Janiculum Hill

After lunch on Friday I went for a stroll up the Janiculum hill, along the Via Garibaldi, following in the footsteps of the eighteenth century writer John Ruskin, who, according to my literary companion to Italy, came this very way. It was on this hill that Garibaldi held off a major attack by French troops in 1849.

Walking up the hill, the first stop is the San Pietro in Montorio (‘St. Peter on the Golden Hill’); next door is the Tempietto, apparently the first true Renaissance building in Rome, a 'mini-temple' reportedly built on the very spot St. Peter was crucified (his grave is under the Papal Altar at the Vatican).

(Il Tempietto)

From here it’s about a hundred meters to the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola, one of the best fountains in Rome, with a spectacular view overlooking the entire city below – and virtually unknown compared to the Trevi. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote in 1835: “as often as once a week we pass the day there, amid the odor of its flowers, the rushing sound of its waters and the enchantments of poetry and music”.

Further along the way is the giant Garibaldi Monument; the walk-way is lined with the busts of the generals who held off a vastly superior French army for a month; ‘Roma o Morte’ reads the plaque on the monument: “Rome, or Death!” There were quite a few lovers, too, in this place of fighters, canoodling by the edge of the hill, the whole of the city spread out like a banquet below.

The next stop was something I’d been looking forward to: La Quercia del Tasso, or ‘Tasso’s Oak’. The great Italian poet, Torquanto Tasso, liked to sit here in the days before his death in 1595. It is a strange sight though: not much at all is left of the tree, which sprouts up through a plinth of memorial bricks, its trunk and remaining few branches supported by rather ugly iron corseting; add to this a lightning strike from 1843, and there’s nothing much really to speak of. It really is in a sorry state; I might add that I found an empty Foster’s bottle catching the sunlight by the base of the tree, which was a nice detail for the small poem I’m writing on the experience.

Nearby, further along the hill, was probably the highlight of the walk for me, as I didn’t even plan on visiting the Sant’Onofrio. Thankfully I ducked into this little monastery courtyard, emerging from the rush of nearby Vatican traffic and into a sanctuary of silence. The church was founded in 1419, bears some wonderful frescoes, and was the death place of Tasso. The serene courtyard overlooks the city; I sat on the bench, and wrote a few lines. After then finding some inconspicuous plaques on the side of the church, one written in German with the word ‘Goethe’ and the other in French with the word ‘Chateaubriand’, I looked in my literary guide, and found it confirmed that many great writers had made the pilgrimage to this very courtyard, including Goethe, Herman Melville, Henry James, Longfellow, Chateaubriand and John Cheever.

On the way home, along the Tiber, I visited the Villa Farnesina, former abode of a wealthy Sienese banker, which is famous for its frescoes, particularly the Triumph of Galatea and Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, both by Raphael, and others by Baldassarre Peruzzi. Unfortunately, it was too late in the day, and the place was closed… so instead I wandered around the gorgeous gardens, hedgerows, orange trees, fountains etc, with not another soul in the entire place. I sat and wrote a few more lines, thinking on how Raphael and his model cum mistresses might’ve frolicked in this very spot; then decided to leave just as the sun was setting behind the Janiculum hill.

(Villa Farnesina)