that is going up right next door to the Mausoleum of Augustus. I was just sent a link to this photo essay about the new museum, with some mock-ups of what the completed structure will look like. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, just two things.

First, the photos are carefully staged to steer around one of the most controversial aspects of the project, which is that it doesn't take its setting into account at all: it's sort of plopped down as if the mausoleum and piazza weren't there. In a way, that seems appropriate to me: after all, the altar was originally located elsewhere, and was moved to its current spot by Mussolini. So I don't know if I buy the arguments that have been made about the structure "damaging the urban fabric", et cetera.

And second, what the heck is that column doing, standing by itself at the top of the stairs? I may not know much about architecture, but I know what looks weird. And that? Looks weird.

anarchy in the SPQR

2005-08-24T12:25:00.000+02:00

Above an ATM machine, Via Carini:
E piu immorale fondare una banca o rapinarla? -H. Fantazzini (followed by an anarchist symbol)

"Is it more immoral to found a bank or rob it?"

Wow. That's, like, all deep and stuff. Still, I want to give the anarchists equal time, you know?

obligatory food porn post

2005-08-23T15:50:00.000+02:00

Dinner last night involved a long walk, through the Campus Martius, and ending up back near the Tiber, in the Piazza Augusto Imperatore. This is the ugly-ass structure, constructed in classic heavy Fascist style, that Mussolini had built around the mausoleum of Augustus. The piazza sort of crowds the tomb (though, I suppose, no more than the medieval buildings that Il Duce had stripped away from it); on the other side, the controversial Richard Meier structure for the Ara Pacis is going up, still covered in scaffolding.

I wish my photos of the mausoleum had turned out. We were there right at dusk; the sky was fading from rose to purple, and you could see light pouring out of the darkening tomb... It was beautiful, and I (characteristically) spoiled the moment by speculating about how cool an Emperor Augustus-themed horror movie would be: after two thousand years, he's back... for REVENGE! In The Curse of Augustus' Tomb! Coming soon to a theater near you!

Foodie-types who know Rome at all will have already guessed where we ate, at 'Gusto, under the columns that surround the piazza. Because I'm slow on the uptake, I only just now realized that the name is a pun: it means "taste", of course, but it's also a play on the emperor's name:

'Gusto is something like an Italian version of an American theme restaurant, only here the theme is focused sharply on food. Still, it has an "it's a floor wax! no, it's a dessert topping!" feel to it, with a restaurant, a pizzeria, a wine bar, a wine shop, and something like a Williams-Sonoma outlet (expensive cooking supplies, good culinary bookstore), all lumped together in a gastronomic three-ring circus. It's a big place, with attractive, modern decor, lots of wait staff striding purposefully through the room, and a dolce vita-style clientele.

We got a table in the restaurant section, outside under the colonnade, with a nice view of the emperor's tomb. After a glass of prosecco, we got down to bizness, starting with a couple of antipasti for the table. First, an insalata di pesci e verdure (grilled fish, a couple of clams, some octopus, with a sort of mild citrus sauce). From the description, I'd expected something more like ceviche; this was more like, um, assorted cooked fish with some veggies and a light sauce.

Next, polpo verace in amatriciana. More grilled octopus, this served with a classic amatriciana sauce. A great amatriciana, actually, with lots of smoky bacony goodness; I happily sopped up the extra sauce with some bread.

'Gusto's primi and secondi are sort of all over the map, from relatively traditional to completely non-Italian, and I think the rest of our meal reflects this. I ordered lombo di agnello al forno, which arrived with what was described as a pizzetta di patata (to you or me it'd be described as a loose potato pancake, or fried mashed potatoes.) The lamb was medium, but still juicy and with a nice herb flavor:

I don't have a photo of the stinco di vitella, which is a shame, because it was terrific: boneless braised veal shank, unctuous and just wonderful. I don't know enough about Italian cooking to know what they do with shanks besides osso buco; this was really good, if maybe a little heavy for a summer evening. (Though any worries on that front were more than made up for by the immature thrill of learning the word "stinco". Hee!)

Here's tortelli di faraona (I think, but can't remember and am too lazy to check, that that's guinea hen):

And finally, 'Gusto also has a couple of couscous selections, as well as "wok cooked" dishes. This is spaghetti with cabbage (and I can't remember what else; probably some sort of protein? I only tried a little bit of it, and found it okay but not so special). And when they say "wok", they aren't kidding; while most of the dishes are moderate-sized, this one is massive:

Peace, love and noodles, man.

We finished off with a plate of Italian cheeses, served with bread and a couple of honeys. (And not just the ladies sitting at the table next to us! But seriously...) The cheeses were good, but I was a little irritated that we couldn't get a waiter to let us know what they were. There's a pecorino there, and what I assume is a gorgonzola (actually, those were the best of the bunch, though they were all pretty good), but I'm not sure about the rest. I wish I were at the black-belt level of fromagerie that I could tell you instantly what a cheese is, but I'm not; it's nice to have a server, you know, help out with that:

'Gusto is an interesting place. I'd definitely head back to the wine bar, snack on some different cheeses and bites, and try some of their wines. (After the prosecco, we had a pretty decent Falanghina, and with the cheese, a glass of some sort of red wine that I can't remember now). But I'm not sure how crazy I am about what's on offer in the restaurant. I appreciate that they're trying to do something modern, and mix traditional elements with the non-traditional (tempura baccala, for example). But I don't know how well it works in practice. Take the octopus in amatriciana: both of the elements were pretty good. But I don't think the dish gains a whole lot from mixing them together. I suppose there might be sort of a joke in serving long, skinny octopus tentacles in a dish where you'd expect spaghetti or bucatini; however, that only gets you so far. Still, it's a fun place, it's great for people-watching, and it's nice to eat with the spirit of the first emperor watching over you.

if Rome's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'

2005-08-23T14:00:00.000+02:00

There was a small earthquake (magnitude 4.5) yesterday afternoon, with its epicenter near Anzio, around 30 miles south of Rome. I wish I could say that I noticed it, but I just found out about it on the news this morning. Though evidently I stood up and looked out the window then (I thought it was to check whether it had started raining), and last night I had a dream about earthquakes, so maybe I picked up on it in some sort of spoooooky subconscious way.

Anyway, here's an article about the quake, with a potted history of the earthquakes in Roman history (executive summary: gods angry, things fall down.) It duly mentions the Lacus Curtius, a strange monument in the Roman Forum, which just maybe got its name from an earthquake-related incident, way back in hoary antiquity...

sweeter sweetness

2005-08-20T15:19:00.000+02:00

Just a very short post today, because I'm super-tired: went for a long walk around the centro storico and tried to hit as many churches as I could. If you're sufficiently motivated, you can see a lot of churches in a morning, and a lot of church art: a Caravaggio here, a Raphael there, and before you know it, bam! it's afternoon, and you need some gelato and maybe a lie-down.

The first, at least, was completely doable: Gelateria San Crispino. Spitting distance from the hordes at the Trevi Fountain, and another of the famousest gelaterie in the city. Lampone was every bit as good as Giolitti's, and the San Crispino (cream and honey) a nice complement.

graffiti pazzi

2005-08-18T14:53:00.000+02:00

I'm really taken by the quantity and variety of Italian graffiti. You'd have to look pretty hard, I think, to find a city in the US that has just so much, covering every square inch of some blocks (in most places, only up to about shoulder height, though: it is foretold that some day a graffitist will come along who knows how to use a stepladder. He will be the Chosen One, and he will OWN the CITY). Also, a lot of it's political. Incoherent politics, maybe, but political nonetheless; something you'd never see in the US.

With that as a preamble, here's the graffito of the day, written in pen on the back of a seat on the number 75 bus:

[swastika] WHITE POWO!

Which I like to think was written by a Nazi with a really bad lisp.

nobody puts Gallienus in a corner!

2005-08-17T17:57:00.000+02:00

Okay, I'm going to indulge myself in two teensy little rants today:

First, evidently Ferragosto is more like Chanukah than like Christmas: it can't be contained in just one measly little day. At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for why the damn Auditorium of Maecenas was closed when I tried to visit it. I stood there at the locked gate, staring forlornly at the sign with the dates and times marked on it: open every day except Monday (it was Tuesday) after 9 AM (it was 10 AM). Maybe they figured that, hey, it's only the measly Auditorium of Maecenas, not the Colosseum; only real archaeology geeks want to see it; and screw 'em. Bleah.

Second, what's the deal with the Italians and making change? Seriously; I know that this is a cliche, but it's absolutely bizarre. I went to Feltrinelli (Italian for "Borders") to buy the 2005 Gambero Rosso guide to Rome, and the clerk gave me massive amounts of attitude because I was paying for 25 euros worth of books with a 50-euro bill. If it were a bar or a little shop, I might understand: the owner doesn't want to schlep all the way down to the bank to get change every morning; that's valuable cappucino-drinking time wasted on customer service. But this is a big store! I've gotta figure that there's no logic here; just the reflex to defend her precious, precious change, and wrath at the customer who's just there to screw everything up...

Okay, enough ranting. Here's a photo I took on my walk yesterday. From the Esquiline, it's the so-called "Arch of Gallienus". So-called because while it has an inscription honoring the emperor. But it's actually one of the city gates of the old Servian wall, pimped up into a triumphal arch. Nowadays, it's in pretty bad shape, which is what I sort of like about it; it's kind of a seedy, broken-down ol' arch, wedged between a church and a block of apartments. Sure, it needs a little TLC, and nobody pays a lot of attention to it nowadays, but it's still standing, dammit!

It's sort of like Gallienus himself. The guy was in power from 253-268, which alone makes him one of the more successful rulers during the "Crisis of the Third Century," aka "Rome, It Sucks To Be You Right Now." He doesn't get a lot of respect, and pretty much only ancient historians even know much about him nowadays. (And he isn't even a punchline, like that other -ienus emperor. You know the one I mean.) But as ruler in a horrible period of Roman history he had his work cut out for him just keeping things from really going to hell in a handbasket, and he put into place a lot of reforms that were followed up by Aurelian and Diocletian and that put the empire on a firm footing again. So I give him props: you go, Gallienus!

tumbleweeds on quattro venti

2005-08-15T15:13:00.000+02:00

Today is Ferragosto, a national holiday that has a religious basis (the Assumption of the Virgin? after what happened to her, you'd think she'd know better than to make assumptions, ba-dump-dump! Seriously, folks...) But in effect, it marks ground zero for the Italian summer holidays. Which means that Rome is empty, man. Empty like a neutron bomb hit: the buildings are still there, but where are the people? Before leaving for Italy, I'd heard that "everybody goes on vacation blah blah Rome in August ghost town blah blah" but, in reality, while there were lots of shuttered store fronts, there was still a lot of stuff going on. Not now; wow. I should totally use this as an opportunity to go commit some awesome property crimes. Or stay in air-conditioned comfort and read Ovid. Whatevah.

sweet sweet sweetness

2005-08-13T17:36:00.000+02:00

It's gotten hot again here-- temperatures in the 90's-- and so yesterday evening after it had cooled off a bit, I decided to take a long walk, with a theme. That theme, you ask? Baroque Rome? The splendors of antiquity? Oh no: as I said, it's hot, and hot weather demands some icy sweets.

With that in mind, I started in Trastevere. On the Lungotevere degli Anguillara, on one end of the Ponte Cestio leading to Tiber Island, is a little stand called Sora Mirella la Grattachecca. They do one thing, very well: shaved ice. I have the sense that this treat used to be more common in Rome than it is now; there's another stand up the street, but grattachecca doesn't fill the streets the way gelato does. It's a shame, because as far as I'm concerned, as a hot-weather treat, it can kick gelato's butt around the corner every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Superficially, grattachecca is like a snow cone, but I've always hated snow cones: massive granules of ice that threaten to break your teeth and lousy artificial-tasting syrup don't really have much to offer. This is a lot better, for several reasons. First, the ice is finely shaved by hand into a soft texture, then scraped into a cup. The syrup is also good quality-- for me, amarena (sour cherry)-- and you know, actually, like, tastes what it's supposed to be. And best of all, they top the concoction with a little bit of fruit: in this case, a few sugared black cherries.

This gave me the strength I needed to cross the bridge into the centro storico, where I wandered (lonely as a cloud) and ended up not in a field of daffodils, but the Campo di Fiori. There I walked by the famous forno, which, I'm told, turns out the best pizza bianca in the city. They were closed, of course (damn you, August!) but the sign promised that they will be back later in the month.

And finally, ground zero for frozen goodness: Giolitti, near the Pantheon and in the eyes of many, the best gelato Rome has to offer. How can you live up to that? It's hard, but they make a good go at it. They had a large selection of flavors (Champagne gelato, anyone?) but it's hot, so I like to go for fruit: this time, I tried mora (mulberry) and lampone (raspberry, which had just come out from the back: good to see that they make the gelato continuously) topped with a nice big dollop of soft, fluffy panna. I don't, frankly, know what to make of the mora: its color was outstanding, purple verging on black, but had a flavor that you might describe as "subtle" or, less charitably, "not much". But I'll be honest: I don't think I've had mulberry before (I just like Pyramus and Thisbe), so that might be a characteristic of the fruit. Lampone, on the other hand, was outstanding. You know how raspberries (and some other berries, too, like blackberry) have, underneath the bright berry flavor, a sort of green, vegetal taste? I don't know if it comes from the seeds or what, but the presence of that flavor has always been a touchstone for me in judging whether a gelato is really good. Giolitti's lampone had it, oh yes. Good stuff, and I'll be back.

I couldn't eat any more sweet stuff that night, but this afternoon's walk oh-so-conveniently brought me back to the neighborhood of the Pantheon (hey, it was closed last night.) This time around, I went over to the dark side-- literally, in this case-- at Tazza D'Oro. This is another super-famous place; one of the top caffes in the City, and particularly well-known for their granita di caffe.

I don't remember exactly when granita machines started appearing in cafes in the US: maybe the mid- or late 90s? I was never all that impressed; they always struck me as sort of a fancy, or at least Italianified version of a milkshake, sort of like the frappucino explosion that hit a few years later. Mostly sweet, not much character. But Tazza d'Oro's granita is the real deal: sweet, true, but with a dark richness that comes from using absolutely first-rate coffee. It's very strong, like good (frozen)espresso, but without any bitterness. And it doesn't hurt that the granita comes sandwiched between two layers of first-rate whipped cream, like a coffee parfait.

I sat on the porch of the Pantheon and savored the granita, then went inside the building. There's not much I can say about the Pantheon that hasn't been said, or that won't make me sound pretentious or geeky. So I'll just mention how wonderful it is to see an ancient building that's still intact, that's still in use, and that shows so clearly what the Romans could do when they put their mind to it. Here's a photo of the ceiling: for some reason, a seagull kept flying in circles around the oculus while I was there. I don't know if it couldn't figure out how to get out, or if it just liked the view. You can just make it out at about the five o' clock position.

Finally, I felt that it'd be wrong to check out Tazza d'Oro without hitting its competitor, Caffe Sant' Eustachio. This is the Rolling Stones to Tazza d'Oro's Beatles (or maybe it's a Roma/Lazio sort of thing, if you prefer a soccer analogy): you're supposed to like one or the other. I can't make a fair comparison yet, but the espresso at Sant' Eustachio is wonderful; I don't know what sort of black magic they use, but somehow they wind up with pillows of smooth crema that covers the coffee. Lovely.

It's a completely unprepossessing place from the outside: here I am in front of it:

Just a hole-in-the-wall, almost literally. But one that really knows how to work a bean.

atkins strikes again?

2005-08-07T16:29:00.000+02:00

There's graffiti down the block from me that reads PATATA TI AMO. Which, of course, means "potato, I love you." You wonder what that indicates: pet name or side-effect of a low-carb diet?

il vicinato

2005-08-06T15:24:00.000+02:00

Monteverde Vecchio, where I live, is on the west side of Rome, up the Gianicolo from Trastevere. It's a relatively new part of the city: through most of the nineteenth century, it was farmland, and didn't begin to be developed until about 1900-1930. Which makes me wonder: why didn't the Roman government take the chance to develop this area along a grid plan? There are some right angles, but also lots of curves. Maybe they're concessions to topography, or maybe it's just that wacky Italian character.

The other thing I realized the other day was that my building, which was built in the 1920s or 30s, is a century younger than my house in Philadelphia! Funny, that.

the price of pizza

2005-08-06T15:06:00.000+02:00

One of the things that's kind of a drag about being in Italy right now is the state of US currency: day after day, the euro keeps taking the dollar back behind the woodshed and beating it until George Washington bleeds green. Which means that lots of things are pretty expensive, including food. It doesn't have to be expensive to go out to eat, but it's tough to do it on the cheap, if you want something other than, say, pizza. I'll grant you that that's in part because of being in Rome, but even food at markets isn't cheap.

Fortunately, I've found a couple of exceptions. Outdoor markets seem to be a little bit cheaper than stores; this is a good thing, because they basically rule. There's one in Monteverde, a couple of blocks from my apartment, where I've done a little bit of shopping. It's a little bit like the Italian Market in Philadelphia (oddly enough), only clean, and with a huge variety of really good quality produce (I counted four different kinds of peaches this morning. You know that's a good thing.)

The other exception is wine, which is ridiculously, laughably cheap. It's super-easy to get a bottle of good wine for less than $10, and decent wine for 6 or 7 bucks. Wine in restaurants is more expensive, of course, but lots of places have a good house wine that's not expensive at all. What that means is that the average cost for a restaurant meal, with a bottle or two of wine, winds up being pretty comparable to a meal in the US.

Best of all, there's a store up the block from me that sells vino sfuso: "loose" wine. They have giant vats of wine; you bring a bottle (like a mineral water bottle) and fill it with whatever you want. I bought a 1.5 liter bottle of a totally acceptable Montepulciano for 2,20 euros: eat your heart out, Two-Buck Chuck!

un giardino romano

2005-08-01T11:08:00.000+02:00

Just after midnight, I was awoken from my jet-lagged slumber by a series of explosions. I was sure for a moment that Al Quaeda had chosen its moment to strike Rome (though in the light of day I realized: really, terrorists hitting Monteverde? Unlikely). Probably it was just fireworks- SUPER LOUD Italian-style fireworks- though it sounded like world war three out there.

That set me back, sleep-wise, so I missed breakfast. No worries, though; I took a couple of peaches and a roll and sat out in the garden. The Centro's garden is lovely: there's a fountain against one wall (pictured) with a little statue, koi and a couple of shy turtles, and another, circular fountain with more koi. Both are artfully covered with moss, and the bigger fountain has sprays of water that cut through the summer heat.

I'd forgotten just how many fountains there are in Rome: the big ones, of course, like the Trevi or our nearby big monument-style fountain, the Acqua Paola on the Gianicolo. But then there are all the little fountains that appear when you turn a corner, or (best of all) the municipal drinking fountains that are scattered here and there: you gotta love those Romans and their aqueducts!

Our garden also has a couple of lime trees (the fruits aren't so nice, but I think they're out of season), lots of shade and a little grill. A lovely retreat from the burning Roman summer.

ecco qui

2005-07-31T23:39:00.000+02:00

Well, here I am, footloose and fancy-free in the Eternal City. Getting to Rome turned out to be a breeze; way easier than I had any possible right to expect. A 118-knot tailwind sped across the Atlantic in record time; meanwhile, I filled mah belly with half a pastrami sandwich (left over from lunch), popped a couple of Benadryl like the Burroughsesque renegade that y'all know I am and dozed my way to an Italian sunrise.

I was, of course, eager to get my feet on the ground and wander around the city (not to mention keep busy and stave off jet lag), so I walked down the Gianicolo, through Trastevere, over the bridge across Tiber Island, through the ghetto (cue the Elvis song, inappropriately), a half-loop around the Theater of Marcellus, up the Capitoline, and down the other side into the Forum where I realized that, hey, it's about a billion degrees out! and I left my hat in the US. ditto sunscreen. At that point, Lobster-Boy walked baaaaack the same way he came, stopped in Trastevere for lunch at an ostaria (penne con fiori di zucco: kinda disappointing. The penne were served in a blush cream sauce, and while there were flowers in the sauce, they were just sort of lying there like so many soggy napkin fragments. If I'd been smart, I'd have ordered pizza con fiori; that's how they can really shine) and back to the Centro for nappin' and emailin' and bloggin' before dinner. Whee!

The other Centristi swear that the local gelateria, "Miami", is the best they've had. I can hardly believe to the idea that the best gelato in the city is to be found within rolling distance (seriously; it's like fifty feet away); some things are just too much to hope for. Clearly, research will have to be done.

in bocca al lupo!

2005-07-26T01:50:00.000+02:00

Only five days left, and it's time to face the fact that I never got around to stripping the layers of rust encrusted around my mad Italian skillz. Which isn't to say that I haven't gotten any practice, just that I've tended to emphasize less useful aspects of Italian. The details of the future tense or the definite article? Not so much. But I do know how to say
stanno appiccionati uno a l'altro: "they're all over each other", and
Ci vedo poco chiaro: "There's something fishy here."

Which might be more useful for The Real World: Rome than for the Centro...

Pack King

2005-07-19T00:38:00.000+02:00

Yeah, packing stinks; there's just no way around it. Even when it's a relatively soft pack (to coin an unwieldy phrase), in which I don't have to put everything away, just enough to get stuff out of the way, it still stinks. There's something about going through all your stuff and realizing that, gosh, maybe you really ought to use that kitchen torch and pasta roller and juicer every once in a while, rather than just let it sit in a box. It's almost enough to make me actually organize my house.

Almost.

i am zee count, and I love to count!

2005-07-17T00:15:00.000+02:00

The countdown begins: T minus two weeks: yow! So much left to do, to say, to defile... I'm in the phase of thinking less about all the cool stuff that's going to happen over the next year, and more about all the stuff I'm going to miss. Ah, well: time to post a picture!

This is from the dinner I had last weekend at the Herbfarm in Woodinville, WA. They have two Vietnamese potbellied pigs which were very sociable and photogenic (though I really ought to edit out the redeye...) The owner referred to them as the "recycling system", but then got all snippy when I asked about whether they'd end up on the menu. Which is weird: if she'd meant that they were pets, she should have said that: "recycling system", to me, implies that they'll be, like, reused for something, right?

visa blues, part 2

2005-06-10T22:23:00.000+02:00

I made another assault on the impregnable fortress of the Italian consulate today, and once again, was cruelly repulsed. Oddly enough, the very same woman I'd talked to before told me that the materials she'd asked for last time weren't what I needed at all. Student visa? No, no, you want a research visa. Come back in a week!

I stand in awe of the obstinacy and tenacity of the Italian bureaucrat. If the Romans had only thought, during the Second Punic War, to post a few of them at the foot of the Alps, they could have turned Hannibal away and saved a whole lot of trouble:

I'm sorry, signor Annibale, but unless you have the forms filled out in triplicate, I can't let you through. You don't know your grandmother's maiden name? Sorry, I can't issue you an invasion visa today: please, come back next month.

Now I just need to decide whether to take my elephants over the pass again, or try to work it out once I get to Rome. Decisions, decisions, I guess...

now with 25% more braiiiiin armor!

2005-05-23T13:48:00.000+02:00

It's nothing too new that you can buy an SUV that comes with anti-rhinoceros protection. I think we can all agree that that's a good thing. But it occurs to me that in every zombie movie, there's a scene where the characters trick out a van or bus with all kinds of anti-zombie gear. So why can't I buy a Range Rover with zombie protection built in? It'd be at least as useful as the rhino accessories-- the chances of being attacked by a rhinoceros at the Twin Oaks Mall are about the same as being attacked by rogue zombies-- and so very much cooler.

In Praise of Loebs

2005-05-21T00:26:00.000+02:00

Today I spent some time googling up what I could about Franklin P. Adams. Adams was a member of the Algonquin Round Table who, among other achievements, wrote a whole bunch of translations of Horace and other Latin poets, as well as some great mock-Horatian poems of his own.

The search brought me to this website, which has some nice little essays. In particular, I'm taken by an essay about the joy of Loebs, which introduced me to this poem, written in the early 20th century by one Charles Larcom Graves, to celebrate the publication of the hundredth Loeb. It begins:

When ways are foul and days are damp,
When agitators rage and ramp,
And Smillie, with the aid of Cramp,
  Threatens to rend the globe;
When margarine is scarce, or beef,
And drinks are dear and few and brief,
I find refreshment and relief
  And comfort in my Loeb.

Read the whole poem here.

visa blues

2005-04-26T18:18:00.000+02:00

I've always said that it's nice, every once in a while, to have your stereotypes confirmed; it makes you not feel like such an ass for having them.

In this case, the stereotypes are about consular officials and Italian bureaucrats. I tried to get my visa for Italy today: according to the Italian embassy website and the Centro, I needed a research visa. The reaction I got at the consulate, maybe not surprisingly, was lodged somewhere between disbelief and contempt: research visa? No such thing; you need a student visa, and I'm sure you don't have the right materials anyway.

Well, I did have the right materials (including a note from the Centro in Italian, which seemed to impress her a little). But she parried by refusing to accept them: too early! Come back in June.

Feh. Two hours out of my life...

Petrarcharama

2005-04-05T18:12:00.000+02:00

I've been reading Petrarch's Rerum Familiarum 6.2 as part of putting together the syllabus for an advanced Latin class. That's the famous letter in which he describes to his friend the days which they spent wandering through the city of Rome. Everything they saw, says Petrarch, reminded them of events in Roman history and letters: the palace of Evander, the death of Lucretia, the triumph and death of Caesar. Petrarch goes on for pages listing all these things, and concludes this section by asking his friend,

Sed quo pergo? possum ne tibi in hac parva papiro Romam designare? profecto, si possim, non oportet; nosti omnia, non quia Romanus civis, sed quia talium in primis rerum curiosissimus ab adolescentia fuisti. Qui enim hodie magis ignari rerum Romanarum sunt, quam Romani cives? Invitus dico: nusquam minus Roma cognoscitur quam Romae. Qua in re non ignorantiam solam fleo—quamquam quid ignorantia peius est? – sed virtutum fugam exiliumque multarum. Quis enim dubitare potest quin illico surrectura sit, si ceperit se Roma cognoscere? sed haec alterius temporis altera querela.

But where am I going here? Can I describe all of Rome in this short letter? Really, even if I could, it would be a bad idea; for you know everything, not because you're a Roman citizen, but because since your childhood, you've been so interested in the origins of such things. For who today are more ignorant of Roman matters, than Roman citizens? I hate to say it, but nowhere is Rome known less than at Rome. I'm not just sad about this sort of ignorance-- although what is worse than ignorance?-- but about the flight and exile of many virtues. For who can doubt that if Rome began to know itself, it would rise again on the spot? But that's a complaint for another time.

What I like about this quote, and why I find it useful, is the idea of Rome as a sort of virtual city. Petrarch and his friend are Roman citizens by virtue of their love of and interest in the city. It's that love that lets them summon up past events from their memory: first, on their walks around the city, and now as Petrarch writes this letter. He's able to do that, he says later, even now that mutata sunt omnia; locus abest, dies abiit, otium periit, pro facie tua mutas litteras aspicio, "everything has changed: the place is far off, the day has passed, our leisure has evaporated, and instead of your face I look on mute letters." Petrarch's Rome, in other words, is as much about memory, writing and friendship as it is a city of brick or marble.

counting down

2005-03-09T00:52:00.000+01:00

Only 48 hours until my big dinner at Studiokitchen! This is going to be fantastic; Shola sent the menu, and it is:

Red Lentil Soup
Smoked Duck and Truffled Artichoke Salad
Burnt Cumin Oil

Foie Gras Custard
Black Truffle Glaze
Porcini – Tallegio "Panini"

Roasted Scallops with Sansho Fennel Powder
Warm Wheatberry Salad
Rabbit Confit and Maui Onion Dumplings
Anise Hyssop Jus

Salt Baked Lamb Loin
Mirepoix of Eggplant, Pistachio and pickled Golden Raisins
Pistachio Praline
Celeriac Apple Cream
Curry Leaf Jus

Vanilla and Ginger Scented Peaches
Almond Orange "Nougatine"
Mandarin Syrup
Peach Cider
Lemon Yoghurt Sorbet

Oh yeah.

Stuffs to Do

2005-03-02T19:29:00.000+01:00

Only five months to go before I leave! I've made a list of to-eat to-do things that I need to hit before I leave Philadelphia.

First additions, not food-related:
*I really need to go to a Phillies game in the new ballpark.

*I've never been to the Atwater Kent museum. Heck, I don't even know if it's that good of a museum; but it's here, and it's about the history of the city, and I really ought to know something about that history...

More to be added later.

primordia urbis

2005-02-28T03:24:00.000+01:00

Thought for the day, from Livy's Praefatio:

Datur haec venia antiquitati ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat; et si cui populo licere oportet consecrare origines suas et ad deos referre auctores, ea belli gloria est populo Romano ut cum suum conditorisque sui parentem Martem potissimum ferat, tam et hoc gentes humanae patiantur aequo animo quam imperium patiuntur.

This license is granted to antiquity, that by mixing together the human and the divine, it makes the origins of cities more august; and if it is acceptable for any people to consecrate its origins and ascribe them to the gods, so much martial glory is due to the Roman people that when they claim the most powerful god Mars as their parent, and the parent of their founder, other human nations accept this as contentedly as they accept Rome's rule.

Good old Livy; I guess the weight of Ennius and Vergil are as heavy to bear as the imperium Romae. Or to put it another way, I've gotta get cracking on putting together a syllabus and bibliography for that "origins of Rome" course...

Li'l Bastards

2005-02-22T20:57:00.000+01:00

It looks like I'll be able to use Flickr to post photos on this site. Here's a sample photo of Mojo and Rudy, in typical dynamic mode:



Andrew joins the blogosphere.  Oy.
2005-02-22T15:21:00.000+01:00
Here we go then... I've accepted with the Centro.  I figure that this will be a good way for me to share stories with friends and family when I'm in Italy.  Probably it'll be pretty much empty space until August...