Aside from the millions of humans that live in Rome, there must be just as many statues. From a nameless angel perched above the high altar of a church to glowering gods of the sea, wrapped in octopi, hunched around fountains—Rome is chock-full of marble citizens.
This guy could be from Brooklyn if it weren't for the collar.
It is one of my favorite aspects of the architecture here but far from the last. The dilapidated streets of the old Jewish Ghetto, for example, are equally beautiful. In a sentimental way they almost conjure the sort of Romantic-era notions about ruin.
“The ideas ruins evoke in me are grand. Everything comes to nothing, everything perishes, everything passes, only the world remains, only time endures.”
-Diderot
(More on ruins and romanticism here)
Aside from any sort of existential appreciation these buildings inspire though, there is also the transformation they’ve undergone to consider. As part of orientation for my IES Rome program we had an aperitivo at a pottery painting studio in a 16th century building known as Palazzo Delfino, in the Ghetto. Palazzo Delfino was supposedly the one-time home of St. Ignatius and his companions in the mid-16th century. In the years following the building was rumored to be haunted.
Centuries later, Lori-Ann Touchette, an American academic, and her partner, artist Paolo Porelli founded their ceramics studio there and restored the space as much as they could to its original parameters. One day, not long after their opening, an old man came to the door. They let him in and he told them how he and his family had lived in one of the small backrooms for four months during the Second World War, with the walls bricked up and people passing them down food and water.
The repurposing of old buildings—from 16th century palazzo to modern day pottery studio—is a phenomenon that I’ve seen around the city a number of times now. The Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary is another amazing example of it. The sanctuary is situated in the ruins of four Roman temples and Pompey’s Theatre—allegedly where Julius Caesar was assassinated in the year 44 BC. The site was later built over and was not revealed again until the 1920s.
From that point onward, stray cats began to inhabit the site, fed by a number of women in the neighborhood. An official sanctuary for them was not founded until 1994 however. Now over 90 cats call the ruins their home. There is something wonderful about seeing the cats among the ruins. These buildings, which hadn’t been continuously inhabited for century after century after century are now once again filled with life—albeit the feline kind.
(More info on the cat sanctuary here)
Just like the pottery studio, the extent of the ruin’s narrative is not clear from first glance. Of course it looks old—ancient in the case of the ruins—but not all of the history is apparent at first glance. The same can be said of some of the churches here. Despite somewhat simple facades, many seemingly modest churches hold masterworks.
This church had a simple, stone facade but the inside was covered in marble and gold.
Finding out what is under the surface of these buildings is something I’ve loved doing in these first two weeks here in Rome—that and knowing that there is much that I’ve yet to discover. Arrivederci!