Two more views of the bridge over the railroad tracks at Garbatella:
Bridge, Garbatella Revisited
Tag Archives: Rome
People and Graffiti, Garbatella, Rome
This series is about people, relationships, and graffiti. I’ll leave the interpretations up to you, the viewers.
Curbside Gas Station, Via Crescenzio
As I was walking from Piazza Del Risorgimento to the Piazza Navona, I passed by this little curbside gas station. It seemed like a relic from the past – I’ve never seen a curbside gas station here in the US, and I don’t even remember seeing any in any of the Spanish or French cities I’ve been to. It just feels like something I’ve seen in old photos. Too bad I couldn’t get it with a vintage Fiat 500 to make it even more timeless.
The Fake Fakir in Piazza Navona
If you google photos of Piazza Navona, you’ll see this guy. He’s there all the time – must be ripe pickings. This is one of the more inventive “living statues” I’ve seen in European cities – while perhaps not as out there as the guy reading the newspaper while on the toilet or as mechanically involved as the stationary bicyclist, the faux levitation is quite clever.
Red Car, Alley, Trastevere, Rome
No words, just a found image.
Old Streetcar, Rome
This is a vintage streetcar at the Piazza del Risorgimento, waiting for a driver shift change. You’d take this streetcar to get to the Vatican, depending on where you’re coming from.
Alas, my chariot to the Vatican Museums and for my visit to Ars Imago, a tiny but very cool camera store fully dedicated to analog photography and supporting the wet darkroom, was the more prosaic modern city bus and subway. I photographed this streetcar on my perambulation home on what was probably my longest day’s excursions – starting out at Via Dei Genovese 37, I walked across the Tiber on the Ponte Palatino, along the Circo Massimo to the Circo Massimo Metro station. From there I took the train to Garbatella, then walked from the Garbatella station to the Centrale Montemartini museum. Alas, my planning ran afoul of the Roman penchant for things being closed on a Monday, and the Centrale Montemartini was not open for visiting, so I consoled myself with photographing the amazing bridge over the railroad tracks and the graffiti art on the Garbatella subway station.
Back on the Metro one stop to Piramide, to the Cimiterio Accatolico (the “English” cemetery so named for the number of British expatriates buried there) to see the pyramid of Caius Cestius and the graves of Shelley and Keats.
Then back on the Metro again, over to the Spagna stop to see the Spanish Steps and have a tea break at Babbington’s. Then back on the Metro to the Ottaviano stop, and then walk to Ars Imago. From Ars Imago, I walked to the Piazza Navona, via the Piazza del Risorgimento, the Piazza Cavour and the Palace of Justice, across the Tiber on the Ponte Umberto I. I stopped in the Museo Stadio de Domitiano. The Piazza Navona owes its shape and size to the Stadium of Domitian, upon which it was built. While in the neighborhood, I also swung by the church of San Luigi dei Francesi to check out the chapel with the Caravaggio paintings. Then dinner at the Piazza Navona, then walked back to the Piazza Venezia to get the modern streetcar back to Via Dei Genovesi in Trastevere. According to my Apple Health app, I clocked in at over 10.5 miles WALKING that day, not including the streetcar and subway rides.
The Spanish Steps as You’ll Probably Never See Them
At this moment in time, the Spanish Steps are closed, yes CLOSED, fenced off with chain link fencing, due to an ongoing restoration project. So this shot, taken by poking the lens of my camera through the fence, is something otherwise virtually impossible without photographic trickery. Pretty much 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, the Spanish Steps are crowded with tourists and the steps themselves are nigh-well invisible. The downside is all those tourists coming to see the Spanish Steps were displaced off the steps and back into the street below, completely over-running the fountain at their foot. So an otherwise lovely fountain was unphotographable.
Old Cars, Trastevere
I love old cars. When I was in high school, I drove a 1962 Nash Metropolitan aka a bathtub on wheels, aka the car that floats (but it doesn’t- it’s not an Amphicar, which did float and drive in water- the Met just looks buoyant). I loved that car despite all its flaws and shortcomings. So I get a visceral reaction when I run across antique cars. These two were outside a restaurant in my neighborhood (which I did not have a chance to try).
Both were being used to advertise the restaurant. I don’t think the truck got driven around much if at all, what with the barrels in the bed with the restaurant name branded into them, and the pumpkins and gourds on top. The FIAT wagon, though, certainly looked like it could be used. I passed them on two different days and on both days neither vehicle appeared to have moved any.
The FIAT wagon looks like the kind of car I’d enjoy having, though – folding canvas top, cute 1950s design, compact enough to be useable in the city, but enough space to haul stuff around. And it would definitely make all the right noises and have that old car smell. You know, a touch of motor oil and unburnt gasoline, combined with the funk of aging upholstery. Terrible cologne idea, but inside an old car? Magic.
Mailbox, Trastevere, Rome
Rome is a city known for many things – fine food, ancient architecture, more churches than you can shake a stick at, and among other things, graffiti. This poor mailbox has been heartily defaced – scribbled on, stickered, and overall abused. Yet it still soldiers on in its duty, collecting the mail. Here is my portrait of the mailbox to elevate it into the pantheon of my Ordinary Objects series:
Something I found fascinating was the degree to which English has penetrated into Italian life. In the big cities, almost everyone speaks it to some degree or other. Signage in museums is in Italian and English – no French, no German, no Spanish, no anything else. Just English and Italian. Even the graffiti is often in English, like the little mushroom to the right of the mailbox here, and some obscenities on a wall outside the Garbatella Metro station (forthcoming in a future post). I don’t know what quite to make of it – while it makes life easier for me as a visitor who is not proficient in Italian (I can fake it ’til I make it based on my fluency in Spanish), I do worry about global homogenization.
St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican
It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by St. Peter’s – the space is so vast, even when full of tourists it doesn’t shrink down.
The baldacchino over the high altar at St. Peter’s is one of the more recognizable objects. Cast from bronze allegedly taken from the roof of the Pantheon, it was designed by Bernini (remember the staircase from earlier?) and marks not only the center of the crossing under the dome, but the grave of St. Peter. While one of its alleged functions is to provide a bit of human scale to the vast space of the basilica, it is so massive that it only compresses the space if there are no people around to provide comparison.
This view into the transept from the crossing with the people in the foreground I think really helps give you a sense of scale for the place.
This is a view of the entrance with its two clocks, as seen from the mid-nave.
On a separate but related note, it’s interesting how we refer to Rome and the Vatican interchangeably when we speak of the seat of the Catholic Church, when in fact they are two distinct entities. This was not always true, of course- especially during the Renaissance through the early 19th century, it was literal truth to say that Rome was the papal seat. Now, of course, the Vatican is in fact not only a separate city within the city of Rome, but in fact a separate nation, complete with its own passports. The Vatican is in fact the world’s smallest country.
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