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.

Milton Gendel, photographer: He came to Rome and never left

Picnic at Villa Centinale, near Siena.  Milton Gendel photo.  

Milton Gendel in his Washington Square apartment, 1940s

Milton Gendel's Rome experience began with a certain serendipity.  In 1949, at age 31, the New York City native was ready to return to China on a Fulbright scholarship.  Mao's Communist government intervened--the new regime did not welcome young scholars--and Gendel made his way to Rome instead, the beginning of a 60-year relationship with the city.  He never returned to live in the United States.

Within just a few years, Gendel had become a central figure in Rome's art scene.  In the mid-1950s, he helped found the Rome-New York Art Foundation, located on the Tiber Island beneath Gendel's apartment--the same apartment featured in the opening scenes of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960).  Through the foundation, and as the Rome correspondent for ART News, he played a central role in Rome's "la dolce vita" scene between 1958 and 1962, nurturing the careers of some of Italy's most important artists, including Alberto Burri, Toti Scialoja, Tancredi, Ettore Scola, and Mimmo Rotella.  Among those in Gendel's inner circle were Robert Motherwell, Alexander Calder, and Willem de Kooning.  An early close friend was Rome's architectural theoretician, Bruno Zevi.  Zevi's introduction to Adrian Olivetti led Gendel to employment doing international public relations for the Olivetti firm.

Perhaps best known as a fashion and celebrity photographer, Gendel photographed (among others), Queen Elizabeth II, Salvador Dali, Peggy Guggenheim, and John Paul Getty.  But he was also widely known for his evocative, even poetic (moreso, at least, than the postwar neo-realist aesthetic) photos of Rome, Rome environs, and Italy.

Evelyn Waugh, Lady Diana Cooper, and Georgina Masson.
(Masson's "The Companion Guide to Rome" is our favorite
long-form Rome guidebook.)

Piazza del Popolo, sans obelisk

Church Wedding

The Flying Ephebe, Rome, 1979

In 1972, Gendel moved his studio to an apartment in Palazzo Costaguti in Piazza Mattei.  Then, in 2011, in exchange for transferring his photographic archive to the Primoli Foundation, he gained access to a first floor apartment in Palazzo Primoli, complete with a loggia on the Tevere.  He lived there until his death on October 11, 2018.

Of Rome's many treasures, Gendel was especially fond of the Protestant Cemetery (now called the Non-Catholic Cemetery); the Pyramid of Cestius; the medical museum in the Santo Spirito hospital; and Borromini's church, San Carlo alle Quartro Fontane.

An early Gendel photo, and one of his most famous.  That's Gendel's shadow in the foreground.  

Bill
For more on Gendel, see this excellent interview in Vanity Fair from 2011.  Thanks to subscriber Marilyn Hochfield for alerting us to the VF piece.

Behind the Wall - the Prisons of San Michele a Ripa

San Michele a Ripa from the side away from the Tevere - a feel for its
length and barrier to whatever is inside.

The long building - perhaps the longest in Rome at a third of a mile (500 meters) - faces the Tevere with no openings, looking like an impenetrable mass that holds nothing of interest.  In fact, the complex of buildings, San Michele a Ripa ("St Michael at the river bank" if you want a tortured English translation) has been used since the 17th century for a variety of purposes, from Catholic medical facilities to prisons to military barracks to arts institutions.  On a recent tour we took of part of this Trastevere block, the focus was on the 18th-19th century use of a substantial part of the complex as a prison/reformatory for women and children.

Carlo Fontana's boys' prison.

The women and girls' prison.

The original prisons - one designated for boys and one for girls - were designed by Papal architects of some fame. Carlo Fontana, a favorite of several Popes and designer of many fountains and chapels in Rome, started the boys' facility in 1701.  He was a rather ordinary practitioner of Baroque architecture and used these techniques, admittedly with severity because of the purpose, in the prison.

Ferdinando Fuga, who designed facades for notable Rome churches such as Santa Maria in Trastevere and Santa Maria Maggiore, added the female prison later in the same century.

The prisons have recently been restored and are open to tours.  At the same time that the prisons were considered modern approaches to incarceration (3 guards could monitor all the cells - not quite a panopticon, but similar), the treatment was harsh.  Boys considered "wayward and disobedient" to their parents ended up there with punishment and moral strictures that included rations akin to starvation.  An attorney who prepared a case for the state's Appellate Court stated in 1851 that the boys who emerged after 2 years were skin and bones, full of diseases and would rather be dead.

From the outside (interior courtyard) one can
see how small and high the windows are; no
one was going to get out of here.

Women in the female section often were those in the sex trade, whom the Church wanted to reform, or perhaps just punish.

The city took over this Papal facility in 1871.  With some interruptions (use as a prison for political prisoners from 1827-1870, for example), the complex's use as a reform prison lasted until the end of the 1960s.  In her biography of the great 20th century Italian writer, Elsa Morante, Lily Tuck mentions that Elsa's legal (though not biological) father "worked as a probation officer...at a boys' reform school located at Porta Portese."  This would've been in the second and third decades of the 20th century, and clearly this was the place.

One can admire the architecture and at the same time be horrified by what transpired within these walls.

Art work being restored in the prison hall.

The large halls of the prison now are being used for restoration work on paintings.  There are some tours of these facilities to admire that work, and part of the space now can be rented for business meetings!

An excellent pamphlet on life in the prisons and on the architecture is available in Italian.

Our tour was part of the extensive Ville di Roma a Porte Aperte series sponsored by turismo culturale italiano.  April's focus was on Trastevere.

This plaque, from 1704 states that Clement IX is responsible
for this institution for lost and incorrigible adolescents,
who here are instructed in becoming more subservient (my
loose Latin translation- anyone is welcome to elaborate on it).

Dianne

A Fire on the River: the Two Sides of Rome's Tevere

Looking south from Ponte della Scienza

Early in the morning of June 28, a fire broke out on the east bank of the Tevere, between the relatively new walking bridge, Ponte della Scienza, and Ponte Marconi, downstream.  The fire started in a riverbank encampment (illegal, of course) of some 15 Romanian families, living in some 25 sheds and shacks. Fire departments from Testaccio and EUR responded, but their ability to deal with the blaze was limited by the steep terrain of the riverbank at that point.  Fortunately, no one was injured or died in the fire, but the families were made homeless.

East bank fire, seen from the west bank

Couple enjoying the river and the gazometro from beneath
the Ponte della Scienza, west bank

We found the story sad but also instructive, especially about the complexity of the Tevere as it winds through the city.  On the one hand, about a mile from the site of the fire--beneath Piazza Trilussa--the west bank of the river has been transformed by William Kentridge into one of the century's monumental works of art.

And, on that west bank one can jog or ride a bike on a paved track near water level, about 50 feet below the top of the river bank, for miles, from Ponte della Scienza north.




On the other hand, as one goes south from Ponte Testaccio, people live amid the dense foliage on the east bank of the river.  On that side of the river, there is no regular path for walking or biking, just dirt paths leading down through the weeds into the encampments.

Encampments, east bank, photographed from west bank

Still, parts of the east bank below Ponte dell'Industria (the "Iron Bridge," between Ponte Testaccio and Ponte della Scienza) are accessible, reasonably safe, and compelling in their way.  One approaches from via del Porto Fluviale (a now trendy area for restaurants in Ostiense) takes a curving street--Riva Ostiense--past some new high-end apartments, and out onto a broad street that's full of colorful graffiti of the customary "lettering" style, dramatic equipment once used for loading and unloading ships on the river, the best view in the city of the largest of the gazometri, and the backs of once-active industrial buildings.  One can "exit" over the Ponte della Scienza, a few hundred yards downriver.

The safer part of Riva Ostiense

Farther down.  These structures--industrial detritus from an earlier era--can be seen in the fire photos, above.

Farther on, the area gets dicey and possibly dangerous.  We had assumed that Riva Ostiense was open on the southern end, and it should be, but it isn't, and so there is no through traffic either for autos or pedestrians. Moreover, at some point about a quarter mile downriver from the Scienza bridge, those living on the bank have closed off what remains of the road with green canvas.  So one has to retreat--and the word feels appropriate.

Path leading down to an encampment below

The light blue at the center of the photo is an encampment, likely destroyed in the fire.

Encampment, seen from Ponte della Scienza, looking north.  Probably escaped the fire. 

Rome in a nutshell, one might say.  A nice path for jogging and biking on one side, people living in squalor and poverty on the other, a few hundreds yards from new luxury apartments.  And Riva Ostiense, open to Ponte della Scienza, beckoning to those with just a little sense of adventure, but beyond that, abandonment and no-man's-land, no effort at development or maintenance.

Bill

ATAC's Playground

It isn't the gardens of the presidential palace.  It isn't where the Pope takes his morning tea.  It isn't even the Arco di Costantino (Arch of Constantine) Golf Club, off via Flaminia.

What we have here is the entrance to the ATAC Dopolavoro.  ATAC is Rome's Transport Agency, and dopolavoro means "after work." This is where ATAC employees go to have fun, after work. There's a long history of dopolavori in the transportation sector of Rome; the railroad dopolavoro is storied and quite elaborate.  And we have nothing against workers having fun.

But ATAC is the agency Romans love to hate; it brings one sciopero (strike) after another, causing residents and tourists untold grief.  Its subway system closes earlier than it should.  And its buses are notoriously undependable.  What is dependable is the dopo lavoro--lots of tennis courts and other play spaces, right up against the east bank of the Tevere.  Workers' kids can take a class in canoeing. They may do croquet on that trimmed lawn. You can have a look--from the street--if you're in the area.

William Kentridge's "Triumphs and Laments": A Spell-Binding, Ephemeral Work on Rome's Tevere River

One of the two processions along the Tevere in front of Kentridge's wall drawings, with enormous projections of iconic Rome figures of history - and of triumph and lamentation - against those drawings.  The "puppeteers" were colorfully dressed and highlighted as well, giving a sense of the making of the performance (see close-up below).

A must stop on anyone's visit to Rome from now (April 2016) until about 4 years from now must be William Kentridge's artwork on the right bank (Trastevere side) of the Tevere between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini.  What can we say besides just don't miss it?  Head down to the river level at one of the stairways and walk the 500 meters slowly, drinking in the great work South African artist Kentridge created on these massive river bank walls.

If there is a repeat of the performance that opened the artwork on Rome's 2,769th birthday, April 21, 2016, don't miss that either.  The music and "projections" were spell-binding.

The theme of "triumphs" and "laments" is presented by Kentridge in his main mode:  the drawing of people and animals in black and white.  We were fortunate to see a few of Kentridge's videos, in this same style, in the path-breaking 2015 video exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo). Here in Rome, the marrying of Kentridge's style with the subject matter of 2700 year-old Rome and the blackened 57-foot high walls of the Tevere (Tiber River) are quite frankly a thing of beauty.

Rome's lupa or she-wolf... here, instead of the infant twins Romulus
and Remus, Kentridge presents amphorae, or water jugs.

Kentridge draws on themes familiar to Romans - from the lupa (she-wolf) who suckled Rome's founders, Remus and Romulus - to the deaths of Rome martyrs such as Giordano Bruno (the "heretic" monk, burned at the stake by the Church in 1600), Aldo Moro (moderate politician murdered in 1978 by radical leftists) and Pier Paolo Pasolini (filmmaker and artist killed mysteriously in 1975 in the Rome seaside town of Ostia). He also uses iconic Italian objects like the Vespa, the moka coffee pot, the Necchi sewing machine, and the bicycle (from DeSica's neorealist film, The Bicycle Thief).  He also brings the successes and tragedies to the present, with references to the migrants landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa.  Persecution and migration is a strong theme in this set of drawings.

Kentridge's interpretation of La Dolce Vita.
Marcello Mastroanni and Anita Ekberg
are in a bathtub, under a shower, in place of the
Trevi Fountain.  Kentridge also makes heavy use
of carts and wheels (as here), perhaps signifying
travel through time.

 A 10-Euro booklet provides a guide to the 1/3-mile wall of art, as well as explains the techniques for making these enormous figures.  If that isn't available, hopefully some of this explanation will be online. Even without it, the work is tremendously powerful.

The iconic Vespa is at the center of this procession.

As we watched one of the opening performances on the left bank, looking across at Kentridge's drawings, we were captivated by the music of triumph and lamentation and the enormous puppetry or projections. The large shadows moving across the great walls, with the colorfully dressed puppet masters (if we can call them that) also visible, was mesmerizing.

Giordano Bruno, represented by Kentridge
through his statue in Campo de' Fiori

The music for these opening performances, composed by Philip Miller, used a variety of music types, from liturgical songs of the late Renaissance to West African slave songs, to ancient Southern Italian songs.  Frankly, the 4 of us (we and 2 of our good Roman friends) could not truly "understand" the music, and I'm not sure we were supposed to, but we did pick out the religious music, the African music, and the Italian folk music - we knew there was a confluence of musical types.  The sounds of triumph and lamentation were superimposed on each other.  It's an experience one was immersed in, rather than must or should have comprehended in its entirety at the time.

Hopefully the music too will be available in some form in the future.  Meanwhile, we will leave you with a link to our video of 30 seconds of the April 22 performance.

The making of the wall art, if we can use such simple words to describe it, is fascinating as well. We were in Rome in 2005 when Kristin Jones first presented her "lupa" - actually several "lupe" on the walls of the Tevere in this spot. She created them by erasing the background to produce the white, leaving the dirty walls to provide the figures themselves.  This same technique was used by Kentridge, who was inspired by, coached by, and encouraged by Jones, who is billed as the Artistic Director of the project.  We also need to give a shout-out to "Tevereterno", the non-profit organization that presented this as well as Jones's work in 2005, and has been working hard and long to reclaim the Tevere, under the direction of architect Tom Rankin.

Because the work depends on the erasure of dirt from the walls, the walls will in time become dirty again, and the black figures will appear to fade into the darkening walls.  That's the reason we suggest you might have only about 4 years from now to see this magnificent, ephemeral, work.

Joggers using the Tevere's bike and walking path, with Kentridge's
art as a backdrop.

Will "Trimphs and Laments" be received as great art?  We have yet to hear from establishment art critics in that regard. We do know the crowd on April 22 was wildly enthusiastic, cheering, whistling, and clapping for the performers and the art.

Dianne

Some of the hundreds of observers of the April 22, 2016 performance, from the left bank of the Tevere.

Aurelian Wall Walk VII: Piazza Fiume to the Gianicolo with the Vatican Thrown In: The Finale

One of the majestic portions of the wall past Piazza Fiume.  We are walking INSIDE here.  Note the use of the wall
for rooms inside (windows), but also the fence, in theory protecting passers-by from the deteriorating wall.  The sign
reads:  "Danger, Access Prohibited."

Spoiler alert - Yes, RST completed the trek all the way around the 12-mile circumference of the third century Roman Aurelian Wall.  Some caveats.  Only about half the wall is still intact (but isn't that amazing!); we sometimes could not follow where it was or should have been because it went onto government or private property.  We have a few places where we could have done a better job of following it.  But that aside, let's have a victory lap!  Or maybe just a virtual one.  And for this post, you'll have enough to do just to follow this final stretch - with about 50 well-culled photos - a stretch no doubt that should have been broken into 2, but one of us did not understand the enormity of the Vatican and how many kilometers it would be to go around it (which IS the wall these days).

For those of you who just joined us, or who weren't paying attention, RST made it a project to walk the entire circumference of the Aurelian Wall.  We did it in 7 stretches, 2 with unsuspecting visitors along. [The links for the previous 6 walks are given at the end of this post. And here are the links to 2 Google maps that give the routes for all 7 walks: Walks I - V and Walks VI and VII.]

The weather this day, somewhat unusually cloudy, and the first stretch (left) both were inauspicious.  We found the wall here cradled in orange fencing, in other words, a deteriorating wall and likely an overly optimistic repair zone. But of course we soldiered on (get used to that phrase, it's a repeated refrain).  And, I should add, walking on the outside is not an option here, because of the Corso d'Italia tunnels AND the racing viale del Muro Torto (below).

And (right) we found even more creative repair work, allowing Roman vehicles (pedestrians are on their own) continuing use of the passages through the wall.



Some principles we learned:  The wall has clearly been chopped off for traffic in many places, and it also has been used for monuments of varying ages and types.  We can't recall the name of the memorialized young man in the picture below, but no doubt a loyal reader will fill us in.

Below, a particularly lovely set of passages through the wall between Villa Borghese and the beginning of Via Veneto.  At left, in white, a war memorial we had never noticed before (small photo right, large photo below).  This is the very old Porta Pinciana, though the "largo" here is named for Federico Fellini.

We were sailing along here, and then the wall disappeared onto private property (photo left, below), at least on the inside.  We think these are, yet again, private church gardens.

The outside was not particularly inviting either, with the wall disappearing alongside the entrance to the famous Villa Borghese parking garage (right),

and then blocked by a sports center (photos left and above).  You can't knock us for trying!

The above and 2 photos below are our attempts to follow the wall as viale del Muro Torto plunges down from the heights to Piazzale Flaminio (way) below.  If you look hard, you can see - but not touch -  the wall in all these photos.

Re the photo at right, we're fairly certain the wall here (on the other side of the weeds) encloses the private gardens of the French-owned Villa Medici, above the Spanish Steps.  And, for a price, one can tour these gardens, but we have not.

We gave up on trying to follow the wall at this point and went straight into the Borghese gardens. Good pick! We found people enjoying the afternoon in the park, including this young boy tipping a quite good saxophone player (right).  We saw statues we hadn't noticed before (above).


Perhaps best of all, from a bridge across the viale del Muro Torto (photo below) we found a great perspective of the wall, again illustrating some wall walk principles, besides what an incredible engineering feat this is and was: 1) There are sections that are simply too dangerous to walk (the outside here), 2) the wall often is high on the outside but low on the inside (the better to pour boiling oil down on one's enemies), 3) one discovers monuments hidden in the bushes, 4) the Fascists were everywhere and had some audacious civic projects (that structure with glass windows is part of a 1920s elevator that would have taken one up and down between viale del Muro Torto - presumably walkable then - and the Villa Borghese). (An aside, there's a Web site that lists the viale del Muro Torto as "very walkable" and then shows a photo with absolutely no place to walk!  Check it out for a laugh.)

Left, the Fascist-era elevator (and another no trespassing sign).

Right, was this designed to keep people from falling onto the Muro Torto below?

This section of the wall also is called the "Muro Torto" (crooked wall) and in the old Papal state days, prostitutes, thieves, homeless people, and suicides were buried in the wall, it is said.  And so the "net" was constructed. This portion of the Aurelian wall actually was here before the 3rd century; it was built in Republican Rome to hold up the Pincio gardens above it.

And, right, a (yet another) monument to the one-legged World War I hero, Enrico Toti, this one in neo-Roman, aka Fascist style, discovered for the first time by us along the wall in the Villa Borghese.


Below, view of Piazza del Popolo from the Pincio (Villa Borghese) - We couldn't resist this lovely view once again (St. Peter's dome in background).

Right, heading down to Piazzale Flaminio from the Pincio/Villa Borghese.  That low wall to the right IS the wall, from "inside."

And, left, this lovely statue of the Borghese griffin, on the "roof" of a ceremonial entrance to the Villa Borghese in Piazzale Flaminio, seen well from above as we wandered down. And, below, the majestic "porta" or gate to Piazza del Popolo, again, a gate as part of the wall.  The inner side of this porta (as in the photo) was majestically redesigned by Bernini, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII, for the 1655 visit of Queen Christina of Sweden.

We seem to be running out of wall here, but this fountain outside the porta and next to a flower stand - all in Piazzale Flaminio -  is a nice flourish.  And here (photo below, left) we look up the Tevere, because we have truly run out of wall and now must cross the river.  Any sane folks would have called it a day here, but one of us thought it was just a hop, skip and a jump around the Vatican; so we both soldiered on.

Once across, we meander for awhile before picking up the wall as part of the moat around Castel Sant'Angelo (right).  And, of course, the wall between the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Vatican property itself gets interesting.  Here is the walkway that supposedly was built so the Popes could escape from the Vatican grounds to the safety of the fortified Castle (even Dan Brown in "Angels and Demons" uses this passageway) (photo below, left).

The large photo below is one of our favorite views, because it shows three distinct eras: The Roman wall, The Bernini colonnade around the square of St. Peter's, and Fascist-era office buildings.  And, above right, a close-up of what look like original 3rd-century building stones of the wall.

We also couldn't resist this shot (below, left) of tourists appreciating the water from a Pope's hat fountain in the Vatican.  Perhaps even the Popes have a little sense of humor.  But the wall, nicely maintained with crenelations and towers, appears to be disappearing into the Vatican itself (below, right).  Those are the Pope's residential quarters in the building back middle, and a couple of Bernini's columns from the colonnade at right.

We exit the Vatican sovereign territory through the gate at right.  It displays the twin symbols of the Pope and the city (with crown, indicating the Kingdom - until the "conciliation" of 1929 an anathema to the Papal state - we've featured this "porta" in an earlier post).  At this point we begin the long slog along the wall with tourists, many pilgrims excited about the new Pope Frances. The tourists are here because it's the route to the entrance to the vast Vatican Museums.

We have the luxury of being able to 1) walk on the other side of the street, 2) notice the embellishments on the wall, such as the elaborate Pope's symbol on a corner, and the "remains" of the once important Porta Angelica, and 3) watch the street sellers ("ambulatori) leaning against the wall and doing their own watching.

Once doors and windows in the wall?

As we pass the entrance to the Vatican Museums, the tourists disappear completely, and we can entertain ourselves (distracting ourselves from the vast distances we now seem to be in for) by noting various wall interventions, as well as men out for their afternoon chat  - complete with chairs they've hauled onto the grounds beneath the wall.

Pretty sweet afternoon locale (left).  And, below, finally a view of the cupola of St. Peter's.  We can see we actually might get around the Vatican after all.

As we try to follow the wall down the hill, we discover to our surprise a railway that once (it appears no longer) went right INTO the Vatican, and that the Fascists were here too (small photo above right).  And we finally close in on our immediate target - back to St. Peter's (below).

But it's decision time.  The wall goes above the road (or the road goes through the wall - it's a large tunnel).  Do we go outside the wall (as we are now outside it) and try to find it on the back side of the Gianicolo hill - or do we go under the tunnel, "inside" and up the familiar Gianicolo route?  We selected through the tunnel and inside, perhaps a mistake.  We might try the outside  - just for fun  - next time we're in the area.

There goes the wall, with tunnel below.

We take a break to watch the bus drivers try to get out of, yes, a bus gridlock coming up the Gianicolo.  Now we know how a lot of those tourists got to the Vatican.  And from this perch along the wall we also can see the storm clouds that we had assumed would stay well north of the city.

This bird was checking out
 the weather and buses too.

And going up the Gianicolo, instead of behind it, probably was a mistake, because, left, we lose the wall again into religious territory.  This section of the wall seemed quite lovely and tempting, but even we understand (some) barriers..                                                                    

As we run to get in our final few meters, we can't help but stop for a brief shot of our favorite view of Rome, from the Gianicolo, and this one with the beautifully-colored, though destructive storm above.

And, then, the end truly was in sight.  At the statue to Anita Garibaldi we would complete our total wall circumference.  Here the wall is just in back of Anita's statue.  The light is particularly interesting here, because the storm is bearing down on us with rain and high winds.  But we have done it!  A mad dash to Bar Gianicolo for a toast in celebration.  Yes, RST had completed the circumference of the 3rd century Aurelian Wall.

Dianne

Posts of the previous six parts of walking the Aurelian Wall:

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.

Wall Walk VI:  From the University to Piazza Fiume, or Glad No One Was With Us
and again, links to the maps, Walks I-V and Walks VI and VII.