36 Hours around Campo de' Fiori

This is the second of two posts that evolved from a friend's request for suggestions of what to do around Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori. As we noted in the first post on Piazza Navona, 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. 

We put our heads together, created a list and a map for her, and enjoyed the exercise enough that we made it into 2 blog posts. Here's the second, on the Campo - expanding into the ghetto proper (the numbering starts with 19 - since the other numbers were used on Piazza Navona).

Note, Campo de’ Fiori and environs (the market – much more than flowers) is open only in the morning, Monday through Saturday).  

Campo de' Fiori, in clean-up phase (2015) 

19.      A statue of Giordano Bruno, the revolutionary monk burned at the stake in 1600, looms over the market in the middle of Campo de’ Fiori. We wrote about him here: https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2009/08/mixing-religion-and-politics-in-lively.html. Bruno's story is the door to many facets of Italian history, politics, and religion, which may be one reason our post has a lengthy and interesting comment by a reader (with the handle "Believer"). Just after we published the post in 2009, Ingrid Rowland's fascinating book on Bruno came out. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo8167222.html

20.      Wine bar L’Angolo Divino enoteca vineria, just a few steps off the Campo, has some food, and is considered one of the better wine bars (all our Roman friends like it). Web site in Italian: https://www.angolodivino.it/

21.      Caffè Peru is a nice (not so fancy) wine bar, known for its great 10 euro aperitivo  (lots to eat):  https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2015/07/caffe-peru-time-for-aperitivo.html  - via di Monserrato. The photo is from 2016.

22.      Palazzo Farnese was designed – or re-designed - by Michelangelo. You can’t go in; it's the well-guarded French Embassy, unless you can find a tour - which we did once. Still, it's definitely worth looking at. This is a lovely piazza (if there aren't too many security vehicles parked all around), with classic use of ancient Roman bathtubs as fountains, and the dramatic, enormous Michelangelo overhanging eaves on the palazzo. Have a drink in the bar that takes in the whole piazza, and enjoy the Renaissance cityscape. (And ask someone about the connection to the Farnesina across the Tevere.)

23.      Hungarian Academy on via Giulia – https://culture.hu/it/roma  -  is usually open 9-5 every weekday. It's one of the best of the foreign cultural academies, often with free, excellent art exhibits. Plus the academy occupies a Francesco Borromini structure built for the Falconieri family.

24.      Galleria Spada is a wonderful gallery that has another piece of Borrominiana - his “perspective” corridor. Open for tours (in English and French) daily except Tuesdays. https://galleriaspada.cultura.gov.it/en/tickets-and-info-2/

25.      Il Goccetto (trans. "the little drop") is our favorite wine bar – via dei Banchi Vecchi.

Il Goccetto. The clientele, as usual, spilling onto the sidewalk and street. Inside, a chalkboard lists all the wines available by the glass. 

26.      Turtle fountain - https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2010/02/on-location-improving-on-turtle.html - Piazza Mattei. The turtles are by Gian Lorenzo Bernini - so you can get your fix of the Borromini/Bernini feud by hanging around this area. And, here's a romantic fable to add to the atmosphere (as if it needed anything). 

27.     Ghetto: The heart of it is this street, via di Portico d’Ottavia – look to Katie Parla for eating ideas – we’ve often gone to Giggetto at the end – because of ties to a friend of ours who lived upstairs. It bills itself as the server of the true Jewish artichoke (perhaps Dianne's favorite food of all time) since 1923. Incredible (and disturbing) free show in a tower right across from Giggetto - on concentration camps with Italian connections. This is the Museum of the Shoah, open Sunday through Friday, with shorter hours on Friday. The Synagogue is across the street and has tours – we’ve never been on one, but have been in the basement museum (hours change quite frequently with the seasons; basically open Sunday through Friday, with shorter hours on Friday) which is quite informative (we went for the first time last year). 

Below, one of the documents on display in the Synagogue museum, commemorating the establishment by the United Nations of the state of Israel. 

Good ruins at the end of the street – you’re almost at Campidoglio and you are at Teatro Marcello.

27A.     Pasticceria Boccione is open only in mornings – get there to get a piece of “Jewish pizza” – kind of like fruitcake - https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/passticeria-boccione

Pasticceria Boccione 

28.      Al Pompiere restaurant. We haven’t been there in years, but we always liked it – totally interior - https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187791-d866514-Reviews-Al_Pompiere_Ristorante_Roma-Rome_Lazio.html

Great Jewish artichokes- there and elsewhere in the ghetto – they won’t be in season, but the restaurants get them now from Africa and sell them in all seasons. If you're not a purist, try them! Carciofi alla giudia (not alla romana, though those are good too) [photo right].

29.     Largo di Torre Argentina – supposedly where Julius Caesar was killed. It has informative panels, and now you can walk in it. It has a cat sanctuary that is fun to visit, and you can "foster" a cat if you are going to be in Rome for more than a few days.

30.     Feltrinelli book store – an international one with paper products and gifts

And in the ghetto there’s lots of “spolia” – re-use of Roman ruins  - if you look up at buildings  - https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2018/01/spolia-in-rome-reading-middle-ages-use.html

Particularly in the area of Campo de’ Fiori and the ghetto, you will see some of these "stumbling blocks" if you look down - https://romethesecondtime.blogspot.com/2013/10/here-lived-commemorating-italian-jews.html. They commemorate the Jews who were deported and died in the Holocaust, with the small brass block outside the doorway of the residence where that person once lived. We stopped to look at one near Largo di Torre Argentina and a young man came out to tell us that  6 of his cousins died at the hands of the Nazis.

 

Campo de' Fiori at dawn, the statue of Giordano Bruno at center/right. Sometimes it's worth getting up early. Daybreak, June, 2015. 

Dianne 

Jewish pizza ("pizza ebraica"): Not your (Italian) grandmother's pizza

Joining the line, including two Giro d'Italia bicycle race competitors, for Jewish pizza on a Sunday morning (before the race started).

Once in a while RST takes a break from heavy-duty philosophy, modern architecture, history, and churches for food, yes, food... especially sweets, say I.

One of our favorite stops is for "Jewish pizza" (pizza ebraica)  in Rome's historic Jewish ghetto.  The photo above shows you nearly the entire retail space of the bakery at via Portico di Ottavia, No. 1.  If you blink, you won't even notice it.  The name, I'm told, thanks to Katie Parla, is Pasticceria “Boccione” Limentani.  I've never seen a sign with the name on it,  but you don't need to know the name to pop in the corner door.

That's the Jewish pizza they're weighing there; sold by the gram/kilogram.  It's like a heavy, warm (eat it right when you get it) fruitcake.   Looks pretty burned and perhaps not edible.  Do not be deterred; it tastes great.

As you can see, the bakery sells other goodies as well.  Katie waxes eloquent about the biscottini on her blog.

The hours are not ideal for most tourists, since it's a kosher bakery.  So not open Saturdays or Friday nights, or Jewish high holidays.  Generally closed as well the last 3 weeks of August and 2-4 p.m. in summer.

They also run out of goods.

Our recommendation:  don't make it a destination; just stop in if you're in the neighborhood and get - and eat - something.

Dianne

"Here lived...": commemorating Italian Jews who died in the Holocaust

in Pigneto

If you look down once in a while in Rome, you may find a small brass plaque beginning "Qui abitava"or "Here lived," with a name, date and other information in Italian.  Like the one above:

Here lived
Fernando
Nuccetelli,
born 1903
arrested for his politics
January 4, 1944
deported
Concentration Camp Mautausen
died April 23, 1944

Here lived Silvia Sermoneta, born 1897, arrested Oct. 10, 1943,
deported, Auschwitz, assassinated July 15, 1944, on via Salaria

Almost 100 of these "stolpersteine" (iin German) or "stumbling blocks" ("pietri d'inciampo" in Italian) are on the streets of Rome, and over 40,000 in 10 countries in Europe and Russia.  The project of German artist Gunter Demnig, they commemorate Jews, Roma, and others, like Nuccetelli, a political prisoner, who died in the Holocaust.

More than 1000 Jews were deported from Rome to the camps late in World War II, as Nuccetelli's plaque reveals. Of the 2000 Italian Jews deported, only 102 survived.



The 4-inch (10 cm) cube stolpersteine is laid flush with the sidewalk, usually in front of the last known residence of the victim.  In Rome, this often  means the stolpersteine replaces a sanpietrino, or cobblestone-like block of the sidewalk and is noticeable not so much for its shape, but the shiny brass. They were laid in Rome in 2010 and 2011, in many of the city's municipalities, including many in the city's old Jewish ghetto.



Relatives of one who escaped the round-up, on via Arenula

We stopped this year in front of two on via Arenula along largo di Torre Argentina, while walking on the street with friends visiting Rome for the first time from the United States. As we were trying to explain the stones, a relative of those who died came out of the building.  He had lost his aunts, uncles and all his cousins, he told us.

Scandalously, 3 of the stones were stolen in Rome in 2012.

Dianne

Here lived Laudadio di Nepi, born 1882, arrested Oct. 16, 1943,
deported, Auschwitz, died during transport; also on via Salaria,
at the same address as Silvia Sermoneta

Jewish Artichokes--in September!

When we took this photograph on September 20 of last year, we were both disappointed and surprised.  Disappointed, because the scene was a trifle tacky: a couple of guys on the main street of the area known as the Jewish ghetto, hustling Jewish artichokes and other Kosher delicacies for La Taverna del Ghetto, one of the area's best-known restaurants.  "The King of the Jewish Artichoke...is here!"  Was business that bad? 

And we were surprised.  Surprised, because we had always (always being like a decade or two) thought that the "season" for Jewish artichokes--carciofi (artichokes) alla giudia--ended in May and would not begin again until February.  And here we were in mid-September, and these fellows were engaged in the unthinkable: selling Jewish artichokes (deep fried whole, then dipped briefly in cold water) when the proper raw material was, we thought, unavailable.  Yet there, on the table, were, undeniably, artichokes. 

Un carciofo all guidia, ready to eat

It seems there are two kinds of artichoke.  Those in the photo were likely the Roman "globe artichoke," available most of the year (though unusual in September).  But the preparation  "alla giudia" is traditionally accomplished with the carciofo romanesco--what food critic Katie Parla calls "Rome's most venerated vegetable"--and that artichoke has the limited season we note above.  Indeed, European Union IGP (Geographically Protected and Identified) regulations legally establish the season for the carciofo romanesco--February thru May, just as we thought. 

To Romans, these things matter.  Shame on you, La Taverna del Ghetto!
Bill

On Location: Improving on the Turtle Fountain

"Even in a city of fountains such as Rome, this probably holds the palm for sheer delight; and what other country but Italy could have produced it?" The sentiments are those of Georgina Masson, whose Companion Guide to Rome is one our favored companions, and her subject the Fontana delle Tartarughe/Fountain of the Turtles, in the Jewish ghetto's Piazza Mattei. It owes its charm to age and quality; it was executed in 1581 from a design by Gioacomo della Porta, and the turtles--a lovely afterthought--are of more recent origin (1658), probably by the talented and ubiquitous Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Despite its charms, the fountain in its natural state was not lovely enough for the film company we observed in May of last year. It seems the Roman sun had dried it off, or up, and the filmmaker wanted it to glisten and shine.
So it was one guy's job to pretty much constantly toss water on the fountain (irony!!) so it would be at its best when the cameras started to roll. He's at work on the left of this photo. And that's how you improve on the sublime.

Bill