Beware the Ides of March

Today is the Ides of March, the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated on the floor of the Senate Hall.  The location is believed to be in what are now the ruins of Largo Argentina, fondly known as the cat sanctuary for all the strays that live there.  I happened to be walking by and saw a crowd of people gathered and so I thought I would see what was going on.  A bunch of actors dressed up as Roman Senators, noblewomen, and Centurions were gathered in the area waiting to begin a reenactment of Caesar's death. 

Sometimes you are just in the right place at the right time.  This might be my favorite picture of my entire time in Rome.

Pope Watch 2013 part 2

Well, that was quick.  Not long after I posted my last blog I heard bells ringing outside my apartment (more than usual), and sure enough, a quick check of the internet revealed that there had been white smoke. 

I made it to the piazza in plenty of time, and found a pretty good spot to stand, although I was outside of the piazza proper.  About a half hour after I got there Francesco I, as the Italians call him, came out and made his address.  I'm glad I rushed over and witnessed this, but to be honest, it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be.  Perhaps because it was night, cold, and rainy, and that dampened (ha! puns!) the mood a bit.  Also, because my main priority of spotting celebrity newscasters was a complete failure.  :(

Running with others along Via della Conciliazione towards the church

 

 My first spot, not so great

 Second spot, with much more room

Papa Francesco's first address to the crowd

 I have to say, for me it was more exciting to see every single window of the facade lit up.  (The facade is always illuminated at night, but only the exterior.)  Also, the appearance of a new pope is the only time the central balcony is used, and so from an architectural perspective I was happy to see this.  I also loved all the little cardinals lined up in the flanking windows.

The view in front of me

 The view behind me.  Put down your phones people!  Experience things in life, not through a lens!

 
My final attempt to get close to the newscasters.  Fail.  I later heard Anderson Cooper was near the obelisk.  Ugh.

Pope Watch 2013

Yesterday conclave officially started, with one vote in the evening.  Since nobody expected a new pope to be elected in just one vote I didn't bother making my way over to St. Peter's.  But this morning I met up with Jasmine, Nick, and Ben to wait for some smoke.

Apparently there are four votes a day, and black smoke (meaning no pope yet) will be released after two negative votes, at noon and 7pm daily.  White smoke (meaning pope!) can be released at any time.  This makes things a bit tricky, as I don't live near the Vatican, but I plan on returning tomorrow and hanging out for a while.  Hopefully he's not elected tonight!

Even if I don't see the white smoke itself, they say that as soon as it's released it takes about 45 minutes for the new pope to emerge and give his first blessing from the façade of the church.  Depending on where I am in the city, I may try to run over to see things.  Also, all the church bells in the city are supposed to ring, so that will be fun to hear.

I'll continue to keep you posted!

The piazza was crowded, but not as much as I expected.  Probably because it's still early in the voting, and also the rain.

Black smoke from the Sistine Chapel

 Also available for viewing on the big screen

With Nick, Jasmine, and Ben

I want to catch a glimpse of some newscasters, but I think this is as close as I can get :(

New Office at the Hertziana

Back in April I switched offices at the Hertziana.  The construction on the various palazzi that make up the institute is finally coming to an end, and with that there has been a lot of reshuffling of books, archival photographs, and people.  It's a bit of a mess, basically.

Although my tenure at the Hertz is almost at an end (next year I won't have my own office and will have to use the general reading room with all the other plebes), I've loved having this new office for the time being.  There is a tiny balcony, so much natural light, and fantastic views.

Jasmine, the other Kress fellow

Reproductions of the underdrawings of the original frescoes in the room (that have now been detached and sold to a museum in Berlin)

My desk

View towards the center of the city

Just across the street is Valentino's atelier, and our office has a nice little view to the inside

Though sadly I've yet to see the man himself.  Or his pugs.  Apparently he has like 6 of them.

Shelbi Comes to Rome

The circumstances of Shelbi's first visit to Italy were sub-ideal at best, but after the health scares were over I was able to take her around town and show her all of the highlights.  Of course we also managed to sneak in some shopping, gelato, and wine (ok, maybe more of these than the sightseeing...).  I've wanted Shelbi to come to Rome since I moved here so I could show her why I love this city so much, and why I study what I do.  Our short time together was so precious, and when we weren't at the Doctor's office, the grocery store, or the pharmacy, we had an amazing time and an incredibly special week together.

With Pinocchio while out and about after dinner with Tom

In front of St Peter's

Colosseo

 

Snow in Rome

At the beginning of February there were reports of snow showers in Rome.  Although I'm told that snow is extremely rare this far south on the peninsula, I've experienced it every winter since I've been here.  In February 2010 it snowed lightly the day of our Fulbright mid-year meeting, but we were inside all day and unfortunately missed out on all the excitement.  The next winter, Katie and I rushed to the center of town when it started sprinkling so that we could see snowflakes fall through the oculus of the Pantheon.  Predictions for this storm, however, called for several inches, something that hasn't happened since 1986.  Hailing (ha! weather puns!) from the northwest, and growing up with hyperbolic weather reports about pending school closures and blizzards (only to then wake up with nothing but a soggy wet lawn), I've become a bit skeptical about snow predictions, and so I took a let's-wait-and-see approach.

That Saturday morning, at about 5:00am, I heard my roommates knocking on my bedroom door, excitedly telling me to look out the window.  It had snowed several inches, and it was still coming down.  They were going to go out exploring, and asked if I wanted to come.  I love me some snow, but I love me some sleep more, so I said I would join them later.

We had standing reservations for a tour that morning of the catacombs beneath St Peter's, and although it was most likely canceled we had no way of knowing, and so we planned on meeting at the Vatican at 9am.  I left the apartment at 7:30am, giving myself plenty of time to walk to St Peter's and take lots of pictures along the way.  Buses, trams, taxis-- nothing was running-- and needless to say, Rome came to a grinding halt, completely unaware of how to handle such a situation.  There was at least a foot and a half of snow on the ground, and even more up north.  Where Tom lives for example, in Monterotondo (about 40 min north), there were at least two feet. 

When I left the apartment and started my walk there were very few people out.  But as I plowed along stories started coming in via text, gchat, and facebook: Claudio had departed from the other roommates and went snowboarding down a hill near the apartment; Emily and Marco were making a snowman in Piazza del Popolo; the Katies were trekking to the Vatican from the Colosseum; Tom went skiing down the streets in his neighborhood.  By the time we got out of our tour (spoiler alert: it actually happened!), the city had taken on a party atmosphere, with people gathering in the streets and piazze to build snowmen, have snowball fights, and to take in this rare event.

These are the pictures from my walk:

 

Starting out, near the Ministry of Education on Viale di Trastevere

I actually witnessed someone trying to drive their scooter.  It wasn't pretty.

 Santa Maria in Trastevere

 Piazza Trilussa

 Campo dei Fiori

Along Vittorio Emanuele

Chiesa Nuova

 Destination reached!  There was a party atmosphere in the piazza.

Sotto la neve

After our tour we happened upon this guy.  On our walk back through the city we saw tons more snowmen.

Even the nuns were impressed

Ponte S'Angelo

Last picture of the day, in Piazza Navona, just before my camera died :(

 
Still snowing at lunchtime

The Book, the Museum, and gli Scioperi

Shortly after the new year the Sala Bologna book finally rolled off the presses and into bookstores in Italy.  Check out the publisher's website to buy a copy for yourself and make me famous!

Here is a scan of the best part of the book, my chapter (of course):

It's so pretty!

In conjunction with the publication was the opening of the new Museo della Storia di Bologna, or the Museum of Bologna's History.  As a contributing author of the book I was invited to the VIP opening on January 27th, for which I was incredibly excited as I imagined it would obviously be an event complete with a red carpet and A-list celebrities.

In my head the opening would look something like this, the annual Costume Institute Gala at the MET in New York

It's without question that I would have been the best-dressed there, and everyone would want a photo of me.

 

No idea who this is, but she'll suffice as a model for me

Of course, in reality I knew the event would be *a bit* more low key, since the opening of a historical museum in Bologna isn't exactly something to garner the attention of the rich and famous.  But regardless, I was excited to be a part of it, to catch up with the scholars I had worked with on the book, and to meet new people.  Not to mention to visit a never-before-seen museum!

The actual museum, in the Palazzo Pepoli

But because this is Italy, and this country decides to hold transportation strikes every-other-week (without any results I might add, but that is a post for another time), I was unable to get up to Bologna.

An all-to-common sight in these parts :(

Alas, I will have to make a trip up in the future to see the museum.  

***

The catalyst for the book was the high-resolution digital scanning of the Sala Bologna and the creation of a facsimile of the south wall to be displayed in the new museum.  Factum Arte, a company based out of Madrid, was hired to photograph the entire room (producing new and incredibly detailed images for the book), as well as make a 3d scan of the south wall.  Factum Arte has previously made similar scans and reproductions for other works of art, including Veronese's Wedding at Cana, an enormous painting in the Louvre, as well as various tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

Francesco Ceccarelli, of the University of Bologna, and one of the co-editors of the book, wrote a brief press release about the project (and I'm mentioned in it!!):

SALA BOLOGNA
The facsimile of the perspectival map of the city of Bologna painted in fresco at the Sala Bologna in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. 

The Museum of the History of Bologna commissioned Factum Arte (the world- renowned, Madrid-based studio led by Adam Lowe, known for its experiments with digital technology in the field of art conservation and the creator of the 2007 facsimile of Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana at the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice) to produce a facsimile of the monumental perspectival map of the city of Bologna frescoed at the Sala Bologna in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. The facsimile, installed in the entrance area of the new museum’s headquarters in the Palazzo Pepoli Vecchio, will allow visitors to admire an extraordinary painting that is otherwise unavailable to the general public. The Sala Bologna, originally a papal dining room with an open loggia overlooking the city of Rome, is not open to visitors because of its location in close proximity to the Pontiff’s private apartments and to the Vatican’s Secretary of State. 

This vast room was constructed on the occasion of the 1575 Jubilee for the Bolognese pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni, who engaged a team of painters lead by Lorenzo Sabatini to create an ambitious geo-iconographical and cosmological fresco cycle. The Sala Bologna precedes by five years the better-known Gallery of Maps in the Vatican. Through it, the Bolognese pope celebrated his native city, glorifying it together with the ancient università, the center of new science in the age of the Counter Reformation. 

The interior of the Sala Bologna contains magnificent terrestrial and celestial maps. The monumental map of the city of Bologna depicted on the south wall stands out among them, recognized as the largest city “portrait” painted during the Renaissance. This gigantic perspectival map shows Bologna’s urban fabric and individual buildings in minute detail, providing a faithful image of the historic city that greatly corresponds to the contemporary one. 

The facsimile was produced by Factum Arte in 2011 as part of a broader research initiative coordinated by Prof. Francesco Ceccarelli of the University of Bologna. The project as a whole has been generously backed by the Prefettura dello Stato Vaticano and the Amministrazione del Patrimonio della Santa Sede (A.P.S.A.), in addition to the logistical and scientific support provided by the Vatican Museums. The facsimile is a result of a comprehensive photographic and three-dimensional recording campaign of the entire south wall, which has enabled a faithful reproduction of every detail of the frescoed surface and its architectural support. The combined use of custom-made instruments and manual finish has enabled the production of an artistic object of the highest quality and of greatest importance for the understanding of the original monument, as well as for its future conservation. 

The results of the research on the Sala Bologna will be published in a volume entitled La Sala Bologna in Vaticano. Arte, cartografia e politica alla corte di Gregorio XIII, forthcoming from Marsilio Editori. Co-edited by Francesco Ceccarelli and Nadja Aksamija, the volume will include original contributions by the two editors, F. Farinelli, F. Fiorani, A. Lowe, M.T. Sambin De Norcen, R. Terra, and E. Urban, among others. 

For more information on the project, Factum Arte's website has a description and photos of the scanning process, as well as the construction and installation of the facsimile.  There are also two videos of the process.  The work they do is incredible in both its scale and detail, and I think they are changing how we approach art conservation. 

 

The facsimile installed in the new museum

Non mi piacciono i calcoli renali

My apologies for being so incredibly absent and not posting forever.  But I have excuses!  Because of this:

 

 Kidney stone round 2

My life has been nothing but this lately:

 

Lots to catch up on with research :( 

But I promise I will start posting again soon. 

So Meta: A Post About My Blog Posted On My Blog

I'm famous!

For a story on tourist photobombs, a picture from this very blog was featured in the Huffington Post.  I love this picture, of the 5 of us in front of one of the Great Pyramids in Giza, with a camel and rider walking by in the background, waving to the camera.  As most of the other photos in the article were from photobomb websites, I have no idea how mine was found.  Personally I like to believe that my blog is read regularly by HuffPo, and in fact it was my very picture that inspired the idea for the story.  Obviously this is the most likely explanation. 

Screen shots of the article...

The best shot of the bunch!