Escapades at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (March 5, 2012)

I can't help it...I cannot call these museums by their translated-to-English names.  The Italian is just so smooth, and rolling - and it sounds so comfortingly similar to Spanish to me, that I simply can't title the post "The National Archaeology Museum of Naples" - which just sounds pointy and brusque.  Do you feel that?  Well, even if you can't, cognates rule, and obviously you're brilliant (as evidenced by the fact that you're reading our blog!), so we trust that you can figure things out.

So: Naples.  Kee-Min has already described our late-night arrival in Naples, our initial impressions of the city (or at least, the area near the train station), and our first meal. But the more pressing question: Why Naples?  Almost everyone we consulted while planning our trip advised against visiting Naples - so why did we flagrantly ignore this repeated advice?  There were three reasons, really:

1. First of all, books.  In the autobiography Eat, Pray, Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert says this:

"I instantly love Naples.  Wild, raucous, noisy, dirty, balls-out Naples.  An anthill inside a rabbit warren, with all the exoticism of a Middle Eastern bazaar and a touch of New Orleans voodoo.  A tripped-out, dangerous, and cheerful nuthouse." 

I'll admit - I was intrigued.  I'm not a city girl, and there was no earthly reason I should like what is being described here.  Blame the power of the pen, but Gilbert's description made me so curious, that I couldn't imagine going to Italy and not visiting Naples.  The deal was sealed when I read John Grisham's Playing for Pizza while we were in the throes of trip planning.  The book is set in Naples, and the cast of characters are basically a rag-tag group of football-playing locals.  Throughout the story, they prove themselves to be independent, loyal, and passionate - about football, about food & drink, and about family & friends.  How could I not want to meet them?

2. Our culinary tour of Italy could hardly be complete without tasting the infamous Neopolitan pizza!

3. I wanted desperately to visit and hike Mount Vesuvius.  I guess that our Mount Ngauruhoe adventure didn't quite rid me of all mountain-climbing desires.  Crazy girl...

Our Vesuvius visit was still a day or two away, but several guidebooks had suggested preparing with a stop at the Museo Archeologico, where many of the artifacts excavated from Pompeii and Herculaneum (the two main cities blanketed in volcanic debris when Vesuvius erupted) are on display.  So, that's where we headed.

On our way, we passed the Duomo di San Gennaro, probably the most famous cathedral in Naples.  The beautiful, huge structure was incongruous, surrounded on both sides and across the street by deserted/drab/dirty storefronts.

For a better perspective on size, check out the size of the door versus the height of the people in this one:

We stopped in, briefly, to gawk at the gilt wooden ceiling, chapels, statues, and frescoes.  But our visit was cut short when we were unceremoniously ushered out by a guard.  Good to know he doesn't let tourists interfere with his lunch break!

We grabbed our own lunch, but you'll have to stop back in a day or two for The Great Pizza Showdown: Naples Edition. [Subsequent blogging on pizza is here.]  Finally, we made it to the Museo Archeologico.

This was probably the least organized and least English-friendly museum we visited.  Almost all of the placards are exclusively in Italian, with the exception of a small collection of displays for kids, which are in both Italian and English.  Nor was the museum particularly well-kept.  The displays are dusty, and the whole place looks a bit worn out.  

But even these language and cosmetic challenges didn't detract from the Herculaneum/Pompeii artifacts.  They were largely self explanatory, so language didn't prove too much of a barrier to our enjoyment and appreciation of them.  But what was most amazing was how well they were preserved - almost everything was in excellent condition, and I had trouble believing that it was all nearly 2,000 years old.  The collection included pretty much anything you could need or want to create a home - from kitchenware to lanterns to coins to jewelry, nearly all in pristine condition. 

We also spent quite some time oogling the museum's impressive collection of mosaic displays, also from Herculaneum and Pompeii.  The mosaics ranged in size from small plate decorations, to huge displays that occupied an entire wall.  In the far corner of the museum, past all the mosaic displays, we stumbled upon the "Secret Cabinet", a collection of Roman erotica from Pompeii.  The history of the room is pretty funny (thankfully, this was available in English), as it apparently caused quite a bit of controversy when it first opened.  Nowadays, the museum's policy is that only visitors over the age of 11 are permitted.  Not that anyone was checking IDs...

After watching a dozen Japanese tourists snapping photos of every exhibit in the mosaic collection, we realized that the Italian's enforcement of the "No Photography" policy is similar to the Greek's: No enforcement (We discuss Greece's policy here).  So, when we made it down to the collection of Greek and Roman sculptures on the ground floor, we finally took out our cameras.  Many of the statues in this collection once stood somewhere in Rome (the one below was in the Bath of Caracalla, for example), and were later housed at the Farnese Palace.  Now on display at the museum, they are known as the "Farnese Collection".

The Farnese Bull
[The original was probably from the 1st or 2nd century BC.  This is a replica from the 3rd century AD.]

The stories behind some of these statues are not for the faint of heart.  The Farnese Bull, for example, depicts two young men tying Queen Dirce to a raging bull, as punishment for her mistreatment of their mother.  Warm and fuzzy, right?

Stanley and I posed in this photo for some perspective - these statue were enormous

Now, the photo above looks pretty benign, right?  Well - don't underestimate our ability to cause trouble in Italian museums!  [If you recall, we inadvertently started a bit of a ruckus trying to find the Cafe at the Musei Capitolini in Rome.]  By now, it was near closing time for the museum.  The school groups had gone home, as had most of the other visitors, and we were basically alone in the statue wing of the museum.  Alone, except for a single museum attendant stationed at one end of the room.  She fiddled, fidgeted, yawned, looked exceptionally bored, and eventually wound up pacing the room while talking on her cell phone, as we wandered around and took photos.  She didn't seem to care, or even pay us one bit of attention.  

Eventually, I remembered Stanley, and whipped him out for a quick photo shoot.  My initial concept for the photo was to place Stanley at the statue's foot, to provide a very clear comparison of sizes.  So, I placed this (small, clean, paper) Stanley on the marble at his foot.  Well, that museum attendant must have had "someone touched a statue"-dar, because the next thing I knew, she was in super-motion.  She sprinted toward us, waving her arms and yelling.  Apparently, (small, clean, paper) Stanleys aren't allowed to touch the marble.  Good to know.

Clearly, she was only doing her job (very thoroughly, at that), but that pretty much sealed the deal for us - we were ready to go.  We skipped the last few rooms, collected our belongings from the Coat Check, and headed back out into the crazy world of Naples.  After all, there was pizza to be eaten!

Naples Day #0.5, a/k/a The Travelers at the Golden Arches

When one of our friends who works for a travel agency heard we were going to Naples (Napoli to the Italians), he suggested we consider staying in one of the small towns outside Naples and only venture into the city proper if there was something we wanted to see. As another guidebook put it, visitors to Naples need to keep a firm grasp on their wallets and cameras. But we decided to stay in Naples, at a hotel next to Napoli Centrale train station, purely for the convenience it offered. We figured we had enough common sense (and fast enough legs) to keep us out of trouble.

When we stepped out of Napoli Centrale and onto the streets of Naples proper, it didn’t look that different from some of the grittier parts of New York City. It reminded Holly of where I used to live in downtown Los Angeles, on Main Street just south of Gallery Row (I would have called that “up and coming”, as opposed to “gritty”). One thing that you can’t help noticing, is that Naples has a serious problem with trash, one that rivals some of the cities I’ve seen in India and Southeast Asia. Early last year, the trash problem got so bad that the Italian government had to send the army in to clean it up (I suppose at some point, accumulated trash becomes a national security issue?). Apparently that wasn’t the first time, and in 1994 the EU even declared an environmental emergency in Naples (presumably trash-related). In fact, several days later as we rode the train from Naples to Florence, you could see mounds of trash sitting out in the open, just beyond the city limits – something I’m used to seeing in the less developed parts of Asia, but was quite surprised to see in western Europe.

But back to our first night in Naples. After checking in to our hotel, we weren’t that hungry and the thought of exploring Naples right away was a little daunting, so we settled on McDonald’s at Napoli Centrale for a quick and easy dinner. Yes, that’s right. The Golden Arches in Naples, Italy. This was perhaps the most memorable McDonald’s experience we’ve had in a while (though Holly might claim that sitting down at an actual McCafe in Singapore was more memorable). It’s clear that they played up the American connection: “Miami Fries”, “Arizona Dream”, “Chicago Supreme”, etc. They even had a map of the United States on their placemats (although according to the map, Miami Fries come from Omaha—who knew!).

The United States according to McDonald's Italia.

We had an order of Miami Fries (which are just seasoned, thick steak fries), a Chicken Legend (fried chicken on a roll with lettuce and mayo), an order of McNuggets, and a Mozzarillo (a burger with mozzarella cheese).

Miami Fries, meet the Chicken Legend.

The Mozzarillo. You can make out part of the slice of
mozzarella under the lettuce, I think.

The food was marginally better than what you’d find at a McDonald’s in the US, but compared to the rest of what we’d eaten in Greece and Italy, definitely fast food. Although one thing definitely worth noting: THE MCNUGGETS ARE MADE WITH REAL CHICKEN. Yes, you read that right. In fact, see for yourself!

Ok, the detail isn't great, but hopefully you can actually see
the texture of the meat itself. Trust me - real meat, not
heavily processed (and texture-less) processed chicken.

This kind of makes you wonder why the Italians (and presumably the other Europeans) get to eat McNuggets made with real chicken meat, while Americans get McNuggets made with, well, you know.

The food aside, dinner at McDonald’s that night also gifted us with an interesting episode of people-watching; we sat at a counter against the windows that looked out on the area just in front of the train station’s main doors. During the course of our dinner, we observed a slightly skeevy middle-aged man try to solicit a young, leggy blonde who was walking past him (she ignored him and kept walking), and a fight almost break out between a drunk and a young street tough (complete side note, if they ever look to cast a Jersey Shore spin-off with an Italian cast, they should really consider casting in Naples). They were separated by sober and more cool-headed mutual friends (apparently a cultural universal – thankfully).  Naples was definitely proving itself to be a city with character! We finished our dinner without further interruption, put on our “tough NYC don’t-mess-with-us” faces, and briskly walked back to our hotel. We arrived safely, and before long were tucked into bed for a good night’s sleep. What would daylight in Naples reveal to us tomorrow?

Wrapping up Rome (March 4, 2012)

By the end of our first full day in Rome, we knew there was no way we’d be able to see everything in Rome that interested us.  There was so much to see just walking around Rome’s various neighborhoods, let alone the major museums and other landmarks.  On our third and final day in Rome, after another run through the Villa Borghese gardens, we decided to try and squeeze in two of the biggies, or at least parts of them—the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. Apparently, every other tourist in Rome was similarly inspired that day. The line to get into the Coliseum snaked back and forth several times and seemed to move at approximately the same speed as a narcoleptic tortoise; we decided it would be hare-brained to try and join the line. We settled for a photo in front of it and an agreement that when we next returned to Rome, we’d sign up for a Context Tour of the Coliseum.

See! Big old Roman building!

Thankfully, we had almost no wait to get into the Roman Forum, thanks to our Roma Passes (though it took a while to find the right entrance—the Romans could take a cue from the Greeks on helpful signage for tourists). Since we didn’t have a live tour guide, we settled on renting an audio guide for four hours, which was approximately how much time we had until lunch. We did not, however, have a proper appreciation for the sheer size of the Roman Forum, nor the fact that our tickets to the Roman Forum also included admission to the buildings on the Palatine Hill. Over the next four hours, we barely managed to complete a tour of the Roman Forum and listen to all of the marked points of interest. We decided the Palatine Hill would have to wait for another time (plus, I was getting hungry). In retrospect, we should have devoted an entire day to the Coliseum, Forum, and Palatine, but at least we know some definite stops on our next trip to Rome!

That’s the Capitoline Museum up there.
Just the day before we had looked down at the Forum from those arches.  

The Romans really have a thing for larger-than-life architecture.  

On the Palatine Hill, looking down at the Forum.

After the Forum, we wandered over to a restaurant in the Navona neighborhood of Rome, based on a guide book recommendation—the Osteria del Gallo. Along the way, Holly filled up her water bottle from one of Rome’s many drinking fountains, which offer free and clean drinking water to anyone (or thing) who’s thirsty.

Making Nalgenes happy since the 1800s.

Another form of drinking fountain in Rome.

We also walked through Piazza Navona, which is one of the more touristy plazas in Rome, with loads of artists ready and willing to draw your caricature or portrait (for a price, of course).  There, we came across another souvenir from the days when Rome ruled Egypt:

These obelisks kept reminding me of Obelix’s menhirs.

Osteria del Gallo was just a little way past Piazza Navona, a well hidden gem. Sadly, many tourists don’t know about it, and end up eating at one of the touristy restaurants in the Piazza or off one of the streets leading off from it. This was one of our top meals in Rome, for a very reasonable €50:

Caprese salad (sorry – we ate most of it before we remembered to document the meal!)

Bruschetta with smoked fish (cod, I believe?)

Mushroom ravioli in a sage and butter sauce

Chestnut gnocchi with shrimp

And, of course, a Moretti Baffo D'Oro 

(incidentally, Moretti is now owned by Heineken.
Does that still make it Italian?)

The hardest thing about cooking, if you ask me, is following the Goldilocks principle and getting the taste of a dish just right. It’s easy to go overboard and make something too sweet, too salty, too savory, etc. But getting it just right … now that’s tricky. Yet that’s what the best restaurants manage to do. Lunch at Osteria del Gallo that day was just right. The caprese salad was fresh and delicious. The fish bruschetta was a little salty, but the fish was tender and almost melted in your mouth (not quite like a good piece of fatty salmon or tuna sashimi, but close). Both of us loved our pastas (and loved our own more than each other’s, which is always a win-win for us both). The Moretti? Well, it wasn’t the best beer ever, but it was perfect for a lunchtime beverage to quench my thirst and wash the food down.

What about dessert, you might ask? Well, we already had a gelato place lined up. After our disappointing experience the day before, we had to give Roman gelato the benefit of a second try. Thanks to the Eat Rome app (can’t recommend it highly enough if you’re headed to Rome), Il Gelato II was on our radar and did not disappoint—they had about fifteen different flavors of chocolate that day. Unfortunately, I doubted my abilities to handle more than three. All of which were mmm-mmm-good.

Mmm-mmm-good.

We strolled back to our hotel and enjoyed our gelatos slowly—it was a gorgeous early spring day in Rome. On the Spanish Steps, the tourists were out in force.

Spanish Steps in the afternoon. As we discovered
when we were walking to the Vatican, they are
deserted at 7:30 a.m., except for the industrious
cleaners that pressure-wash the Steps.

But it was time for us to go. After taking care of some trip planning back in our hotel room, we departed for Roma Termini to catch our train to Naples. More on that, and our arrival in Naples, coming soon. Stay tuned!

Osteria dell'Ingegno, aka Best Dinner In Rome (March 3, Cont'd)

It was a busy Saturday for the K-N Touring Team.  We'd gone for an early morning run, a late morning Underground Rome tour, and an all-afternoon session at the Musei Capitolini - plus we'd learned all about spolia.  We were hungry.  We were also looking for a restaurant in Rome, on a Saturday night, without any reservations.


But we are nothing, if not persistent (and in possession of the awesome Eat Rome app - well worth the $2.99 price tag).  After being turned away at our first two tries, we stopped into Osteria dell'Ingegno - and were immediately shown to a table.


The place was crowded - the tables were packed in pretty tightly, and we needed to squeeze carefully between other diners to get to our table.  Every other table was full, and remained so for the rest of the evening.  We must have gotten pretty lucky to snag a table when we did!


We started off by sharing a deep fried artichoke, served with hummus and a fried potato cake.  This was our least favorite dish.  Deep-frying things usually makes them exceptionally delicious and crisp - but taking an already-pointy-and-pokey artichoke and frying it crisp is just...ouchie, at least to me.  Plus, the inner parts didn't really get fried, they just got oily and mushy.  The hummus and potato cake were good, but not extraordinary.

Don't get me wrong - the appetizer was good, but not exceptional.  However, our entrees were spectacular:

I enjoyed this scrumptious tower of root veggies (bottom) and seared tuna (top), served over pureed fresh peas and a balsamic reduction.  My mouth is watering as I look at this, two months after actually eating it.  The flavors were bright and genuine, the root veggies were al dente, and the fish was super fresh and seasoned just perfectly.  That crunchy decoration on top was an added bonus.

Risotto cakes with fresh ricotta and something green (spinach?), served with a creamy thyme-nutmeg sauce.  These little guys were smooth, creamy, and a mix of sweet-n-savory I don't usually care for - but worked splendidly here.

We enjoyed our meal with several glasses of very good wine: a prosecco with our appetizer (this was fast becoming a habit in Italy!), and a glass of white (me) or red (Kee-Min) with our entrees.


We were finding it very, very difficult - and frankly, just plain unwise - to resist dessert in Italy.  So we were an easy sell on a "twist on tiramisu", and an apple torte served with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.

The tiramisu was delicious, and although it lacked the ladyfinger base to which I'm accustomed, I had no problem polishing the whole thing off.  The apple tort was particularly scrumptious, especially with the homemade ice cream (not too sweet) and warm dipping sauce (sweet, but in a good way).  And with that, we were full and happy:

This was, by no means, our cheapest meal in Italy, costing us somewhere around 90 Euros for 4 glasses of wine, appetizer, 2 entrees, and 2 desserts.  But we had basically skipped lunch, so this was really 2 meals in one!  Plus, the food and service were excellent.


We ate quite a bit of fantastic food in Rome, but this was probably our favorite meal - by a small margin.  I should admit to the possibility that we were swayed because we were especially hungry on this particular evening.  But we aren't claiming that our data are perfect, and what I can tell you is this:  Osteria dell'Ingegno is where I'd head for dinner tonight, if I opened my eyes and found myself in Rome, right....*now*.

Musei Capitolini (March 3, Cont'd)

We'd kicked off this second day in Rome with a run and an Underground Rome tour, and it was still only lunchtime.  We were determined to make it a full day of sightseeing, so at the end of our tour, we grabbed some unremarkable gelato from Il Gelato di San Crispino (storefront near the Trevi Fountain, I believe).  This was the gelateria featured in the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" - but to be honest, there is much better gelato to be had in Rome.  We found the servers diffident, the prices high, and the gelato decent, but not amazing.  But, you never know until you try!  And with that, we headed for the Musei Capitolini.

I insisted on spending a few minutes soaking up the sun appreciating the organic nature and unity of the Piazza del Compidoglio, which was designed in the 1500s by Michelangelo.  Apparently, the buildings have been modified somewhat since then, but this look pretty much like what we saw:

[Picture from: http://en.museicapitolini.org/sede/piazza_e_palazzi]

The long building on the right was built in the Middle Ages as the Palazzo dei Conservatori (Palace of the Conservators), and Michelangelo designed the one on the left as a mirror image. Today, both are part of the Musei Capitolini.  The building straight ahead was the Palazzo Senatorio (Senatorial Palace), and today this is home to the Roman city hall.

Due to the Piazza's unusual positioning on the uneven ground at the top of a hill, the courtyard is actually a trapezoid, rather than a perfect rectangle.  As a result, the travertine design on the ground is actually egg-shaped, not oval.  In the center of the Piazza, you can see Michelangelo's bronze statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.  A closer view:

 

[Photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marco_Aurelio_Campidoglio_front_2.jpg]

Actually, this is only a replica of the original statue, which has undergone extensive preservation and is on display inside the museum, where it can be properly protected from the elements.

We took some of our own photos of the Piazza, and of us basking in the sun, but they are the one and only set of photos from our trip that got electronically misplaced.  So, you'll have to settle for these borrowed photos instead.  Thankfully, the Piazza photos are really the only ones that got misplaced, since we were required to leave our cameras in a locker before actually entering the museum anyway.

We went into the museum around 2 PM...and got lost in there until after 7.  What an enormous place!  We began in the statue courtyard, where there were statues from ancient Rome collected and displayed.  Many were complete, others were...random body parts.  Greece had prepared us for this (see the end of the this post, for example), though, and we marveled at the enormity and age of...well, of everything, before heading inside.

The first ~15 rooms of exhibits, which would normally house paintings and sculptures, had been taken over by the Lux in Arcana exhibit.  To avoid the confusion I experienced, I will start by explaining exactly what the exhibition is.  According to the website (link above), the exhibit contains "100 original and priceless documents selected [from] among the treasures preserved and cherished by the Vatican Secret Archives".  The exhibit at the Musei Capitolini is the first (and possibly only...!?!?) time these artifacts will be on display for the public.

We were unaware that this special exhibit was going on, but upon our arrival, we received flashy programs (in English) declaring "Lux in Arcana!!!"  There were more flashy posters and signage when we arrived at the entrance to the exhibit.  The first display that I saw included the proceedings from the trial of Galileo Galilei, and I was intrigued enough to pause to look at the old documents and flip through the touchscreen timeline.

I turned, and saw more exhibits, organized in the same way - a document or artifact under plexiglass, surrounded by digital screens that ran timelines and descriptions relevant to the artifact.  However, I was (honestly here) still struggling to figure out how all these pieces fit together.  "Lux in Arcana" didn't mean anything to me, and although all the artifact descriptions were available in English, I couldn't find anything that described the totality of what we were seeing.

Finally, I had to ask Kee-Min, "What the heck are we looking at here?!?"  He'd been able to figure it out, and so he clued me in - but I'll admit, I was already feeling exasperated with the whole exhibit.

But, I was determined to the entire museum, and like it.  So, I sidled up to another artifact's display - something about the invention of paper/papyrus.  I tried to use the digital screens that scrolled historical information.  They looped ~5 minutes worth of context, a timeline, and elaboration of the events surrounding the artifact described.  But they could not be controlled by the viewer, and the lengthy display time of each screen made me impatient.  They weren't moving fast enough (for me), so continuity was lost.  I quickly grew tired of waiting and moved on, the story only half finished.

Furthermore, there was absolutely no organization (that I could find). Each item had its own display, but taken together, the items were not arranged in any reasonable order: not chronologically, not by continent, and not by subject.  Unable to assign any sort of order, I freely admit that the whole thing annoyed the heck out of me, and eventually, I gave myself permission to give up on the whole Lux in Arcana thing.  Instead, I started peeking around the temporary displays to see the artwork on the walls and the statues shoved into corners.  I was much happier with this approach.

To be fair, I should note that Kee-Min did enjoy the Lux exhibit, finding the artifacts and associated snapshots of history to be fascinating.  He lingered far longer in this section of the museum.

But thankfully, the Musei Capitolini offered plenty for those of us who found the Lux exhibit exasperating.  After moving past it, I walked through room after room of art and artifacts, lingered in a hallway with more statues, and rested while absorbing the enormous room constructed to house the original bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius (originally placed in the courtyard, see above).

After a few hours, when we felt unable to read any more informational placards, we tried to find the coffee shop one floor up.  In doing so, we caused a bit of trouble, and learned several important lessons:

1. It is entirely possible that the signs for "Cafe" point in the most counter-intuitive direction, and when you take a leap of faith and try to follow them, they abandon you in the middle of the museum.
2. Just because the map shows stairs, doesn't mean that you, as a museum visitor, are allowed access to the stairs.
3. Some doors will be marked "Not an Exit. Alarm Will Sound!"  Some doors will not be marked as such - but they may still be alarmed.
4. If you inadvertently go through such a door, five middle aged Italian women (museum attendants) will move faster than any other Italians you've seen on your trip.  They will also be yelling.
5. Eventually, they will give you directions to the Cafe, rolling their eyes all the while at your American stupidity.

But it will all be worth it, when you acquire a delicious espresso and cocoa drink with whipped cream:

If you go, order it.  It's called "Capitolini something-or-other".
The details don't matter. Just order it!!

Mosaic tabletop.

Fortified, we returned to the museum for another two hours.  Mostly, we wandered through room after room of paintings, dolls, clothes, tables, you name - from Italian artists, ~ 1600 - 1800.  Kee-Min was fascinated by some of the mosaic tables on display, and even risked snapping a few photos with the camera on his phone:

Another tabletop, up close!

The displays themselves weren't that cramped, and most included some English descriptions.  But the sheer size of the building meant that there was a lot of artwork on display.  By about 7:30, we were exhausted and ready for dinner.

We headed downstairs, collected our stuff, consulted the handy Eat Rome app to search out a dinner spot, and headed out.  Stay tuned, because the next post will detail what was probably our favorite meal in Italy!!  And I promise - after a few text-heavy posts, there will be *plenty* of food photos!

Spolia

I have already blogged at length about our Underground Rome Context Tour.  But there is one thing I forgot to mention, that is just to cool to forget: Spolia.

Spolia refers to the re-use of materials from old buildings in the construction of new ones.  In Italy, this is most easily identifiable as the re-use of columns:

This marble column looks big and strong...let's just stick it in right here!

Viola!  A corner support.  This building wasn't built around the column - rather, the column was imported from some (hopefully) already disintegrating temple or building to be re-used.  Recycling, the ancient Roman way!

This was a new concept to both Kee-Min and I.  But we are excellent at pattern identification, and once our docent, Phil, described spolia and identified a few examples, we spent the rest of our trip searching for more.

Check out the columnar supports on each side of this window.

This one might even be a double-decker spolia column!

So, if you ever find yourself in Italy or Greece, keep your eyes open.  It's amazing what you can find, once you know to look!!

Underground Rome (March 3, Cont'd)

So where were we, before we got distracted by cross-country journeys, and Tumblr, and such things?  Ah, yes.  Rome.  Rome!

I believe that we left off at about 8 AM on our second full day in Rome.  Kee-Min discussed our first day here, and I described the run that started our second day here.  Post-run, we cleaned up and headed out on a hunt for breakfast...

We were now a week into the European leg of our trip, and we had to admit: Lunch was proving to be a stumbling block in our sightseeing missions.   In both Greece and Rome, a “normal” local breakfast consisted of coffee, and possibly a pastry.  While this made for a tasty start to the day, it did not provide us with sufficient fuel for a full morning of walking, museum-ing, and learning.  Furthermore, if we managed to get to lunchtime without a snack, we were so hungry that we'd then choose a heartier (and often, more lengthy) option for lunch.  While a leisurely lunch of salad/pasta/dessert/wine is sometimes a good thing, and definitely a cultural experience, it does suck two prime hours from the sightseeing day.  As most sites and museums are open ~8 AM-5 PM, we found that a lunch that lasted from 1 until 2:30 or 3:00 left us with an awkward 2 hours of “open” time that were hard to use productively and wisely.  In short, the whole afternoon was a bust, at least on the museum front.

So we devised a new strategy for double-header days – ie, days when we wanted to visit 2 museums or sites.  March 3rd was such a day.  Our plan required that we relax our “do not eat tourist food” rule and succumb to a more American style breakfast. 

A truly welcome sight, after a week of eating "fat + air" for breakfast...

This heartier meal, combined with a quick midday snack (*ahem*gelato*ahem*), was usually enough to get us until 5 or 6, when we could turn our full focus toward dinner.

Thus fortified, we headed out for the second Context Tour of our Rome visit - Underground Rome: The Hidden City.  We had toured the Vatican with a Context guide the day before (Kee-Min wrote about that experience, and Context in general, here), and we were really excited to be on another Context adventure.  We met Phil, our docent, in the Piazza San Lorenzo, outside the Church of San Lorenzo.

With both Context tours, we had a knowledgeable, engaging guide who helped us see far more than we would have alone.  But while our Vatican guide was a very serious guy, who led us through one of the most popular tourist spots in Rome, our Underground guide was a charismatic storyteller, who took us into parts of Rome that remain unexplored by 99.999% of of the people in Rome, tourists or otherwise.  This tour was unlike any other tour I've ever taken - and it was awesome. 

 So tell us about it already!!  Why "Underground"??

Ah.  So glad you asked!  Use your imaginations with me for a minute: Go back 2,000+ years, to ancient Rome.  There was a compact city center that included political, business, and residential areas in very close proximity.  A few of the richest folks may have spread out a bit, building homes on the outskirts of the city, along the (one) main road leading into Rome.

There are periods of building and expansion, until BAM!, there's a major fire.  Without a fire department and trucks, much of the city burns before the flames are brought under control. With no easy way to remove the debris, they are simply left on the ground, and new buildings are constructed right on top of the rubble.  Suddenly, the city is a little higher than it was before.

A few hundred years pass, and BAM! there's a flood.  Buildings are washed out, destroyed, or structurally compromised - and ultimately end up as another pile of rubble.  Again, rebuilding occurs.  And again, the resultant rubble raises the city just a bit more.

When Phil first described this process, I was skeptical.  Could such incremental elevation gains result in a present-day city that is meters higher than its ancient predecessor?  I wasn't quite sold on the idea, until an image flashed into my mind - an image from my childhood home in northern New Jersey.  In the unfinished basement of my parent's house (built in the 1950's), in the crawl space under the kitchen, lives a set of concrete stairs.  Those stairs are all that remains of the house that preceded ours on the land.  The house burned down, and the site was razed - save the concrete stairs, which were buried in the basement of the new construction.  If that effect were multiplied over several thousand of years, it's easy to see how an ancient city could rise meters above its original elevation!

And, just like the concrete stairs buried under my parents' house, there are remnants of the past - archeological/anthropological treasures - to be found in the bowels of the buildings of "modern day" Rome.  Bear in mind that "modern" Rome is actually still hundreds of years old.   In fact, the risk of accidentally uncovering an ancient building is so high in and around Rome that there is very little new construction (such a discovery could halt, or at least considerably delay, work).  Renovations on existing buildings are usually confined to providing structural support and facelifts.  Phil explained that it's quite common to enter a building in Rome today and see remnants of its history, from the stamps of ancient brick makers, to modern walls that have been built up and around crumbling brick walls, to windows and doors that have been filled in or cut out. 

As examples, Phil showed up copies of drawings and old photographs of the square we were standing in from 50, 100, 200, and (I think) nearly 300 years ago.  These images showed virtually the same buildings we were seeing in front of us.  The roof lines, the windows, even the awnings and balconies - all were remarkably preserved.  Of course, there was a top floor added here, or a window cut there, but this was definitely a "work with what you have" culture.

We entered the church, which was constructed in the early 12th century, and were proceeded down narrow hallways, through low doorways, and into the basement.  And that quickly, we were walking through and among the foundation and walls of the buildings that inhabited the site before the present-church, in the early hundreds AD.

Because this area would have been on the outskirts of the original city, Phil speculated (although it's impossible to prove) that the original structure on this site was the house of one of the wealthy political leaders of ancient Rome.  This (presumed) dwelling was quite large, and enough of the brickwork still remains today that we could see the floor plan. There were also remnants of a church that stood on the site, after the house but before the current church was erected.  The foundation and some parts of the first floors of the original buildings mingled with each other and with the foundation of the present-day church.  In many places, the church co-opted these pieces as as its own foundation.

Phil kept us engaged with his story of the politician who (may have) lived here, and he kept us on our toes with an abundance of pop-quizzes, testing our powers of observation and our skills as budding anthropologists.  He wove in history lessons on early Rome, from slavery, to politics, to power struggles and progression.  He pointed out unusual structural elements, asked us to guess whether they were from the house or the church, and to speculate about their purpose.  All of this proved educational and fantastically cool - I do wish we had some photos to share, but it was pretty dark, and the intimate nature of the tour discouraged us from photography.

When there was nothing left to explore under the church, we walked a few blocks to a second church, where we saw similar remains.  Basilicas in Rome are a dime a dozen - I wonder how many have these treasures hidden in their basements??

Our tour concluded with a visit to a building (whose name we can't remember) that contained the ruins of an ancient Roman apartment building, or insula.  This site had been renovated and prepared for large-scale public viewing, and was designed so that visitors could look down on the structures from walkways suspended above.  We could see spaces for shops on the ground level, and the stairs that led to the apartments on the upper floors.  With the exception of a single freshwater fount outside, and the single shared latrine on each floor, the structure didn't look that different from a modern day apartment building.  Again, Phil wove stories about the inhabitants, their work, and their lives.

We - and the rest of our group - were impressed by how technologically advanced this ancient society was.  I guess this is a common reaction at the end of the tour, because Phil responded with a final, closing challenge.  He pointed out that, despite the impressive buildings, waste management, and city planning in ancient Rome, this was a society where the upper class held huge numbers of slaves under incredibly oppressive conditions.  In comparison, there were contemporary societies with less impressive building and engineer feats, but a significantly more progressive view of human rights.

His challenge question to us, then: How, exactly, do/should we define an "advanced" society??

The fact that this question stuck with me, nearly 2 months after the tour, is all the more to Phil's credit.  His skill as a docent and storyteller are what made this tour so great.  He knew his facts - the buildings, architecture, history, etc.  But he also created stories (and was clear that they were historical fiction) that made the tour both entertaining, and memorable.

So, if you prefer a more intimate, "brainier" tour, we strongly suggest that you splurge on a Context Tour for your next overseas trip.  The price tag is a bit higher than some other tours, but we found our Context experiences to be among the most educational, and memorable, of our entire trip. 

*We are not being paid for this endorsement!

Back in the saddle!

So, you've probably wandered over here from Tumblr, huh?  Or maybe the Facebook link? 

Right. Well, either way (or neither way), you're still welcome to stay.  If you want to know where everyone else came from, you can go here to see the close-out of our cross-country Tumblring.

Being the awesome-amazing planner that I am, I have orchestrated to have a *new!!* blog post up here waiting for you, when you clicked over.  At the moment, it's not a super-exciting travel post.  But it may be a prelude to a super-exciting travel post.  In fact, I am quite certain that it is!

For now, I just want to assure you all that we are back on the European-Adventure-Blogging-Caper.  We have some half written posts, some dining notes, and plenty of photos.  But they all need to streamlined, timelined, organized, finished, polished, and posted. This is where I (Holly) come in.

So, like any good worker/procrastinator, I have taken meticulous care to prepare my workspace:

 

Computer, coffee, water, sweatshirt, and tennis ball for foot rolling - I should have no excuses for non-productivity now.  Except...oooh!  Something shiny!  Trails outside!  Bike to ride!  Job to find!  Facebook!

*ahem*

Focus.  Right, focus.

So stay tuned.  Some of the romance may be gone, since we're now back in the US - but I hope that the writing and photos are still worthwhile.  In case you want a quick review, Kee-Min has already written about our first day in Rome, and I posted about kicking off our second day with a run at the Villa Borghese.  We'll be blogging forward from there - so come back soon for more Roman goodness.   

[Sorry, that looks too much like "Roman goddess".  None of those here.  Gonna have to try a different Google search for that one.  But thanks for stopping by!]