Cat Sanctuary

Our walk back from Trastavere to the bus stop took us also to the cat sanctuary at Torre Argentina. I am posting a few pix for family members who are, have been, or will be, feline fanciers.

SM Trastavere

Our Easter Sunday return to Trastavere was due not only to my scavenging ways but also to the fact that we thought--hoped--Vicki's missing hat had been left at the Dar Poeta restaurant the night before. And so we trudged from Porta Portese up to the restaurant again, the area no less crowded than the night before, and, voila! there was the hat sitting next to the manager's station. Thank you, honest Romans and tourists! 

Our walk had one other salutary effect: we passed by one of our favorite churches, SM Trastavere, and were able to go in and have a good look. The church dates from the 340s, just the foundation, and claims to be the oldest Marian church in Rome. There were major restorations and re-dos in the 5th, 8th, and 12th centuries; also the 18th, but who's counting? It's one of the frustrations but also one of the glories of these things, knowing that something is indeed very old, but that what you're looking at, parts of it, are not that old. The basilica design is Roman, the beautiful granite columns in SM Trastavere are possibly from the Baths of Caraculla or from a Temple of Isis (old), and the mosaics are Medieval (old enough). The Madonna della Clemenza is reckoned to be 6th-9th century, Byzantine (plenty old enough). A favorite place.

View from the piazza

Arch and half dome

King and Queen of Heaven

Deposition of Mary

Center aisle of the basilica and beautiful columns

Madonna della Clemenza

Ceiling...more pix of this church here

Porta Portese Market

Porta Portese is Rome's Sunday flea market, in Travastere, something we did a decade ago, and again in 2019, but something I wanted to do yet again, to soothe my scavenging nature. Vicki did not want to do it...properly characterizing it as the world's longest line of crap. So it is...not a flea market any more but just a bunch of overstock, hot, or otherwise dubious stuff, no more than a couple of stands of items of collectible, aesthetic, literary, or historic interest. Or any other interest. Mostly knock-off clothes and discards. A kilometer long, at least, maybe a mile. Great people-watching, sort of. We didn't buy anything. We almost never do anyway. I think I'll now move it to the "once in a lifetime" category. Or maybe the "once in a lifetime is once too many" category. BTW, this was Easter Sunday morning, the high holy day, in Rome, the capital of Christendom; and the flea market was packed. 

Table after table of stuff for 1€ or 2€; why bring clothes with
you in a suitcase when you can buy it all here cheap and look
like a native?

Sic transit, Gloria

Capitoline At Night

After dinner, we crossed the river and walked back up the Capitoline Hill, to see the Forum at night...

Easter eve, peeking in to see what the Christians
are up to

Theater of Marcellus, different view

Now overlooking the Forum

Arch of Titus; and a full moon

Us, there

Coliseum coming into view

Rome's Jewish Ghetto

We thought we'd do the Rickie Stevie guided walk of the Jewish Ghetto--a miniscule piece of Rome we'd not seen before--then watch the sunset from a bridge over the Tiber, walk a bit of Trastavere, and then walk back to the Capitoline for night views of the Forum. A few words of explanation. 1) Jews were in Rome well before the Diaspora, as any good merchants of the day would be. Their presence here explains a lot about early, and later, Christianity. They settled mostly in Trastavere, across the river. Only in the 16th century did the Popes get around to putting them in a ghetto, proscribing what they could and could not do, etc. Later centuries were kinder...until the Germans arrived. In 1943, they rounded up such Jews as they could find, about 2,000, and sent them to places like Auschwitz and Mauthausen. They did not return. What remains in Rome are a few identifiably Jewish streets and establishments, attempting to keep the culture alive. 2) It is impossible to carry a straight story line as you walk the streets of Rome. Any given block might contain something of the Republic or Empire, of the Medieval or Renaissance church, or art or architecture, of later eras, or even things of interest from our own time. The Jewish Ghetto walk is like that. So bear with me...

The day started well...the #71 bus appeared to be waiting for us at 

the stop across the street...actually, it was waiting for a demonstration

march to pass

We're approaching the 25th of April, Italy's Day of Liberation;

most of the rest of the nations involved regard May 8th as VE

Day; in Italy it's different; the American and British armies

advanced no further than Florence, and it was left to partisan 

brigades, mostly communist, like the one celebrated here, to 

finish Fascism in Italy, Mussolini's and Hitler's, especially in 

all the great industrial cities of the north

And now we're in the Jewish Ghetto; we've seen these memorial
medallions all over western and central Europe...

A nice Catholic church at the entrance, 
facing the synagogue...just a little reminder...
you can always convert...

Rome's synagogue

Every neighborhood's got its ruins

Remains of a great portal associated with the theater of Marcellus,
built in Augustus' reign

House built into the ruins, would not relinquish
its property rights...

One bit of the remains of the theater of Marcellus

One of the specialties of the area is fried
artichokes

Cucina Ebraica

Pigeon feast

Main drag

Many of the structures quite old

"I want that one!"

Interesting fountain; legend has it Bernini added the turtles in
respect of the Jews, who traveled with their houses on their backs

Very old charity donation box

Similarly old reliefs

Sunset on the Tiber

St. Peter's in the distance

Now in Trastavere, where we had a great pizza
and calzone dinner at Dar Poeta (thanks, Rebecca)