26 Piazza di Spagna

(View from the top of the Spanish Steps)

The apartment in which the poet John Keats died after living for four months in Rome is literally on the corner of the famous Piazza di Spagna. The place itself is now a museum dedicated to the poet; of the house-museums I’ve been to (Samuel Johnson’s, Keats’ in London) this was probably the best value (3.50 euros) and also the best.

(Salon, Keats's Apartment)

This is primarily because of Keats’s bedroom. After the salon, and the dining room, all lined floor-to-ceiling with books in dark majestic bookshelves, and filled with exhibits (letters, photos, trinkets, drafts etc) you walk into a very small room with views of the piazza and of the Spanish Steps themselves.

(Keats's bedroom)

(View from Keats's bedroom 1)

(View from Keats's bedroom 2)

Entering the room is an overwhelming experience, and I came very close to choking up when I stepped in. A chill shot down my spine, that feeling of frisson which I didn’t really feel at his grave (perhaps because I was distracted; though I did, to a lesser extent, at Shelley’s). I suppose this is partly because the main parts of the room, the walls, the fireplace and the ceiling, are all exactly how they were in 1821. The bed isn’t the same (all furniture was burnt after his death), but the one that’s there is in the same spot. The room is tiny, so as soon as you see it, you see Keats lying there in your mind’s eye.

It was a draining afternoon - the most effecting of the Keats triumvirate I've now visited (his house at Hampstead, his grave in Testaccio, his Rome apartment). Two Camparis at the Café Greco helped matters, after which I wandered to the very top of the steps to take in the view (photo, top).

(On the Spanish Steps; Piazza di Spagna)