Quinto Sulpicio Massimo: the Child Poet who Studied Himself to Death

We've always enjoyed the eclectic frenzy of Piazza Fiume, at the juncture of Corso d'Italia and via Salaria, one of ancient Rome's consular roads. But there's a part of that eclectic mix that we've never understood: the jumble of "ruins" of various kinds on the north side of the piazza. Thanks to a morning newspaper, Il Messaggero, we now have a better understanding of what happened there, and when.

Looking through the fence (or over it) at the ruins, there's a statue of a small boy in a niche (above), with some writing to the sides and below, and below that, some large grey blocks of stone. You're looking at the tomb of Quinto Sulpicio Massimo (note the street sign with that name nearby to the right). Quinto was a prodigy, a boy genius, when at age eleven, in 94 d.c., he entered the third "Certamen Capitolinum," a contest featuring extemporaneous Greek poetry "readings." Rome's most famous poets competed--more than 50 of them were entered--but none performed so ably as young Quinto, who improvised 40 verses, no doubt astonishing those in attendance. Whether he won is not known.

Sadly, Quinto's career in oratory was cut tragically short. As the text around the niche explains, Quinto died a few days after the competition, weakened by "too much studying and his excessive love for the 'muse.'"




Quinto's tomb, and another beside it, remained intact for 2 centuries, protected from the barbarian invasion of 276 by the hastily constructed wall built under Emperor Marcus Aurelias' watch. According to Il Messaggero, his tomb was encased in one of the two towers of Porta Salaria.

Vespignani's Porta Salaria

You'll notice that there is no Porta Salaria. It didn't survive the cannons of the invading Goths under King Vitige in 537. Then (skipping ahead some 13 centuries), under the new Italian state, the Porta was rebuilt by Virginio Vespignani, only to be torn down in 1921 to open up the piazza. It was then that Quinto's story came to light: as Vespignani's work was being disassembled, workers uncovered the niche and statue--the "cippo"--that one sees today (although the statue is a copy; the original is in Centrale Montemartini, on via Ostiense).

The structures behind the tomb for many years housed the studio of sculpture Ettore Ferrari, who died in 1929. Among other large works, Ferrari created the statue of Giordano Bruno in Campo de' Fiori.

Somewhere back there was Ferrari's studio.  

And one more "treat." If you walk around the corner to your left (facing the tomb), and look up at the wall, you can't miss the latrine--a toilet--hanging off the side of the wall (on its outside, of course). At one time there were 260 latrines on the Aurelian wall, serving the soldiers who worked in the
fortification.

Convenient bathroom 

Bill

Aurelian Wall Walk VI: From the University to Piazza Fiume, or Glad No One Was With Us

If you look hard, you'll see a piece of the wall in back.  It's a lovely courtyard, but gives no hint of how one can start
walking the wall.

Some of you dear readers may recall we last left you on a wall walk with Annie, which ended at the Aeronautical Ministry Building on viale Castro Pretorio.  [Links to posts describing the wall walks to date are at the end of this post.]  The wall did take a break for that 1930s building, and so did we - for a stop in the University and for lunch.  You may recall Bill and Dianne of RST attempted to walk - in stretches, sometimes with unsuspecting visitors along -  the entire 12 mile circumference of the 3rd century Aurelian Wall, of which about half remains intact.  

For this particular tract, the 2 of us decided it would be easy enough to pick up the wall where we left off, where viale dell'Università meets viale Castro Pretorio, but we were sadly mistaken.  Part of the problem is that the land that once held the enormous ancient Roman military base, Castro Pretorio, now is both military property and the national library with its immense grounds, not all open to the public.  The military base would have been incorporated into, and used to make part of the wall in the 3rd century; this is another example of the Romans incorporating existing buildings into the wall - one reason the Aurelian Wall went up so quickly.  But not so easy to figure out in the 21st century. In any event, here's our route in photos, and we're sparing you the many times we walked back and forth half a mile or so at a time, adding several miles to what should have been the route, all to try to find the  "f***ing wall" (as our co-walker on one stretch, Brian, dubbed it).  

And one of our loyal readers suggested we provide a map of our wall walks.  We are taking that under consideration and hope to provide some map guidance at the end of our trek, but no one would have wanted to follow the route we took this day.  UPDATE:  Map at this Google link.

After walking from the Aeronautical Building, past the garden above, then the military 
compound, we thought we were really getting to the wall when we approached the national library.

We scouted around behind the library, where
it seemed like the wall should be, and this is
what we found.  Yup, that's the wall behind
the fence and bushes.  Not so easy to follow,
unless you are a bird, or a drone.

After walking and back and forth the equivalent of a mile or so,
on viale Castro Pretorio, we gave up and walked to its busy
 intersection with viale del Policinico.  If you can't start where
you want, start at the other end, we figured.  And we knew the
wall would be at the end of this stretch, as this photo shows.

This broken start to the wall was a sight for sore eyes. And the beginning
of our trek backwards along this stretch.

A well-maintained shrine to commemorate World War II
civilians who died was built into the wall here.

The outside of the wall along viale del Policinico
has some particularly nice, tall stretches.

Some even under repair.

But here we lose the wall as it heads into private property.

That's it, back there, not too far away from the military base and the
library, but this was as close as we could get.  Now we have to walk BACK
to the intersection of viale del Policlinico and viale Castro Pretorio.

Once at the intersection, it was easy walking along the busy Corso d'Italia
 (above,  not in the tunnels). Though these "temporary" supports don't 
encourage one to walk too near the wall.

The one-legged World War I Bersagliere hero, Enrico Toti
(we'll see him again in Wall Walk VII) - a monument inside
Porta Pia.

A view of Porta Pia.  Typical of the wall, the Porta forms part of it,
or it forms part of the porta.  This famous (now rebuilt) porta was
where the secular forces breached the wall to force the end of
 the Papal State in the Risorgimento, September 20, 1870

Looking back towards Porta Pia  - nice stretches of the wall, intact.

Not to be deterred, we tried walking INSIDE
 the wall here. No go.  Private property again.

The usual markers for a Pope who restored the wall at
 some point.  In this case, Pius IV, Pope from 1559-1565
 (you can see his coat of arms on Piazza del Popolo as well).

We discovered, before Piazza Fiume, this monument to
September 20, 1870.  The hundreds of times we had driven
down Corso d'Italia (admittedly, mostly in the tunnels),
 we had  always seen Porta Pia, but never this monument.
Shows you what walking will do.

Creative use of a hole in the wall.  That's Piazza Fiume ahead,
with the large La Rinascente department store.

The wall is particularly heavily used as one approaches Piazza Fiume,
with lots of building within  the wall itself, as well as onto it.

Our just desserts, a glass of wine at Caffè Piave, not far from
 Piazza Fiume, and near a bus stop.

Okay, so we hadn't covered a lot of wall ground by now, but we'd been out for hours and so called it quits, or we convinced ourselves it was cocktail hour somewhere.

Dianne

Wall Walk I: Porta Metronia to Porta Maggiore.
Wall Walk II: Porta Metronia to Porta San Paolo.
Wall Walk III: The Tame and the Wild Sides (Porta San Paolo to the Tevere).
Wall Walk IV: Porta Portese to the Gianicolo, or Brian's Lament.
Wall Walk V: Porta Maggiore to Castro Pretorio, or Annie's Reward.

Audrey, Shopping in Rome

Yes, that's Audrey Hepburn, maybe at her skinniest, which is saying something, and in era bellbottoms, and sporting the oversize sunglasses that would again be in style in 2012.  Accompanied, we were told, by her grandson.  It's 1972, and they're in Piazza Fiume, in front of the famed and architecturally significant (still extant and newly remodeled - and - the subject of an earlier post) department store, la Rinascente.  We saw the photo for the first time just months ago, when we were in an underground bookstore (accessed by the stairs beyond Audrey).  When we admired the photo, the proprietor insisted on printing us a copy.  (It's a good bookstore, btw, and has Roman ruins within it.)

As RST regulars know, Audrey is iconic in Rome and environs. 

Here (and now), she's selling a purse (E25, about $33)



And here, her image is used to market beauty services in the
upscale Trieste quartiere.  (A permanent is
E60, or about $90).



With the photo in hand, we reenacted the Audrey shopping scene, with Dianne as Audrey and minus the sullen teen. 

                        

Born Again in Piazza Fiume: La Rinascente

Piazza Fiume.  As Rome piazzas go, it's not much.  Today, its main purpose is to move vehicles from one place to another: the North/South, one-way thoroughfare via Salaria drains the Trieste quartiere, dumping tens of thousands of cars and scooters daily into the piazza and onto Corso Italia, where they hurtle down the Muro Torto to Piazza del Popolo, or take a mysterious left turn, cutting back through a section of the Aurelian city wall, to access the Corso going east.  Except for a small section of the piazza on the northwest, where the intersection with via Bergamo creates a bit of civil space, Piazza Fiume is a mess. 

That doesn't mean there aren't some things to see.  Gather your pedestrian skills and cross Corso Italia with the traffic coming down via Salaria.  There, on the southwest corner, you'll find a bland 1950s building, now occupied by Barclay's Bank.  Bland, yes, but over the entrance to the left, now looking north, are a curious set of painted protusions affixed to the wall.  Like a fifties album cover.  Cool, man!

Across via Piave (the extension of via Salaria) is one of Rome's few neo-Gothic structures, with those pointed windows that seem so out of place in this mostly neo-classical city. 

And on that building--appropriately on via Piave--note the large plaque honoring the Italian soldiers who fought and died in a dramatic and successful effort to hold off an advancing Austro-Hungarian force at the Piave River in northeast Italy during World War I. 









Walk up the street, toward the piazza (beware motorists turning left!) and enjoy the interesting section of the wall and a bunch of columns in front of it (we have no explanation for this craziness, except it's eclectic Rome at its best).

Across the street, an underground bookstore boasts a section of Roman wall, jutting out into the room, and black and white photos of the city here and there. 

So there's more to Piazza Fiume than meets the eye, especially for Rome-the-Second-Time bottom feeders.  But we've saved the best for last. On the northwest corner of the piazza is a department store, La Rinascente (roughly translated "rebirth").  Against all odds and, it would seem at first glance, common sense, it's a registered and protected architectural landmark.  It was designed by the Milanese team of Franco Albini and Franca Helg--their only building in Rome--and constructed between 1959 and 1961, when it opened.  Albini was an architect of considerable reputation, his career going back to the 1930s, when he designed public housing.  

It was the second La Rinascente store in Rome (the first, opened in 1887, was until recently at the corner of via del Corso and via del Tritone--the building still exists), and Albini and Helg used the basic massing of that first store in their design for this one.  Beyond that, the modern store, for all its apparent ordinariness, was new, fresh and innovative, inside and out.  The structure is of reinforced concrete and steel frame.  The exterior infill panels--an outstanding feature--are of masonry, not flat but folded--Baroque "movement" in the facade design, some say--and tinted to recall the color of porcelain in ancient Rome.  One observer has described it as a "Renaissance facade redone with contemporary technology." 

Another important feature is the substantial, open, steel cornice, referencing Michelangelo's cornice--surely the most famous in the city--for the Palazzo Farnese. 

The Sorgente Group, which has owned the building since 2006, claims that La Rinascente "is considered the best example of the setting of a modern building within the historical context of the city."  Architectural critic Reyner Banham, likely to be less biased, nonetheless shares the Sorgente Group's admiration, while noting the limitations imposed by the era.  Albini, he notes, faced severe "cultural restraints."  "He was designing a building for a conspicuous site in the history-laden ambiente of Rome, at a time when the historical nerve of most Italian architects had failed almost completely (these were the years of Neoliberty nostalgia)."

Inside, you'll find a modern department store, recently refurbished.  Shop 'til you drop. And as you do, consider three elements of the interior.  On the top floor there's a modern bar/cafe.  Avoid it or embrace it as you choose, but don't miss a chance to look out the windows, where you'll have an extreme close-up view of the steel cornice. 

Descending on the escalators, you should know that these were installed in 2011 by the firm of Tim Power Architects, perhaps replacing an elevator.  The Tim Power firm makes much of this makeover, emphasizing the importance of redoing the building's circulation so that customers could reach the upper floors rapidly and without waiting.  (The Power folks even cite starchitect Rem Koolhaas, for whom escalators are a "key metaphor for the expanding city.")  

The Albini/Helg staircase

We hope we haven't lost you here, because there's one more gem in this building.  The chiocciola--the word means both "snail" and "spiral staircase"--which once provided much or all of the building's circulation, is a masterpiece, an "expressive shell" that draws architectural historians to the building.  You'll have to poke around to find this wonder in Veronese red marble.  Each rung of the metal railing has a small curve at the end, marking the era. 

It may well be the most sensational staircase in Rome, though modernists will claim that honor for Luigi Moretti's chiocciola in the ex-GIL (a Fascist-era youth center) at the intersection of viale di Trastevere and via G. Induno. 

The Borromini/Maderno staircase

The Albini/Helg staircase is most often compared to the 1627 marvel by Francesco Borromini and Carlo Maderno, in Palazzo Barberini.  A photographer who admires both claims that the "api" (bees) that were a required element in anything created for the Barberini family, also appear in the staircase at La Rinascente.  Check that out. 

Bill