Via Appia Antica

Roman moonrise # 156

As my time is quickly coming to an end here in Rome, it's the little things that matter, like this, what is I think my hundred and fifty third Italian moonrise.

The Baths of Caracalla

(The Baths of Caracalla)

Talk about scale: judging by the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, you'd swear giants used to live in Rome. Or Titans. The baths are about the size of a modern waterpark (think 'Wet 'n Wild' on the Gold Coast). It's no coincidence that Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound here - and it proved an enjoyable imaginative exercise to try to guess which block of marble the Romantic poet sat on to do so.

The Roman Forum is impressive, but I realise now it was but one of many major centers of public life in Ancient Rome. The ruins of Ostia Antica, the sea-port town are much larger (and you're free to run around through the ancient city, playing ancient traders); the Palatine hill is easily as conducive to the imagination; what's left of the Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa) in Tivoli suggests that the emperor's abode was the size of maybe four Westfield shopping centres; and from our recent visit to the Baths of Caracalla, one thing's for certain: they don't make baths like they used to.

(An artist's impression of the baths... see those specks in the water?)

Why so large? Well, of course you need your cold baths, your hot baths, and your luke warm baths; and what bathing complex would be complete without a gymnasium to practise wrestling and boxing, a public library and a place for gigolos and prosititutes to ply their trade? There are a few small areas where the mosaic floors and walls have been renovated (one imagines), though the bronze mirrors that aided in the heating process, and the colossal statue of Hercules are no longer about (the latter, I believe, is in the museum at Napoli). The whole thing - along with the rest of the city - went belly up when the Goths invaded and cut the aquaducts.

With summer in full swing - though it's yet to pack a serious punch - it would be calming to know that there was a public bath (or water park) this central. In Australia, the public swimming pool - like the public BBQ - is comparatively ubiquitous. Here in Rome, for all its stupendously beautiful fountains, and its countless drinking fountains (fontanelle), there's noe one public swimming pool to speak of - which is arguably why the locals head to the hills in July and August.

Circo Massimo

To get to the Baths of Caracalla (see above) we caught the bus to Circo Massimo, once a grand stadium famous for its chariot races, now better known as the place where the whole of Rome came to watch Italy win the football World Cup last year. It is, of course, no longer a stadium, but an oval-shaped park between the Palatine hill and (my favourite) the Aventine hill. Em and I have walked past here a number of times, but this was the first time we actually walked through the park.

There is to this day a dusty track around the inner perimeter that schools use for athletics, but the rest is grass and, the remnants of spring flowers.

UPDATE (July 11): My kiwi friend James has recently informed me that Genesis , who recently reformed for a one off tour band, are playing their final show of their first world tour in 25 years, here in Circo Massimo this Saturday night, in front of up to 400,000 people (Yikes) - minus Peter Gabriel, but with Phil Collins. What's more, its free - the real challenge will be getting a seat. Stay tuned for a review (that is, when I finish my other reviews). She seems to have, an in-vis-i-ble touch-ah...

Via Serpenti

One of my favourite streets in Rome, for some reason (perhaps that big stadium in the distance): Via Serpenti in Monti, joining Via Nazionale and Via Cavour. This is where I've been meeting up with my poet friend Aidan to talk shop over a cafe freddo and a nastro azzuro... or three. He's introduced me to Muldoon, I've introduced him to John Forbes, etc.

Moonrise in Trastevere

Trinity College

DUBLIN: On Bloomsday afternoon we met up with Liam’s mate Simon for a tour of Trinity College. As the privilege of viewing the college’s main attraction, the Book of Kells, costs 8 euros, and the guided tour including said attraction costs 10, we decided to take the former – two euros for a guided tour seemed more than fair.

Our tour guide was memorable, to say the least: a dashing gentleman and graduate in his early twenties, he was nothing if not a top-shelf toff, complete with cravat (class-conscious Aussie? No such thing!... ‘You can take the boy out of Queensland….etc.’) – and by that I mean, ‘young man brought up knowing he was going to become an MP because his parents always said so'– with an intimidating, towering intellect and the perfect annunciation of a QC from the days of olde.

(Our tour guide, the future Irish PM)

Our young would-be MP or PM did, however, have a charmingly dry sense of humour, which eventually disarmed us all – e.g. “To the left you can see the former residence of one Samuel Beckett, who after emigrating to Paris famously declared that Trinity College attracts the cream of Irish society – the thick and the rich… The only difference now, of course, is that we are no longer rich…” (delivered in deep, drawn-out and deadpan tones) – and though he was aware of his charm, we didn’t hold that against him. I later learnt from Simon I wasn’t the only one suffering an inferiority complex.

However, given both the beauty of the architecture, and the undeniable rigour of its intellectual culture, I was overcome by a strange desire to attend such a college (which I realized with a pang was about as likely as me playing cricket for Australia… Incidentally, Liam spied the cricket pitch that Beckett, whom we both knew played for the college as a fast bowler, probably graced).

We were reminded by our guide along the way that the empirical philosopher Berkeley (from whom the Californian college gets its name), the revolutionary conservative politician Edmund Burke, and one of the two men to split the atom were among Trinity’s numerous illustrious alumni.

The Book of Kells – an illuminated manuscript of the gospels about fifteen hundred years old – was, while impressive, not the knockout one is led to expect. At least, I didn’t think so; I suppose it’s difficult to be impressed by ‘old’ stuff when arriving from Rome. I enjoyed the ‘Long Room’ of the library, which contained over 200,000 rare books, just as much. (Another excerpt from our dashing guide: “The Long Room is the longest college library in the world, approximately five meters longer than that at Trinity College, Cambridge – and we relish… every… centimeter”.)

By this time we all agreed it was Guinness o’clock, and embarked on a Saturday night pub crawl that would end sometime Sunday. One of our detours fortuitously lead us past Christ Church, and, eventually, the church of St. Patrick.

(Christ Church, Dublin)

(St. Patrick's)

Dusk was late, but when it finally hit the overcast sky gave way to vibrant blue, which lent the churches a more upbeat mood than that afforded by the perennial grey. Needless to say we spent the rest of the night swimming in stout and Irish whiskey, debating contemporary politics, the civil war in Palestine, London’s bonus boys and the bombing of Dresden.