Rome 2001

Rome 2001

Don found an irresistible deal on the Internet while rummaging around in the travel section, called me downstairs to look at it, and then called John and JoAnn. In the fall we had planned a trip to Italy in the spring of 2001: Rome for a few days, then Siena, Florence (where John and JoAnn would have to leave us for lack of more vacation time), and then roaming around Tuscany and Umbria. Medical difficulties had made us cancel the whole idea, but they were in abeyance and this abbreviated version looked cheap and good. It was a week in Rome, package deal: air fare and hotel for about the same amount as the air fare alone. We said “Why not?”; John and JoAnn said “Why not?” (actually JoAnn said “See Rome for the first time with an architect and an art history major? That’s a no-brainer!”) and off we went in April.

I must say the new airplanes on US Airways’ European runs are an improvement, even if they are just as crowded together as ever. The brilliant idea of the head flaps that fold up to support you on the sides is wonderful—I used them in conjunction with my blow-up neck pillow and was quite comfortable. And the individual TV screens that give you a choice of programs help immeasurably; many of the trips we’ve taken have offered movies I couldn’t stand to watch, and since I can’t read on planes, boredom is rampant. Of course the music programs didn’t work: only after I heard the first movement of something by Vivaldi four times did I realize that it wasn’t going to go anywhere, and Bobby Darin singing “Mack the Knife” over and over didn’t appeal either. I don’t know why they were stuck like an old broken 78 record, but they were, going and coming home.

Anyway, what with the head flaps and my usual Tylenol Nighttime Allergy and Sinus pills (my standard dose along with Bonine for planes) I actually managed to sleep for about an hour and was marginally less ragged when we landed at Fiumicino.

We reunited with John and JoAnn, found a cash machine (Bancomat in Italian), retrieved our luggage, and trundled down under the roadway and back up the other side to get to the airport train station. JoAnn had deliberately brought a huge suitcase so she’d have room to stash the stuff she planned to buy, and even with its wheels it wasn’t easy pulling it around or onto the train. I was trying my new carry-on size for the first time and loved it—much easier than the plaid thing with the leash that I’d been using for about 15 years. I left most of its Christmas bow on it for identification on luggage roundabouts, and it worked fine.

At Termini we walked the interminable distance from the end of the world where the airport train deposits you and were lucky enough to find a van-size taxi out front. We’d never have fit in a smaller one. The driver whisked us past the Spanish Steps and down the fancy shopping street, over the Tiber, and to the Olympic Hotel not far from the Vatican. Miraculously, our rooms were ready—first time in memory—so we refreshed with a shower and unpacked before heading out for lunch. Our room was on the corner, reasonably spacious but with a very tight bathroom; John and JoAnn had a smaller room with a larger bath. We won—the bellhop must have felt that seniority ruled. I had wondered why he pointed them toward the room next to the elevator and then led us round and round to another room.

We set off to find the pizzeria that we had tried once after a trip to the Vatican Museums, remembering only that it was on a corner down the hill from the museum entrance, and actually found it. Had the first of many pizza lunches and decided that we might as well get the Vatican taken care of that afternoon. We’d forgotten until then that it usually closes on Sunday afternoons and therefore is, unlike all others, open on Monday.

They’ve built a whole new entrance since we were there in late 1999; very modern and fancy, but you don’t get the double winding ramp experience any more. We visited the Pinocoteca—the painting museum—remembering the things we had liked before, and then went the usual labyrinthine route, through the Raphael rooms (now finished with restoration), into the little Fra Angelico chapel, and uphill and down dale to the Sistine Chapel.

That is still mind-blowing, even at our third visit in three years. John and JoAnn, of course, had never seen it before. John was pretty much speechless; JoAnn was overwhelmed by it. They’ve left one tiny corner of the ceiling unrestored so you can see what it was like, and how anyone could see that and still object to the restoration is beyond me. The colors are so vibrant now, the contrasts so strong, and that tiny unrestored area is muddy and gloomy.

Fortunately we had read Rick Steves’ note in his guidebook that there is a door at the far end that takes you directly out to St. Peter’s. It was formerly only open to guided tour groups, but now it just stands open and the cognoscenti can just sneak right out. This saves the 20-minute walk back down the endless corridor to the museum exit plus the 20-minute walk around the walls to get back to St. Peter’s. We crept through, found ourselves in a courtyard with a view of the piazza, and went on into St. Peter’s.

By this time Don and I were fading, so I’m afraid we rushed J & J a bit, although we did spend quite a while there. They went back later to have more time. I had an advanced case of museum feet besides sleepiness, so we finally walked back to the hotel for nap time.

We tried a restaurant recommended in Rome Access that was only two blocks away, but it was full, so we ended up at a rather nondescript place a couple of doors away and had a fairly good meal, noting for the future that that little street was full of restaurants. And so, as Mr. Pepys says, to bed.

Breakfast in the hotel was a reasonable buffet: cereal, yogurt, rolls, some questionable juice (the grapefruit flavor was a lot better than the orange flavor), coffee, tea. I had learned on our previous trips that if you ask for cappuccino you get it, so I did every day. I like it much better than their gut-churning coffee (of course they think ours is pathetically weak).

On Tuesday we really began our week of seeing too much but enjoying it. Our main goal that day was the Forum, but with Castel Sant’Angelo right close to the hotel we decided to go there first. The views are still terrific, and they had finished all the digging up around it to make a finished park. We climbed up the ramp and all the stairs, visited the frescoed rooms and the Papal Treasury, eschewed the military museum exhibit, and came out on top under the archangel with his trumpet.

Then we trudged across the Tiber under the gaze of Bernini’s sculptures on the bridge and headed through all the back alleys for the Campo di Fiori, where the market was in full swing. By now it was “sugar shot” (as JoAnn calls it) time, so we sat in a Campo café, where John and JoAnn had Cokes, I had iced tea (I asked for limonata and got tea with lemon), and Don won the round by asking for cioccolato caldo. It looked and tasted like a melted chocolate bar, thick and rich, and converted at least two of us to a permanent longing for it.

Refreshed, we went through the familiar passageway to show J & J our old hotel, the Teatro de Pompeii (which has gotten way too expensive), and headed toward the Forum, passing the “Sacred Area” with the four temples and 250 cats on the way. Some midwestern ladies walked by as we were looking at it, exclaimed “Oh, they have a map!” and stopped to ask us directions to the Forum. We pointed the route out and they went happily away, leaving us wondering how in the world anyone would think of wandering around in a strange foreign city without a map. We each carried one as a matter of course, and most hotels give them out free.

Before we got to the Forum there was Trajan’s Market to be seen, so we wandered through it and enjoyed everything but the art exhibit they had installed in it. I had photocopied a page from Art Through the Ages that showed how the vanished basilica encircled the magnificent Trajan’s column, which helped us understand how the enclosure enabled people to see the ascending sculptures on the column from inside the basilica. After a little casting about we finally decided to eat lunch at the little restaurant on a balcony overlooking Trajan’s forum. The food wasn’t very good, but the view was spectacular. There are surprisingly few lunch places around there.

Finally, the Forum. I had a little better grip on it by this time and was able to enjoy it more, though it is still just about as muddled as the Agora in Athens, with layer on layer of temples and occupation. We climbed up the Palatine Hill and I enjoyed taking pictures—last time we ran out of film just as we arrived. Miraculously, the little museum in the old convent was open—a rare occurrence according to Rick Steves—so we enjoyed both the exhibits and the toilets. The pines on top of the Palatine are almost as wonderful as the ruins, so we have lots of pictures of them.

By this time we had jointly had enough of sightseeing. We descended, left the Forum with the obligatory (for JoAnn) stop at the gift shop, bought four very expensive lemon Fantas, and headed back toward the Victor Emmanuel Monument. Extreme fatigue had set in for at least three of us, so we opted for the unthinkable—a taxi to the hotel. John, on the other hand, was fresh as a daisy and headed up the hill to a games shop that he hoped would have a book he was seeking. It didn’t, but walking back with the aid of his map he found Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, and Piazza di Popolo, all quite by accident. Don and I rested. For dinner we all headed to a basement restaurant we had spotted across the street from the hotel. The food was fine, the host was charming, the ambiance was okay, but an accordion player arrived and played ad nauseam. We didn’t go back. Convenience has its limits.

On Wednesday we walked first to Piazza Navona and observed the now-fully-restored fountains, which they had been working on in November 1999. From there we went by Chiesa San Luigi dei Francesi (for the first time I realized that it was the French church in Rome—the name hadn’t sunk in before). That’s were they have “the most Caravaggio in the smallest space,” as one of our guidebooks said. It’s a tiny chapel with four or five huge paintings showing the life of St. Matthew. That’s where we first saw, three years ago, the little boxes that you put money in to turn the lights on. Ingenious.

We continued to the Pantheon and explored that. On the whole trip it was always fun to see J & J react to things that were still blowing our minds even though we’d seen them before, and the Pantheon is still on that list. Had hot chocolate (except for John) in the square—again expensive but worth it for the ambiance. Then we took them to see the little Bernini elephant with the Egyptian obelisk stuck on his back, one of my favorite things.

Next we tried something new, the Church of the Gesu. That’s the one with the fake dome. You come in and look forward and upward at what is clearly a dome, but when you go and stand under it, the illusion is visible and there is no dome at all—just some rather remarkable perspective painting. Word is they ran out of money. It’s on a little piazza that we’d seen pictures of, with matching buildings sporting curved 18th-century facades encircling. One is the police station; the others seem to be apartments. All painted pink with white trim, although one isn’t restored yet and is a bit dingy.

We saw a nice-looking outdoor restaurant in that piazza and came back to it after our next visit, to Hadrian’s columns at the Stock Exchange. They’ve cleaned up the little square since we were last there; we had navigated it on boardwalks placed above quantities of mud. There we saw a young woman, dressed in white robes, finishing up her all-white makeup; just as we were leaving she assumed her post as a statue. She was remarkable, and after we ate I wanted to go back and give her the tip she wanted to take her picture, but she’d left by then. Pooh.

Refreshed by lunch, we headed back past Navona to the Palazzo Altemps, where Anne Van Merkensteijn had sent us on our visit three years ago. It is a terrific building, a fact I had almost forgotten, and has a remarkable collection of ancient Roman statuary. The fun thing is that almost all the statues have little diagrams on the wall behind them showing what is restored and what is original. The building has a colonnaded three-story courtyard and marvelous beamed halls with remnants of the frescoes that once decorated them. It’s a great place that hardly anyone knows about, because it only opened to the public fairly recently. Our 1998 Eyewitness Guide said it was not open.

There was still much time left in the day, and we didn’t, as usual, have sense enough to quit. So we found a cab and headed to San Clemente. It is still wonderful: the mosaics in the upper church, the faded frescoes in the lower church, and the spooky corridors of the Roman house underneath it all. I actually overcame claustrophobia enough to walk through the corridors instead of taking one look and heading back up the stairs as I had before. John said he was very proud of me. Then gelati time, plus time to sit for a while.

We decided to be adventurous and take the subway back to the hotel. The guidebooks all said it was quite easy. I guess it is if you’re a sardine, or maybe we just hit rush hour. We took it at the stop near the Forum, having walked back from San Clemente, and wedged ourselves in with difficulty along with thousands of others. Lots of people got off at Termini, thank goodness, and it was possible to breathe (if you wanted to) from there till our stop. As we emerged from underground John said fervently, “Well, I guess now we can cross that off our list of things to do!”

That evening we tried the restaurant we’d wanted on our first night, Tre Pupazzi, and it was almost empty. Nice place, so we were well fed.

Needless to say, none of us had any trouble sleeping.

On Thursday we made our farthest excursion. (We had thought of Tivoli for Villa d’Este and Hadrian’s Villa, but public transportation to them is so lengthy and complicated that we gave up the idea.) Don had seen pictures of Santa Costanza’s mausoleum in both our Eyewitness Guide and in Gardiner’s Art Through the Ages, so that was one of his few demands. John and JoAnn teased that he kept adding to his demands—“The only place I really want to see is…”—but this was the first.

It is outside the walls, which entailed a bus. First we walked to the Piazza di Spagna (it was on our way) so that our first-timers could get the obligatory climb up the steps, and then we headed downhill a long way to the Piazza with the Triton fountain, where buses were supposed to be found. We waited and waited for the number we wanted. It started to rain. We put up our umbrellas and waited some more. Finally a bus came that wasn’t quite the right number but at least headed in the right direction, so we got on (we had bought tickets at a kiosk near the river) and stayed as long as it was on the right road. Then it started to turn off. Don asked a lady getting off about Santa Costanza and she volubly pointed us further down the original road, so we headed off. Blocks and blocks in the rain. We kept passing walled convents, hoping that each one would be it, but the street number we had was not encouraging. “I hope this is worth it,” Don muttered.

Finally, we made it. We paid a nominal fee at the gate and headed down a brick path to the bottom of a little slope and found the tiny domed brick building. It was built in the fourth century, very innovative with slender columns supporting the dome and an ambulatory around the space. That’s why it was in the art book. Inside, it has incredible mosaics on the arcaded ceilings of the ambulatory: vines and flowers, little farm scenes, religious iconography very lightly done, all in tiny tesserae with delicate detail.

We were entranced. “Yes, it was worth it,” said Don, and we agreed.

In the same convent complex is Santa Agnese, an early Romanesque church of about the same date. It was quiet, gloomy on this cloudy day, and quite lovely. We found a little postcard stand at the entrance to the catacombs (which we eschewed) and bought many.

We found the right bus outside and headed for Termini, where we located a sandwich place that wasn’t McDonald’s. Afterwards, we went to the Michelangelo church built into the Baths of Diocletian across from Termini and watched John being blown away by the immense domed and vaulted space.

Still time left in the day, so, ever gluttons, we went to the big museum in the Palazzo Massimi near Termini. Lots and lots and lots of Roman statues. The best part is the timed-ticket exhibit on an upper floor that has a whole Roman house with frescoes. I think they found it along the river when they were building the big walls that keep the Tiber out of the city. If I remember rightly it is supposed to be the little pied-à-terre where Caesar kept Cleopatra. Maybe, but it’s nice.

Taxi to the hotel and collapse. For dinner we walked up to the Hosteria de something or other across from the Vatican walls, where we found a small, friendly place with good food. Made “reservations” for Saturday night as well—the owner said “Sure” but didn’t even take our name. Anyway, it worked.

Friday was even more of a marathon than the rest of the week. We did pace ourselves with breaks every day, but when I write all this down I can’t quite believe we did so much.

We started out walking across the river to the Trevi Fountain, which JoAnn hadn’t yet seen, though John had bumped into it on his lone walk our first full day. From there we headed up the Quirinale to see San Carlo alla Quattra Fontana—one of the other necessities on Don’s list. We had finally read—bless Rick Steves—that churches are usually open only in the mornings, which explained our previous two futile trips there. This time, indeed, we got in. It really is a marvelous, tiny, Baroque wonder. We admired, then went a block or so down the street to San Andrea della Quirinale, with its curved front—added to the list on the spur of the moment as long as we were right there.

We went back to Quattra Fontana and I looked down the hill. “Why don’t we head for Santa Maria Maggiore?” I asked, since it was right in view. “We haven’t been there, and it’s the right direction.” So off we went, downhill and uphill. We stopped at a cafe opposite the obelisk in the piazza—a large, bleak nothingness—behind the church and had the requisite hot chocolate. Then we went into the church, which is enormous. We were enjoying the mosaics and statuary when I suddenly realized I no longer had our camera on my shoulder. Panic—it was the one the kids had given us for our 40th anniversary.

I raced back to the cafe and went in. Our young waiter was putting together a sandwich behind the counter; he looked up and nodded to me, deadpan. “Signore,” I panted, “Ho perso la mia camera.” That’s not the right word for camera—it means room, but macchina da fotografia or whatever did not spring to mind.

“Si,” he said, continuing with the sandwich. Silence. I waited. Finally, he looked up with just the trace of a twinkle. “L’ho trovato.”

“Aaahh!,” I gasped. He finished the sandwich, in no hurry, moved to the cash desk, and retrieved the camera. I thanked him profusely and offered him some money; he shook his head and finally grinned. “No, no, no. Buon giorno.”

That accomplished—the others had finished Santa Maria by now and were waiting outside—we decided to find San Pietro in Vincoli to see the Michelangelo Medici tomb. Don and I had walked almost right by its hidden location on one of our previous journeys and hadn’t realized it was there, but this time, fortified with better guidebooks, we went right to it. Much construction going on in the church, but they had kept a path clear to the statues. Moses with the horns I hadn’t seen since my first trip in the fifties. It’s still impressive, even with dust and noise and scaffolding all around.

Lunchtime. We headed toward the park area and found an outdoor cafe—a rather dubious one, but the one further down the path looked full. Had the usual disbelief that we wanted only two pizzas for four people, ate, and then started looking for Nero’s Golden House, which we knew was in the park.

It is nothing if not well concealed and ill-signposted. We wandered and wandered among the ruins of Trajan’s baths with no luck, just as Don and I had on our earlier trip, but finally we went down and around the hill and actually found the entrance. It is reservation-only, and there was a large and obnoxious tour group whose leader butted in front of me and then dealt with all kinds of individual problems and interruptions from her flock while I waited and waited along with a long protesting line behind me. Finally I got tickets timed for 5:30; it was only a little after two at the time.

Now what? JoAnn wanted to see the Colosseum, and Don and I realized that we’d never been inside it either. So we continued down the hill, waited in a long line, bought our tickets, and went in. We walked all over the open parts, up as far as we could, noting where workmen were still trying to patch it together. John said he heard a bagpipe. I expressed disbelief until we went a little farther and I heard it too. We looked out an opening and there, indeed, was a fully kilted bagpiper playing to a bemused group down on the ground toward the Forum.

Time for a rest. We crossed the road to the street that heads toward San Clemente and plopped down at a café for gelati. What we got was quite a bit more than we expected: very elegant sundaes, with whipped cream and sauces and all. None of us should have, but we all enjoyed every bite. To stall a little longer I made a sketch of some buildings and trees. But finally we really had to do something, and it was still only about three o’clock. I looked down the street. There was another obelisk. We consulted the map and discovered that it was in front of San Giovanni in Latero, another of the famous churches.

So off we trudged, passing San Clemente and several convents as well as many little businesses.

The church was fabulous. John loved the Bernini-school statues along the nave and was frustrated because the guidebooks said nothing about them. Much fuss was going on around the altar because some church dignitary was coming later to celebrate Mass, so we had to stay away from there. The cloister, which required a small donation, was perfectly beautiful. Many of the columns were twisted, with tesserae embedded in the twists, and the late-afternoon light on them was wonderful. We went back through the church and headed for the very early baptistery, which has been much restored and altered but was interesting.

By now it was finally time to head back for Nero. We trudged back down the street, crossed over the traffic-ridden main streets, and sat outside the cavern-like entrance to the site until they called our tour.

I had made a big mistake, unknowing. They had offered audio sets for the tour, something that Don and I routinely refuse because they are usually expensive and don’t tell us anything we don’t know already. But here it seems they were cheap, which I didn’t realize, and the guide depended on everyone having one. She didn’t say a word; just led us into various places and waited while everyone else listened to the audio. Very frustrating. Still, the excavation was fascinating. It was hard for us to tell what was original Nero’s house and what was part of the foundations of Trajan’s Roman baths that had been built on top of it when it was razed, but the spaces, all underground now, were amazing: huge high, narrow vaults, a maze of wide corridors with room after room leading off. The concrete octagonal room that was the climax of the tour was featured extensively in Art Through the Ages,  so at least we knew something about that.

We staggered out and convened to discuss dinner. It was still not Roman time for dinner, but we were incapable of anything else. We headed back toward Campo di Fiori—another long hike—pausing to admire the acrobatic traffic cop at Piazza Venezia and to collapse for a Coke off the square to allow JoAnn to recuperate.

We were going to try a restaurant at the end of the Campo that had been highly recommended as good and inexpensive, but it seemed to have folded its tents permanently since last we looked, so we went to the place where Don and I had had lunch on both of our previous trips. JoAnn thought it was too cold to be outside, so we sat inside and ate quite well. Then we trudged the long way back to the hotel. I sat down with my little map and a home-made scale and figured that we had walked over eight miles that day, not counting all the walking inside churches, Nero’s house, and the Colosseum. Whew. John began to refer to it as the day of the death march.

Saturday we decided to “do” Trastevere, using the Rome walks book I had borrowed from the library. We stopped by the Vatican on the way to get some stamps and mail postcards; JoAnn had read that their post office was much more efficient. (Doubtful—one of my postcards out of two never arrived at all.)

We walked along the river for a while and then searched for the entrance to the Villa Farnesina, which was well concealed on a back street. It is small for a palazzo, but has one room with great frescoes by Raphael—all gods and goddesses and some very phallic fruit. One panel has only a huge painted head filling it: the story is that Michelangelo came by one afternoon to see his friend Raphael, who was out. So Michelangelo grabbed a brush and painted the all-one-color head on the wall. Could be—the head is spectacular. Upstairs in the villa is a room with trompe l’oeil columns and views: not as good as Raphael but quite interesting.

Chocolate time, on the corner of a small piazza. Then we headed for Santa Maria in Trastevere, went in, and to our pleasure found ourselves as observers to a small wedding. We were wandering looking at the mosaics when the group came in, so we sat in a back pew and enjoyed it. It was an older couple, probably in their forties or fifties, and only family members and close friends, apparently, were present—not more than 20 people. It was a nice interlude.

We had lunch at a bar and started the Rome walks itinerary. First it led us to the sole island in the Tiber, which is a still-operating hospital that has been there for centuries. That was intriguing: an old gate, the remnants of a Roman bridge, a still-functioning Roman bridge, and a couple of churches. To our surprise, the rest of the walk was very boring. Don and I had followed the older Rome walks book that Oona had lent us on our first trip and every one we tried was good. This one was leading us down bleak, deserted back streets, mentioning things that used to be there—mostly factories. It included vacant lots and closed warehouses. I can’t imagine what the author was thinking of. John was the first to complain—I was too busy reading out loud—but we all agreed to abandon it.

We went back to the main drag, had a Coke at McDonald’s (horrors!), and headed across the Ponte Sisto, which I still like as a little pedestrian bridge that you can always find on a map. Another walk in the book included the Via Giulia, which I had explored thoroughly on our past trip, so we went the length of that and found it much more interesting. Besides, it was leading us home.

We walked back to the hotel for a rest and split up for different goals; Don and I went window shopping along the pricy Cola di Rienzi that our hotel had its side along and then up to Ottaviani, which is full of neat stores. We found that all the boutiques had a theme new to us—they were painted entirely white inside, shelves and all. I suppose that will be the new thing in the U.S. one of these days.

By dinner time it was pouring rain, so under our umbrellas we went back to the Hosteria to fulfill our dinner “reservation.” The host greeted us happily as old friends and we were promptly seated. Good food, nice place.

Sunday was our final day. John and JoAnn hadn’t yet seen the Campidoglio, so that was the main goal. We headed down Cola di Rienzi yet again, crossed the Tiber, and decided that first we’d look in on the Piazza di Popolo. To our delight, they were having some sort of big sports fair. Under a gorgeous blue sky they had laid out badminton, life-size and regular chess games, volleyball courts, a mini-soccer field, foozball, and other booths that we couldn’t identify. We were early for it, so much was still being done and it wasn’t fully in use yet, but it was fun to see.

We walked between the twin churches (Don had learned that one has an oval dome and the other a round one, so they really aren’t quite twins except in appearance.) and down the Corso, which is pedestrian-only on Sunday mornings. Tons of people out. We stopped for hot chocolate at the Napoleon Bar on Piazza Venezia and went up to the Campidoglio. Went all through both museums, going underground—which we hadn’t known you could—between them, mostly because we were seeking a toilet. The underground passage had a side trip that led to a balcony with a great view of the Forum, which was a surprise. I saw one of my favorite stupid statues again—a woman who has a head glued on to her that is entirely the wrong size. It flares out for shoulders about half-way down her neck, and is completely out of proportion. I don’t know what they were thinking of. We found a cafeteria on top of one of the museums (I can never remember which is which) with marvelous views of Rome, but it was windy as all get-out and hard to eat up there without your cup and napkin taking off. It was also chilly and clouding up.

We left there and tackled another Rome walk; this one, below the Campidoglio, promised better and led to many things we wanted to see. We got about a block, were offered umbrellas by a vendor which we declined, and half a block later the skies fell. I announced firmly that if the vendor showed again I was buying an umbrella no matter how many we had back at the hotel, and lo, he appeared. It was a very good five-euro investment—three minutes later it stopped raining, and though it continued to threaten we didn’t get wet again.

We went past the ancient Theater of Marcellus, which has, amazingly, been transformed into condos, saw a church built on the base of a partly-surviving temple, and went on down the hill.

First stop was San Giorgio, a lovely, simple Early Christian church that was nestled between some hilly residential areas. In front of it was the Arch of Janus, a four-way Roman gate that marked the site of the ancient meat market. Then we headed a block away to Santa Maria in Cosmedin, where the tour buses were busy disgorging large numbers of teenagers who wanted to see La Boca da Veritá on the porch. We skirted them, getting a good enough view from a distance, and enjoyed the beautiful church, also Early Christian. La Boca is thought to be a manhole cover from Roman times, but it is in the shape of a face and the idea is that if you put your hand in the mouth and tell a lie your hand gets bitten off.

Across the cobbled street is a pair of temples that we had seen on an earlier trip and hadn’t been able to identify. Now the guidebook said they were a Temple of Hercules, round like the Temple of Vesta, and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, which is like a miniature Maison Carrée. They are both very small, fenced off so you can’t get too near, but interesting.

We wandered on, seeing a few medieval houses, and found the famous Turtle Fountain, which Don and I had missed on previous trips. No wonder—it is in the middle of nowhere. We stopped in Campo di Fiori for hot chocolate, which felt very good on the chilly day, and headed home. To our pleasure, Tre Pupazzi (that means three puppets, supposedly for a wall carving that we never could find) was open in defiance of the guidebook information, so we ate there again.

Next day was transit time. The man at the hotel desk told us that we’d do better catching the train at Ostiense instead of Termini, so we took his word. Bad advice. Of course in his efficiency he forgot to put our names on the cab-calling list, so we waited for our cab for half-an-hour before checking and getting straightened out. The train, unfortunately, was packed with commuters. Don and I squeezed upstairs with our bags, leaving John and JoAnn to cope with JoAnn’s huge—and now full—suitcase below. We stood through several suburbs, where most of the people got off, and finally made it. Checked in, bought limoncello in the liquor store and a print we liked for Santo’s 80th birthday, and we were off home.