Week 8 – The familiar winding walk from Centro through Trastevere to Gianicolo

Trimming the olive trees in the Academy's Bass Garden after the olive harvest.

Autumn is all around us now in Rome.   The days here are now much shorter – sunset is around 5:00 Pm since we turned our clocks back last weekend (a week before the U.S.)   The mid-day sun no longer bears straight down into the cortile – instead, its low angle sends arcs of sunlight through the colonnade and across the travertine and herringbone brick paving.  This past Friday the Academy staff used long rakes to harvest the olives from the olive trees in the our Bass Garden.  The nights are chilly, and we all eagerly await November 1, when the Italian government permits the heat to be turned on.   The evening before, Halloween, is not a big holiday here in Italy – many Italians tend to think of it as an American holiday.  The American Academy however, does celebrate Halloween, and I’ll include some pictures from that in a separate post. 

 On the professional side, I was tremendously excited this week to be on the scaffolding of Bernini’s colonnade of St. Peter’s, which I’ll also cover in a later post.  

 For this week’s post, I’ll follow-up on my discussion last week of my frequent and now very familiar walk from the Centro Storico (historic center), over the Tevere (the Tiber River), through the Trastevere neighborhood, and up the largest hill within the walls of the city of Rome, to the Gianicolo (the Janiculum), to my apartment.  Having walked it so many times, every twist and turn in this winding route has become familiar and beloved to me.  I’ll try to convey some sense of that familiar 20 minute walk here, primarily in photos, starting in Centro, and walking home to my apartment at the American Academy, atop the Gianicolo.

1. This walk could originate anywhere in Centro, but we’ll take it from Via Giulia, which is where I happened to be when I took this sequence of photos.

2. Via Giulia is a straight-as-an arrow street (unusual for Rome’s Centro) laid out during the Renaissance.

3. Via Giulia includes the Palazzo Farnesi (right), with a bridge across the Via Giulia that was to connect it to extensive gardens.

4. Renaissance-era streets tend to have quite a few palazzi (palaces). When I see one with its immense gate open…

5. I love to sneak a peek inside..

6. ...to the courtyard. While the street gates are often understated and a bit dingy, the courtyards are usually an entirely different world from that of the street – impeccably maintained, tranquil, and dappled in sunlight.

7. At the end of Via Giulia is a major intersection where the Ponte Sisto crosses the Tevere

and one can see 3 landmarks marking the route up to Gianicolo.

9. The Ponte Sisto (foreground), the Fontana l’Acqua Paola (near the top of the hill, upper right of photo), and the former fountain in Trastevere that the l’Aqua Paola once fed (mid left of photo)

10. Crossing the Tevere (Tiber) on the Ponte Sisto

11. Now in the Trastevere section, at the piazza at the termination of the Ponte Sisto (dominated by the former fountain)

12. We bear right out of the piazza, and follow the medieval streets of Trastevere, which alternately narrow and widen like billows fanning a flame

13. Where the streets briefly widen, cars park and cafes spill out onto the street

14. Where the streets narrow, cars, pedestrians and motorinos compete to squeeze through the narrow passages between building corners. (This street continues through the middle of the photo, squeezing and winding between all those buildings.)

14a. Only in front of the church (at right) do barriers keep the cars from parking wherever they can squeeze in. Walking this now familiar route along Via di San Dorotea…

15. …always makes me think of my late grandmother Dorothea, who immigrated to the U.S. from another Mediterranean country, and who walked everywhere with me, hand in hand, when I was 4 and 5 years old. I always tired-out before she did.

 

 

16. At the end of Via di San Dorotea is this, one of the "major" intersections in this medieval neighborhood.

17. From here, this (briefly) very wide road leads up the hill to the Gianicolo.

18. But pedestrians walk on the raised street parallel and to the right.

19. After a hundred meters or so, we take a right up a steep pedestrian ramp to a dead-end street at the…

 

20. …gates of the Accademia Degli Arcadi – a secret society that dates to the 1690's. Glancing through the iron gates, we see the walls of the neglected garden and forecourt, which we hear include mysterious carvings. This place seems destined to wind-up in a Dan Brown novel…

 

 

21. To the left of the gates of the secret society (and still outside the gates), we take a narrow staircase up…

 

 

 

 

22. …to another dead-end street that runs uphill past a Spanish school (note the flag at left). Climbing the steep hill, the street ends in…

23. …an even steeper staircase. Climbing the stairs, we…

24. …emerge at the top, turn left at the top of the stairs, and see the Fontana L’Acqua Paola to our right, and a scenic overlook to our left.

25. The entrance to the Spanish Embassy is at this scenic overlook, so armed Italian “Alpini” (an elite military mountain unit) are always on guard.

25a. We walk along the curved road, admiring the view of the Centro below.

26. Directly behind us is the Fontana L’Acqua Paola. Many Romans (including many taxi drivers) don’t know it by its real name, but by only by its nickname: “Fontanone” (“the big fountain”).

27. This is one of the only fountains in Rome that people are still allowed to splash around in. For a colleague of mine in my apartment building (which lacks air conditioning) with 3 kids under 10, that was invaluable during the heat wave this past August. Turning the corner past the Fontanone, we walk up a short side street, along the side of the garden of the Chiaraviglio …

28. And turn the corner onto our street, Via Angelo Masina, at the Chiaraviglio, another American Academy residential building that houses staff and several visiting artists and scholars

28a. Looking up Via Angelo Masina, we walk toward the Porta San Pancrazio, a monumental gate in the city walls

29. We walk past the gates of the McKim Mead and White building (the main building) of the American Academy..

30. Continue a short distance up the sidewalk…

31. To my apartment building next door, a former convent. We pass through the gate at the sidewalk, through a forecourt, through a large archway…

32. And to a narrow inner court, to the door to my apartment. Home again.

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