Subterranean Rome - an engineering feat from 2500 years ago

 

At one time, one could visit,
but would you want to?

  Rome's - if not the world's - most famous sewer showed up on our RST Top 40 list, admittedly at #40, almost 9 years ago. We're revisiting it today, because it fits into our you-can't-go-there-anyway category; in this case, because it's underground.

Better to view it from the outside, here, today, as it exits into the Tevere.

 The sewer, or Cloaca Maxima (also spelled Cloaxa, as we did 9 years ago, but Cloaca is more common, we've learned since) - meaning "big sewer" - was constructed about 2500 years ago, even before the Romans as we know them. It was designed to canalize water coming down from streams on Rome's 7 hills into the Forum. It ran straight through the Forum and was first open, with small boards as crossing points (must have smelled lovely).

In the photo at right is a reconstruction of what the Cloaca Maxima looked like during the time of the Tarquinian kings (6th century BCE).

When we wrote Rome the Second Time in 2008, we were fascinated by the large mouth of the Cloaca on the Tevere that one can still see today (it shows up in Itinerary 3: The Strange Career of the Tevere, p. 48 in the print copy) - see photo above,"Lo sbocco nel Tevere." There are many views of that 2500 year-old opening, including by Piranesi (etching below), who apparently inspired Goethe to visit the Cloaca in April, 1788. There's evidence Goethe was able to go inside the sewer, though we don't know if he entered it from the Tevere. 

There are more, quite lovely, paintings and etchings at the end of this post.  Amazing a sewer can be so inspirational.

We, who are always finding ways to tie Rome, Los Angeles, and Buffalo, NY, to each other, offer to tie at least Rome and Buffalo together with the tracing above ground of the waterway below-ground. The photo below shows the route of the Cloaca Maxima, above ground, as it would look today. Recently, Bill took the two of us on a route following an important creek in Buffalo, the Scajaquada Creek, where it was placed - a mere 90 years ago -  underground, but can - more or less - be followed above ground. 

So that's our challenge to our readers and to us the next time we are able - to follow the Cloaca Maxima's route above ground.  Part of that route, of course, still wends its way through the Forum, and one can today find evidence of it above ground there, as in this photo:

These (above photo) are the remains of a small "chapel" ("Sacello") to the Sewer Venus ("Venere Cloacina"), evidenced also in a coin of the period (photo right). 

Other fun facts.  Most of the sewer is in use today, 2,500 years later, although not the part that opens onto the Tevere. Etruscans started building it by carving into the very useful tufo (photo left). It was finally (!) covered over in the 2nd century BCE, as Rome grew and there was need for more space. Agrippa (1st century BCE) took a boat and explored it. 

People who were sewer-keepers were proud enough to have this on their tombstones (photo right). 

One of the San Sebastiano stories has him thrown into it. Left, Ludovico Carracci's 1612 painting of San Sebastiano being thrown into the Cloaca

Parts of the Cloaca Maxima are built with the classic Roman marble, travertine (tons used by Richard Meier to construct The Getty Museum in LA - see, I got LA in there - as well as the Ara Pacis structure in central Rome). Photo right.

There have been visits "down there" from time to time, including the photo at the top of this post from the 1960s, as I recall. Now, small robots are used to investigate the caverns, called "robotini" or "archeorobots" - photo left.

Most of the information in this post is from a Zoom lecture by Daniela Pacchiani, a specialist in ancient archaeology, as part of Turismo Culturale Italiano's Roma Inaccessibili ("Inaccessible Rome") series in January and February.

Dianne (more 18th and 19th century paintings below!)

This is a nice "capriccio" or fantastical image
of the Cloaca's opening onto the Tevere. It is 
not too far from the temple, whose ruins are fancifully shown here,
but which are obviously not exactly in this location.

Margaret Fuller in Rome: "Rome must be inhaled..."

Margaret Fuller

As is the case with Goethe, it appears the 19th-century American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller first had sex in Rome.  Not that I want to start a Facebook page on this topic, but the effect of Rome on artists is a subject RST has been exploring for years.  And for Fuller, the apparently plain-faced, 37 year-old genius, Rome "must be inhaled wholly, with the yielding of the whole heart,...It is really something transcendent, both spirit and body."  And so she did.


This post is in essence a short biography of Margaret Fuller in Rome, including locations that can be turned into an itinerary.  At the end is a link to a Fuller-inspired tour being offered this year by a knowledgeable American group.


I must admit my infatuation with Margaret Fuller came late and via an Italian friend.  After Bill and I drafted our first guide to Rome, Rome the Second Time, we asked this highly educated friend to review it for us.  After he had read the itinerary that includes Garibaldi's defense of Rome from the Gianicolo in 1848, he said, "Of course, you know Margaret Fuller."  Of course, I did not.  All those English courses at Stanford, an MA in English, lots about Transcendentalists, and nothing about Fuller.  No doubt the syllabus would be different today.


So, yes, we included a few sentences about Fuller in RST.  But it was only when I read Megan Marshall's 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, that I understood that early feminist's effect on Ralph Waldo Emerson, among many others, and Rome's effect on her.

Via del Corso, where Fuller first lived in Rome, as a nanny for the Springs, as it might
have looked mid-19th century, with no vehicles (this photo taken recently, at dawn)

Giovanni Ossoli

Within a week of her arrival in Rome in spring 1847 as tutor for the 9 year-old son of fellow New Englanders, Rebecca and Marcus Spring, Fuller had met her future lover, the younger, not well-educated, monolingual Giovanni Ossoli.  It was a chance meeting, at vespers at St. Peter's during Easter week.


At the time, Fuller was living with the Springs on via del Corso, nearer Piazza Venezia than Piazza del Popolo.  We don't know the exact address, and now - unlike when Fuller lived there -  the imposing monument to the unifying King Vittorio Emanuele II occupies the view at the southern end of the street.

Via del Corso, no. 514, where Fuller lived when she
 returned to Rome by herself, in fall, 1847.  Ossoli found
her this apartment, close to where he lived with his parents
 - who knew nothing of his relationship with Fuller.

When Fuller returned to Rome after the 1847 summer, Ossoli found an apartment for her closer to Piazza del Popolo on via del Corso, then the most active street in the city.  Upstairs at 514 via del Corso, she could look across to the rooms Goethe, one of her influences, occupied more than 50 years earlier.


By the new year, Margaret was pregnant, and endured her first trimester with more than 40 days of unremitting rain in Rome.  "Rome is Rome no more." But in March she went to Ostia with Ossoli and "A million birds sang." By late April, the likely unmarried Margaret was "showing," and she had to leave Rome to avoid detection by anyone who knew her.  She left for the country mountain town of L'Aquila in the Abruzzi, then 3 days travel from Rome (now 2 hours by train), where she felt "lonely, imprisoned, too unhappy."  She was called a "ragazza madre," literally "girl mother," but probably equivalent to "unwed mother."

The flags mark Goethe's house, which Fuller could see from
her window at 514 via del Corso.

Meanwhile - and that's a big meanwhile - forces vying for control of Italy were raging along the peninsula. Soon not even L'Aquila was safe, because Neapolitan soldiers, loyal to the Pope, were encamped there.  So Margaret moved to the even smaller city of Rieti, with rooms overlooking the Velino River. In Rieti, on September 5, 1848, "Nino" was born.



After Nino was baptized, Fuller left the child with a wet nurse in Rieti and returned to Rome and to her job writing dispatches for the New York Tribune.  She resumed her column with an early December 1848 issue, recalling a year of "revolutions, tumults, panics, hope."




Ossoli located an apartment for Fuller at 60 Piazza Barberini, where she could see the Quirinale (then the Pope's palazzo), Bernini's Trident Fountain in the middle of the Piazza, and Palazzo Barberini, now partly obscured by mundane commercial buildings.

On Piazza Barberini, where we think #60 might have once been.

We looked for 60 Piazza Barberini.  Not only is the "modest stucco building" no longer there, but neither is the address.  It was likely swallowed up by new streets, such as via del Tritone.  Fuller biographer Marshall says Bernini's Bee Fountain was at the foot of Fuller's building, but that too has been moved since the 19th century.


From her rooms on Piazza Barberini, Margaret could hear gunshots from the various forces and see wounded men carried on stretchers.  In February the secular state was proclaimed, and from a balcony in Piazza Venezia, Margaret watched the celebrations there.

Via Margutta, where Thomas Hicks, who painted Fuller's
portrait, had a studio.  No one we encountered on the street
had heard of Hicks, or Fuller (but they''ll tell you where Roman
Holiday was filmed and where Fellini and Masina lived).

In the tranquil first few months of this new Roman state, Margaret walked the Borghese gardens, as she had 2 years earlier with little Eddie Spring.  Now the oak trees all had been cut down, for fortifications.   But the Republic was short-lived.

The stained glass symbol for the Fatebene Fratelli hospital
(featured, btw, in Angels and Demons)

With more wounded soldiers and civilians, Margaret found a role for herself.  On April 30, 1848, "Margherita Ossoli" was appointed "Regolatrice," or director, of Fatebene Fratelli hospital, functioning to this day on Isola Tiburtina, the Tiber Island in the middle of Rome.  By this time, French troops loyal to the Pope were advancing on Rome and Fuller was urged to go to a safer location.


She relocated to Casa Diez on via Gregoriana, just a couple blocks from Piazza Barberini.  This hotel had been favored by American and English tourists but, because of the revolution, was now almost empty.  We couldn't find the hotel, nor any trace of its name.  But via Gregoriana, leading to the top of the Spanish Steps, remains a popular location for foreign tourists.




Via Gregoriana - but we are not sure where the hotel Casa Diez
was located

On July 2, routed by the French, Garibaldi led his remaining troops out of the city.  Fuller watched as they passed by the obelisk in back of San Giovanni in Laterano. The next day the French troops marched into Rome.  Fuller spent her last night in Rome on the Pincio with her husband, who was camped there with his regiment.  She then left for Rieti to reclaim her son.



Fuller and Ossoli, who soon joined her, spent several weeks in Rieti, hiring a new wet nurse for their ailing son (the prior one had given him wine and water when her milk supply was short) and bringing him back to health.  They then left for Florence, where there was an American contingent. They finally booked passage on the only vessel they could afford, a cargo boat to the US, and left Livorno, on the coast near Florence, on May 17, comprising 3 of the 6 paying passengers on the "barque." It was supposed to be a 2-month voyage.  And so it was.  On July 19, the vessel went aground off Fire Island.  Only a few hundred yards from shore, Fuller, Ossoli and their son drowned.



Dianne

Large parts of this narrative are derived from Megan Marshall's excellent biography, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.  And parts were gleaned from an itinerary for a bicentennial commemorative tour of Italy following Fuller's life there.  The organizers planned to place a plaque at Fatebene Fratelli Hospital in Margaret's memory.  We looked extensively and asked many questions, but we did not see any plaque there, nor did there appear to be any similar plaques at the hospital.  Some of these same organizers are leading a 2016 tour based on transcendentalists in Italy.  See their Web site http://transcendentalisttours.com/upcoming-tours/ 

Walking in Goethe's footsteps: home in Rome series part 1

A famous but rather odd painting of Goethe amid the Roman
ruins - it's in Casa di Goethe.  Goethe thought it was
a good likeness.

Goethe’s sojourn in Rome made him a changed man, according to Goethe himself. The greatest of German writers (e.g. Faust) and polymath, Goethe literally fled to Rome and went from being a depressive German (apologies to Bill) to an emotional expat. Some say it was because he had sex for the first time in Rome (per no less than WH Auden, writing that Goethe's diary “is that of a man who has known sexual satisfaction”).  And this is after Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther – from whose fame in part he was fleeing. We like to think it was Rome itself that brought joy to Goethe, and that’s the way his diary reads.



Goethe looking out the window of the casa.
You can put yourself here;  the window is identified at the house

Goethe called 3 September when he arrived in Rome “the birthday of my new life.”

You can step in Goethe’s steps, look out his window, and feel his presence (with some effort on your part) in the “Casa di Goethe” – or Goethe’s home – in the center of Rome, via del Corso 18 – a few steps from Piazza del Popolo.

The good news about the well-organized Germans is that the “home” is well managed and maintained, with very good temporary exhibitions, as well as some permanent ones.  But well-maintained also means it is rather soul-less, and feels like the 21st century, not the 18th. That’s why it takes some effort to be transported back to Goethe’s time.  As Goethe said in the 1700s, “What the barbarians left, the builders of Modern Rome have destroyed.”  [The best version of that line plays on the name of the fabulously rich Roman family, the Barberini - what the barbarians ("barbari") didn't destroy, the Barberini did.]  One can imagine what Goethe would think now.  One really has to stretch one’s imagination to see the “delightful view of our garden and of neighbouring gardens in all directions, for our house stood on a corner.”

The exterior of Goethe's house on via del Corso

You can check out the hours, exhibitions, and some of the holdings of the “home” at the website – in English. A visit used to be free, then was Euro 2 and now is Euro 4 – but still worth it, in our opinion.

It’s worth it because Rome so moved Goethe, much like it does us. Of course, he did some things we haven’t – he visited the upper galleries of the Sistine Chapel (tho’ have to admit, we were high up on the scaffolding when Michelangelo's Last Judgment there was being restored), ate meals there and napped on the papal throne; climbed Trajan’s Column; bathed in the Tiber (“from a well-appointed and safe bathing machine”!).

Here’s what he says in his diary:

“Now, at last, I have arrived in the First City of the world!...All the dreams of my youth have come to life….In other places one has to search for the important points of interest; here they crowd in on one in profusion.”

St. Peter’s: “has made me realize that Art, like Nature, can abolish all standards of measurement.”

And on visiting the Sistine Chapel: “At present I am so enthusiastic about Michelangelo that I have lost all my taste for Nature, since I cannot see her with the eye of genius as he did.”

On the Coliseum at twilight: ”Once one has seen it, everything else seems small. It is so huge that the mind cannot retain its image; one remembers it is smaller than it is, so that every time one returns ito it, one is astonished by its size.”

And that’s just a bit of his writings that sang to us. For more, read his Italian Journey. Plus we’ll quote from him here and there in future posts. If you’re not too well-informed about Goethe, Wikipedia does a decent job of explaining this incredible mind and person.

Dianne

Note: We’re calling this “home series, part 1” because we will feature in short order, 2 other homes you can visit – Pirandello’s and DeChirico’s.

Evidence that the painting of Goethe is iconic.
Added by Bill