Annie Lux's blog: The Surprise(s) of Rome

When I used to do road trips across the US, I always said that planning was half the fun. Getting out the maps, checking the routes, researching what there is to see and do along the way. Since I’ve been traveling with Paul the last few years, though, it often happens that I’m busy with something right before the trip and

don’t have time to read up on where I’m going. So more than once, I’ve gotten off a plane without much idea of what I’d find. (Hmm, Geneva: birthplace of Calvinism and fondue! What else?)

As you can imagine, trying to plan a trip of this length while also planning (and having!) a wedding didn’t leave much time for extensive research on any one place. Rome, for instance. Now, everyone knows--and of course I did--about the Vatican and St. Peter’s and the Trevi Fountain, etc. But beyond that, well, not so much.

If I had, some of the "surprises" might not have been so much of a surprise: oh! Raphael is buried in the Pantheon. Who knew? (Well, lots of people, but not me!) Luckily, Paul had in mind some historic churches to visit (my atheist husband is even more of a church fan than I am), but even he was surprised by some of the things we found along the way:

Tombs of saints! I don’t know why I’d be surprised to find the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena, one of the patrons of Rome, buried in a Roman church. I mean, this is Rome, of course there will be saints and popes buried here! Maybe because so many early saints are apocryphal, and even I (who once wrote a play called Lives of Saints) forget which ones were real and which were stories of one sort or another. Catherine of Siena was real (she was a nun and mystic who served the poor of Rome) and not terribly early (1300s) by Roman standards. And there is her tomb, right under the altar at Santa Maria sopra Minerva church. Her head, however, lies elsewhere ("stolen" by her followers and returned to her hometown, Siena).

Apparently that head/body thing is not so unusual. A day or two earlier, we’d been at the church of St. Agnes (Sant’Agnese in Agone), which houses the head (which at this point is a skull--lucky since it is displayed in a reliquary for all to see—of the young virgin and martyr but not her body (which is at another church in Rome bearing her name). (And yes, that's it in the photo.) This church has the added distinction of being built on the very spot of the young (age 12 or 13) saint’s martyrdom. One could be forgiven for confusing Agnes with one of the apocryphal virgin/martyrs of the early church (300 AD), since the stories around her death--if not the reports of her death--have been greatly exaggerated. Like others of her ilk, Agnes was a young Christian virgin who refused the marriage proposal of a "pagan" bigwig and was condemned to death. (One assumes that the death sentence was technically for being a Christian, not for refusing a marriage proposal, a nice technicality for spurned pagan bigwigs.) According to the legends, she was made to walk naked through the town (in some versions of the story she is dragged to a brothel since it was illegal to execute virgins). Miraculously, her hair suddenly grew and grew to cover her nakedness. She was then burned at the stake, but the flames refused to burn her. So, like other saints whose bodies have survived traditional execution methods (see St. Margaret, St. Catherine of Alexandria, etc.), she was beheaded. (There’s also a story about lions in there somewhere.) But Agnes herself, legends notwithstanding, seems to have been a real person.

Tombs of artists! In addition to Raphael’s grave in the Pantheon, we happened upon the tomb of the sculptor Bernini (whose glorious statues, David and Apollo and Daphne we’d seen in the Galleria Borghese) in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major; that is, the biggest church in Rome dedicated to the Virgin Mary), and that of the early Italian Renaissance painter Fra Angelico at Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Unexpected works of great artists! Also in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, there’s a statue (Christ the Redeemer) by Michelangelo just standing there (so to speak) in the church. As tourists, you can’t get anywhere near the Pietà in St. Peter’s (not since the incident in the 1970s when some nut came at the statue with a hammer). And in the Piazza Navona, where St. Agnes is (at least, her head), there is a delightful statue by Bernini.

Famous relics of Christianity! What is that in that tiny chapel down those stairs in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore? Why, it’s the remnants of the Holy Crib, the manger of Bethlehem! Well, gosh. And just down the street, at St. John Lateran, you’ll find the actual steps from the Jerusalem home of Pontius Pilate, which supposedly Jesus walked up several times of the day of his Passion, and which are said to be stained with his blood. They’re covered with wood now, so there’s no seeing the blood stains. Pilgrims climb these stairs on their knees.

A note about the authenticity of relics seems in order. Throughout the Middle Ages there were relic salesmen traveling around Europe hawking the bones of some saint or another, or the liquid that oozed from the tomb of some other saint, or even pieces of the "true" cross. How many of these were hucksters? Right. At least one of the pieces of wood in the silver and crystal reliquary in Santa Maria Maggiore has been proved to be not-at-all authentic (it came from the backing of a painting from the 1500s). Even the guidebook sold at the church admits that the provenance of the other pieces of wood can't be accurately traced. This does not in any way stop the faithful from venerating and praying before the relic. The Pontius Pilate steps (Scala Sancta) at St. John Lateran might be a different case. It seems that St. Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, took a trip to Jerusalem in the early 300s and had the staircase brought back to Rome. I mean, it's possible that in that shorter period of time (only a few hundred years!) people would know where the Roman Prefect would have lived. Why not? I do remember, though, my summer as playwright-in-residence at an artist colony in Woodstock, New York. Tourists down in town were always asking where the famous 1969 concert was held, and locals would point at some random field and say, "oh, it was right over there." (It was in fact held 14 miles away from the town of Woodstock.) St. Helena, it must also be noted, had a real "thing" for relics.

Hidden churches and pagan altars! One of the most interesting places we visited was the Church of St. Clemente--not far from St. John Lateran and quite near the Colosseum. By anyone’s standard, the present church, built in the 1100s, is pretty old. But beneath this church is an earlier church, built in the 4^th century, not long after the emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of Rome. Though the word "dank" springs to mind when walking through this underground church (there are plenty of springs under here), it’s a fascinating sight. There is a reasonably intact fresco from the 4^th century here. You’re not supposed to take photographs but Paul snuck (sneaked?) the photo here. But that’s not all! Underneath the 4^th century church is a 1^st century private home, which includes, among other things, a Mithraic altar. (Mithraism was one of the old Roman religions.) How cool is that?

This place made me wonder what, if anything, might remain of the temple of Minerva under the Catholic church built on top of it. Yep, that’ why they call it Santa Maria sopra Minerva (sopra=on top of). Take that, ancient Classical goddess! Ouch! Having looked it up, it seems that church was built over the foundations of the temple (which, it turns out, may have actually been a temple of the Egyptian goddess Isis, not Minerva at all). Well, that makes sense from the Catholic point of view: after all, one of the ways they spread their religion throughout Europe so quickly was by appropriating pagan imagery and deities and putting a layer of Christianity on top.

Back to St. Clemente. This church is, as I mentioned earlier, situated near the Colosseum in what is (obviously) a very old part of Rome. As we walked down the street between the church and that ancient edifice, we couldn't help but be aware that there was very likely the remnants of at least one older civilization under our feet.

Which brings me to the first of the "little" surprises, the ones that wouldn’t necessarily be mentioned in a guidebook. Again and again, while walking from one church/restaurant/piazza to another, we’d come upon yet another archaeological site in one state of excavation or another. Or we’d notice what is clearly a very old structure either built around or even incorporated into a more modern building. More little things: the artworks that adorn so many random corner buildings. Gas stations located right on the sidewalk of a busy street.

I have to admit it: I didn’t fall in love with Rome on first sight. The apartment we rented was wonderfully comfortable and spacious, but the neighborhood, Vatican walls notwithstanding, didn’t inspire me. Even the charming stairway that linked the Viale Vaticano with the rest of the neighborhood didn’t do it, since the rest of the neighborhood wasn’t terribly interesting and didn’t even have good grocery shopping. It didn’t feel like what I expected Rome to feel like. And for the first few days, we went to the obligatory tourist attractions (and they really are obligatory for good reason) and, of course, they are full of tourists. Rome crept up on me slowly, when there was time later in the week to walk along the Tiber, to hang out in the Trastevere area (which seems to me--and I’m sure I’m not the first to think so--to be the Greenwich Village of Rome), to return for a third time to the gelato place a few blocks below the Spanish Steps. I felt like I was just getting the hang of la dolce vita when it was time to go. Ah well: we did each throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, which is said to ensure a return to Rome. And, after all, the next stop is Tangier!