RST's 700th Post. Holy Cow!

We've been writing this blog for more than eight years, but it remains surprising--no, astonishing--that we have managed to produce 700 posts.  Yes, 700!  If you figure it takes about 8 hours of work to produce one post (some are less, some much more--like days), that amounts to 5600 total hours spent making content.  That's like having a 40-hour-a-week job for almost 3 years.  Yikes!

To celebrate our 700th, we're offering links to some of our most popular posts (those with the most page views, and some others with lots of traffic).  Click on the link to see the original post.

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church.  The all-time page-view champ at over 15,000.  A ways out of town, but worth the trip.  #17 on RST's Top 40.

Europe's Largest Mosque--in Rome.  We may have a lot of Muslim readers, but the building is quite something no matter what religion you are.  Also on RST's Top 40 - at #24. Interestingly, a post we did on Rome's Kebab was also widely seen.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A Moral Act or Not?  Philosophy professor Raymond Belliotti examines the ethics of the murder by evaluating it against 7 moral criteria.







Riding a Scooter in Rome.  Actually, RST's post on renting a scooter in Rome was somewhat more popular, but this one's more useful--lots of hard-earned tips about riding a scooter in Rome, should you decide to do it, which you shouldn't.

Italy's Liberation Day: Bella Ciao.  Guest blogger Frederika Randall pulls apart the legendary anthem and examines the history of "Bella Ciao."













 Tracking Elizabeth Taylor.  ET spent some time in Rome, some of it with Richard Burton, while she was making movies.  She's still iconic here, but perhaps less so than Audrey Hepburn, whose image is everywhere.













The 1960 Rome Olympics: An Itinerary.  There's lots to see in Rome related to the 1960 Olympics: the Olympic Village; the Palazzetto dello Sport, where Cassius Clay made his name and reputation; an amazing stadium built by Mussolini where the athletes warmed up.












Garibaldi in Rome.  The darling of Italian unification, Giuseppe Garibaldi fought the French on the Gianicolo and lived to tell about it.












Via Tasso.  To most Romans, via Tasso means "place where the Germans imprisoned and tortured their political enemies," or something like that.  It's not far from the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, and you can visit, even walk into the cells and read the messages prisoners scrawled on the walls. RST Top 40, #3.

On St. Paul's Path.  Cities have their "named saints," saints special to the city.  Rome has two: Peter and Paul.  Paul brought Christianity to Rome, and was martyred just outside the city.  You can visit the sites and try to feel his presence.

Oldest Supermarket in Rome: 1961

Tucked away behind the 1960 Olympic Village, where the athletes stayed, and backed up against the busy Lungotevere dell'Aqua Acetosa, is the first grocery store in Rome, or so we hear.  Not the first

store that sold groceries--that would take us back into the 19th century, no doubt--but the first American-style grocery, Rome's first supermarket.  By American standards you won't find it "super"; it's quite modest in size, perhaps a 10th of the floor space of the U.S. equivalent, and not much larger than two 7-11s--maybe 3.

The Carrefourgoncino/Shopping at Home

Nor is the exterior especially noteworthy, though the enormous surface parking lot--room for at least a hundred cars and never close to half full--is, for Rome, a spectacle, and for shoppers, a gift.  Dianne took pleasure in the "Carrefourgoncino"--the store's van, parked right there in the spectacle.  The van's name is a word-play on the name of the market--Carrefour--and the Italian word for van, "furgone."

The banners outside the store's entrance announce that the store is open 24/7.  We haven't tried the place at 3 a.m., but I wouldn't count on getting the baby formula at that hour. 

The best part is the wall to the right as you enter, which you can scan as you're waiting in line to be checked out.  Though it didn't open until 1961, the store was apparently built for the 1960s games.  With that in mind, the current owner/tenant, the Carrefour chain, has mounted half a dozen large photos of athletes at the games.

This section of photos is labeled "La Moda del Villaggio" (Village Style)

The store, as it looked probably in the early 1960s.  

While Dianne was shopping I was photographing the photos.  I have included one of them here, as
well as another of the store in operation sometime in the early 1960s (the signs above the vegetables are vintage early-60s shape).  Then a woman cashier (not the owner or the manager) rushed up, shook her finger, and told me that what I was doing was "proibito."  End of photo session. 


Bill  

Not far to the west, the underbelly of the architecturally
significant Corso di Francia

And all around, the buildings of the Olympic Village, now residential housing

RST Makes History: 600th post!

It would nice to claim that we've been writing this blog longer than Jon Stewart hosted the Daily Show.  Unfortunately, it's not true.  Stewart's first show was January 1999, and RST didn't premier until February 17, 2009.  We're disappointed, to be sure.  But it's reassuring to know that we've been "on" almost as long as Hannity (no, we don't watch), and longer than Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Glee, and The Good Wife.  2429 days.  

The occasion for all this self praise is our 600th post, an average of one every 4 days, roughly.  It has helped to have Rome as our subject city, rather than, say, Keokuk or Kankakee (in the words of an old song, no insult intended--we're from Buffalo, after all).  To paraphrase a Rome friend, whenever we wonder what to write about, or think we may have finally exhausted the city's possibilities, we just walk outside.

To celebrate our longevity and persistence, we thought we would offer our readers a few blasts from the past, links to posts they may not have seen when they first appeared, but have witnessed large numbers of page views over the years (in this context, "large" means more than, say, 500 hits--sometimes much more).  You could find these, we know, by using the site Search button, or through a Google search, but you probably didn't, or won't.  Besides, we've done some winnowing.

Here are 11 we think you'll enjoy.  And thanks for your support!  Now if Hannity would only get fired.

Making Limoncello

Rome's Modern Churches Are Worth the Trek

The Politics of an Anthem: Bella Ciao

Walking the (Aurelian) Wall: Wall Walk I of our series

Libya and Italian Colonialism

Garibaldi in Rome

Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, winning the 1960 marathon,
running barefoot

The 1960 Rome Olympics

The Building Wars: MAXXI vs MACRO

World War II at Home: Via Tasso

Gabbo: The Death and Life of Gabriele Sandri






Born Again in Piazza Fiume

la Rinascente, Piazze Fiume

The 1960 Rome Olympics: an Itinerary

The 1960 Olympic games opened on August 25, 1960.  On the 53rd anniversary of the occasion, we re-publish a post from 2010. 

A new expanded itinerary of Foro Italico and the area across the Tevere from it, Flaminio, is now one of 4 walks in the new guide: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Along with the tour of Foro Italico and Flaminio, Modern Rome features three other walks: the 20th-century "garden" suburb of Garbatella, the Fascist-designed suburb of EUR; and a stairways walk in classic Trastevere.  This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores,  and other retailers; retail price $5.99.

As readers of an earlier post on Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila will know, Rome was the site of the summer Olympics fifty years ago, in 1960, when 8,000 athletes from around the world were exposed to the charms of the Eternal City and, less happily, to its sultry August weather. By all accounts the games were an organizational success; even the Germans were impressed.

Like all events of this scope, Rome's Olympics left behind a significant architectural heritage, much of it built for the games, though some events utilized facilities built under Fascism or dating to ancient Rome. Bikila's record-breaking, barefoot race began at the foot of Michelangelo's Campidoglio steps and finished after dark, under the illuminated Arch of Constantine. Rowing events took place not on the roiling Tevere, but on Lago Albano, the volcanic gem in the nearby Alban Hills (we recommend the long path around the lake shore). Some boxing matches and the basketball finals, where Jerry West, Jerry Lucas, and Oscar Robertson worked their still-amateur magic, were held in the Palazzo dello Sport, the Pier Luigi Nervi masterpiece built for the games and located in the Fascist-built EUR complex south of the city center. Not far from the Coliseum, the 4th-century Basilica di Massenzio was transformed into a three-mat wrestling facility (the recent photo at left shows the Bascilica being used for a high-profile series of lectures by famous authors). The Cold War politics of the games were played out here and there, most notably, perhaps, at Scoglio di Frisio (below right),

a restaurant founded in 1928 and (still) located at via Merulana 56, where US sprinter David Sime dined awkwardly with Soviet broad jump specialist Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, in a meeting the CIA hoped would lead to Ter-Ovanesyan's defection to the West. It did not.

For the most part, however, the center of the 1960 games was Flaminio, a relatively undeveloped zone at the city's northern edge, about two miles beyond the gate at Piazza del Popolo, straddling the Tevere. To begin your journey into Rome's Olympic past, take Tram #2 from the piazza just to the north of Piazza del Popolo. Get off at Piazza Apollodoro. Looking to your left, the first building you'll see is Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazetto dello Sport, a graceful concrete delight, embracing the curvilinear modernism that was the era's best contribution to architectural history. It was built in 1957/58 (prefabricated, and assembled in 40 days) for the Rome Olympics. The dome is of concrete, and it's supported by concrete flying buttresses, which allow for natural to penetrate the interior all around the building. The basketball team played some of its games in it.

The building was immediately recognized as an outstanding work; in 1962, while traveling on a Stanford foreign campus program, the authors of this blog found themselves
seated inside the the structure, listening to a lecture on its aesthetic virtues. Avery Brundage, the hard-wired head of the International Olympic Committee, compared Nervi's structures to the works of "Bernini and Michelangelo, and the momuments left by Hadrian, Trajan, and other Caesars."

Immediately to the north and east of the the Palazetto, and occupying many acres, is the Villaggio Olimpico (Olympic Village), which housed the athletes that competed in the games (it's now simply a housing project). As you walk through the enormous complex, you'll notice that most of the streets are named after countries: via Unione Sovietica, via Portogallo, via India, and so on. Then, as now, the area was divided, and one might say rather inelegantly, by an elevated highway: Corso Francia. A shame? Perhaps, but when it was designed and built (1958-60), the roadway was elevated, and placed on single pilasters, precisely to avoid its functioning as a great barrier with the Olympic Village. Elevated roadways were all the rage in this period, both for aesthetic reasons and because highway engineers believed they were magical solutions to traffic problems. Remarkably, the architects in this case were Antonio Nervi and Pier Luigi Nervi. In retrospect, the project was done about as well as it could have been. Think of it as the most artistic viaduct you've ever seen.

The architects of the viaduct surely could not have anticipated one of its uses. At the games, the highway served as a natural divider between the women athletes, housed on its west side, and the men, housed on the east. Everyone, it seems--it was an era outstanding for its prudery--was concerned that the boys would get into the girls' rooms, and so everything was gated, fenced, and guarded. Despite the precautions, Italian men found binoculars and telephoto lenses, parked their cars on the Corso, and enjoyed the view.

The buildings within the Village were designed by a team of distinguished architects that included Adalberto Libera, one of Fascism's best and most prominent architects (in a December 3, 2009 post, we offered Libera's via Marmorata post office as one of Rome's 20th-century architectural treasures). The Village buildings, especially in their current scruffy state, are not at that level, but they do have some interesting qualities.
They vary in number of stories and in surface treatments. But all are in a modernist vocabulary common to the 1950s and early 1960s. Some of the buildings display their original pastel colors. Some are topped by impressive round constructions--ventilation systems, perhaps--that emphasize the rationalist, geometric character of the buildings. Most if not all of the buildings are raised one story above ground, probably to give the Village a greater sense of integration and community and to prevent the buildings from becoming barriers to communication between the different nationalities encamped there. The great American decathlon athlete, Rafer Johnson, was among those who found another benefit; on a Sunday before his event, he was seen relaxing in a lounge chair in the cool air under one of the structures, listening to jazz on a portable radio while clearing his mind for the rigors of competition. Besides the dormitories, the Village had shops, restaurants and sidewalk cafes, a bank, recreation rooms, a cafeteria (maybe more than one), an outdoor movie theater, and a dance floor, crowded every evening. As you travel the Village, you may find some compelling statues (see photo) that don't seem to fit the period. You're right. They are of 1911 vintage, and were moved to their current locations when an older stadium was demolished.

Among the self-made celebrities at the Olympic Village was a young Cassius Clay.
But Clay was not yet famous. The gold medal he would win in Rome would be his springboard to success. Even so, Clay made a reputation in the Village and elsewhere, "always preaching," "always talking," as an American diver put it. In the photo at right, taken in the Village, he's in the center, with two other American boxers who won gold medals. In his delightful book on the Rome Olympics, Rome 1960, David Maraniss tells the story of a naive and thirsty Clay, drinking from the water fountain in his suite, unaware that it was a bidet.

There are more stories to be told. But it is time to leave the Olympic Village. Our next stop is across the river. To get there, find your way back to the Palazetto dello Sport. From its northerly side, cross via Flaminia through Piazza dei Carracci (you'll find a nice cafe and a comfortable wine bar in the piazza), down via Massaccio, via Poletti, and via Brunelleschi (in the US they would be the same street), and across the Tevere on Ponte Duca d'Aosta.

There, in front of you, you'll see a white marble obelisk, or you won't because it's probably still covered for refurbishing. The words "Mussolini Dux," inscribed into it, were in 1960 an embarassing reminder of the Italy's infatuation with the Duce, and some were inclined to tear the thing down. It remained. Beyond the obelisk, there isn't much that isn't straight out of Fascism, and it was all there for the games. Taking care to avoid future Olympians practicing on their skateboards, continue up the viale del Foro Italico, replete with reminders of Fascist imperial adventures. At the end, move through the piazzale to the Stadio di Marmi beyond, rimmed by 60 marble (marmo) statutes inspired by Fascist ideals of youth, strength and beauty. Some field hockey matches were held here, and the Stadio was also used by track and field athletes as they warmed up or just tried to stay relaxed while awaiting their events at the big stadium beyond.

You can't miss the Stadio Olimpico, just to the west. It was there that the elegant and popular sprinter Wilma Rudolph would win gold at 100 and 200 meters. It was there that Livio Berutti (200 meters), Peter Snell (800 meters), Herb Elliott (1500 meters), Lee Calhoun (high hurdles), Ralph Boston (broad jump), and Al Oerter (discus) won gold (if you're over 60, you'll know some of these names). Rafer Johnson won gold in the decathlon there, too, but it may be of more significance that during the opening ceremonies for the games, Johnson entered Stadio Olimpico as the first black athlete to represent his team--and the United States--by carrying the American flag.

As we explain in Rome the Second Time, the Stadio Olimpico that you see here, while visually interesting, isn't what was there in 1960, though the site is the same. The original stadium was built in the 1930s, under Fascism. In order to prevent the stadium from obscuring the view of Monte Mario, much of the seating was below ground level. The stadium was modified for the Olympic games and again more recently, when the Monte Mario issue was eclipsed by other needs. A photo of the opening ceremonies, featuring Johnson carrying the flag, shows that whatever modifications were made to the stadium for the games, the recast structure did not yet obscure the mountain.

That's enough for one day. But we can't resist recommending one more site, very close by: the main pool in the Foro Italico. It's in one of those red buildings along the Tevere (the side you're on), and you should be able to walk in and have a look at the fetching 1930s mosaics by Gino Severini, Angelo Canevari, and other great artists (see our July 19, 2009 blog).

Bill

Hamlet in the Weeds: Rediscovering Italian Sculptor Amleto Cataldi

"The wrestlers" in Viale Unione Sovietica - that's the
Olympic Village apartments in back

Stumbling across underappreciated art is always fun, per RST.  We almost literally stumbled across Amleto ("Hamlet" in English) Cataldi's gorgeous "athletes" because they are now strewn in odd and spread out places in the vicinity of the 1960s Olympic Village in the Flaminio quarter of Rome - itself a burgeoning art scene (the new Hadid MAXXI and Piano's Parco della Musica are nearby - all of these are on the itineraries in our new book: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler; more information below).



At first, a single sculpture was all we knew existed.  A friend and I ran into it when we were walking back from the "supermercato" to our not-so-close apartment one day.  The idea of sculptures of athletes in what was the Olympic Village for the competitors in the 1960 Olympics made sense.  But these sculptures seemed of an earlier period, and so they are.

"The runners" in 2008 before
the most recent restoration

"The runners" in 2012, after restoration - find them at the
SE corner of XVII Olimpiade and via Germania
(1/2 block east of  Corso Francia)

Tracking them down, much later, we found they originally were commissioned to stand on 4 large columns when, in 1927, architect Marcello Piacentini, one of Fascism's great architects, spruced up the 1911 Flaminio Stadium.  You may be able to spot them towards the end of Vittorio DeSica's neorealist masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief, which features a soccer match crowd letting out at that stadium.  Four of Cataldi's sculptures were the artistic hallmarks of the main entrance to the stadium.  But the stadium was torn down in 1957 to make way for the new Olympic facilities (including a new Flaminio stadium and the Palazetto dello Sport - which Bill has waxed eloquent about in a prior post).  But the statues didn't make an easy trip to Olympic Village. They apparently were carelessly toppled in 1957, damaged, and consigned to warehouses.  In the 1960s, after the Olympics were over, a journalist living in the Olympic Village tracked them down and had them repaired and installed in various grassy areas near and around the Village.  They then were not taken care of and apparently his daughter began a campaign to have them restored once again.  Sometimes when we've seen them, they simply stand amidst weeds.  They did look better the last time we saw some of them.  But there still are no plaques marking the sculptor or any history.  So just go find them and enjoy them.  And, speaking of finding them.  We located two (see photo captions).  We'd be happy for someone to locate the other two.

Saluting the "Tax Man"

We also didn't know at the time we stumbled across these fine giant athletes that the same architect, Cataldi, designed and sculpted the statues on the monument (right) on one of RST's itineraries, and featured in the book.  What we call there a "monument to the tax man" - a monument to the fallen of the Guardia della Finanza, is in Largo  XXI Aprile near Piazza Bologna.  That monument was unveiled in December 1930 (by Il Duce himself), shortly after Cataldi's death.

A "ciociara" type of sculpture by
Cataldi similar to the one that
is the subject of a repatriation
attempt by some Italians

Cataldi is described by some as a forgotten sculptor of the early 20th century.  Most Romans seem to know nothing about his public sculptures, and he was primarily a sculptor of public monuments, in large part monuments commemorating World War I dead. But his sculptures seem to fetch high prices at auction, even today.  One Italian was making an appeal that a sculpture of Cataldi's, set for auction in New York City, was such a national treasure that it should be returned to Italy.

Because his art nouveau lines appeal to us, we will continue our search for Cataldi's sculptures, even though, forgotten as they are, we still can't afford to take one home with us.

Dianne

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious features the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio (as noted above), along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in classic Trastevere. 

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores,  and other retailers; retail price $5.99.

A. S. Roma's Soccer Field: Soon to be a Parking Lot

Stadio Olimpico, current home of A.S. Roma.  At left,
a few of the 1930s statues that line the Foro Italico
athletic field. 

A.S. Roma is one of two great Rome soccer teams (the other is Lazio).  For many years both teams have played their games at the Stadio Olimpico, originally built as part of Foro Mussolino (now called Foro Italico) in the 1930s, but significantly remodeled for the 1960 Olympic Games.  Recently the new American owner of the team, for reasons unknown to RST, has been pursuing plans for a new stadium for the Roma club, to be built on the outskirts of the city.  Those plans were dashed when the land was sold for yet another big housing project.   Now there's talk of building it in Guidonia, a country town about 25 kilometers northeast of Rome's center, served by a 2-lane road.   We can imagine the Monday morning headline: "Traffico nel Caos" (Traffic in Chaos).   

The stadium where Roma once played, seen from
Monte Testaccio.  Here it still resembles
a soccer field.  In the background, right,
the Pyramid. 

Decades ago the Roma team (generally considered to have a more leftist and working-class fan base, than also Rome-based Lazio, whose fans are generally more upper class and right-wing) played in a small stadium in Testaccio, then a working-class quartiere and home to a massive slaughterhouse, and known to tourists primarily for Monte Testaccio, a substantial hill created two thousand years ago from shattered amphorae, the huge clay jars used to transport oil and wine.  We first saw the old stadium in 2010, from the crest of Monte Testaccio (photo left). 

The same stadium, 2 years later.  The photo was
taken from via Caio Cestio. 

And just last month we walked by the field, now just weeds.  In a year or two, we learned, it will be a parking lot.

Bill

This photo, recalling a 5-0 Roma victory over Torino (Turin) powerhouse Juventus in 1931, is in the new Testaccio market,
not far from Roma's old field, where the game likely was played.  The market is another sign of gentrification of the neighborhood.

Pier Luigi Nervi: Palazzetto dello Sport

Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport (little palace of sport) sits on its own small piece of land in the Flaminio district, a thing apart.  It's a stone's throw (even for this tired old wing) from the Parco della Musica, so we've been by it, and around it, many times over the last few years, admiring its space-age design while wondering why the roof always seemed to need a coat of paint.  Bill recalls being inside in 1962 with a touring group of Stanford students, unsure what to think of the building, which was new then, having been constructed for volleyball and other events at the 1960 Rome Olympics. 

The Palazzetto beckoned on a recent trip to the neighborhood, when the late afternoon light drew our attention to the building's striking colored glass windows.   The Palazzetto is also featured in the Flaminio itinerary in our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. More on the book at the end of this post.

Walking around the exterior, of the Palazzetto, we found an open entrance (!) and walked in.  Voilà.  Some very good volleyball players were practicing.  We admired the space, took some pictures and, not wanting to press our luck further, left.  A few hours later we photographed the same windows, from outside (photo at top).  Lovely.
Bill

As noted above, the Palazzetto, and more around it, are featured in the Flaminio itinerary of our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.

Elizabeth Taylor in Rome



Liz and the unsuspecting Eddie Fisher--with Burton?

"The only word Elizabeth knows in Italian is Bulgari," her 5th husband, Richard Burton, once remarked, referring to the storied merchant of jewels.  Richard had kindled the Bulgari passion in Elizabeth in 1962, when the two were in Rome for 215 days filming Cleopatra (1964) on mammoth sets on the lot of Cinecitta'.  Though already married (Liz to Eddie Fisher), the lovebirds had secretly rented a pink stucco bungalow in Porto Santo Stefano, on the promontory of Argentario, perhaps an hour from Rome.  (Scandalized at hearing of her conduct, a member of Congress sought to have English-born Taylor banned from re-entering the United States.)

A forlorn Richard and Elizabeth following a car
accident in or near Rome, 1962



Wearing Bulgari Serpenti, 1962

 While trying to manage their affair, deal with the Vatican's condemnation of Elizabeth as "a woman of loose morals," figure out a future for themselves, and process the likelihood of an imminent visit by Richard's wife, Elizabeth became ill.  She had her stomach pumped at Salvator Mundi Hospital and, later, Richard sought to soothe the beast with a $150,000 emerald brooch from Bulgari.  It was the beginning of a love affair--with Bulgari this time--and in June, 2009 this affair was consummated with a spectacular showing of some 500 of Elizabeth's Bulgari items at the Palazzo delle Esposizione on via Nazionale.  That occasion was the 125th anniversary of Bulgari's store in Rome.  As Margo Jefferson wrote in the New York Times in 1999, Taylor was "full of no-nonsense shamelessness."  "Whether it's about how she ages or what she wears, she has, bless her heart, made the principles of good and bad taste equally meaningless."  On the set, she wore diamonds while playing dominoes.  She was vulgar but not vain.   

As Cleopatra

Cleopatra enjoyed some success at the box office, but not enough to justify the extraordinary cost of production.  The set for Alexandria, the Egyptian capital where the real Cleopatra met Julius Caesar in like 56 BC, was the largest, most elaborate, and most expensive ever made.  But if the film was an economic bust, it was a highly symbolic one.  With Roman Holiday, it was the best known of a group of the "Hollywood sul Tevere" (Hollywood on the Tiber) films, many of them filmed on sets at Cinecitta' and collectively responsible for drawing a generation of film stars to the Eternal City--among them Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Rod Steiger, and Dick and Liz--and in the process helping to create the glamorous and decadent era of via Veneto and the paparazzi.  (See our post on Hollywood films made in Rome in the postwar era.)

Made in the early 1960s, at the height of American power and hubris,  Cleopatra was a visual representation of the nation's world dominance in the postwar era and of its dreams--not to be realized--of a future characterized by American hegemony in the world.  And the scene that best captured that historical American moment featured Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, entering Rome on a massive 30-foot pedestal pulled by hundreds of slaves, to the acclaim of thousands.   

1961, with Eddie Fisher and
Kirk Douglas and his wife

Taylor did not appear in Spartacus (1960), another of the Hollywood-sul Tevere films, but she had been drawn to Rome in 1961, accompanied by her husband Eddie Fisher, to celebrate the film's 1st anniversary with its star, Kirk Douglas (today, after her death, Taylor is being called the last movie star--but Kirk's still alive).  

With Eddie Fisher

Elizabeth was in Rome at least two other times.  She and 3rd husband Mike Todd were there in 1958; later that year he died in the crash of a plane named "Lucky Liz."  With Eddie she attended the opening of the Rome Olympics in 1960.  

Rome 1966.  An informal moment.  Liz in a cast
with a '60s look, Richard as Hemingway

And she was back again in 1966, for no obvious reason.  On the 28th of March, she showed up with Richard at Rome's Opera House, her hair in an exaggerated, fantastical bun decorated with bands of jewels and a jeweled hairpin that spilled over onto her forehead.  Looking a lot like Cleopatra.  Elizabeth Taylor lived most of her life in Beverly Hills, and New York was a second home.  But Rome--especially the delicious, over-heated Rome of the early 1960s--was a grand stage for a woman of great appetite and enormous talent. 

Bill