Quarto Miglio: 20th-century town, new market

We've known about Quarto Miglio for some time, because our son went to school there in 1993, when RST's Rome adventure began.  It's basically just a small town--population about 11,000--located to the southeast of Rome's center.  The name comes from its location at the 4th Roman mile of the Appian Way (via Appia Antica). The area was settled in Roman times, and many of its streets are named after ancient Romans.

As a modern community, Quarto Miglio dates to the 1920s, when construction of new buildings accelerated. The parish was established in 1935, and the church of San Tarcisio (on the main drag, via di San Tarcisio) was completed in 1939. San Tarcisio was a 3rd-century Christian martyr.

Among those who once lived in Quarto Miglio are movie director Franco Zeffirelli, Gina Lollobrigida, and fashion designer Valentino (though they no doubt lived in large villas on the ancient Appian Way, not in the town center).

Poster announcing the celebration for the opening of the new market and playground

We were ready to touch base once more with Quarto Miglio, because we had read about the construction there of a new market, complete with wall murals by, among others, Luca Maleonte and Diavù .  The opening of the new market had taken place on a Friday evening, complete with music and calisthenics (to celebrate a new, outdoor activity center).  But we couldn't make the Friday opening, so we headed out on the scooter the next day, arriving about noon.

We found the new market easily enough. It consists of about 10 small, separate buildings, designed for individual merchants. When we arrived, only one of them was occupied and open, a fruit-and-vegetable seller.  He told us that heavy rain had pretty much ruined the opening, and then lamented the lack of traffic at the new market.

The nearby exercise area was not much more active--a few mothers with their kids, who were playing on the newly installed equipment.

Playground in foreground, market in background

Behind them, a school wall displayed paintings designed to appeal to children--not art by any means, but pleasant enough:

On the back and side walls of the market stands we found a few more artful pieces (below).

Could be  Diavù -referencing nearby via Appia 

Looks like Luca Maleonte.  Playground is back right. 

Bummed out by the lack of activity at the market and playground, we headed for the "town" center, which was a few blocks away.  More life there, including a caffetteria in a small piazza, with some folks hanging out at unshaded tables, and a sartorie (seamstress), located in a bright storefront.

And we think we found the 1939 church of San Tarcisio:

On a side street, we came across a handsome building in the neo-medieval style, probably dating from the 1920s:

Another small piazza,below, this one featuring some elegant pines, a modernist apartment building with a balcony jutting out over the stone walkway, and a couple of shops.  In one of them, we were lucky to find some tennis balls, for a friend who needed them--and not for tennis.

And a wiry cat, enjoying a high window ledge that it had somehow managed to scale.

That's our Quarto Miglio "adventure."  Disappointing in some ways, modestly satisfying in others--sometimes that's how things work out.  And it's what we do.

Bill

Tracking Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's stormy love affair in Rome

Liz and Dick – larger than life and famously falling in love in Rome.  Gotta love it, and I do.  Enough to drag Bill to Liz and Dick sites in and around Rome.

Imagine - on an enormous screen

That Elizabeth Taylor’s and Richard Burton’s passion for each other continues to fascinate many fans is no surprise, but that I’m one of them surprises me, at least.  I wasn’t that “into” them at the time, but since seeing Cleopatra on an enormous screen at Shea’s Buffalo several years ago (think of the size of her breasts!), and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold on a large silver screen last year, I've been hooked. 

Reading Furious Love – the recent book about “the marriage of the century” – or should we say marriages? – further stoked my enthusiasm.

And, of course, their torrid love affair began in a city we adore, Rome. 

First stop: Cinecittà.  They met in January 1962 (essentially for the first time) in Rome’s Hollywood, Cinecittà, on a sound stage for Cleopatra, determined not to like each other.  But they couldn't help themselves.  The sparks flew, and they still can be seen on screen in that overproduced epic, perhaps best known for the scene in which the Egyptian empress enters the Eternal City on a gigantic, sphinx-like float.  Cinecittà now has tours.  So you can walk where these famous two did their courtship dance. 

Entertainment on villa grounds, via Appia Antica

Second stop: the grand villas of via Appia Antica.  While they were filming Cleopatra, Liz lived in an “expansive Italian villa” on the old Appian Way.   We couldn't find the villa, but we can imagine it:  “The pink marble mansion came complete with swimming pool, acres of pine forests, two butlers, and three maids.”  Perhaps it’s a bit like Eugenio Sgaravatti’s on via Appia Antica - whose villa we know because he invites all of Rome to a spring party.

Salvator Mundi International Hospital on the Gianicolo

Third stop: a hospital.  By February 1962, Elizabeth was so in love with Burton that when he told her he would not leave his wife, Sybil,   she took an overdose of sleeping pills and was resuscitated at Salvator Mundi International Hospital on the Gianicolo, on RST’s Modern Rome Trastevere Stairways walk.

Fellini on via Veneto 

Fourth stop or stops: following the paparazzi from Piazza Navona to via Veneto.  They continued their torrid affair.  They were followed all over Rome - from Tre Scalini, the famous spot for “tartuffo” ice cream on Piazza Navona, to via Veneto, where Federico Fellini was filming La Dolce Vita.  You may recall the reporter in Fellini’s film is called “Paparazzo” (buzzing insect) – and, so, the paparazzi in Rome, on Vespas, found Liz and Dick.  And the world discovered the paparazzi effect.

Porto Santo Stefano today

Fifth stop:  a seaside hideaway.  The famous couple tried to escape the paparazzi by fleeing to a villa in Porto Santo Stefano on the Tuscan promontory of Argentario.  Caravaggio is buried in Ercole, the town on the opposite side of the island from Porto Santo Stefano.  We hiked from Ercole to Porto Santo Stefano one day – not knowing Liz and Dick had put their feet in the water off this same small town. But then, Liz and Dick probably didn’t care about Caravaggio either. 



Playing another furious couple

Sixth stop:  another lavish sound stage.  In 1966 Taylor and Burton were back in Rome to film Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew – an appropriate vehicle for the couple, who celebrated their second wedding anniversary on March 15, 1966. In the film of the Shakespeare play, Burton is Petruchio, the domineering husband, and Taylor is Kate, the wife who won’t be submissive – at least until the end.  It was Zeffirelli’s first film, and Elizabeth’s first Shakespearean role.

Again, the Taylor-Burtons had an opulent villa on via Appia Antica.  The filming this time was at the Dino De Laurentiis Studios just outside Rome.  As the Furious Love authors put it: The Burtons would be driven each morning in the Rolls-Royce, past the Coliseum, to their suite of palatial dressing rooms.” 

Dinocittà morphing into Cinecittà World

takes a lot of imagination to look back and forward

And so, Bill drove me, in our Malaguti 250, past the Coliseum, to where the studios should have been.  We searched and we searched, asked local police, and finally discovered something like a wasteland of old buildings with an optimistic sign. [our pic of studio site] Several years ago, a press release announced that there would be new theaters close to Rome, in this new “Dinocittà” (a take-off on Cinecittà), named after De Laurentiis of course. 

The project seems hardly to have gotten off the ground, and we were not allowed to step inside the gates.  Sadly, the current state of Dinocittà makes it difficult to bring to mind the films made there besides The Taming of the Shrew; among them King Vidor’s War and Peace with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn (1956) and John Huston’s The Bible (1966) with George C. Scott and Ava Gardner, Huston himself, and Peter O’Toole.  Press releases in 2002 said a Brian DePalma movie would be made there “next year.”  But those are the latest press releases on the www.romastudios.com Web site. Not much to see there, but if you get into maps, you can find it at this link.

Still, for those of us paying homage, it’s a nice drive outside Rome, on km 23.270 of the Pontina, on the west side of that harrowing road to the seashore.  It’s only 2 km north of Pomezia, a city founded in the Fascist era that we find intriguing.

Ponti and Loren's villa in Marino, circa 1964

Last stop: the small town of Marino in the Colli Albani just outside Rome. Taylor and Burton couldn't seem to stay away from each other or from Rome.  He holed up there when she announced her separation from him in 1973, and she went back to see him there as they tried to make up.  He was staying at Carlo Ponti’s immense villa in Marino. Burton needed to get his drinking under control to star in Ponti’s The Voyage, with Ponti’s wife, Sophia Loren.  (For more photos of the villa, see this link.)

And here Burton writes Elizabeth several pleading letters datelined “Rome”: 

“…[I]f you leave me, I shall have to kill myself.  There is no life without you, I’m afraid. And I am afraid.” – Burton.

Her response:  “I don’t want to be that much in love ever again.”

And so we leave our furiously in love couple, where they had their highs and their lows – Rome.

Dianne

Quotations from Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger 

Another out-of-the-way church in Rome: San Sebastiano

Saint Sebastian

Church lady decided it was time for a break from all that Fascist architecture, graffiti and social analysis.  Instead she offers Christ’s footprints, a Bernini pupil’s sculpture, catacombs, a check-off list if you’re doing your seven-church pilgrimage in Rome, to  name a few.

1612 facade

These are all found at the Basilica of San Sebastiano, at the cross-roads of via Appia Antica (the ancient Appian Way) and via delle Sette Chiese – “7 Churches Road.”  Built in the 3^rd or 4^th century, this quiet, lovely church was redone in the early 17^th century.  Among its treasures is the statue of an unusually recumbent Saint Sebastian, complete with gold-tipped arrows (photo at top).  The statue is so Berniniesque that some think its sculptor, Bernini’s pupil Antonio Giorgetti, did it from a Bernini sketch. 

in case you wanted a close-up

If that’s not enough, there are Christ’s footprints, the pole on which Sebastian met his arrows, and other relics.  The San Sebastiano catacombs, next to and under the church, were the first to be called catacombs (a word meaning underground cemetery, apparently derived from the Greek for "hollow"--Bill). 

If you want more on the iconography of this popular saint, Catholic Online has a good bio, tho' needless to say it doesn't talk about him being a gay icon.

Renaissance-worthy interior

It’s hard to say anything on the via Appia is off the beaten track; that’s really a non sequitur.  But, approaching San Sebastiano from via delle Sette Chiese as we did, one feels almost as a pilgrim might have.  And, unless a busload of tourists has just arrived to descend into the catacombs, you’ll pretty much have San Sebastiano to yourself, a treat in Rome. 

Dianne