The Vatican Walls: Where Fascism Meets Catholicism, or Letting Out the Popes

On one of our great Wall Walks (we know there are those of you who have wondered what happened to our plan to walk the perimeter of the 7th-century Aurelian Wall... yes, those posts are to come), we encountered a physical reminder of the 1929 "Conciliation" between the Italian State and the Catholic Church.  The grand double arches you see in this post are impressive evidence of the Romans' ability to use architecture and symbols to constantly remind us of their history.

In 1929, Benito Mussolini signed for the State, and Pietro Gasparri, Cardinal Secretary, for Pope Pius XII, the Lateran Pacts that resolved the question of the role of the Catholic Church within the secular Italian State - basically, the territories the Church would retain, financial reimbursement for property seized in the revolution, the Church as the State church.  That question had been pending since the "Risorgimento," or the overtaking of most of Italy by the non-Papal forces, in 1870.  And, since that time the Popes had not come out of the Vatican, a self-imposed incarceration.

The Conciliation - commemorated by Via della Conciliazione, which leads from the Tevere to St. Peter's - is also known as the Lateran Pacts, because the agreement was signed in the Lateran church: San Giovanni in Laterano.  (We had always thought they were signed in Piazza della Pigna, where there is a plaque to that effect. Perhaps Il Duce and Gasparri negotiated aspects of the Pacts in that quiet piazza, in which sits a restaurant we have frequented.)

Perhaps more interesting.

So to the Wall.  The photo above, of a double archway, shows one of the first "signs" of the Conciliation that we found on our walk.  In this case we are "inside" the Wall, inside the Vatican, that is, looking out.  On the top of the arch on the left is the coats of arms of Rome, the SPQR, and on the right, the symbol of the Pope, the Pope's hat (mitre) and St. Peter's crossed keys to the Church,  (Why the balls on the coat of arms?  See below.)  So we have the Wall, we have the exit from the Vatican, now usable by the Popes, and a symbol on each gateway representing the two sides in the power struggle.

The archway in the photo above, another exit/entrance from/to the Vatican is perhaps more interesting because it has three layers of secular and Papal symbols.  On the lower level, if one looks closely (see photo left), the State symbol has 1) the King's crown 2) the fasci, representing the Mussolini government, and 3) SPQR, the ancient Rome's government acronym, adopted by Mussolini to tie his Fascist regime to ancient Rome.

The coats of arms at the top likely are older ones that were placed here. The Papal one on the left is of the Barberini Pope (see the bees), Urban VIII (1623-44), and the State one on the right is for the King of Savoy.



Finally we leave you with the grand double archway below, looking from the outside into the Bernini colonnade.  Here the multi-layered blocks and symbols appear to have both Papal and Fascist dating. There is a reference to Pius IV (IIII), a Medici (note the balls in the coat of arms in the photo at the top of the post), who in the early 1500s built the now destroyed Porta Angelica, to welcome pilgrims from the north.  It was at Porta Angelica in 1849 that Garibaldi and his troops made their first forays into Rome to take over the city from the Popes.

So perhaps the Vatican is extracting a sense of justice.  We have a gate (think exit) built after the 1929 Conciliation to acknowledge the Vatican territory and let out the Popes for the first time in almost 60 years.  But on that gate, the Vatican has placed highly symbolic parts of the 1500s Porta Angelica, the gate where at one time (1849) anti-Papal forces forcefully challenged the rule of the Popes; and the Popes won that battle.  Garibaldi's forces won about 20 years later: 1870.  While I disagree with him, David Kertzer, in his book Prisoner of the Vatican: The Popes, the Kings, and Garibaldi's Rebels in the Struggle to Rule Modern Italy, takes the position that even though Garibaldi won the battle for Rome in 1870, eventually the Popes won the war, in the sense that the Catholic Church has religious (albeit not state) dominion over more than 1 billion people.  In any event, in these grand arches and gateways, the Popes are making their point: we're still here.

Dianne

Wall Walk IV: Porta Portese to the Gianicolo, or Brian's Lament

Our friend Brian was in town, and we somehow convinced him to accompany us as we pursued our

Porta Portese.  A good place to get run over.  

goal of walking the length of the Aurelian wall--in this case, a segment that begins at Porta Portese and ends on the Gianicolo at Piazza Garibaldi  In retrospect, it's not the most inviting portion of the wall - at least the first part; there seemed to be more trash and ugliness around than usual, though the former is endemic to Rome. [Update - here's a Google map that includes the itinerary.]

We gathered at Porta Portese, on the inside of the wall, and walked through.  On your left, on any day but Sunday, when the market takes over, is the beginning of a quarter mile of shack-like shops, all dedicated to 2-wheeled vehicles: bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles.

A Barberini Pope.  Below, the date--looks
like 1644; Pope Urban VIII's (a Barberini)
papacy was from 1623-44

You can explore these if you like, but the wall goes right--we're on the outside now--bumping along viale delle Mura Portuensi, past a substantial pile of detritus and a handsome, if worn, papal symbol--nicely dated, too--to Piazza Bernardino da Feltre.

Looking back from across viale di Trastevere

There, looking right, one can observe the inside of the wall.  Here the wall disappears as it crosses the busy viale di Trastevere, but it's easy to find on the other side next to an unassuming structure of ca. 1970 vintage.  The photo here was shot on the other side of the viale, looking back.

Your climb begins here, along viale Aurelia Saffi, the outside of the wall on your right, hugging Villa Sciarra.  If you've tried the stairways walk in our latest guidebook, Modern Rome, you're in familiar territory. There are some ragged sections of the wall here, but some handsome and powerful ones, too.  Having gone around the corner of the Villa, enter the park at the first entrance on your right--narrow but suggestive.  The Villa is large and fascinating, with lovely paths and intriguing structures.  Much of the best stuff is to your right, near the portion of the wall you've already seen from the outside.

Detritus in Villa Sciarra.  Someone had a party.

But, in pursuit of new wall, we're going left, into a scruffier section.  If you poke around, you'll find a short staircase down inside the wall--and your familiar pile of Roman trash.

"Are these people crazy?"

Following the wall takes one into what appears to be a maintenance area--cars and vans, overgrown bushes, and so on.  Brian is wondering what he's doing here.  Further on, there's a reward: a handsome fountain, vintage and author unknown - though there are rumors of a Bernini satyr fountain in the villa, perhaps this is it.

Reward for hard work

Porta San Pancrazio, from Bar Gianicolo

Exit the park at your first opportunity and follow the outside of the wall as it enters an open space known as Largo Minutilli, with its complement of handsome pines--and an SPQR plaque from 1649. Ahead, the wall bends right--via Carini is on your left, and the automobile traffic from it can be intimidating--with Porta San Pancrazio just ahead, and, just before you get there, one of our favorite places to snack and drink: Bar Gianicolo.  The porta is a handsome one, featuring the shield of Pope Pius XI, who rebuilt it after it was damaged in the 1849 battles between Garibaldi and his followers, who were holding out inside the wall, and the French armies, defending the papacy, attacking from the outside.  The French won, delaying the creation of a unified Italy.

Views, finally; these from in front of Acqua Paola,
looking across the Spanish Academy to much of Rome
beyond.

The combat up here was intense and bloody--we've written about it in a chapter of Rome the Second Time--and the battle can be followed in considerable detail in a fine new museum inside the porta.  Instead, we took our companion Brian down via Masina--to the right of the porta--past the McKim, Mead and White building housing the American Academy [1913], then sharply left to the Acqua Paola Fountain, which hovers dramatically above the city (and came in at #19 in our RST Top 40).

Evidence of water tank

Brian asked to be carried the rest of the way, but we refused.  Returning to the porta we took a hard left through the opening--picking up the wall again, now inside,  On the left, a building, possibly designed by Michelango, that once housed - and may still - a "serbatoio"--a water tank.  The inscription is of interest: Gianicolo Storage Tank, 1941--and, nearly erased, XIX E.F. [year 19 of the Fascist Era]. Further on, on the right, a curious statue to Ciceruacchio ("Chubby"), a working-class martyr to the Garibaldini cause.  The statue is curious in part because it is out of place here.  It was recently moved to this spot.   A hundred meters of London plane trees track the Aurelian wall here (you're on top, and inside).

Bruno, kissed

Then the statue to Giuseppe Garibaldi (bear in mind we are now in what can only be called a Garibaldi Theme Park) and, just beyond, a humbler piece of work honoring Bruno Garibaldi, rather charmingly decorated on this day with a kiss.  We are crossing perhaps our favorite spot in Rome, the top of the Gianicolo.  We are not alone in this preference, of course.




Our destination, the end of our wall walk for today,  is just ahead, down the hill towards Prati. Fittingly, it's another Garibaldi, and this one is a woman: hard-riding, gun-toting Anita Garibaldi, wife and companion to Giuseppe. The Annie Oakley of the Risorgimento.  We're not making this up.    Bill

Anita 

Walking the (Aurelian) Wall II: Porta Metronia to Porta San Paolo

"City walls, to a properly constituted American, can never be an object of indifference; and it is emphatically 'no end of a sensation' to pace in the shadow of this massive cincture of Rome....even to idle eyes the prodigious, the continuous thing bristles with eloquent passages."  Henry James, 1873

The Aurelian Wall near Casa del Jazz.  Here, from the outside, a sloping giant, with doors and windows added
later, perhaps to serve "inside" residents

Thwarted. Inside of wall not accessible here

Each section of the 3rd-century Aurelian wall has its own pleasures and mysteries and delivers its own lessons.  RST blog readers may recall we are on a mission to walk the entire (once 19 km, or 12 mile) wall.  On this section, going (roughly) south and west from Porta Metronia, we discovered how much of the wall is inaccessible, especially from the inside. [Update:  a Google map includes this itinerary.]


That lesson was delivered immediately, when, exiting Porta Metronia, we found ourselves barred from the inside of the wall by a gate (and inside, a half dozen plastic dishes and cartons--someone is feeding the area's cats).

Seems like suburbia, except there's a wall

We returned to the outside, which here skirts one of Rome's newest and best kept urban parks: benches and fountains, joggers, walkers, thinkers.  How long, we wondered, could we sit on a park bench without a book, a newspaper, or a cell phone?

Old scaffolding inside the wall/no access

At Porta Latina, through which runs the ancient via Latina, we peek inside and hope for access, just a fence and yards of year-old scaffolding.  Outside, the wall is sometimes marred by a fence (presumably to protect passers-by from falling bricks) and marked by the Papal families who restored it at various times: here, the Barberini family, with their bees on the shield.

Remnant of an aqueduct

The next porta is a handsome one: Porta San Sebastiano, through which runs (well, not now, it's closed for repairs, to reopen in the next century), via Appia Antica.  Just inside (besides a guy taking a leak) is another arch, and a grand one.  Not part of the wall, it's one of few remnants of the Aquedotto Antoniniano, which once fed the baths of Caracalla.  On the porta itself, we found some chiseled crosses and the date 1622 - ancient graffiti?  This porta is the entrance to the one part of the wall where one can walk inside: the wall museum, an RST Top 40 site.

Maybe they own horses

The next opening in the wall is door-to-door automobiles, but it is, indeed, a porta: Porta Ardeatine.  EUR is a couple of miles to the left, connected by the multi-lane viale Cristoforo Colombo. The baths of Caracalla are a half mile downhill to the right.  We're still looking for access to the wall's inside, and we're still being denied: on this side, a fence guards a long, maintained field, someone's private estate we would guess, legal or "abusive" we can't say.

Homeless "shelter"/locked gate to inside of wall

And on the other side of viale Cristoforo Colombo, another locked gate, a cat, and a primitive plastic shelter used by the homeless.  On we go, still outside, past the Casa del Jazz (taken from the Mafia as part of a legal penalty, years ago).  The grounds on this section are better maintained, and the wall is designed differently, with wedge-shaped cutouts wedges at its top (see photo, top of this post).  We noticed several ground-level doors--certainly not part of the original defensive system, perhaps once used as exit/entrances by families living on the inside.

Florentine Pope advertising wall work

At a sharp right turn, more evidence of Papal interest, this time the Medici of Florence (all those fleurs-de-lys)  And further on, the brick façade removed to reveal the tufo--of different colors, perhaps different eras--beneath.

Stairway into upper San Saba

Finally, at the next porta, we can tuck ourselves inside.  Immediately, the wall shrinks--we're inside now, on higher ground.  As we follow the wall around the corner and down the hill, we enjoy peeks through the wall at soccer fields and, to our right, views of the little-known and curiously isolated community of San Saba, constructed in the early 20th century.

Porta San Paolo (and at left, the Piramid)

Ahead, the wall is simply gone, victim of Rome's automobiles, and then beyond, the magnificent Porta San Paolo, out of which runs via Ostiense (the road to Ostia); today this porta, too, houses a museum.  Historically, the piazza is well-known as the site of short-lived but furious resistance to the German occupation of the city in 1943.

Cafe' du Parc. Table service, but order inside.  

Even downhill, this wall-walking is hard work, and so we treat ourselves to a glass of wine at one of our favorite redoubts, the Café du Parc, with its long, now fenced-in outdoor space.  From our table, we enjoy a view of the Ostiense Post Office, one of four designed by noted architects during the Fascist era. This one--worth looking at from the front, and inside, too--is the work of Adalberto Libera and Mario De Renzi.  When it opened in 1935, Mussolini was there.

Bill

Inside the wall, San Saba just ahead; the wall seems short here, but it's because the ground is high.  The wall
is much higher on its "outside."