Roman era graffiti found on Colosseum

Roman era graffiti found on Colosseum

Graffiti dating from the Roman era has been found scrawled on the walls of the Colosseum during restoration work.

By Nick Squires, Rome

10 January 2013

Restorers also discovered fragments of brightly coloured frescoes, suggesting that the ancient monument was gaudily decorated when it hosted gladiatorial fights and wild animal hunts under the emperors.

The fragments – in ochre, red, blue and green – are in stark contrast to the monochrome grey and white of the travertine marble that covers the facade of the amphitheatre today.

The graffiti includes hard-to-decipher words and symbols as well as two large phalluses – possibly an erotic representation, or perhaps just lewd scribbling.

The new discoveries were made on the third and highest level of the Colosseum, which is closed to the public.

They are spread out over a 200ft-long section of a covered tunnel which would have funnelled spectators to their seats high above the arena.

The coloured frescoes were "an extraordinary discovery", said Rossella Rea, who is in charge of the landmark in the centre of Rome.

"We weren't expecting to find them. There is still a great deal to be studied and there will almost certainly be other surprises."

The frescoes would have been "rich and elaborate" in colour and detail, said Ida Simonelli, the head of the restoration team.

A £22 million restoration of the Colosseum, to be funded by Diego Della Valle, the multi-millionaire founder of the Tod's shoe empire, is scheduled to begin within weeks.

It will be the most comprehensive restoration effort in more than 70 years and is expected to take two years.

The project, which will entail removing decades of grime from the facade of the Colosseum, will take place in phases so that the amphitheatre can remain open to visitors.

The privately-funded work, which has been delayed by months of bureaucracy, is being seen as a model for the sponsoring of other ancient sites in Italy, including Pompeii.

Source from The Telegraph

Treading Flowers

Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer on their villa near Rome, Italy, January 1960

Echoes

'Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.'
- Giotto di Bondone

Sistine Chapel

A photograph I took of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling in Rome a few years ago; Michelangelo's masterpiece is now 500 years old!

Here is an article from BBC News about the artwork.

Sistine Chapel ceiling at 500: The Vatican's dilemma

Alan Johnston, BBC News, Rome

31 October 2012

The Vatican has indicated for the first time that it might eventually need to consider limiting the number of visitors to the Sistine Chapel, 500 years after its completion.

Michelangelo's famous frescoes have been described as one of the world's supreme sights. In scene after scene, some of the Old Testament's most powerful stories unfold. And at the centre of this vast work is one of the best known images in Western art; the depiction of God reaching out to touch Adam into life.

But for some, the room has become a victim of its own fame and magnificence. They say it just attracts far too many tourists. Twenty-thousand visitors pour through the Chapel's doors every day; more than five million a year. And the Italian literary critic, Pietro Citati, recently launched a searing attack on the Vatican authorities for allowing in such huge numbers. Writing in the pages of Corriere della Sera newspaper he went as far as to describe the crowding on an average visit as an "unimaginable disaster". "In the universal confusion no-one saw anything," he wrote. And speaking to the BBC he reinforced his criticism. "The Sistine Chapel was full of people - a huge crowd, packed tightly together... and they were all breathing! There was this dense 'human-ness'! Human sweat. It was horrendous." Mr Citati said that this endless, rising, humid "wall of human breath" could be damaging for the priceless frescoes above.

Responding to this kind of criticism, the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci, acknowledged that there was a "serious problem". He said that the whole doctrine of the Catholic Church was set out in the images in the Sistine Chapel, and that he wanted everyone who visited to be able to appreciate that symbolic system. But Mr Paolucci accepted that that was not easy to do when the room is packed. "It becomes noisy, people are confused, bewildered - it's hard to understand." he said. "Too many people make it uncomfortable... and it also creates a problem for the conservation of the frescoes." Mr Paolucci said plans to improve the ventilation and counter the threat from humidity in the Chapel would be unveiled soon.

But he also said that, ultimately, steps might have to be taken to restrict the numbers allowed in. "We may get to that point - if necessary - a so-called 'limited number' of visitors," Mr Paolucci said. "But so far we've tried to avoid this because the Sistine Chapel for those who visit the Vatican is not only a place of art but also a spiritual, religious place."'A living death'

There is an argument that it should be made as easy as possible for any pilgrim coming to Rome to see this room that has such a significant place in the Catholic world. The Sistine Chapel is also a papal conclave where the College of Cardinals meets to elect a new Pope And just a matter of weeks ago, in a newspaper article, Mr Paolucci said it would be as "unthinkable" to limit access to the Sistine Chapel as it would be to limit access to the famous shrine at Lourdes.

But the critic, Mr Citati takes a darker view, arguing that it is all about money. The Church makes a significant amount out of visitors to the Chapel and the other delights of the Vatican Museums. Everybody in the long queues in St Peter's Square is paying more than 15 euros (£12.50) for a ticket. But it is possible though to avoid the masses if you can spare close to 220 euros for a private tour. Each involves about 10 people who are allowed into the Chapel outside the standard opening hours. Mr Citati is not the first person to take issue with the number of visitors being allowed into the Chapel. Writing shortly before his recent death, the art critic Robert Hughes recalled reading of the German writer, Goethe, visiting the Chapel 200 years ago. Back then the Sistine was "a place where one could be alone, or nearly so, with the products of genius," Hughes wrote. "The very idea seems absurd, today; a fantasy. Mass tourism has turned what was a contemplative pleasure for Goethe's contemporaries into an ordeal more like a degrading rugby scrum." He said that painting was a silent art, that deserved silence from those who came to view it.

But these days the Sistine Chapel is filled with the sound of its murmuring mass of visitors. And it is hard to ignore the conversations around you. "Can you imagine someone painting this... with a brush!" an American tourist exclaimed to his companions on a recent visit. Then they discussed what Michelangelo would have been paid. And soon afterwards they were laughing out loud, thoroughly enjoying themselves but prompting an angry security man to come stalking over, glaring at them, and "shushing". It was the sort of exchange that drains the place of the spiritual intensity that Michelangelo wanted to give it.

Robert Hughes said the modern atmosphere in the Sistine represented "a kind of living death for high culture" at the hands of mass culture. And with its talk now of the possibility of eventually limiting numbers, perhaps the Vatican is beginning to feel the same way.

Commissioned by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo began work in July 1508, and the ceiling was unveiled on 1 November 1512. Michelangelo accepted the commission unwillingly at first as he considered himself to be a sculptor rather than a painter. The Sistine ceiling was the first, but not the last fresco Michelangelo undertook. The central ceiling vault depicts nine scenes from the Book of Genesis: three of the Creation, three the fall of Adam and Eve and three of the story of Noah. The Sistine Chapel was named for Pope Sixtus IV, the uncle of Pope Julius II. Michelangelo later said: "After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-size figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognise the old man I had become."

Rome tourists face €500 fine for snacking

Audrey Hepburn eating ice cream on the Spanish Steps in Roman Holiday

Rome tourists face €500 fine for snacking

By Nick Squires, Rome

2 October 2012

Eating a gelato on the Spanish Steps may be at the top of a list of things to do for many visitors to Rome, but it could land them with a €500 (£400) fine from today.

Visitors who want to emulate Audrey Hepburn in the classic film Roman Holiday will be slapped with hefty fines under a new law adopted by the city's council.

Under the law, tourists are prohibited from eating pizza, sandwiches, panini or any other snacks around many of the monuments and architectural treasures in the 'centro storico' or historic centre of the Eternal City.

They include the marble fountains of Piazza Navona, which is thronged with cafés, restaurants and street artists, as well as the stone walls which surround the Pantheon, a former Roman temple converted into a church, and Via dei Fori Imperiali, the broad approach to the Colosseum, the ancient Roman arena where gladiators once fought.

Fines will range from 25 euros up to 500 euros, in what one Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, described as a war against the sandwich.

"It is forbidden to encamp or erect makeshift shelters and stop to eat or drink in zones which have a particular historic or architectural value," reads the ordinance adopted by Rome city council.

The law is intended to "guarantee the protection of areas of merit in the historic centre." Similar bans have been adopted in Venice, where eating snacks on the street is prohibited in St Mark's Square, as well as Florence and Bologna.

"This is a way to re-educate people about how to behave in this city. We've let standards fall," said Viviana Di Capua, from an association of residents who live in the historic centre.

"At the moment people can do anything they like in this city. We need to restore respect. It's just a first step – a lot more needs to be done," she said.

She called for a crackdown on drinking alcohol in Rome's cobbled streets and piazzas, while other campaigners said they wanted to see an end to the pub crawls that have become popular with young foreign tourists, particularly Britons, Americans and Australians.

Article from The Telegraph

Marcello di Finizio

I found this photograph here on Artdaily, taken by Andrew Medichini, of 49 year old Italian businessman Marcello di Finizio, from Trieste, as he protests from the Saint Peter's Dome in Vatican City, Rome. His banner reads in Italian, 'Help!!! Enough Monti (Italian Premier Mario Monti), enough Europe, enough multinationals, you are killing all of us. Development?? This is a social butchery!!'. Here is an article about the protest.

Man Ends Protest Atop St. Peter's Dome

An Italian beach bar owner who climbed onto the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome to protest against plans to open up the country's seafront business sector to more competition has climbed down after a 24-hour protest.

Marcello Di Finizio, sometime owner of a business that rents out umbrellas and lounge chairs to sunbathers, leapt over railings near the top of the 137-metre-high dome on Tuesday afternoon (local time) before abseiling down to a ledge over a window in the cupola.

He then unfurled a hand painted sign reading: "Help! Enough with (Prime Minister Mario) Monti, Enough with Europe, Enough with Multinationals!"

After coming down today he said he would shortly hold a meeting with Tourism Minister Piero Gnudi to discuss the reason for his protest - anger at European Union rules that mean existing concessions to manage stretches of beachfront in Italy will be auctioned off from 2016.

"I really hope it's over now and we can start again with our small firms and get the economy started again," he told reporters and a small crowd of supporters.

"Something which has really struck me throughout this whole carry on is that I've asked for a meeting with the minister very politely many times and I've always run into a rubber wall," he said.

Di Finizio's protest was a microcosm of the deep-seated opposition Prime Minister Mario Monti faces as he seeks to overhaul an economy that has long been tightly controlled by special interest groups.

The auction move has been bitterly opposed by the beach clubs which control access to some of Italy's most popular beaches and which rent out the umbrellas and sun loungers favoured by many Italian beachgoers.

New rules will limit the length of the licences and put existing concessions up for auction, a change which operators say will penalise them and leave them out of pocket for the investments they have made.

They say the auctions will favour foreign multinationals over smaller local businesses.

Piazza Navona

'Our windows looked out upon the square, which circumstance is a source of infinite enjoyment to me. Directly in front, with its fantastic belfries and swelling dome, rises the church of St. Agnes; and sitting by the open window, I note the busy scene below, enjoy the cool air of morning and evening, and even feel the freshness of the fountain, as its waters leap in mimic cascades down the side of the rock.'

from Outre-Mer - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I sovrani

La Domenica del Corriere

13 May 1900

I sovrani visitano gli scavi del foro Romano nella ricorrenza del 2653° natalizio di Roma

The King and Queen visit the excavations of the Roman Forum on the occasion of Christmas 2653° Rome

Via del Corso

'There are verandas and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house - not on one storey alone, but often to one room or another on every storey - put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner.'

from Pictures from Italy - Charles Dickens

Charm

'It was dirty, but it was Rome; and to anyone who has long lived in Rome even its very dirt has a charm which the neatness of no other place ever had. All depends, of course, on what we call dirt. No one would defend the condition of some of the streets or some of the habits of the people. But the soil and stain which many call dirt I call colour, and the cleanliness of Amsterdam would ruin Rome for the artist. Thrift and exceeding cleanliness are sadly at war with the picturesque.'

from Roba di Roma - William Wetmore Story

Radiance

'The great slanting beam... was visible all the way down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust or a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the shadow. Insects were playing to and fro in the beam, high up towards the opening. There is a wonderful charm in the naturalness of all this; and one might fancy a swarm of cherubs coming down through the opening and sporting in the broad ray, to gladden the faith of worshippers on the pavement beneath; or angels bearing prayers upward, or bringing down responses to them, visible with dim brightness as they pass through the pathway of heaven's radiance, even the many hues of their wings discernible by a trusting eye; though, as they pass into the shadow, they vanish like the motes. So the sunbeam would represent those rays of divine intelligence which enable us to see wonders and to know that they are natural things.'

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Coliseum

I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering,—upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; 
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Caesar's palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. Where the Caesars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth;
But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection,
While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.
And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon
All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not, till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old,—
The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.

- Lord Byron

The Central Cloister of Museo Nazionale Romano

'Even in December it is full of flowers - canea and chrysanthemum, rose and iris, heliotrope and purple veronica. Broken statues and columns peep from among the greenery; here the marble bust of a dead Roman is crowned by a spray of tiny red roses which have not realized in this sheltered pleasaunce that winter has come; there some broken amphorae are half hidden in a clump of yuccas. In the heart of the garden where the four paths meet is a lichen-covered fountain almost smothered in waterplants, which never tires of singing to a dying cypress, the only one of all the five planted by the hand of Michelangelo himself, which still stretches its tired old limbs in the sunshine.'

from The Colour of Rome - Olave Potter

Exhilaration of Spirit

'Rome is the noisiest capital in Europe. The Italians love noise. It seems to give them an exhilaration of spirit. It is their way of expression, vitality, dynamic purpose, and the joy of life. The motorcar has given them an easy means of indulging in this form of self-expression, and they make full use of it. Their motor horns have a strident and ear-piercing timbre not possessed by any other make of horn in any other country.'

from European Journey - Philip Gibbs

Il Natale di Roma

La Domenica del Corriere

2 May 1915

Il Natale di Roma: Il Natale di Roma allo stadio Nazionale: dinanzi al palco dei Sovrani, i fanciulli delle scuole formano la 'stella d'Italia'.

The Birthday of Rome: The Birthday of Rome at the National Stadium: the stage before the Sovereign, the school children form the 'Star of Italy'.

Eternal City

'When we have left Rome in such a state as this, we are astonished by the discovery, by and by, that our heartstrings have mysteriously attached themselves to the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where we were born.'

from The Marble Faun - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Olympics

Italy has hosted three of the modern Olympic Games. In 1956 they held the Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, in 1960 the Summer Olympics in Rome, and in 2006 the Winter Olympics in Torino.

Ice Cream

'Particularly around the Pantheon, there are streets in Rome where practically everyone seems to be carrying an ice cream cone. In Rome there are serious disputes among connoisseurs about the relative merits of the slick Gelateria della Palma and the more traditional Giolitti.'

from Travels with Alice - Calvin Trillin

Campo dei Fiori

'A gayer scene is not imaginable. The sunlight filters between a forest of enormous white umbrellas on to the brilliant fruits and flowers piled up in their shade; and glitters on the silver fish still lying in the round tubs in which they were brought to the market... The women are as gay as their own wares, with their full swinging skirts bunched up on their hips, and their velvet stays, and brilliant flowered kerchiefs. There are all sorts and conditions of attire - here you see an old woman with a face as wrinkled as a walnut, wearing blue stays over a pink bodice, and a bright scarlet cloth on her head; there a girl, as beautiful as a Madonna, with a tovaglietta [headcloth] on her glossy hair, and red stays over a St. Anna green bodice.'

from The Colour of Rome - Olave Potter

Delicacy of Grandeur

'By far the most beautiful piece of ancientry in Rome is that simple and unutterable Pantheon to which I repeated my devotions yesterday afternoon. It makes you profoundly regret that you are not a pagan suckled in the creed outworn that produced it. It's the most conclusive example I have seen yet of the simple sublime. Imagine simply a vast cupola with its drum, set directly on the earth and fronted with a porch of columns and a triangular summit: the interior lighted by a hole in the apex of the cupola and the circumference furnished with a series of altars. The effect is the very delicacy of grandeur - and more worshipful to my perception than the most mysterious and aspiring Gothic.'

from a letter by Henry James to his sister in 1869