Blue Guides

Turin, the city of FIAT, still struggles to throw off its industrial image but, thanks to the outstanding restoration of its palaces and museums, it is now becoming an absorbing city to stay in. A lot has changed in the last few years, which makes the upcoming revision of Blue Guide Northern Italy very timely. The city is well-ordered and much of the traffic has been removed from the centre so that a walk down the arcaded streets is all the more pleasant.

Turin cafés are elegant and the food is excellent and astonishingly good value. The four-course tasting menu at one our favourite choices, the Via del Sale, in the Via San Francesco Da Paola, just off the magnificently arcaded Via Po, was only €30. The house wine is normally the seductive Barbera d’Asti—and at €5 for a litre carafe is all too affordable! The Hotel Victoria in the centre of Turin is particularly welcoming and comfortable and deserves a special Blue Guide recommendation. It is simply a highly professional hotel, beautifully decorated and with a very fine spa.

One of the most significant updates has been in the two major museums, the Sabauda Gallery and the Egyptian Museum. The Sabauda Gallery has been relocated to a wing of the Royal Palace (one ticket covers both). This is the royal collection (“Sabauda” means “Savoy”, Turin’s ruling house), much of its accumulated by clever buying in the 19th century, and the new gallery concentrates on its highlights. The 14^th- and 15^th-century section is very fine (a Madonna by Fra Angelico and a Filippino Lippi of Tobias and the Archangels are among the treasures) but there are good things also in the 17^th-century rooms. There is a painting by Van Dyck of the children of Charles I, sent by Queen Henrietta Maria, their mother, to her elder sister, Christine-Marie, who had married Vittorio Amedeo I of the House of Savoy. The Flemish collection is also outstanding and the gallery benefits from being well displayed and not overwhelming in size.

Sir Anthony van Dyck: The three eldest children of Charles I.

The famous Savoy collection of Egyptian antiquities was largely gathered during the 18th and 19th centuries and was extensive enough by the 1830s for Champollion to do much of his work on deciphering hieroglyphics in Turin. For years the collections seem to have gathered dust but there has now been a vibrant revival of the museum. Somehow it has caught the imagination of the city.  It  buzzes with energy and school groups, with the number of visitors now topping half a million a year. At first I was a little disappointed with the traditional cases of artefacts in the first rooms but the sculpture gallery is stunning, and one has to accept that this is a better collection than that in the British Museum. There are especially good arrangements of everyday life found in undisturbed tombs.

The finest restorations are to be found in the coronet of palaces and hunting lodges that encircles the city: the “Corona di Delizie” or “Crown of Delights” as they have been known since the 18th century. The Villa della Regina is walkable from the centre, along the Via Po, through the majestic Piazza Vittoria Veneto, across the Po and up the hill past the Neoclassical church of the Gran Madre di Dio, built to celebrate the return of King Vittorio Emanuele I after the Napoleonic hiatus when Piedmont had been ruled from France. The villa originally dates to the early 17th century but derives its name from Queen Anne-Marie, the niece of Louis XIV who married Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy, and made it her home. She died here in 1728. There is an elegant ‘classical’ garden behind the villa and its private vineyard is still kept up.

Forty minutes from the centre of town is the Venaria Reale, the vast 17^th–18^th-century hunting lodge of the royal family. Virtually abandoned after the third wife of Carlo Emanuele III died here in childbirth in 1741, it has now been subject to a massive restoration programme. The first rooms of the Reggia, the main palace, are devoted to the Savoy dynasty, which originated in Savoy in 1003, so making it the oldest in Europe. (With the dynasty secure in Piedmont, Sardinia and then Italy, Savoy itself was passed to France in thanks for French help in the unification of Italy in 1860.) Here you can find the dynasty’s members listed and thus sort out the rulers and their marriages into the other royal families of Europe. A gallery of (reproduced) portraits of all the more significant members provides further help. The next rooms show the growth of Turin as a capital and document the works of the two great architects of the dynasty, Guarino Guarini in the 17th century and Filippo Juvarra in the early 18th.

Juvarra (1678–1736), who arrived in Turin in 1714, was appointed architect of the Venaria Reale and completed the astonishing vestibule there as well as the palace church dedicated to St Hubert, the patron saint of hunting.  Yet this is only one part of the complex that can be visited. There are two exhibition areas (with exhibitions of the fashion designer Roberto Capucci and Lorenzo Lotto on show until the summer of 2013), the  royal Savoy barge as well as many of the original rooms of the earlier palace. Then there are the gardens now being recreated after falling into decline in the 19th century. There is a complicated ticket system under which you pick and choose what you want to see, but we found that it is better to go for the €20 ticket that covers everything. The planned 18^th-century town, the borgo antico, alongside the palace, is full of eating places.

When the royal family abandoned the Venaria Reale, it was Juvarra who was asked the design the new hunting lodge at Stupinigi, to the south of the city. This is a wonderful building and the restoration is magnificent. The lodge is owned by the order of St Maurice and its future was in doubt when the order fell into financial problems but on 15^th March, 2013, it opened again and it is hoped that this will be permanent. Every room is beautifully decorated, not least with 18^th-century hunting scenes set in the adjoining park. The central hall is simply staggering: Juvarra’s architecture, if you do not know it, is altogether a revelation, whether here at Stupinigi or in the entrance hall he designed for the Palazzo Madama back in the city or at the Superga, the ‘victory’ church on a hill overlooking the city that later became the mausoleum of the royal family.

Filippo Juvarra’s royal hunting lodge at Stupinigi.

After the Second World War, the royal family, discredited through their association with fascism, went into exile and many of their former palaces, especially those in Piedmont, began to crumble. The rejuvenation of these buildings has been astonishing and puts Turin back on the map as one of the finest cities in Europe for the Baroque.

There are many other sights in Piedmont to explore. The Castello di Masino, beautifully restored by FAI, the Italian ‘National Trust’, was our favourite but we also loved the castle at Issogne, on the old Roman road to Gaul, across the regional border in Valle d’Aosta. All these delights will be crammed into my forthcoming tour of Turin and the surrounding area in May.

Charles Freeman is historical consultant to the Blue Guides and author of Sites of Antiquity: 50 Sites that Explain the Classical World.

Looking out across the rooftops, you can see, on the distant shoreline to the left, the white shape of the Castello di Miramare glimmering in the sunshine. On the right, behind the arcaded harbour buildings, loom the sand-coloured funnels of the luxury yacht Al Said, third longest in the world. The former structure belonged to the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. The latter is the property of a different monarch, the Sultan of Oman, a great lover of Classical music whose orchestra travels with him. This is Trieste, an extraordinary city where extraordinary juxtapositions are a way of life.

The view shown above is seen from the sixth floor of the Museo Revoltella, an extraordinary place in itself. It is housed in two adjoining palaces, one of them built by the wealthy businessman Pasquale Revoltella as his town residence. It is opulently decorated on three floors, the stairway ostentatiously bearing the owner’s personal mottoes of “Honour, Reflection, Entrepreneurship, Perseverance”. After his death, in accordance with his will, the palace was made over to the public as a museum. The adjoining building was drearily repurposed by Carlo Scarpa, beginning in 1968. The two together now house a much augmented public collection of paintings and sculpture.

Pasquale Revoltella was a Venetian by birth, the son of a prosperous meat merchant. When Napoleon extinquished the Serene Republic in 1797, Revoltella (aged two) came with his parents to Trieste. Apprenticed to a trading house as a teenager, he threw himself into the commercial life of his adopted city and, when he came to adulthood, prospered as an importer of grain and timber. He was an early shareholder in the Generali insurance business and also a keen champion of the Suez Canal project, which he believed would pay rich commerical dividends as far as Trieste’s maritime trade was concerned. He travelled to Paris to meet De Lesseps and to pledge Trieste’s support for the scheme, and was soon after named vice president of the company responsible for cutting the waterway. His instincts proved him right. And although the Austrian imperial government had at one time been suspicious of him, even imprisoning him over alleged illicit dealings during their war against Italy in 1859, he was later rehabilitated and created Baron Revoltella in 1867, by the emperor Franz Joseph.

Revoltella remained unmarried but he was not socially reclusive. His dinner parties attended by bejewelled beauties, his French chef’s extravagant concoctions and his gleaming gilded tableware were famous. At a gala banquet which he gave in honour of Franz Joseph’s brother Maximilian, on the eve of the latter’s departure for Mexico to take up his imperial appointment, the centrepiece, which drew gasps of wonder from the assembled guests, consisted of four hounds sculpted from butter attacking a wild boar confected out of sausage. It is difficult to gauge what motivated Revoltella. Was it business? Insecurity? A desire to impress? Ambition for social status, or for acceptance? A genuine regard for art? Did he have good taste? It is hard to say. His palace is a deliberate showpiece, but is neither impressively original nor depressingly vulgar. His chosen philosophers, whom he had sculpted at the top of the main stairs, were Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Leibniz: not thinkers, as such, concerned with the destiny of the soul, but physicists and mathematicians, an Italian, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German. His collection of paintings contains the kind of thing that one might expect from a man of his time and status: Biedermeier portraits and romantic images of the Orient: there is a good Cairo street scene by Ippolito Caffi. In the study hangs a vivid Egyptian landscape showing the Suez canal slicing its way up from the Red Sea to Port Said.

From the library (which contains a copy of Revoltella’s own travel journal, which he wrote during his trip to Suez in 1861), a false door designed to imitate a bookshelf leads through to a small cabinet, once a bathroom, where some of the early treasures of the collection are housed, among them a model by Canova for his famous heroic nude statue of Napoleon holding a celestial ball intended to carry a Winged Victory. (The completed statue, in Carrara marble, never pleased the little emperor. He felt that the golden Victory figure appeared to be flying ominously away, and the statue was consigned to the vaults of the Louvre until purchased by Napoleon’s nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, who displayed it in his London home, Apsley House. It is still there.)

The collection in the adjoining building is rich in Italian art of the 20th century. De Chirico, Morandi, Carrà, Sironi, Burri: all are represented by at least one work. Particularly interesting are the local Trieste painters, whose work is less often seen in international collections. Piero Marussig is the best known; but also interesting are Carlo Sbisà (1889–1964), who found inspiration in the Italian Renaissance, and Bruno Croatto (1875–1948), known for his powerful realism.

Above: The Draughtswoman, by Carlo Sbisà. Below: Portrait in front of the Palatine ruins, by Croatto.

All content © Blue Guides

An update to Blue Guide Florence from Alta Macadam.

One of the frustrations of guide book writing is the rate at which changes can occur. In the latest edition of Blue Guide Florence I complained that the museum of Santa Maria Novella had “a rather shabby and abandoned feel to it”, and that the oldest part of the monastery had been “closed for restoration for many years”. At that time there seemed no signs at all that the situation would change, and indeed I had found it in the same state for at least the previous four editions!

But now–finally–my complaints are no longer true, since a few months ago the museum arranged around the cloisters attached to the great church of Santa Maria Novella was given a definitive facelift and provided with a brand new entrance from the station square. Most important of all, access into the church from the Green Cloister has been provided so that the two monuments are once again linked together in their correct historical context (and can be visited with a single ticket).

You can now visit the Cloister of the Dead (so named because there was a cemetery here) and the pavement tombs and funerary monuments on the walls are well lit and well cared for (although sadly there is no description of them, as yet:  it would be interesting to have the inscriptions and dates transcribed).  The mid-14th-century frescoes include those in a chapel attributed to Orcagna (where the unusual Nativity scene is dominated by a flock of sheep and goats, and even a bumptious dog). Although the other frescoes here are extremely worn and some of them now barely visible, they have been restored as far as possible, and excellent explanations are provided in situ of the history of this, the oldest part of the monastery.

In contrast, off the adjoining cloister, the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel, dating from the later 14th century, are superbly preserved, and they remain one of the great sights of Florence. Here, too, the new explanatory panels (also in English), are well placed and extremely helpful. This chapel overlooks the Green Cloister with its three mighty cypress trees, and green-toned frescoes. The four most important lunettes, by Paolo Uccello, have been removed for restoration, but one of the four can always be seen (on a rotating basis–when not in the restoration laboratory) in the Chapter House close by. Here, since they are displayed at ground level, the visitor is provided with a wonderful opportunity to examine them at very close range. The huge vaulted chapter house also provides a magnificent setting for some of the monastery’s treasures, including vestments and church silver, and in the adjoining chapel are two memorable late 14th-century painted wood busts of female saints, as well as an altar frontal with fifteen charming embroidered scenes of the life of the Virgin, stitched by nuns in a Florentine convent in 1466. From outside this chapel glass doors enable you to look into the Great Cloister–currently occupied by the military police, though they are soon to be moved to new barracks, so this part of the monastery will also one day be accessible to the public.

St Thomas Aquinas and St Peter Martyr confounding the heretics: fresco by Andrea di Bonaiuto (1366–69) in the Spanish Chapel. Note the dogs, black and white like their masters, attacking heretical wolves. These are the “domini canes”, the “dogs of the lord”, their name a pun on “Dominican”, the order to which the monastery of Santa Maria Novella belonged.

It is extremely encouraging that the Florentine authorities have succeeded in making this monumental area in the heart of the city so inviting a place to visit. On some days it even has an atmosphere which perhaps recalls the days when pilgrims would call in here, as today travellers on their way to and from the railway station (with their luggage sometimes in tow!) can often be seen enjoying the peace of the cloisters as well as the wonderful works of art.

Tucked away in a quiet nook in the sestiere of Castello is Palazzo Grimani, newly opened to the public, after years of restoration. I arrived late one afternoon, just as dusk was falling. As I climbed the wide stairway to the first floor, the sound of ethereal music floated down to greet me. A tall, slim woman in black was singing Josquin, accompanied on period instruments, to a small assembly in the portego. It was a magnificent way to begin a tour of this extraordinary place.

The palace was begun (so the Blue Guide tells us) around 1530 by Cardinal Domenico Grimani, son of Antonio (who was Doge from 1521–23), and work was continued to enlarge the palace by Antonio’s grandson Giovanni, Patriarch of Aquileia. It has been suggested that Jacopo Sansovino may have been involved in the work, collaborating directly with Giovanni Grimani.

Cardinal Domenico had a famous collection of Classical sculptures. At the death of his grandson Giovanni (in 1593) they were donated to the Republic, forming one of the first ever museums of Classical antiquities (and they are still on public view, constituting the main core of the Museo Archeologico in Piazza San Marco). Domenico was an important collector in other fields, too: he purchased works by Bosch, Memling and Dürer, drawings by Leonardo, and paintings by Raphael, Giorgione and Titian. At the death of the last descendant of the family in 1865, all the works of art which had remained in the palace were sold and dispersed. What you see today, as you visit the palace, are the rooms themselves, stupendously decorated in a wealth of original styles, the former backdrops for these marvellous works.

Vista through to the Laocoön, viewed from the vestibule in front of the Tribuna.

At one end of the portego, the central hall that runs the length of piano nobile, is the Cameron d’Oro where plaster casts of famous Classical sculptures (including the Laocoön) evoke the marbles once exhibited here by the Grimani. The room leading off it, the Sala a Fogliami, is perhaps the most remarkable in the whole palace, because of its ceiling, covered with a fresco showing thick foliage and fruit trees—peach, pomegranate, pear, medlar and quince—populated by birds which appear to be attacking each other. Amongst the plants the painter included maize and tobacco, recently arrived from north America. The motif of the birds, it is said, was designed to symbolise Giovanni Grimani’s stern stance against heresy, a reference to his acquittal by the Inquisition, who had accused him of unorthodox attittudes to predestination. There is a bench in the room: the best thing you can do is prostrate yourself on it, flat on your back, and just look

Fighting heron and hawk. Ceiling detail of the Stanza a Fogliami.

The extraordinary Tribuna was designed by Giovanni Grimani to display some 130 pieces of his statuary collection. Its sober atmosphere recalls the vestibule of the Laurentian Library in Florence—and it is now empty except for the Ganymede (a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original) which has been returned from the Museo Archeologico and now again hangs from the centre of the ceiling as it did in the Grimani’s day.

The Sala di Doge Antonio, and the little vestibule and chapel adjoining, are decorated with exotic marbles. The ceiling of the chapel is decorated with the following Latin motto: “Thou has protected me, O Lord, in thy tabernacle, from the slander of tongues.” By fireplace in the main room is a bronze bust of the Doge himself, a stern-looking man. Leading off from here are the Camerina di Apollo and Camerina di Callisto, decorated in the 1530s in stuccowork and fresco.

Camerina di Apollo: ceiling decoration.

In an adjoining room are four extraordinary panels by Bosch (c. 1503) representing Paradise and Hell, the Fall of the Damned, and the Ascension to Heaven. The image of the Fall is memorable in the extreme: like a scene from a nightmare, souls are represented as having tumbled through a great hole, and they now sit helpless in the dark, far from the light which streams through upon them, unreachable, from the manhole high above their heads.

Adapted by Annabel Barber from the forthcoming new edition of Alta Macadam’s Blue Guide Venice.

It didn’t take long. A mere twenty-fours hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his abdication, portents were being seen in the skies above the Vatican. Jupiter, the great god of the Romans, began rattling his thunderbolts and lightning was recorded striking the cupola of St Peter’s—twice. This is the kind of thing that happened on the eve of Caesar’s murder. “Never till to-night, never till now,” says a trembling Casca, “did I go through a tempest dropping fire. Either there is a civil strife in heaven, or else the world, too saucy with the gods, incenses them to send destruction.” Is that what heaven is doing? Or is it a seal of approval? After an eight-year pontificate, Jospeh Ratzinger is volunatrily vacating the Throne of St Peter. It is not an unprecedented step, but it is a controversial one. It is something that is not “done”. But Benedict XVI has never been afraid of controversy. While he lacks the charisma of his predecessor John Paul II and while he never inspired such fervent devotion in people’s hearts, he has been, in his thoughtful, mild-mannered way, revolutionary.

Pope Benedict is eighty-five. Before him lie who knows how many years of increasing frailty. It takes a vigorous and resilient man to hold the Christian world together. His decision to abdicate was taken, he says, “for the good of the Church”. The same was said in 1406, on the election of Gregory XII, who was raised to the pontificate purely on the understanding that he would resign, “for the good of the Church”, in order to heal the Great Western Schism. He did resign (though not as easily as all that; he was a wily old Venetian) in 1415. And the Schism did eventually heal. But what was this Schism, and how could a papal resignation heal it?

For most of the 14th century, the popes had abandoned Rome for Avignon in the south of France. This so-called “Babylonian captivity”, when the popes were “exiled” from their homeland, began when Pope Clement V (a Frenchman) was persuaded (by the French king) to set up his court in France. Political disturbances in Italy made this seem a good idea to Clement, and in 1309 he decamped to the peaceful banks of the Rhone. Horrified Italians—notably the poet Petrarch and St Catherine of Siena—begged for the papacy’s return, but it was not until 1377 that Gregory XI (also a Frenchman) re-established papal government in the Eternal City. (Since this Gregory, incidentally, there has never been another French pope—but who knows what may happen next month; the Archbishop of Paris is a current contender.) But though the popes came back to Rome, all was not healed. Strife and confusion were to dominate the next four decades, in the form of the Great Schism, which lasted from 1378 to 1417. This represented a complete rupture of ecclesiastical unity. Rival claimants to the papal throne were simultaneously nominated and crowned by competing factions of cardinals. For almost all of this period there were two or even three popes at once, each claiming to be the anointed successor to St Peter. The true popes found themselves locked in combat with rivals known as ‘antipopes’. Gregory XII was elected under the terms of a deal whereby both he and his rival, the antipope Benedict XIII, would simultaneously renounce their claims, allowing for a single successor to be appointed to replace both of them. For the good of the church. The plan worked—admittedly not without plenty of shenanigans—and eventually, in 1417, the Roman-born Oddone Colonna became Pope Martin V.

The Church hopes to have a new pope in place by Easter. But how do papal elections work?

A pope is elected by the cardinals, who form the “parish clergy” of Rome. The complicated rules for the conclave (from the Latin con clave, referring to a chamber that can be locked “with a key”) are designed to ensure that the election is not unnecessarily delayed, nor unduly hurried, and that it should be free from any kind of external pressure. After the death (or resignation) of the pope, all the cardinals are summoned to the conclave, which must be held in whatever city the pope dies, not necessarily Rome. The cardinals are housed in specially prepared apartments and before the conclave begins, a Mass of the Holy Spirit is celebrated, to invoke divine inspiration. Voting takes place twice a day, in the Sistine Chapel. The practice of burning the ballot papers, so as to indicate by the colour of the smoke whether or not a pope has been chosen, is probably a 20th-century innovation. A two-thirds majority is required, and it is usually obtained fairly quickly, though in 1799 the cardinals took three months to make up their minds. The winning candidate must be formally asked by the Cardinal Chamberlain whether he accepts the nomination. Sometimes he is very reluctant to do so: the infirm Leo XII, in 1823, pointed to his ulcerated legs and said, “Do not insist, you are electing a corpse.” Once he has accepted, and has chosen his regnal name (the last pope to use his real name was Marcellus II, in the mid-16th century), the new pontiff is robed and the Cardinal Chamberlain makes the announcement to the waiting crowds: Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum, habemus papam: I bring you tidings of great joy, we have a pope.

Pope Benedict XVI is to renounce his duties on February 28th. On the day preceding, Wednesday 27th, he will deliver his final audience to the public. Papal audiences are held every Wednesday morning, either in the purpose-built Vatican Audience Hall, or, if the weather is fine, in the open air. If you are going to be in Rome on that day, don’t miss it. It will be an emotional occasion.

(With extracts from Blue Guide Rome and Pilgrim’s Rome: A Blue Guide Travel Monograph, and featured on Stanfords blog.)

‘St Valentine at the Milvian Bridge’ was an early Christian basilica situated outside the walls to the north of Rome. The true identity of Valentine, the saint to whom it is dedicated, is obscure, though one tradition makes him an early bishop martyred on the Via Flaminia, the continuation of the Corso which runs north from the city centre, on 14th February 273. His remains were buried nearby. The spot soon became a Christian burial ground, and the basilica was built in the fourth century. It flourished until St Valentine’s relics were taken to a more central location, to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (site of the famous Bocca della Verità). This so-called ‘translation’ of relics became common practice after the emperor Theodosius I passed a series of acts between 378 and 380 declaring Christianity the official religion of the empire. Although at first loth to convert pagan temples into their own sacred buildings, the early Christians gradually overcame their aversion and began adapting structures in central Rome as churches, consecrating them with the bones of martyrs brought in from the old, outlying burial sites.

St Valentine’s original basilica exists only as a ruin today, attached to catacombs dug into the Parioli hill. Traditionally the site was open to the public on St Valentine’s Day, but the complex is extremely unstable: of the basilica that had been enlarged and embellished by that tireless beautifier of martyrs’ shrines, Pope Honorius I, nothing at all remains to be seen.

A little further north, however, in the Olympic Village built for the Games of 1960, there is the modern church of San Valentino, consecrated in 1986. This is a remote location, and on the feast day of the saint, few seek out his church. Millions are scurrying around with cellophane-wrapped flowers, and blood-red fluffy hearts are dangling in every gift-shop window. But in the church of St Valentine only a subdued Mass is taking place in a side room.

St Valentine with the attribute of his martyrdom, the axe. The book he holds bears a text from John 13: ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. The theme of love and faithfulness, with which Valentine is chiefly associated today, is taken up in the pair of mating birds upon the tree stump.

The spirit of the saint lives on in the tradition whereby lovers attach padlocks to the nearby Milvian Bridge as a symbol of their indivisible attachment to each other. Though the padlocks were removed by the municipal authorities in 2012, they are slowly returning. The association of St Valentine with lovers comes from the date of his martyrdom, 14th February, the day when, according to old lore, mating birds choose their nesting partners.

The basilica of St Valentine is one of twenty-three churches visited on pilgrimage by Sigeric, newly-elected Archbishop of Canterbury, in 989. You can follow in his footsteps in Pilgrim’s Rome: A Blue Guide Travel Monograph, from which the above text is extracted.

As work on the new edition of Blue Guide Venice gets underway, and as I start planning my next trip there, my thoughts turn to the island of Burano. On a sunny day in February—and if we’re lucky there will be some sunny days this month—the colours of Burano’s houses are at their absolute best.

Burano is most famous perhaps for three things: its lace, its S-shaped biscuits, and its colourful façades. But there is more. The little church of San Martino, for example, approached down the wide Via Galuppi, contains a wonderful painting by Tiepolo. It is a rare treat to be able to admire a work of Tiepolo without having to crick your neck back to look at a ceiling fresco. This is a Crucifixion, commissioned by a pharmacist in 1722 (his donor’s portrait is included, in an oval frame at the far left, not shown in the detail here). Christ is depicted victorious, his eyes cast upwards. One of the thieves has already being taken down and his body is being untied; the other still writhes upon his cross. In the foreground, the grieving, grey-faced Virgin swoons into the arms of the two Marys.

Via Galuppi and Piazza Galuppi, where the church stands, are named after the island’s most famous son, the composer Baldassare Galuppi, who was born here in 1706. He was immortalised by Browning, in “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”.

“Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind! 

Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by—what you call
—Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival…”

The skipping rhythm of the verses is intended to imitate the notes of a toccata played on a clavichord. The themes of gaiety and masked revelry and death are particularly relevant in a Venetian February, the season of Carnival and Lent. Though if the sun shines, there is no need to dwell on them for long.

There are plenty of places to eat on Burano. Al Gatto Nero offers local fish dishes, including a risotto di gù alla buranella (Burano-style goby risotto).

“St Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold…”

I have always loved Keats, and he is, of course, a poet with better claims than many others to a Roman association. But as a schoolchild, studying him, I disliked that poem. I sniggered at the line “Into her dream he melted.” I was irritated by the way, for the sake of a perfect jog-trot iambic pentameter, Keats writes “a-cold”, instead of just plain Anglo Saxon “cold”.

It was much later in life that I became acquainted with St Agnes herself, her legend and her beautiful basilica, on the Via Nomentana in Rome’s northeastern outskirts. On the eve of the saint’s feast day, January 21st, the Pope solemnly blesses two white lambs. But why?

The lambs of St Agnes and the pallium
Sigeric of Glastonbury, recently named Archbishop of Canterbury, journeyed to Rome in the year 989 to receive his stole of office, the pallium, from Pope John XV. During his time here, Sigeric visited three churches intimately connected with the manufacture of this vestment, a connection which is still maintained to this day.

Every year, two winter lambs are purchased from the Cistercian monks of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio at Tre Fontane, south of the city centre (on the site of the martyrdom of St Paul). It is their wool that will be used to make the pallia. On the feast of St Agnes (21st January), the two lambs are taken to the basilica of Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura and solemnly blessed. The association of St Agnes with lambs comes from a play on the virgin martyr’s name (Agnes) and the Latin word for a lamb (agnus). If the pope is not personally present at the service, then the lambs are afterwards taken to the Vatican, decked in white roses, to receive his benediction. After this they are entrusted to the care of the Benedictine sisters of the convent of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, where they are raised with the utmost care until Holy Week, when they are shorn. The nuns weave their wool into the pallia which will be conferred on new metropolitan archbishops on the Feast of St Peter and St Paul (29th June). In the apse mosaic of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Pope Paschal I is shown wearing the pallium. His is pure white, adorned with two red crosses.

Each of these churches, SS Vincenzo e Anastasio, S. Agnese fuori le Mura with its attached catacomb, and S. Cecilia, is hugly rewarding to visit. You can read more about them in Pilgrim’s Rome: A Blue Guide Travel Monograph.

Slightly pixelated, but still recognisable: Pope Paschal I (left) wearing his pallium woven from the wool of St Agnes lambs (and with a square nimbus indicating that he was alive when this portrait was created), in the company of St Cecilia and St Paul. Detail of the apse mosaic in the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.

Alta Macadam (author of Blue Guide Florence) paid a fascinating visit to the state restoration laboratory to see it: 

Leonardo’s painting of the Adoration of the Magi, owned by the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence and which the artist left in its preparatory state, has been removed to the state restoration laboratory in Florence’s Fortezza da Basso for restoration expected to take at least three years. Leonardo was commissioned to paint the work as the high altarpiece for San Donato a Scopeto, a church outside the city walls (no longer extant). The funds had been provided by a saddler in 1479, and it may be that Leonardo was chosen for the job since his father worked as a notary at the monastery to which the church was attached. The contract was drawn up in 1481 but just four months later Leonardo seems to have withdrawn from the agreement as he was called to Milan by Ludovico Sforza. (The monks of San Donato had Filippino Lippi paint their altarpiece 15 years later).

Leonardo left his work at the preparatory stage. In the extraordinary sketched details we can study the development of his ideas as he seemed to play with various designs and solutions which include over sixty figure studies, both human and animal. The iconography that he uses, turning the arrival of Christ into an extraordinarily crowded, almost exotic scene, is derived not from the biblical account but from that of a 14th-century theologian who suggested that the event provoked fright and incredulity as well as devotion. Although Leonardo made preparatory drawings for the work (which are now preserved in the Louvre, the Uffizi, and the Royal Library in Windsor), it seems that he spent much time working out his ideas on the work itself.

The preparation of the support is particularly interesting. The canvas was made from hemp stretched over ten planks of poplar wood (attached behind with metal bars, still in place) and then the ground was prepared with no less than five hands of gesso mixed with glue. Through the use of highly sophisticated apparatus, it has been established that the preliminary drawings on this ground were made by Leonardo first using charcoal, then a brush, and then indigo blue watercolour, so that there are three distinct layers of drawings. Leonardo then began to add a very little pigment, mostly ochre. As in some of his chiaroscuro paintings, it appears that he worked on the darker tones first, so that the two trees in the centre of the painting (one a palm, the symbol of Victory and the other probably an ilex, recalling the Tree of Jesse) stand out as the most finished part of the work. The sky is still white with only a few very faint touches of lapis lazuli.

Because of its unfinished state, Leonardo obviously never varnished the painting but many varnishes were added during subsequent centuries, in an attempt to unify its appearance. These later interventions have tended to reduce the overall effect to that of a monochrome painting. The work has also been subjected to several past restorations, the last of which was in 1924. Since the aim of the present restoration is to remove the varnishes added after Leonardo’s time, the end result will probably show stronger contrasts of tones but will not be spectacularly different from its present state. But we will be able to study even more closely the evolution of Leonardo’s ideas as he resolves problems as they arise and investigates the various possibilities of  composition and form. The atmosphere in some parts of the work is almost chaotic, with Classical ruins, equestrian scenes, and human and animal figures closely entangled, while around the isolated majestic figure of the Madonna and the blessing Child, the Magi are shown in deeply reverent worship. The painting has many similarities in technique with Leonardo’s wonderful painting of St Jerome and the lion in the Vatican Pinacoteca, which he also left unfinished at around the same time. The format of the Adoration is unusual: it may have been slightly truncated at the bottom, so that it was probably originally exactly square.

This project is just one of many in progress at the state restoration laboratory in Florence, which is world-renowned for the excellence of its work—but sadly very much in need of funding so that more young restorers can be trained, to ensure the conservation of Italy’s art treasures in the future.

At the far east end of Exeter cathedral lies the tomb-chest of Hugh Oldham (d. 1519), with his painted effigy reposing upon it.

Oldham rose rapidly in the church, and may have owed his preferment at least in part to the good opinion of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, in whose household he once served as chancellor. His nomination as Bishop of Exeter in 1505 may have come about with her help. Margaret was a member of the House of Lancaster, and Oldham himself was a Lancastrian by birth. His home village was near Manchester, and his educational foundations included Manchester Grammar School (and Corpus Christi College, Oxford). His chantry chapel is at the end of the south aisle. It is dedicated to St Boniface and St Saviour and bears the scars of the Reformation: not a single carved saint of the many that decorate the exterior still possesses its head. The altarpiece inside has been similarly disfigured. According to the cathedral guide, this iconoclasm was the work of the Dean of Exeter himself, in a bid to demonstrate his allegiance to the reformers.

The leitmotif of the chapel’s decorative scheme is the owl, which Bishop Hugh used as his personal device, constructing a rebus from it: Hugh Owldham. Once you start looking, you see owls everywhere: along the walls, on the ceiling, even embroidered on the kneelers.

Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence, takes a look at Ghiberti’s restored masterpiece

Perhaps the most important restoration project to be completed in Florence in 2012 was that of Ghiberti’s bronze doors of the Baptistery, aptly described by Michelangelo as worthy to be used as the Gates of Paradise. Over the past few years some of the individual panels have been exhibited in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo as their restoration has been completed, but only this year has the entire door been installed in the enclosed courtyard of the museum (since 1997, an excellent copy has been in situ at the Baptistery). The project to restore it began in the 1980s and proved to be one of the most complicated restoration projects of a bronze work of art ever carried out in Italy. However, experts from Florence’s State Restoration Laboratory have now been able to reveal the original gilding which covers the wonderful reliefs, some with details in the round and some with incredibly delicate details in low ‘schiacciato‘ relief producing an extraordinary effect of depth (even though each panel is only 10cm thick).

Detail of The Story of Joseph

Apart from the beauty of the sculpture, the doors also represent a technical wonder of bronze casting (they weigh over 9 tons). Their present restoration—which took more or less the same length of time it took Ghiberti to produce them—was also fraught with difficulties because of previous interventions. The panels had been given a patina imitating bronze probably as early as the 18th century, and it was only after they had been removed for safety (to a disused railway tunnel) during the Second World War that the original gilding was revealed, but using highly corrosive caustic soda. During the 1966 Arno flood, the force of the water detached six panels, which swirled around in the muddy water before they could be retrieved. It is extraordinary to think that it then took months for the restorers to removed the other four panels from the door frame. The present restoration was begun using Rochelle salts in an attempt to remove the patina as well as layers of grime, until (in around 2000) the use of laser substituted this method with spectacular success. The huge door is now preserved in a special display case which keeps it fully protected in an inert state. Ghiberti’s original gilding (he used a highly toxic mercury amalgam) has now been returned to the surface but the problem of corrosion of the bronze has still not been solved, hence the need for the protective case to control the climate and try to eliminate the corrosive salts which threaten the gilding.

Lorenzo Ghiberti was given the commission to produce these doors by the Arte di Calimala, the institution in charge of Florence’s most revered building, the octagonal Baptistery, which stands in front of the west door of the cathedral. He had previously spent some 22 years working on another set of doors for the same building. For those doors, the Arte di Calimala had organized a competition, in which the young Ghiberti (then aged only 24; the date was 1402) had narrowly defeated Brunelleschi. This competition has often been seen by art historians as the moment when the ‘Renaissance’ began in Florence. The commissioners were so pleased with Ghiberti after he had completed those doors that they did not subject him to another competition but unanimously agreed he should forthwith begin work on a second set of doors for the south entrance to the Baptistery. The subjects he was asked to illustrate were episodes from the Old Testament. Instead of restricting the images to 28 small quatrefoil frames, as he had done with his panels at the north entrance, he elected to depict various episodes from each story in the same panel, so producing a quite new design with just ten large rectangular panels. He decorated the frame around these with statuettes of prophets and sibyls, as well as medallions with portrait heads, including, in the most prominent central position, his own self-portrait, shown dignified and bare-headed, no longer as an artisan but as a well-established artist with his new position in society. Next to him is the portrait head of his son, Vittorio, who is known to have worked with his father on the doors, especially in the later years. Here, too, is Ghiberti’s proud signature, asking us for our admiration. It took Ghiberti 26 years to complete the doors, and when they were finished the Arte di Calimala at once decided they should be used as replacements for Pisano’s 14th-century doors at the Baptistery’s main east entrance, despite the fact the subject was not the usual one (the life of St John the Baptist) for such a position.

Each panel is a marvel of sculpture and the eye is drawn at once into studying the details of the beautiful figures, the plants and trees, the architecture. There is a Gothic elegance in many of the figures, combined with a new conception of classical beauty. Many details of the upper panels, which are too high to be seen clearly, are illustrated in a multimedia display also installed in the courtyard (the fascinating restoration operation is also explained here). The doors will eventually be moved to a huge new display area in a former theatre next to the museum: work is underway there to adapt this space not only for these doors but also for the earlier doors by Ghiberti and those made in the 14th century by Andrea Pisano so that all three sets will be displayed together in a reconstruction of the space between the Baptistery and the Duomo façade (which itself will be partially reconstructed as it was when originally designed by Arnolfo di Cambio). Hopefully, in its new position, the wonderful Doors of Paradise may be even more visible, with perhaps even some sort of platform to enable the upper panels to be seen at closer range.

At the north door of the Baptistery itself there is currently a display of casts of some of Ghiberti’s quatrefoil panels, since that door is to be restored this year and will be replaced in situ by a copy. A recently instituted association, the Guild of the Dome, is inviting international sponsors to help pay for this, calling for donors to ‘adopt’ each panel, one by one.

This year, 2013, is the 1700th anniversary of one of the most remarkable edicts issued by a Roman emperor—or, to be accurate, two emperors, as it was jointly issued by Constantine, fresh from his victory over his rival Maxentius in Rome at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, and Licinius, emperor of the East. The two rulers were in Milan consolidating their relationship through an arranged marriage between Licinius and Constantine’s half-sister Constantia. Milan had been declared a capital of the Western Empire at a time when Rome, though still weighted with prestige, was no longer an effective centre for the defence of the northern borders.

Plaque commemorating the Edict of 313, in Milan on the site of the imperial palace where it was promulgated. Photo by Giovanni dall’Orto.

The Edict of Milan was a set of instructions to provincial governors and it was a recognition that the last great persecutions of Christians, initiated by the emperor Diocletian, had been a failure. It called for the toleration of Christianity and the restoration of the properties damaged in the persecution. Historians are still arguing over Constantine’s role in all this. Was his public declaration of support for Christianity a result of his own conversion to the new religion, or was it simply a pragmatic way of consolidating support for himself from the bishops, who were by now important authority figures in cities which were often in decay?

The Edict did not give Christianity a privileged position among the other religions of the empire. Constantine certainly had no ambition to abandon paganism. Until well into the 320s he identified with the cult of Sol Invictus, ‘the unconquered sun’, a cult that was popular among his soldiers, and his new capital, Constantinople, was dedicated according to ancient ritual. The only church there completed by his death was the Church of the Holy Apostles, where he was to be buried but, as Constantine designated himself the thirteenth apostle, this was hardly a humble acquiescence to his new faith. Indeed, he had only been baptised shortly before his death in 337.

The Edict did not assign special favours to Christianity, but it outlawed its persecution, and as such it marked the moment of greatest religious toleration in the empire, and so deserves to be celebrated. An exhibition, Constantino 313 DC, has been mounted in the Royal Palace in Milan. It runs to 17th March, after which it transfers to Rome, where it opens on the 27th. The exhibition is largely a celebration of Milan itself as a new imperial capital, with evidence of the imperial palace from recent excavations, and there are sections showing the increasing use of Christian symbolism, notably the Chi-Rho, in art including military insignia. The army, which was central to Constantine’s rule (so that his Christian biographer Eusebius could write of him as ‘God-blessed’ in his victories) has its own section. Another is devoted to Constantine’s mother, Helena, who initiated a new phase in Christian history through her finding and veneration of the Cross in Jerusalem. From now on, relics play an important part in Christian worship. Nails from the Cross were placed in Constantine’s helmet and went into battle with him. Although Christianity was eventually to assume a privileged position in the empire, with pagan cults suppressed in the 390s, the Edict of 313 fully deserves to be rescued from obscurity: and this exhibition does just that.

by Charles Freeman, historical consultant to the Blue Guides and author of Sites of Antiquity: 50 Sites that Explain the Classical World.

Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure by Artemis Cooper. John Murray, 2012

Walking seems to be back in fashion. Pilgrim routes, secret pathways, ancient trackways: it is as if we are rediscovering the traditional pace of life. One catalyst for the interest has been Patrick Leigh Fermor’s celebrated walk across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, in 1934, when he was only eighteen. It was immortalized in his two books A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. Although they are among my favourite travel books, I had not realised quite how long after the walk they were written. A Time of Gifts appeared 44 years later and Between the Woods and the Waterseveral years after that. So they are as much reflections on the walk, with added colour and insight, as they are of the reactions of an eighteen-year old.

Virtually abandoned as a child in England by his family—his father had a distinguished career as a geologist in India—Paddy (the name by which his biographer and his many friends knew him) grew up essentially feral. School did not work for him and he seemed unemployable. Yet he had a passion for the Classics, an acute memory for texts and a fascination with languages and how they shaped cultures. All this was incipient when he began his walk, but as he uncovered the ancient landed families of eastern Europe, explored their libraries and became a lover, notably of Princess Balasha Cantacuzene on her remote estate in Romania, he discovered new roles for himself. He was always to be a wanderer, attracted to the aristocracy as much for their heritage as for their status, ever willing to be financially supported, and happy to drink and sing his way through the night in a variety of languages and cultures.

When war came, it was again apparent that Paddy was not employable in any conventional role; but with his fluent Greek he could be found a job as a general dogsbody in Intelligence. This is how he ended up supporting the resistance in Crete against the occupying Germans. His most famous exploit, kidnapping the German commanding officer, General Heinrich Kreipe, forms the narrative highlight of this book. The moment when Paddy was able to complete a Horatian ode begun by the General is an unforgettable homage to the common roots of both cultures. Of course, with reprisals against villagers and Paddy’s own careless shooting of a partisan with a gun he thought unloaded, the kidnapping remains controversial, but for many Cretans Paddy was a hero. Hard-drinking reunions followed in the years to come.

Artemis Cooper knew ‘Paddy’ well, but her subject still presents a challenge. Cooper is wise enough not to try to match Paddy’s style when describing the famous walk and is content to tidy up discrepancies and fill in gaps. The kidnapping of Kreipe is well told. The problem comes with the years that followed. There is certainly good material for charting Paddy’s sophisticated survival skills, his charm and success in persuading others to finance him (notably his long-term lover and eventual wife, Joan). It is moving to read of the shattered lives of his friends and lovers, Balasha among them. Full tribute is paid to his publisher, Jock Murray, whose guile and persistence ensured that the books actually appeared. Most publishers would have abandoned Paddy in sheer exasperation at his penchant for parties over disciplined writing.

Cooper also hints at the darker side: the depressions, the sexual dalliances—some of them actually encouraged by Joan—and at Paddy’s ability as much to bore his listeners as to amuse them. And yet somehow she does not capture the full personality. The chronology is there, the house in the Mani is built (at Joan’s expense), the wanderings are well charted, but the subject remains strangely elusive. Doubtless there are more perceptive and probing memoirs to come, but this biography provides a solid background and serves well to send one back to Paddy’s writing, not only the famous walk but also the vivid studies of Greece, Mani and Roumeli. And we are promised that the fragments of the third volume of the walk, awaited by his readers for so long, are due to appear next year.

(One correction. Paddy’s friend was Ian Whigham, not Wigham. He was a man of fastidious good taste and generous hospitality: I count the two occasions when I had lunch with him, as a friend of a friend in the 1970s, as among the more civilizing experiences of my life.)

Reviewed by Charles Freeman, historical consultant to the Blue Guides and author of Sites of Antiquity: 50 Sites that Explain the Classical World.

by Charles Freeman

At the end of a recent tour of Friuli in October, I asked members of my group what they had enjoyed most, High on the list were the Tiepolos in the Patriarchal Palace in Udine. Commissioned in the 1720s by the Patriarch of Aquileia, Dionisio Dolfin, member of an aristocratic Venetian family, they were designed to highlight the link between the Patriarch and the patriarchs of old, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Perhaps the two finest works are Rachel hiding the idols from her father, Laban, and The Judgement of Solomon. Their state of preservation is remarkable.

The Judgement of Solomon (1726), fresco in the Patriarchal Palace of Udine. The subject was a popular choice of decoration for public buildings which also served as law courts.

Tiepolo was still young, just thirty, when he began his commission, but already his work is assured. The colours are rich, the soaring perspectives painted with the confidence that was to stay with him throughout his Europe-wide career. He always comes across to me as someone who loved painting for its own sake, not as a means of sorting out some internal angst.

So it was frustrating to arrive at our next destination, the vast Villa Manin, and to find that we were a few weeks too early to see the majestic Tiepolo exhibition that opened there on 15 December (and lasts until 7 April). It is open every day, even on the afternoon of Christmas day (further information and booking on the Villa Manin website).

The exhibition boasts a wide scope. There are works from Venice and the villas of the Venetian countryside, where Tiepolo spent much of his life, many of which have been brought back from the galleries as far flung as new York, Montreal, Helsinki and Stockholm. Several of the canvases are enormous—luckily the central rooms of the Villa Manin can take them—together with the preparatory drawings for them. So the vast canvas (7m by 4m) of St Thecla freeing the city of Este from the plague, from Este cathedral (completed in 1759 in commemoration of a plague of 1638) is there together with the preparatory study now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The opportunity has been taken to restore the canvas: in fact there is a sense of opulent generosity about this exhibition that is far removed from the austerity that is afflicting so many Italian archaeological sites at the moment.

The exhibition is linked to the Patriarchal Palace in Udine and the Sartorio Museum in Trieste, which contains a fine cache of Tiepolo drawings. So the show promises a true feast for those who find themselves drawn to an artist who is perhaps the finest Italian painter of the 18th century.

Udine and Friuli are covered in Blue Guide Northern Italy and Blue Guide Concise Italy. Charles Freeman is historical consultant to the Blue Guides and author of Sites of Antiquity: 50 Sites that Explain the Classical World.

by Alta Macadam

A study in oil for Leonardo da Vinci’s famous lost mural of the Battle of Anghiari, which he began in the first years of the 16th century for a wall in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, opposite a scene of another victorious battle commissioned from Michelangelo (but never executed), has recently been identified by the Italian police in charge of recuperating works of art stolen from Italy, especially works stolen during the Second World War. In 1621 the work entered the collection of the famous patrician Roman family the Doria (who also had possessions in Genoa). In 1940 it was stolen from Naples, and it is now known that since then it turned up in Switzerland, Germany, and even New York before it was acquired in good faith by the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum. This museum has now lent it to Italy and it is currently on show in Rome at the Quirinal, the palace of the President of the Republic. In January it will probably be sent to the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence for a year or so, but will then return to Japan (although it will be allowed back to Italy for certain periods). Scholars have therefore been given the chance to examine it and decide if it is by the hand of Leonardo himself or whether it is a 16th-century copy by an anonymous Tuscan painter (and so similar to other copies of this date which have survived, one of which, also showing the struggle to take possession of the battle standard, is preserved in Palazzo Vecchio itself). It is known that the two huge cartoons (chalk drawings on paper) of the battle scenes, made by Leonardo and Michelangelo, were much studied by their contemporaries before being lost or irreparably damaged.

This event, which has been given much publicity in the Italian press, comes soon after the investigations carried out by National Geographic in Palazzo Vecchio’s Salone dei Cinquecento to see if anything at all remains of Leonardo’s famous work, which he left unfinished. The completed part was painted with an unsuccessful technique so that it very soon all but disappeared, and the wall was ssbsequently painted over . The long-drawn-out investigations aroused some controversy, and did not result in any interesting finds. The project was halted a few months ago.

So the chance to see the ‘Tavola Doria’ again in Italy, after all these years in which it had quite disappeared, is all the more satisfying.

by Alta Macadam

After spending many weeks in Venice preparing the text for a new edition of Blue Guide Venice (out next year), I feel moved to sing the praises of the remarkable transport system run by ACTV in the city and the lagoon. Despite the huge number of passengers involved, the service is amazingly efficient and there is excellent electronic information supplied at the landing stages, telling you when the next boat is due. Although a single ticket is very expensive, there are numerous passes which give you free travel on the entire system for a certain number of days, and the season tickets for those who stay longer are extremely good value.

As an approach to Venice and all its wonders, nothing can be compared to the leisurely trip on vaporetto no. 1, all the way down the Grand Canal from the railway station at one end to the basin of San Marco at the other. It is only like this that you can appreciate the uniqueness of the city, see some of its greatest buildings to their full advantage from the water, and understand how the city functions with its myriad forms of water transport, from boats propelled by oars (gondolas to sandoli), through barges of all shapes and sizes, to motor boats. In addition, it provides the visitor with a glimpse into the way of life of the Venetians. For this reason the Blue Guide—ever since its first edition in 1957—has reserved a whole chapter exclusively to a description of the Grand Canal as seen from this vaporetto:  the left bank from the station to San Marco and the right bank from San Marco to the station.

Those who work on the ACTV boats are all trained sailors from the Italian navy, and one never ceases to wonder at the skill and efficient aplomb with which the boats are docked at every landing stage. The sailors always attend to the unloading of their passengers with great care and kindness, giving their arm to the elderly or infirm (extended to everyone on days of particularly rough water) or helping mothers carry off their prams. They always step off the boat before the passengers to make sure the vessel is securely moored and usually like to announce, with a flourish, the name of the stop as they do so for those on board, and then the name of the destination for those about to board (and at this point they are always patiently ready to give the added explanations unprepared visitors usually require). It is also fun to observe, even in the most crowded boats full of tourists, how the Venetians stand out for their elegant dress and way of greeting each other, and their quickened step the moment they set foot on the landing-stage as they leave the boat. You can often catch visitors almost mesmerized by these rituals as the boat proceeds on its way.

The design of the larger vaporetti has remained virtually unchanged and there is usually a small area where you can sit outside (now almost always in the stern). Although officially they can carry a maximum of around 200 passengers, their capacity seems limitless, and when very crowded everyone seems faintly amused  to feel the boat sink lower and lower into the water as it moves off at a more sedate pace. The ability of manoeuvre by the pilots is astonishing, especially in the crowded traffic on the Grand Canal, where they always manage to give right of way to the gondolas, how ever many of them cross their bows. And after San Marco, they always accelerate and steer out into the basin of San Marco making a wide loop in the water before returning to the quayside at San Zaccaria, simply in order to avoid disturbing the many gondolas moored on the molo at the Piazzetta. But this is always an exhilarating moment in the trip and the chance to catch the best view of all of the Doge’s Palace and the Piazzetta, with the domes of San Marco conspicuous behind.

Whenever you suddenly get tired of walking in Venice it is always worth finding the nearest vaporetto stop. There is nothing more enjoyable than taking a restful boat trip, for the joy of the ride and the wonderful views. Some of best lines are those that serve the many stops on the wide Giudecca canal; the ones that follow the Cannaregio canal out to the Fondamente Nuove on the edge of the northern lagoon; and the ones that leave from the Riva degli Schiavoni for Sant’Elena and San Pietro di Castello on the eastern edge of the city, where you get a unique view of the extensive dry docks of the Arsenale, and where the boat now calls (on request) at the island of Certosa. And then there is the truly wonderful trip (still for the price of a single ticket) via Murano out to Mazzorbo and Burano, where you get the ferry (for no extra fare) across to the remote island of Torcello. This is by far the best way (and the cheapest) of exploring that evocative part of the lagoon, but unfortunately since this ACTV service starts at the Fondamente Nuove, I suspect that the private motor launches which offer tourist excursions to Burano and Torcello from the quayside nearer San Marco often get more custom. Another real bargain is the no. 11 bus service, still offered by ACTV, which runs to the southern tip of the Lido. You then stay on the bus as it boards the ferry across the channel to the island of Pellestrina. After that, the bus takes you the whole length of that island and terminates beside the connecting passenger ferry which continues to Chioggia, where you arrive about an hour and a half later.

The small ACTV motorboat which provides a regular service from near San Zaccaria to the Armenian community on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, just a short distance beyond the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, also calls at San Servolo, where you can get off and have a walk in its walled garden. The view on the return journey, of all the domes of the churches on the Giudecca canal, of the Salute and of San Marco, is spectacular. There are other regular services from Fondamente Nuove to the more remote inhabited islands, very rarely visited, of Le Vignole and Sant’Erasmo. On request, these stop at the Lazzaretto Nuovo, open to visitors by appointment (when you wish to call the boat to get back to Venice, you activate a ‘traffic light’ at the landing stage).

It has to be admitted that there are also some mysteries attached to ACTV. The numbering system of the vaporetti and motoscafi changes every few years, for reasons that are difficult to fathom: in the last few years, for instance, the 51 and 41 and 52 and 42 (which do the circular route in each direction via Murano) have become 5.1. and 4.1. and 5.4 and 4.2. The services to Burano and Torcello have been given completely new numbers. And as for the special summer services, including the vaporetti to the Lido, which take crowds of Venetians there for a swim on hot days, it is never clear what number they will have (nor, in some cases, which route they will take). You can also sometimes be perplexed about the validity of your ticket (all of them last for one hour, so you can use the same ticket if you change boat—but only if it is going in the same direction!). Even if you have a valid pass or season ticket, you are now asked to present your ticket to the machines before you board (although it seems that many Venetians, all with their special passes, quietly refuse to adhere to these new regulations).

Innovations in recent years include illuminated electronic signs in the cabin, showing which stop is coming up next, and also, rather more obtrusively (but usually only in operation in high season) recorded messages in both Italian and English (I once heard a Venetian mother repeating “next stop” to her child, to teach it a little English). The Rialto markets have been given a vaporetto stop for the first time, and the San Marco stop now has a grand new floating shelter which facilitates the flow of tourists (even though many Venetians have complained that it is too big and blocks the view of the Salute from that side of the Grand Canal). A ‘vaporetto dell’arte’ has been introduced at certain times of year, which costs considerably more than a normal vaporetto but which has the advantage that you can get on and off as you wish, and which at present is never crowded. This is particularly helpful to the elderly or those confined to wheelchairs (although of course vaporetti are one of the very easiest forms of transport for wheelchairs).

The transport system has to deal not only with the enormous crowds of visitors at certain times of year, but also the problems of ever more frequent acque alte (flood tides), when some of the services have to be suspended because they can’t get under the bridges, and even the winter fogs which can make navigation treacherous, so that some lines have to be cancelled. But despite all this, ACTV remains to my mind one of the great Venetian institutions, which facilitates a visit to the city in so many ways. It deserves the support and gratitude of all those who go to Venice.

A swift tour of the Uffizi’s newly-opened Red Rooms by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence.

The Sale Rosse are a suite of nine rooms (nos 56–66) on the piano nobile of the Uffizi, opened in June this year. They are marked on this plan on the Uffizi website (which also takes you on a virtual tour). The rooms display some ancient Roman sculpture and Florentine paintings from the early 16th century, most of which was formerly displayed elsewhere in the gallery. They overlook the courtyard and have large windows providing excellent lighting. Each room has a bright red wall (hiding the climate control apparatus) on which the most important works are displayed (perhaps not an ideal solution). Labelling is kept to a minimum.

The first room (56), the only one entirely painted crimson, has an impressive display of early-Imperial Roman replicas of famous Hellenistic sculptures. They include a marble replica of the Capitoline Spinario, the Farnese Hercules, and the Gaddi torso. They have been exhibited here to underline the influence that they had on Florentine painters of the early 16th century (pointed out by Vasari), notably Andrea del Sarto, whose works are hung in the first two rooms. His three chiaroscuro scenes, on show for the first time, show his skill and interest in representing the Classical style. His Madonna of the Harpies, with its carved Roman base, is also a direct citation of ancient Rome, and other altarpieces by him are displayed in the same room, as well as his delightful portrait of a young lady with a book of Petrarch (formerly displayed in the Tribuna). Room 59 has Domenico Puligo’s splendid portrait of Pietro Carnesecchi, a male portrait by Franciabigio, and three scenes by Bachiacca.

Rosso Fiorentino is for the first time given a room to himself (60), although the extraordinarily powerful Moses defending the daughters of Jethro from the shepherds is still only attributed to him. His endlessly reproduced Angel Musician is in fact only a fragment, and the portraits displayed here are only tentatively attributed to him; it is suggested that one of them may be by Giovanni di Lorenzo Larciani, who also painted the exquisite little Allegory of Fortune hung here. Portraits by Pontormo in Room 61 include his well-known (posthumous) portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio, dressed from head to foot in crimson, which used to hang in the Tribuna, and his very fine portrait of Maria Salviati, who was his contemporary and the mother of Cosimo I (b. 1519). Maria was widowed at the age of 27 and devoutly dressed as a nun for the rest of her life, hence her portrayal as such here. Her tomb in the Medici Chapels, and that of her husband, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, have been investigated this month in an attempt to solve the mystery of Giovanni’s death: it seems his foot was amputated following a battle-wound but he died shortly afterwards of septicaemia). Two other lovely portraits hung here were formerly atttributed to Pontormo:  the woman with a basket full of spindles by Andrea del Sarto, and the musician by the much less well known Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi.

Pontormo: portrait of the widowed Maria Salviati, mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici

Rooms 64 and 65 display all the great Medici family portraits by Bronzino, which include his masterpieces, most of which were formerly in the Tribuna. Here they can be seen in a far better light and in all their glory. Amongst them are the newly restored refined portraits of Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia, fittingly displayed on either side of the “Panciatichi” Holy Family. Eleanor of Toledo, in a splendid velvet dress with her son Giovanni, is shown in a very sophisticated work, whereas the delightful young Medici children are portrayed in much more natural poses. A bizarre note is struck with the full-length nude portrait of the dwarf Morgante: it is displayed in the centre of Room 65 as it is amusingly painted both on the front and the back.

The last room (66) has a superb group of paintings by the greatest master of this period, Raphael. His famous portrait of the first Medici pope, Leo X, with his two cousins whom he created cardinals, hangs beside his self-portrait and his court portraits of the Gonzaga and Della Rovere. But perhaps the most memorable painting of all in this set of rooms is his famous Madonna del Cardellino (“Madonna of the Goldfinch”), which was spectacularly restored a few years ago.

Raphael: Madonna del Cardellino (1506)

Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence, pays a visit to the newly-opened Blue Rooms at the Uffizi.

Florence’s Galleria degli Uffizi has been undergoing renovation and expansion since the State Archives left the building in 1989, releasing a vast new exhibition space on the piano nobile. When the ‘Grandi Uffizi’ are finally completed, more than twice the present number of paintings will be on show and double the number of visitors admitted. However, work has progressed agonizingly slowly. The exit itself at the back of the building is still awaiting the embellishment (or, many would say, the encumbrance) of a vast structure designed by Arata Isozaki in 1998—if funding from central government is ever forthcoming. Meanwhile, there is a feeling of neglect throughout the gallery and the general atmosphere provided by the staff is not the most welcoming.

But we should at least be grateful that the Tribuna has been restored and, over the last few months, two sets of rooms on the piano nobile have been opened for the first time. The Uffizi now has an excellent website, where you can take a virtual tour of the entire gallery, room by room and painting by painting.

The first rooms to be opened (in May of this year), marked on the plan on the website as the ‘Sale Blu’, house non-Italian paintings, mostly of the 17th–18th centuries. The rooms take their name from their bright blue walls. Unfortunately there are no windows, and one wishes they were bigger. The Flemish and Dutch schools are particularly well represented by numerous small works (many of which were already on show at the Uffizi by the 18th century). Ever since the 15th century, Flemish painting was well known in Florence—the huge Portinari triptych (today exhibited in the Botticelli room) was shipped from Bruges to Florence in 1483 after it had been commissioned there by the Florentine merchant Portinari. Some two centuries later, the future Medici grand duke Cosimo III acquired a number of small Dutch paintings while in Holland. These included Gerrit Dou’s self-portrait (now in Room 47) together with a genre scene by the same artist and six works by the less well-known Dutch artist Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–81), who was most particularly admired by Cosimo. Also displayed in this room are an interior by Gabriel Metsu and a scene in a country inn by Jan Steen. In Room 49 are some famous portraits by Rembrandt. Two of the forty or so self-portraits he painted throughout his life are hung here: as a proud young man in armour sporting a hat, and then as a rather pathetic, very old man. His portrait of a bearded rabbi is signed and dated. The large landscape by Hercules P. Seghers is known to have been admired by Rembrandt (and there is a fascinating hypothesis that he might even have had a hand in painting the sky): curiously enough, it was donated to the last Lorraine grand duke, Leopold II, by an English lady called Hatfield who ran a pensione on the Lungarno Guicciardini. There are two still lifes here by Rachel Ruysch, one of the few women painters of the time: she managed to paint some 100 works in her long life (she lived to be almost 100), as well as giving birth to 19 children. Also here is an idyllic landscape by Adriaen van der Velde and a view of a square in Amsterdam by Jan van der Heyden. In Room 50 are 17th-century works by Godfried Schalcken, lit by candlelight, including his self-portrait commissioned by Cosimo III in 1694. Room 53 has works by Adriaen van der Werff (who was famous in his own lifetime; less so now). In Room 54 there is a self-portrait by the little-known Dutch painter Gerrit Adrianensz Berckheyde (an intriguing work, it includes another self-portrait, shown hanging on the wall behind the sitter). The landscapes here are by Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Dirk van Berghen and Jacob van Ruysdael. It is interesting to note that all the imitation Dutch ebony frames were made in Florence much later, during the 19th century.

Rachel Ruysch: Still life with insects

The Flemish school is well represented (in Room 52) by Paul Bril (Seascape), David Teniers the Younger (The Butcher’s Shop), and by two allegories attributed to Jan Brueghel the Younger. More 17th-century Flemish works are displayed in the largest room (55), where Rubens is represented by a self-portrait (which, however, is not apparently entirely by his own hand) and also by the fine portrait of his first wife, Isabella Brandt. There are also a number of late portraits by Van Dyck. Daniel Seghers, whose particular skill was in representing flowers, painted the lovely garland encircling a bust of the grand duke Leopold.

There are also two rooms of French paintings (dating from the 17th and 18th centuries and acquired at the end of the 18th). The later works include portraits of Vittorio Alfieri and the Countess of Albany by François-Xavier Fabre; Marie-Adelaide of France in Turkish costume by Jean-Etienne Liotard (whose self-portrait also hangs here); and two delightful portraits of children by Chardin. Another room is devoted to the Spanish school, poorly represented elsewhere in Florence: it is dominated by a superb large portrait of the Countess of Chinchón by Goya. St John the Evangelist and St Francis is a typical work (signed) by El Greco. The self-portrait by Velázquez was brought to Florence from Düsseldorf by Anna Maria Luisa, sister of the last Medici grand duke.

Vienna’s Albertina is currently hosting an exhibition entitled “The Emperor Maximilian and the Age of Dürer”. Many of the works on show are drawn from the Albertina’s own extensive collection.

Maximilian (1549–1519) was one of the greatest rulers that Austria ever had, both a knight and a humanist, a bridge between two worlds, the man who took his dominions from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. He made his court a centre not only of government but also of culture and learning, founding the Vienna Boys’ Choir and what is now the Austrian National Library. The double marriage of his grandchildren to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary secured those two kingdoms for Austria. His son married Joanna the Mad of Spain, and the son of that union, the emperor Charles V, ruled over more of Europe than any other monarch before or since, as well as over Spain’s holdings in the New World. The famous line about Austria, “Let others make war; you, fortunate Austria, marry” dates to Maximilian’s reign. He succeeded to the title Holy Roman Emperor when it was relinquished by his father; and his own first marriage to Mary of Burgundy secured important possessions in France and the French-controlled Netherlands. Of Austria it was said that: “You receive from Venus what others receive from Mars.” No one knows to whom this quip should be ascribed. To frustrated rulers of others portions of Europe? Or to Maximilian himself, in an ecstasy of self-congratulation?

Maximilian certainly had a keen sense of himself. He was not perhaps the first ruler—and certainly not the last—to understand the value of propaganda. One of the most fascinating artifacts in the Albertina exhibition is the so-called Triumphal Procession, 54 metres of sheets of vellum running the entire length of the main room, painted in a variety of bright, expensive pigments, including silver and gold, and depicting an allegorical pageant, a pictorial recount of all Maximilian’s triumphs in love and war, as well as his fabulous wealth and illustrious ancestry. The idea was Maximilian’s own, and was commissioned in 1512 from the Regensburg painter Albrecht Altdorfer. One of the most amusing scenes is that of the War with Venice, where Maximilian’s forest of lancers is shown chasing a sheepish Venetian lion back across the lagoon.

The “Great Venetian War” of 1508–16 in fact ended in stalemate, but Maximilian was able to present its first campaign as a success

Plenty of portraits of Maximilian exist. My favourite is the one that opens the show, painted in 1502 in Italianate style (three-quarter length and with the face shown in profile) by the Milanese artist Ambrogio de Predis. Maximilian had married, as his third wife in 1494, the Milanese duchess Bianca Maria Sforza, and De Predis had accompanied her to Innsbruck for the occasion. The portrait of Maximilian is his only known signed work (the signature can be clearly seen, in the bottom left-hand corner underneath the emblem of the Golden Fleece).

Ambrogio de Predis’ portrait of Maximilian, and detail of the artist’s signature

Maximilian’s campaigns were largely funded by the Augsburg banker Jakob Fugger, a copy of whose superb portrait (by Dürer) hangs here. Dürer was one of the artists of the German Renaissance who flourished under Maximilian’s patronage. As the opening wall text of the exhibition notes: “In commissioning spendid works, Maximilian’s intent was to stage himself as the ideal medieval knight and model ruler. The paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures that he commissioned and which were produced in his milieu convey the image of an emperor who was immortalized through art.”

The Fugger portrait has clear affinities with the work of the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini. We know that Dürer visited Venice. And though he had little good to say about the merchants on the Rialto, he respected Bellini, describing him in a letter as the best of all the Venetian painters.

The exhibition runs until 6^th January 2013. Material for this post partly extracted from Visible Cities Vienna and Blue Guide Literary Companion Venice.

We were lucky to get into the area of the old Port of Trajan, just south of Fiumicino airport. The website states that it is “open” between 9am and 1pm on the first Saturday and last Sunday of the month, and gives a Google map with a pin stuck in it close to the Parco Leonardo railway station. So we took a train there, on the first Saturday of the month, and arrived shortly after nine thirty. No museum in sight. I rang the number and was told that the guided tour had already begun, that there was no way we could join, that in any case a prior booking was necessary. We could come back on the last Sunday of the month. “No,” I said, “you don’t understand. I’ve NEVER been in Rome on the right day of the month before. This time I am! It’s my only chance! We really want to join the group. Tell us where they are!” We set off on foot, along the busy Via Portuense, with the prospect of several kilometres to go, narrowly missing being flattened by trucks. Then a godsend: a man stopped and gave us a lift. The entrance gate was just under a motorway flyover (marked A on the map). By extraordinary good fortune, the tour was just inside the gate, inspecting the remains of what had once been a portico fronting a line of granaries belonging to the old Port of Claudius.

The ports were laid out here in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, first by Claudius and then by Trajan. The sea has retreated some three or so kilometres west since then, and most of the area has dried out or been drained, but some of the old contours remain. The grain stores, though overgrown with weeds, still clearly retain parts of their old flooring, built up on brick stilts known as suspensurae, a device designed to minimise damp.

Suspensurae in the floor of an old warehouse

Claudius’ port was, in its heyday, the largest in the Mediterranean, with 800m of wharf. But it was unsheltered and very vulnerable to storms. In AD 62, for example, 200 ships at anchor were wrecked in a gale. The complex was altered, with a new harbour further inland, by Trajan. We left the Claudian area by means of a short colonnaded street (B), with a double enfilade of chubby travertine columns running up it. On one side we were shown a brick archway filled in with bricks arranged in the crosswise opus reticulatum pattern. The archway was never open, the guide explained. It was placed there to give greater strength, to direct the downward thrust of the wall outward to the buttressing piers on either side, at a point where there is no stable ground directly underneath. We were also shown two pieces of fallen travertine column. One of them, a capital, had two iron pegs sticking out of its underside. It was with these that the capital was fixed to the block below it, but with a “glue” of molten lead, which was poured in along specially cut runnels (shown in the next illustration). Lead, unlike iron, has a certain amount of elasticity, which can better withstand seismic shocks.

View of the colonnaded street; Load-distributing arch

Capital with iron fixing pegs; block with square hole for fixing peg and runnel for molten lead

At the end of the colonnaded street we turned right, to the site of the old Darsena, Trajan’s inner harbour (C). There is little to see now but a reed-filled marsh, but at one side the stone harbour wall can be seen. Analysis of the warehouses that stood alongside this harbour has shown that the stores of marble, the heaviest item to move, were—perfectly logically—placed closest to the dock. On the further side were warehouses that had possibly held grain, or some other commodity sensitive to damp, since the walls had been coated in a layer of pozzolana, a waterproof cement made from a mixture of lime and volcanic ash.

View of the Darsena

From here we walked out onto a broad, flat path, grass-grown now—though once it had been filled with water, for this was the channel (D) that linked the old Port of Claudius with the hexagonal Port of Trajan. It is wide enough for several ships to have passed along it at once. At its far end we could see the remains of large warehouses (E). We turned past them, onto a narrower path (F), again once a water channel linking the harbour complex with the Fossa Traiana, the canal that Trajan dug to link his port to the Tiber.

We were all impatient to see the famous hexagonal port, but there was wildlife to be admired: a herd of fallow deer; enormous funghi that were erupting from the soil practically before our eyes; a long black-and-yellow chequered snake; and scatterings of porcupine quills. The land is a bit unkempt. Much of it belongs to the Torlonia family. It could be a magnificent park, if time, energy, money and enthusiasm could be found…

Part of the hexagonal basin is flanked by warehouses of the Severan period, probably built during the reign of Antoninus Pius. It was possible to climb onto a sort of viewing platform, to get a glimpse of the basin (G). But the view from the ground is nothing compared to the sight of it that you have from the air, when flying from Fiumicino. This huge six-sided harbour has always been full of water. In the Middle Ages it was stocked with fish. No one is sure why a hexagonal shape was chosen. The information board at the site was non-committal. Our guide was keener on the more interesting story: that it was the work of the great genius Apollodorus of Damascus, the architect who designed the Markets of Trajan in the Imperial Fora. That he chose a hexagon because the ripples caused by ships moving into it would create “echo-waves” coming from the side, which would meet the outgoing wave and effectively cancel it out. We experimented with this at home, with a six-sided container but, sadly, managed to prove nothing. The tour was long, but very interesting. Today, as Blue Guide Rome so aptly puts it, most overseas traffic to Rome still docks here: the airport of Fiumicino could not be located in a more appropriate spot.

Information for visitors:

Open on the first Saturday and last Sunday of the month. Call ahead to book: T: 06 6529192. Meet at the Museo delle Navi, Via A. Guidoni 35 (Fiumicino Airport). Tours begin at 9:30 and last approximately three hours.

For updates on the ongoing archaeological project of the British School at Rome/University of Southampton, see here.

In the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, just off the Corso in central Rome, is a simple, unobtrusive little monument to the French artist Poussin. He died in Rome on 19th November 1665 and the monument was placed in the church by Chateaubriand in 1832, at the height of the Neoclassical age, ‘pour la gloire des arts et l’honneur de la France’. The glory of God is not mentioned. Poussin is most famous as a painter of romanticised classical landscapes. The relief carving on the monument shows shepherds in an olive grove grouped around a tomb, trying to make sense of the words inscribed in its surface. It is a direct reference to a famous work by Poussin, now in the Louvre, in which exactly the same scene is shown. Written upon the tomb are the words: ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’. Death, in other words, comes to us all, even to the carefree creatures of idyllic Arcadia.

(An extract from Pilgrim’s Rome: A Blue Guide Travel Monograph)

At half past seven on an early November morning, the sun is gilding the rooftops but the streets below are still in deep shadow. The newspaper kiosk is doing a slow trade. Few people are about as yet. There are street cleaners, and dog-owners bringing pooches out to empty their bladders, and sandalled nuns and neatly dressed ladies making their way to the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte.

It is an old foundation, dating back to the days when this part of Rome was still open countryside. “Delle Fratte” means “of the bushes”. In its present aspect, the church is Baroque, built of warm café-au-lait-coloured brick. Its unfinished tower and tall, slim campanile are the work of Francesco Borromini. The campanile can only really be seen from the street that runs alongside the church, Via Capo le Case, from where, after dusk, the Gabriel audio equipment store projects laser beams onto the church’s lateral flank.

Borromini’s campanile by day; the Gabriel Store laser show by night

Morning Mass is celebrated in a steady stream, at 7, 7.30, 8 and then every hour until midday. The altar that is in use is not the main one. Instead, the chairs and pews are turned to face a chapel on the north side, with its altare privilegiatum, its “privileged altar” from which, at a time when such things were condoned, you could come away after Mass with a plenary indulgence. This is the “Chapel of the Apparition”, so called because one January day in 1842 the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in a vision to a young French Jew by the name of Alphonse Ratisbonne, converting him to Christ. St Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who elected to die in place of another in Auschwitz and who is now the patron saint of political prisoners, celebrated his first Mass at this altar in 1918.

A priest clad in penitential purple arrives to officiate. He begins with a prayer for all deceased Minims, members of the Franciscan order of mendicant friars founded by St Francis of Paola in 1435. A chapel dedicated to the founding saint stands on the other side of the church, with an altarpiece by the late-sixteenth-century Renaissance artist Paris Nogari. It was perhaps painted when Pope Sixtus V gave the church to the Order of the Minims. The chapel also contains a scale model of the passenger liner Cristoforo Colombo, dedicated to St Francis of Paola in his guise as patron saint of Italian seafarers.

Members of the small congregation hastily scribble petitions to the Virgin on little slips of paper which they place in a basket on the altar rail. Behind them an aged prelate in voluminous black robes slumbers sprawled in his confessional. As the Mass progresses, he begins to receive clients and is constrained to wake up and shut the doors.

The priest is reading from the New Testament. I recognise the words of the Sermon on the Mount: blessed are the meek, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. In the apse, above the unused high altar, is a fresco of the miracle of the loaves and fishes and below it, in a cartouche, a line in Latin from St John’s Gospel: “Andrew saith unto him, there is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes.”  This is the only reference that I can see to Andrew, the church’s titular saint. To the left, in another chapel on the north side, is Giovanni Battista Maini’s sub-Berniniesque statue of St Anne, depicted lying on her side, her hand clasped to a palpitating stone bosom.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand, by Pasquale Marini (17th century)

A number of artists from Rome’s foreign community were buried here in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among them was Angelica Kauffman, known for her portraits and her ceiling and wall paintings. Her plaque is beside the door on the north side, below that of her husband and fellow artist Antonio Zucchi.

“Here lies buried Angelica, daughter of John Joseph Kauffmann of Schwarzenberg, who by the merits of her paintings earned a cenotaph in the Pantheon but who ordered that she herself be laid to rest in the same grave where Antonio Zucchi was placed, that she may live in peace with her husband after death. She lived 66 years and 6 days, and died on the nones (5th) of November 1807. Hail and farewell, most excellent of women.” A bust of Kauffman was erected in the Pantheon in 1808.

Flanking the chancel are the church’s two greatest works of art, Bernini’s angel with the crown of thorns and angel with the titulus, two originals from the series on Ponte Sant’Angelo. I don’t much care for them. I find their facial expressions and exaggeratedly postured limbs absurd. I don’t like their billowing drapery. But they are by Bernini, so I pay them my respects before leaving via the side door into the cloister.

The cloister is a lovely, peaceful space, planted with orange and lemon trees. In the brick pavement the word “Charitas” is picked out, the motto of the Minims, who are enjoined to show brotherly love to one another. Like all Franciscans, they take a vow of poverty. But the Minims of Munich, in order to keep body and soul together, began brewing beer. They named it Paulaner, after the town of Paola, the birthplace of their founder. Hence the beer’s logo of a cowled friar.

Mass is over by the time I go back into the church. Ite, missa est. The congregation shuffles out, shriven, contended, fed with the body of Christ and ready to face the day. A young sacristan from Goa scurries over to the altar to tidy up and another priest in purple arrives to take the next Mass, a tall, handsome young man from Nigeria. A new congregation shuffles in. The process of writing petitions to the Virgin begins all over again. Exaudi orationes servorum tuorum.

Last week, for the first time in my life, I visited Rome without going into the Forum. Usually I pop in to check out any new developments, to visit parts of it that were roped off the last time, or simply to enjoy the thrill of just being there. But this time, I have to confess, I couldn’t face it. Rome seems more crowded every year. Not very long ago, the Forum was free. You could wander in at will at any time of day or night. Now there are fences and turnstiles. The exit beside the Arch of Septimius Severus, with its high barricade and tall barred gate looks like something from a high-security prison. No way in. Did I really want to fight my way through the crowds along Via dei Fori Imperiali, past the gaudy carts selling fizzy drinks and hot dogs, to join the long, long line at the ticket office? No. I couldn’t face it.

But just when I begin to think curmudgeonly thoughts, that Rome has had its day, has lost its elegance and charm, I see something to make me fall in love with it all over again. It always happens and this afternoon was no exception. I glanced behind me at Pietro da Cortona’s severely symmetrical façade of SS. Luca e Martina. The door was closed as usual, but there was a notice on it that I had never seen before. I rushed up the steps to take a closer look and this is what I saw:

Oh joy! The sign itself was beautiful, with the tall columns of the Temple of Saturn reflected in its shiny plastic surface. But its message was even better: the church would be open on Saturday! A miracle! This church is never open…

Well, it is now. On Saturdays, from 9–6 in October to April and from 9–8 in May to September.

The first church on this site was built by Pope Honorius I in the seventh century. Honorius’ pontificate was not uniformly glorious but he was particularly keen on building or embellishing churches on the site of martyrdoms and to him we owe the lovely basilica of Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura (as well as the Senate House in the Forum, which has survived so well because he converted it into the church of Sant’Adriano). This church, between Sant’Adriano and the old Mamertine Prison, was dedicated to the Roman martyr Martina and later also to St Luke, when Pope Sixtus V gave the building to the Accademia di San Luca, the artists’ academy. This was not pure altruism. Pope Sixtus wanted to enlarge the square outside Santa Maria Maggiore, the basilica which was to house his magnificent funerary chapel, and to do so he needed to demolish the academy church of St Luke. In exchange, the academy received this one, and gave it a second dedication to the patron saint of artists, following a tradition that St Luke painted a number of portraits of the Virgin Mary. Several academicians chose to be buried here, among them Pietro da Cortona himself, who designed the church we see today.

Monument to Pietro da Cortona (d.1669), architect of the church

Pietro da Cortona was a Tuscan painter and architect. He worked for the Medici in Florence and for another Tuscan family, the Barberini, who made their fortune in papal Rome. The design of this church is largely by Pietro, assisted by his nephew Luca Berrettini. The façade bears the papal insignia and name of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini), for whom Pietro also produced the splendid trompe l’oeil ceiling in the salone of Palazzo Barberini.

The façade of SS. Luca e Martina is austerely elegant, apparently symmetrical but not completely (which gives it interest), and firmly placed at the restrained, harmonious end of the Baroque spectrum. The interior is airy, light and beautifully proportioned: much of the structural detail and the pale colour scheme dates from the early eighteenth century, departing from and complementing the Baroque in a very pleasing way. The current upper church stands much higher than ground level, for this is a damp site and the crypt below has suffered from flooding. De-humidifiers are at work flat out, and from the peeling walls, one can see why they are needed. The crypt was designed by Pietro da Cortona partly as his own mausoleum and his tomb remains (his monument is pictured above).

In the upper church, above the high altar, is an effigy of St Martina, whose remains were found when work began on Cortona’s remodelling. The altarpiece itself is a copy of Raphael’s St Luke Painting the Virgin.

Because this is a minor “sight”, there are no crowds here, no couples taking pictures of each other on their smartphones, no lecturers with iPads discoursing to their flocks, no guides shouting semi-accurate factoids at voluminous tour groups, no commercially-operated mendicants camped on the steps. If you happen to be in Rome on a Saturday and can’t face the queues for the Forum, come here. It is peaceful and beautiful and is the masterpiece of one of Italy’s finest Baroque artists.

For more on the church of SS. Luca e Martina, and on the Roman Forum, see Blue Guide Rome and Blue Guide Literary Companion Rome.

 Image © Anthony Majanlahti

Christianity did not conquer the Roman Empire with the sword—and yet it was with the sword that the groundwork was laid, at the Milvian Bridge. Today the place is peaceful: but this not particularly impressive-seeming footbridge over the Tiber was the scene, in late October of the year AD 312, of one of the pivotal battles of Western history, where the forces of Constantine vanquished those of his rival emperor Maxentius.

The bridge today is not very much frequented, except by lovers, who used to come here to clip a padlock to one of the bars placed at intervals along it as a symbol of everlasting attachment. The clotted love tokens have now been removed and unimpeded you can peer over the parapet and look down on the Tiber below, watch it burbling swiftly over a shallow cataract, and imagine the clash and clamour of horses and men.

Maxentius championed Rome. He made it his capital—he was the first emperor for a hundred years to do so—and set in motion a train of great building projects aimed at restoring the city to its central position within the empire, not just symbolically but actually. He named his son Romulus and dedicated a temple in the Forum (either to his dead son or to the great eponymous founder of the city). His sister Fausta married his co-ruler, the man whom Shelley ostentatiously called the ‘Christian reptile’. Constantine was not so much reptilian as amphibious. He was born a pagan but emerged from the water as a Christian, and so died.

And he was unable to share a throne with Maxentius. The two soon came to blows, and battle lines were drawn at the Milvian Bridge across the Tiber. In order, as he hoped, to cut off his adversary’s retreat, Maxentius had destroyed the bridge before the battle commenced. It was an action that proved his undoing. With his horses and men he was forced back into the water and there drowned, yielding the day to his rival. Constantine built an arch to celebrate his victory. It is one of the most famous of Rome’s surviving ancient monuments, standing beside the Colosseum. On its short west face is the goddess Luna in her two-horse chariot. On the long south face is a scene of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. The short east face has a roundel of the sun god rising from the ocean and a depiction of Constantine’s adventus into Rome. On the north face we see Constantine in Rome distributing gifts. The inscription which appears on both the north and south faces (identical on each) contains a famously ambiguous religious reference to a ‘divinitas’, a divinity, in the singular. What or who was this god? It is an early and important witness of the slow change from the worship of many deities to the worship of a single, all-powerful one. The process by which this happened is fascinating and can be traced all over Rome in its art and architecture.

IMP·CAES·FL·CONSTANTINO MAXIMO

P·F·AVGVSTO S·P·Q·R

QVOD INSTINCTV DIVINITATIS MENTIS

MAGNITVDINE CVM EXERCITV SVO

TAM DE TYRANNO QVAM DE OMNI EIVS

FACTIONE VNO TEMPORE IVSTIS

REMPVBLICAM VLTVS EST ARMIS

ARCVM TRIVMPHIS INSIGNEM DICAVIT

“To the Imperial Caesar Flavius Constantine, the Great, Pius, Felix, Augustus: inspired by a divinity and in the greatness of his mind, with his army and by the just force of arms he delivered the state both from a tyrant and from all his faction; thus the Senate and the People of Rome have dedicated this arch in token of these triumphs.”

An extract from Pilgrim’s Rome: A Blue Guide Travel Monograph. Text © Blue Guides

The expressive statue of a young man in a finely-pleated linen tunic, Il Giovane di Mozia, was found at Cappiddazzu on the northeast side of the island of Mozia (the ancient Phoenician Motya) in 1979. In the stance of a victor, with hand on hip, the pose of the statue expresses great confidence in his youth, beauty and power. This remarkable work, made of white marble and dating from the 5^th century BC, is thought to be by a Greek artist. It was found buried under a layer of rubble, face up in the road by the sanctuary. The face and the front are abraded, possibly from when the bronze accoutrements were torn from the statue during the attack of 398 BC by Dionysius I of Syracuse. When the statue was loaned to the British Museum in London for the duration of the 2012 Olympic Games, it was universally referred to as ‘The Motya Charioteer’. But this identification has not always been so certain. It is true that the work shares similarities with the famous charioteer of Delphi. But there have been numerous other theories: one suggests that the statue may represent Melqart, a Phoenician god and titular divinity of Tyre, identified by the Greeks as Heracles. He was probably wearing a lion’s skin made of bronze (which would have partially covered the head) and a bronze band around the chest—the holes where this would have been fixed can still be seen. Another theory suggests that the statue may represent an athlete, or an unknown Carthaginian hero. The fact that it was not recovered and replaced in a temple, in spite of its enormous value, would be explained if it indeed represented a god. The shocked survivors of the battle against Dionysius may have thought their god profaned and buried it where it was found. Perhaps. I haven’t seen any claims for Melqart recently. Certainly not since Brian Sewell, in the London Evening Standard, announced: “This standing figure, larger than life-size, broken off at the ankles, is a charioteer. His dress is no ordinary chiton, the standard male garment of the day, but one that falls full length to protect his body from the clouds of dust kicked up by horses’ hooves.” Whatever the truth, if you didn’t see it in London, get ye to Motya.

See here for information about Blue Guide Sicily and how to buy online.