We are 17 days away from our next attempt at international travel. While the risk of a major trip to Egypt and Jordan was not worth taking, a rugby weekend in Rome looks far more manageable. And, crucially, far easier and less expensive to cancel at the last minute if we must.
Italy is always an uneasy holiday venue for the Bencards. For me, it is a spiritual home where I feel more alive. It is rich with memories of childhood and exquisite family holidays, brimming with the art and food I like best. It is the only place in the world I have any chance of comprehending and making myself understood in another language. Though my husband is not quite the Italophobe I jokingly paint him, the country’s romantic appeal is mostly lost upon him. If left to make his own choice he would generally prefer to be anywhere else north of the Alps. His tomato allergy doesn’t help. And, crucially, for a man who can get by in four languages and, before meeting me, never really vacationed in a place where he couldn’t chat with the locals, not understanding what’s going on around him bothers him profoundly.
Experience has taught us that a bit of travel planning is essential for marital harmony. If we each set out our priorities before a trip, and are honest about what we don’t want to do, life is more comfortable. I’ve also learned that my husband is far more likely to be captivated by the odd or quirky than anyone’s traditional Top 10 list. And so, to help with our preparations, here’s the first of two round-ups of Roman sightseeing possibilities. Below, my choice of the 10 best things to see that are off the usual tourist track. I’ve visited them all, but my husband has not. Next time, I’ll offer my wish list of things I still haven’t managed to see but want to explore.
1. THE OTHER THREE PAPAL BASILICAS
Everyone knows about St. Peter’s, but there are actually four papal basilicas in Rome. A papal basilica is differentiated by a holy door only opened in Jubilee years, a baldachin (decorative canopy) over the high altar and a restriction against anyone but the pope celebrating mass at that canopied altar. The three basilicas that most people miss are St. Giovanni in Laterano, St. Paolo Fuori le Mura and St. Maria Maggiore. Though all were “improved” by the same counter-reformation trends that made Rome’s churches a festival of the Baroque, the main fabric of these three is much older. All have the original footprint of the vast rectangular Roman civic buildings early Christians adopted as their first major churches, and a wealth of early Christian mosaics. They are unlike almost all the other churches in Rome and feel profoundly ancient. They aren’t close to each other, however, so seeing more than one of them in a trip would require dedication. If I had to choose one I’d opt for Santa Maria Maggiore, which has the most early Christian stuff plus a collection of impressive tombs. Though if you want really quirky, go to St. John Lateran and then pop across the street to the Scala Sancta. This marble staircase is supposedly the one Christ ascended for his appearance before Pilate. St. Helena brought it back to Rome. It now has a wooden staircase sheathing its precious original substance and pilgrims ascend on their knees, praying at each step. I am glad I did this when I was 11 as I can’t imagine my knees holding out for the whole climb these days.
2. SAN CLEMENTE
This church is a variation on the theme above. It is also an early-Christian, basilica-shaped building with fantastic early mosaics. It’s a lot easier to get to than the three above, being just a gentle stroll from the Colosseum. But what really differentiates it is what lies below. You can climb into the basement where you’ll see the foundations of the first church, which dates to the late 4th century. Then you get to scramble down another level, and you find yourself in the excavated remains of a Roman street with the foundations of an apartment block and a temple of Mithras, with intact altar surrounded by stone benches for the celebrants. (See photo above). There’s no better place in Rome to appreciate the city’s layers of history and probably no better-preserved Mithraeum. (London’s version, despite its curators’ high-tech attempts to bring it to life, looks sadly underwhelming in comparison to this one.)
3. OSTIA ANTICA
Pompeii is world-famous and the reason most tourists make the effort to get to Naples. Few realise there’s an ancient Roman cityscape almost as well-preserved that is easily accessible by a suburban train from the capital city. Ostia was the port of ancient Rome. Throughout imperial times this was a bustling, affluent and cosmopolitan town of up to 100,000 people. With political instability in the 5th century came a lack of engineering will to keep the waterways open. The port silted up, people moved away and nature reclaimed the abandoned site. These days you can walk down empty city streets where many buildings have preserved ground floors. There are several bath complexes with impressive mosaic floors in situ, and lots of architectural detail to stumble upon in shops and villas. At the town’s centre is an impressive theatre and a marketplace surrounded by offices of all the traders who were once based here, their businesses advertised in mosaic in front of their thresholds. The best part … at least when I visited … is that there’s hardly anyone here. For at least a third of my visit I was wandering through ruins entirely alone, creating the sense I was discovering the place for the first time. It’s magical.
4. THE CAPUCHIN MUSEUM AND CRYPT
The most macabre, bizarre sight in Rome and not to be missed if there’s a shred of Goth in your soul. When the capuchin friars moved in to their new church of St. Maria Della Concezione dei Cappucini in 1631, they brought 300 cartloads of remains of their deceased brothers through history with them. And this being the height of the Baroque era, they decided to not just bury them, but use their skeletons as building materials for a wildly ornate decorative scheme in the basement. Femurs, tibias, skulls, vertebrae and the like were separated like piles of Lego, coming back together as columns, arabesques, flowers, domes, circles, etc. And just so you don’t forget what you’re actually looking at, some of the brothers’ skeletons remain complete, dressed in moth-eaten robes, glaring down at you through empty eye sockets to remind you that the glory of the world is fleeting.
5. THE MUSEUMS ON THE PINCIAN HILL
For a less gruesome take on the Baroque, head to the Galleria Borghese. This is one of the world’s great small museums: the collection is small enough to get round without feeling overwhelmed, but it’s jammed with masterpieces. It’s best known for having Bernini’s most famous sculptures and an impressive group of Caravaggios. It’s all housed in an eye-wateringly opulent palace that would be worth the trip even without the art. A short walk away is the National Etruscan Museum at the Villa Giulia. This is another aristocratic villa once built as a suburban retreat at the edge of Rome, now quite central. And like the Borghese, it’s worth visiting just to nose around the impressive building. The Etruscans are a bonus. Rulers of central Italy before the Romans turned up and muscled in on their territory, the Etruscans influenced the Romans but are distinctly a people apart, with art that’s more reminiscent of ancient Crete or Egypt. This is a fascinating repository of beautiful things from a mysterious and little-known culture.
6. TRAJAN’S MARKET
Almost all visitors to Rome will have seen this amphitheatre-shaped complex of ancient commercial buildings from the modern road that cuts through the Imperial Fora. Few would have gone in. This is essentially the world’s first multi-story shopping mall, with a design so practical it’s still used by urban planners today. (Though they may be unaware of the source.) Though heavily skewed towards shopping, the market held a library, concert halls, offices and spaces to hang out with your friends. The world’s foremost expert on the place happens to be a professor I studied with at Northwestern, Jim Packer, so I’ve felt a special bond since he introduced me to it. Like Ostia, it’s a place you can get up close and personal with the Roman world without lots of tourists bothering you.
7. TIVOLI
Trajan’s Market is vast and imposing, but it’s insignificant compared to the villa his successor Hadrian built at Tivoli. Anticipating Disney’s International Showcase at Epcot by almost 2,000 years, Hadrian made his holiday retreat from the capital a city-sized sprawl of architecture collected from around the Empire. There’s Greece here, Egypt there, a nod to the Near East over that bridge. It’s a glorious place to wander around, but it presents you with a major challenge. It takes most of the day to see it properly, and it’s just one of three notable attractions in this town 40 minutes northeast of central Rome. If you prefer gardens, or fancy yourself a hydraulic engineer, you’ll head for the Villa d’Este, where owners from the Renaissance through the Baroque shaped the steep inclines below the house into some of the most outrageously opulent water gardens ever seen. There’s also the Villa Gregoriana, a park full of managed, romantic wildernesses created around the ruins of yet another rich family’s country retreat. (I’ve never found time for that one.)
8. PALAZZO DORIA PAMPHILJ
Most tourists wandering down the Corso, Rome’s main commercial street, walk by the rather plain gateway of this palace without realising it’s a tourist attraction, much less one of the most lavish aristocratic palaces in Italy filled with one of the world’s most valuable private art collections. To tell the truth, I find the interiors a bit gloomy, but the sense of discovering a hidden treasure is better than the decor. I also love the way it’s occupied by a modern family still involved in its maintenance and management. The current owner, Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj, is a long way from your average Italian aristocrat. He travelled the world and ran a restaurant in Brazil before inheriting the house. He’s a gay rights activist who, with his partner and their adopted children, has been instrumental in advancing changes in Italian law and perception. And as the son of an Englishman … his Maidenhead-born father married into the family and changed his surname as the palace and title went down the female line … he takes an English aristocrat’s approach to managing the estate. He narrates the audio guide, rooms are available for private hire (a former employer of mine used to use the place for customer events) and upstairs apartments are let out at a peppercorn rent to artists and writers. Other space is given over to the centre that supports positive relations between Anglicanism and the Roman Catholic Church.
9. TRASTEVERE
This eclectic neighbourhood sits behind the Vatican and across the river from most major tourist sites, so has traditionally gotten little tourist footfall. (Though this has changed in recent years.) The winding streets are a delightful hotch-potch of architectural remnants, with Medieval walls and Roman columns often turning up in the facades of more modern buildings. There are loads of interesting shops and restaurants that all feel profoundly local. It’s a great place for a gentle wander.
10. VILLA FARNESINA
Aside from eclectic wandering, this is the main reason to venture into Trastevere. Yup, it’s another lavish villa built by a famous Roman family with papal associations. And while the whole thing is very nice, those in the know seek it out for just one thing: a spectacular ceiling. Everyone flocks to the Sistine Chapel; I’ll take Raphael’s loggia here any time. Originally open-sided and perched above the Tiber, the loggia served as a summer banqueting pavilion for the outrageously wealthy Chigi family. Legend says they served dinners on gold plates and once empty threw them into the Tiber below to show off their limitless resources. But the family money came from canny banking and they were no fools; they strung nets below the loggia to capture the whole dinner service for washing and re-use. Obviously, a family that fond of display was going to invest in some serious interior design. Enter Raphael, also busy at the nearby Vatican for the Popes. Here, unleashed from religious restrictions, he created a wonderland of gods and goddesses in the pursuit of love. The colours are vibrant, the perspectives bewitching, the action non-stop and some of it lascivious in the extreme. It is one of the most beautiful rooms on the planet. (The Farnese, whose name brands the palace now, didn’t buy it until it was almost 60 years old. They are more directly related to another magnificent fresco cycle, which will show up on my next list.)
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