36 Hours Around Piazza Navona

 A friend recently asked us for suggestions of what to do around Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori. She was clear that she and her companion would be in Rome only 3 days, had seen the big sights and did not want to go back to those this time, and they did not want to do much walking. So maybe this is "36 Hours in Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori." 

We put our heads together, created a list and a map for her, and enjoyed the exercise enough that we have made it into 2 blog posts, the first on Piazza Navona and the second on the Campo. Here's our map of Piazza Navona for starters, and you'll see #1 is Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers - not exactly Rome the Second Time, but a good place to begin any walking around.

Below is the code we gave our friends (with a few elaborations; and note she has been a French teacher - so there are a few Francophile hints here) for our suggested meanderings in and around the piazza. Bear in mind our idiosyncrasies, and that we leave all restaurant suggestions to Katie Parla (https://katieparla.com/city-guides/rome/)

Piazza Navona and environs:

1.         Fountain of the 4 Rivers (Fontana dei fiumi – Bernini)

Piazza Navona can be a magical space, especially when no one's around, like at dawn.

Piazza Navona at dawn. Borromini's Sant'Agnese in Agone (see #2, below) is at left. 

But not always. In 2014, we encountered Bernini's lovely fountain while city workers were repairing the stone pavement around it. And the piazza has its sometimes tawdry, commercial side. 

2.         Sant’Agnese in Agone – (church) by Borromini  

            So between #1 and #2 here you get a feel for the great rivalry of architects/sculptors: Bernini  - the sculptor who was an architect - and Borromini, the architect whose architecture is sculpture. You'll have to look up for yourself the apocryphal story that one of Bernini's figures in the 4 Rivers Fountain has his head turned away so as not to see Borromini's church (the statue was erected first).

3.         Embassy of Brazil – often has art shows you just walk into. We like these one-off exhibits that often are open all day, are free, get you inside a classic palazzo, and often are very good - usually contemporary -  art.

4.        Palazzo Braschi – excellent museum (generally Rome, 17^th century on), sweet café – easy to walk thru – often free shows on the ground floor – beautiful cortile - https://www.italofile.com/museo-di-roma-palazzo-braschi/ - this article says “best museum in Rome you’ve never visited." Re the free shows: it was here we learned about Raffaele di Vico and his extraordinary contributions to Rome's cityscape in the 20th century, and saw a moving photo/quotation exhibit of women trapped in abusive relationships. As noted, the shows are wide-ranging.

5.         Portuguese Institute – We have been to shows here (met the architect Julio Lafuente one evening - we are taken with his buildings), but can’t locate it nor a site for it – walking around Piazza Navona just looking is a pleasure anyway (if you can avoid all the hawkers).

6.        Stadio di Domiziano (Piazza Navona was built over it) - underground archeological site – small and interesting – not sure of opening times; sometimes has exhibits as well. This is a good way to get your ancient history fix, and to learn more about Piazza Navona - https://www.tripadvisor.it/Attraction_Review-g187791-d196846-Reviews-Stadio_di_Domiziano_Navona_Square_Underground-Rome_Lazio.html

7.         Tre Scalini tartufi – just go and get one of those to split – amazing gelato dessert – make sure you go to this corner and not across the little street to a copy cat. Tre Scalini is the real deal. We wrote about the tartufo war in 2010: https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2010/08/tartufo-truffle-war.html

8.        Hotel Raphael – one of the city's best rooftop bars and lobby – interesting political stories about it too – on the way to Santa Maria della Pace and Chiostro Bramante -

The imposing exterior of the Hotel Raphael,
as it was 15 years ago. 

https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2017/04/30-april-1993-angry-crowd-throws-coins-bank-notes-bettino-craxi/

9.         Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pace – lovely, limited hours

10.      Bramante Chiostro & exhibition space - https://www.chiostrodelbramante.it/?lang=en  Beautiful cloisters and has a café, plus current show is Pistoletto –the contemporary Italian artist famed for his use of mirrors.

Bramante Cloister  - can't recall the
name of the show but fairly
certain those 2 "head" sculptures
are by the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa

A work by Pistoletto--this one at the State Department.

11.      Piazza di Pasquino – the original “talking statue” - https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2012/10/pasquino-lite-romes-talking-statue-gets.html

Pasquino, right, with his messages relegated to a board next to him.

12.      Cul de Sac – on Piazza di Pasquino – considered one of the best wine bars in Rome – has food – don’t go to the salad place by mistake

13.      Otherwise bookshop – English one, just steps from Piazza di Pasquino  - on via del Governo Vecchio – nice street with boutiques, tho’ getting a bit gentrified

14.      Caravaggio – San Luigi dei Francesi – 3 amazing Caravaggio paintings – the French church in Rome

15.      Caravaggio – Basilica di Sant’Agostino – 1 Caravaggio – and the once Papal library next door is gorgeous – worth just walking up and looking at it (Biblioteca Angelica)

16.      Sant’Ivo – a Borromini masterpiece (church)

17.      Palazzo Napoleonico -  interesting for its French connection https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2014/01/when-rome-was-french.html - it is NOT Palazzo Altieri – the entrance to Napoleonico is on the Lungotevere.

18.      Baracco museum – ancient sculpture – we think it’s free – we’ve never been in it!

 

The First Mormon Temple in Italy - in Rome (sort of)

The temple looks large and impressive in this view, but it's actually quite small. The
curved planes seen here may be a citation to Meier's Jubilee Church, below,
or to Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. 

Our search for contemporary churches led us a few months ago to the first Mormon temple in Italy – dedicated on March 10 this year. It’s the 162^nd Mormon temple in the world.

It was indeed a search to find the temple, which is as far out of the center of Rome as any church we’ve found.  Touted as a building whose sponsors “spared no expense,” the temple is, frankly, underwhelming.  Of course, it must compete not only with the spectacular Catholic churches of the Renaissance, such as St. Peter’s and San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (both cited as inspirations for the temple) to name just two, but also 21^st-century churches we admire that include Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church and Piero Sartogo’s Santo Volto.

Scale model of interior of temple

For those who think Meier’s Jubilee Church is way out of town, you need to go twice as far to get to the Mormon Temple. It’s practically on top of the GRA (Rome’s outer ‘ring road’) and seems to fit in with, perhaps even be diminished by, the large, undistinguished shopping mall and apartment buildings nearby.

Meier's Jubilee Church

Piero Sartogo's Santo Volto

We found the temple decidedly uninspiring. The Salt Lake City-based Mormon architect might have done better to collaborate with an Italian starchitect to end up with something that approaches the awe-producing design of Paolo Portoghesi’s Mosque, or Meier's and Sartogo’s churches.

Mosque

Admittedly, we did not go inside the temple because once it is dedicated, non-Mormons are not permitted inside. Mormons are allowed inside only for specific purposes, which do not include basic church services.  The inside – from the scale model we were shown by a young American proselytizer at the Visitor Center, looks more homey than church-y.  Church services are held in a chapel, which again is decidedly – and it appears purposefully – plain.  There’s none of what Alain de Botton cites as the religious architecture that makes one almost believe there is a God.

Chapel

Adam and Eve

The Visitor Center paintings include an Adam and Eve who look like Barbie and Ken, the Mormons’ patron saint, Moroni, who looks like Charlton Heston, and others who may be designed to make us feel that we, too, can be figures in a Passion Play. It also has a faux Italian farmhouse and faux farm landscape.  A villetta was torn down to make way for the temple complex – so perhaps this is an homage to that villetta.  Regardless, it’s kitchy at best.

Moroni

Faux villetta inside Visitor Center

The Mormons have only recently been added to the list of religions that have an elevated status in Italy, allowing them some tax and other benefits. They cite the 1929 Concordat between Mussolini’s Fascist government and the Roman Catholic Church for inspiration, and they ended up hiring a lobbyist to get what they wanted, beginning that particular quest in 2006. The history of discrimination against the Mormons is an interesting one to be sure. Pope Francis met the LDS (see PS below) President in March, a first-ever meeting of those figures.

Faux campagna romana inside faux villetta

We’d like to think we’re eclectic in our lay appreciation of religious architecture, but, frankly, we’d skip this complex in favor of almost any other one in Rome. In fact, what attracted Bill on our scooter ride home was his discovery of a brutalist water tank that is in one of the books in our library on 200 great Rome architectural works of the 20^th century.  At least he got something out of our trek.

Dianne

Bill's brutalist water tower

PS We read recently that the Mormons no longer want to use that name and ask that everyone use the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or LDS for short.  Because they used Mormon when building and consecrating this temple, we stuck with it for this post.

More than the Trevi Fountain: Prosciutto, Palazzi, Prints and Paintings within a coin's throw.

The Trevi Fountain is definitely a Rome the First Time experience--and many more times after that, we think. So don't miss it.  (And some advice on visiting it below... it's not so simple these days.)

But there's more!
Three historic Renaissance palazzi, more than three free exhibition spaces, and great food abound in the small streets to the right and left of the fountain.

To fuel yourselves for fighting the crowds and police that now surround the fountain, try the mouth-watering, tiny prosciutteria off the piazza. I must admit I wasn't keen on meeting our family there, expecting something trending on Yelp or Facebook, with little local flavor.  I was so wrong, as the "before" and "after" photos illustrate. La Prosciutteria Trevi, via della Panetteria, No. 34,11 a.m. - 11:30 p.m.

Sonia Delaunay print

Now for some art.  The Trevi Fountain overwhelms everything near it; thus, it's understandable that three or more (depending on how one counts them) art exhibition spaces are almost on top of the fountain and yet usually quite devoid of visitors. Istituto Centrale per la Grafica - the Central Graphics Institute - is contiguous with the building on which the fountain is built.  Go along the street on the right of the fountain and you'll find the entrance on your left.  It has excellent shows.  We've seen many there - from Piranesi's fantasy prints to Sonia Delaunay's work.  Free.  Via della Stamperia, 6.

Piranesi - from his fantastica "jails" series.

Borromini's 17th-century frieze at
Accademia di San Luca, with an Ontani
sculpture in the niche inside.

This is one of several exhibition spaces behind the fountain. The main one is in Palazzo della Calcografia - an 18th-century building by Giuseppe Valadier.  A second one is in Palazzo Poli, with an entrance on the left side of the Trevi Fountain (as we recall), and which is considered to house the Trevi. Some of the space is devoted to a permanent exhibition of older print-making machines and explanations of the techniques then and today.  You might be lucky, too, as we were one day, to find yourself on the second floor of the palazzo and looking out the window right onto the fountain itself.

Across from Palazzo della Calcografia is the main building of Rome's exclusive arts academy - Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, founded in 1577.  In this palazzo, Palazzo Carpegna,you can simply walk in to see the famed Borromini ramp and friezes from the mid-17th century.  Prominent exhibits often are installed on the ramp and elsewhere throughout the building.  We've seen excellent architectural drawings by contemporary Italian Starchitect Renzo Piano,who also designed the New York Times headquarters in New York and the newer buildings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

That's Ontani in the shimmery pale blue silk
 suit and pony tail.  We caught a glimpse of
him touring his own exhibition
while we were doing so as well.

This summer the Accademia's primary installation is of works by an Italian sculptor and painter of whom we hadn't heard - Luigi Ontani. We found his capricious sculptures technically superb as well as fun and a bit bizarre. The exhibit is open until September 22 of this year. The building also houses a permanent exhibition of works donated by some of the famous members of the Academy, including Bernini.

Ontani's version of the lupa, Rome's she-wolf, with himself as the wolf.

Part of an Ontani sculpture channeling
Gertrude Stein.

Okay, advice on the Trevi Fountain.  Try to go very early in the morning or late at night.  Otherwise, it's a mob scene.  Don't try to wade in the fountain ala Anita Eckberg in La Dolce Vita.   There are police patrolling and pushing tourists to obey an unwritten code of conduct.  Eating lunch isn't in the code (see below).  Nor, for some of the fountain police, is sitting on the edge of the fountain. 

Trevi Fountain code police:
The couple is being told to put their food away.

Last photo - Curator and professor (Temple University, Rome) Shara Wasserman --she with the gold purse -- takes a group to the exhibition space in Accademia di San Luca.

Dianne

In Rome, and Free: the Barberini Palace

Being a tourist in Rome can be expensive. Hotels and restaurants exact their toll, and the cost of admission for two at state museums can run about 30 Euro ($40).  So it's always nice to find places you can go--places both interesting and significant--without paying a dime.  One of those places is Palazzo Barberini.  It's conveniently located, just steps from the foot of via Veneto (and from Piazza Barberini), and important parts of it are accessible without paying for the museum (and numismatic society) it houses.

Up these stairs to the Secret Garden

The sloping site, which once housed a smaller palace, was acquired in 1625 by Maffeo Barberini, who became Pope Urban VIII in 1625.  In the years that followed, three great Roman architects worked on the design and construction of the new palace:  Carlo Maderno; Maderno's nephew, Francesco Borromini; and Gian Lorenzo Bernini.  Usually rivals, Borromini and Bernini actually worked together on the palace for a short period.

Be on the lookout for "bees"--the symbol of the Barberini family

Bernini's staircase

After taking in the facade, you can enter the building at its center.  To the left you'll see Bernini's lovely staircase and, to the right, one of Borromini's greatest achievements, an oval (helicoidal, actually--you'll have to look that up) staircase.

Borromini's staircase

In our view, it is Rome's most extraordinary staircase, rivaled only by the Luigi Moretti's modernist spiral masterpiece, hidden away at the back of the ex-GIL (youth center) in Trastevere--and also free.

Il Giardino Segreto

Climbing the gentle center stairs offers access to what is known as a "gardino segreto"--a secret garden, hidden from public view.  Like the staircases, the garden is accessible at no charge.

Weird stuff in the garden

Poke around.  There's some weird stuff in there.

Bill

The Spiral Stairways of Rome

We've assembled five of our favorite spiral stairways.  Four are in Rome.  On the upper left, Bill is rather awkwardly examining an exhibit mounted in the helicoidal (apparently that's a word) ramp at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, located just steps from the Trevi Fountain.  The palazzo dates to the 16th century, and in the 17th, Francesco Borromini worked his magic and constructed this ramp, which circles inside the building for several stories.  Its purpose remains obscure; we don't know if it was intended for foot traffic, or horses.  On the upper right, a cool, modernist stairway designed by Luigi Moretti.  It's housed in the back of the Casa del GIL (a Fascist youth center), located within about 200 meters of Porta Portese in Trastevere (just follow the streetcar tracks), which was built between 1933 and 1936.  The staircase is accessible from the side of the building, off the parking lot. 

Below left, that smiling woman is Dianne, standing beneath a lovely staircase in one of the new towns--we're pretty sure it's Latina, but it could be Pontinia--built by the Mussolini government in the 1930s on the reclaimed Pontine marshes.  Below right, courtesy of photographer Jessica Stewart (see her site, http://www.romephotoblog.com/), is one of two water towers constructed during the modernization of the Termini Station.  This one is located at the back of the station, on the right side (as one faces the station).  The architect was Angiolo Mazzoni, who also designed the towering side aisles of Termini.

Finally, a tantalizing staircase from the Villa Medici.  Looking up.    Bill

Europe's largest mosque - in Rome

The principal mosque in Rome is a world apart from the rest of this very Catholic city. Its postmodern decor is reserved; it has wide open spaces—corridors in the open air--and repetitious designs; it’s set in a green space divorced from any other city structures. After all the baroque churches of Rome, even my favorites by Borromini (who also loved repetition built into the architecture of his churches - I think he would have loved this building complex), I find the mosque beautiful and serene, an almost ethereal structure. Bill says it borders on boring (maybe all that Renaissance architecture is getting in his blood).

We both recommend a visit – Wednesday and Saturday 9:30-11 a.m. only, and of course then it is devoid of worshippers, which gives it an eerily empty feeling. (Directions at the end of this post.)

Women: be sure to wear something that covers your arms, no shorts, and you’ll need a scarf to cover your head. I was alert enough to wear appropriate clothing, but had no idea about the scarf and was lucky enough to borrow one from another visitor. Only a few visitors – you can wander around the mosque’s many separate sections on your own, and a couple group tours (all in Italian) were in evidence on a recent Wednesday morning.

It’s something of a miracle that the mosque, the largest in Europe, stands in Rome at all. It took the blessing of Pope John Paul II for it to be built. Controversy resulted in a minaret slightly less tall than St. Peter’s dome (39 meters (128 feet) vs. St. Peter’s 40 (130 feet), but the mosque is built in a very low area of Rome, so the minaret and main building are hardly visible from any distance, and no real threat to the imposing St. Peter’s dome, not too far away. The architectural competition was won by Paolo Portoghesi (with his then partner Vittorio Gigliotti and Iraqi architect Sami Mousawi) in 1976 and the building opened in 1995, funded mainly by Saudi money.

The mosque complex is nestled in a park-like area at the base of the ritzy Parioli district and very near a vast expanse of sports complexes along Acqua Acetosa (literally "vinegary water," but to the Italians that means very good water, a place Goethe liked to visit as well). And speaking of water, there wasn't much in evidence at the mosque. Like many other Rome monuments, the water supposed to be coursing down the main steps was not, and appeared not to have been running for some time.

A bonus: outside the mosque a large food stand was set up with a Muslim man and woman selling all types of prepared food. Of course, we went away with a large box of pistachio and honey-based desserts. A large market operates outside the mosque on Friday mornings, but you can’t visit on Fridays.

There is surprisingly little written on the mosque. See the following site for detailed architectural information: http://www.archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=1074 or, if you're lucky, find Frederika Randall's 1995 Wall Street Journal article. The city of Rome has some information in a badly - even humorously - translated website (the architects aren't Portuguese; one of the last names is Portoghese) at http://en.turismoroma.it/scoprire_roma/roma_religiosa/la_moschea Ingrid Rowland, writing about Palladio describes the elegance of the mosque in her New York Review of Books piece, covered by Bill in a later post.

Directions: from the Rome center: take the train just outside Piazza del Popolo (Metro A from Termini to Flaminio/Popolo) to the Campo Sportivi stop (you can use your same metro ticket – but this is the train, not the metro; the station is outside, north of Piazza del Popolo, on the side of Villa Borghese), and head back towards the city, towards the minaret, which you can see from there.

Dianne - and see our RST Top 40 piece on this signature mosque. For a bit more on Rome's ethnic presence, see a couple posts on Romanians (the gladiator controversy and a newsstand , the Pigneto neighborhood, Chinese (and other) stores near Piazza Vittorio, and some immigration controversy.  Oh, yes, and do eat a kebab.