A walk in the centre of Rome

I alight on Largo Argentina, outside the Feltrinelli bookshop. This time I ignore the large bookshop and head up a narrow side alley to start my trek through the 'historic centre' an area that is hard to define.

The best way is to consider it as the area most visited by tourists away from the obvious trilogy of the Colosseum, Palatine and Roman forum. I'm staying well clear of those three today. I'm also ignoring the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps both part of any top ten on Rome.

I walk past the lavish shop which clothes the clergy that throng the streets, especially the Vatican area just a skip and a hop away on the notorious 64 and 40 bus lines. The windows offer up dazzling displays of golds and purples, cassocks, vestments and fascia amid various silver cups and gold platters. It's all rather gaudy and tasteless.

I cross a small piazza with a news kiosk that sells international magazines and newspapers, and walk past Piazza della Minerva. It is famous for the statue of an elephant carrying an obelisk. The statue was designed by Bernini and executed by an assistant, Ercole Ferrata. It has stood on Piazza della Minerva in front of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva since 1667. In November 2016, vandals broke off a piece of the elephant's tusk, an act which outraged many. However, they left the broken piece behind and the statue was restored to its former beauty.

Walking past the little elephant I can see the dark bulk of the back of the pantheon. In the days when I used to work in the city centre I would often take my lunch break sitting on the small wall that ran behind it. I'd nibble on a rather bland sandwich, one of the tramezzini which look so tempting when viewed in their wrappers all smartly heaped on trays but turn out to be rather tasteless. I've never worked out why: maybe it's the too oily too white bread (it contains lard, so not for vegans or vegetarians), maybe it's the under seasoned fillings with always the same predictable combinations.

More often than not I'd have a wedge of excellent pizza bought from one of the few genuine 'pizza al taglio' shops in the centre. There used to be a small plain shop, on its white washed walls were various certificates of excellence that the owner had won. The selection of pizza was simple but genuine. Sadly, the elderly couple that ran the place have retired. 
I was dismayed to see that it had been replaced by one of those cheap and nasty food places that have begun to pop up all over the centre,  all bright colours and loud music, with large fridges filled with cardboard sandwiches, soggy salads and over-sweet fizzy drinks. it was all sold for far more than the elderly couple had ever charged for their humble slices of pizza. They rarely had more than six flavours going: pizza bianca and margherita being daily staples while the other flavours varied according to the season.

Sill thinking of Rita and Gianni's little pizza shop I walk past a hotel featured in 'The International' a silly thriller starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, partly set in Rome where every scene managed to trot out a cliché. I can see on the next corner Tazza D'Oro, a famed coffee bar which graces the pages of every single guidebook about Rome. In the film a scene had shown in the alley next to it a gaggle of nuns with fully starched dazzling white wimples walking four abreast, just the type of scene one rarely really comes across.

I'm now on Piazza della Rotonda in front of the Pantheon, a truly amazing feat of ancient architecture which has survived intact to this day partly because of its conversion to a church in 609AD and partly because of the building materials used, akin to today's cement.
Today's version of the Pantheon was designed by the Emperor Hadrian and the architect Apollodorus of Damascus in 120AD. He ended up being executed by the emperor over a dispute about the building. The original pantheon, an altogether simpler edifice,was built on this site to honor the mythological founder of Rome, Romulus.

The most amazing thing about the Pantheon is its dome (43,30 metres in diameter) with a hole in the middle (7,8 meters in diameter) - the oculus - the eye of the Pantheon.

For Pentecost, a religious festivity celebrating the descent of the holy spirit to the disciples of Jesus, tens of thousands of rose petals are dropped through the oculus onto the floor of the pantheon 43 metres below
The portico is supported by 16 Corinthian columns each weighing  60 tons. They were taken from Egypt and transported via barges and ships to Rome. The triangular pediment above bears an inscription attributing the pantheon to Marcus Agrippa. It is the only remaining part of an earlier incarnation of the building which Hadrian left as a tribute to his predecessor.

On the beautiful piazza in front of the pantheon is the Fontana del Pantheon built by Giacomo della Porta in 1575. The design was modified in 1711 to include a different basin and the marcutio obelisk (dating from Ramses II) on a plinth surrounded by four dolphins

Nowadays, the piazza is always crowded with tourists taking photos, or having an overpriced snack at one of the many bars that fill the piazza. If you are visiting the Pantheon on a hot summer day, you will find in front of the fountain, one of Rome's 2000 drinking fountains fitted with two large spouts, known as 'nasoni', big noses.

Fill up your water bottles or have a drink at the fountain. The water is fresh, piped in from Bracciano Lake. If the Summer is very hot, and water levels in the lake are falling then the 'nasoni' are switched off. Though some nasoni are never switched off.

If you feel like splashing out, and you will here, trust me, you can sit at one of the terraces and order an over-priced beverage and snack, and enjoy for a while one of Rome's most magnificent sites. Just watch out for those selfie sticks!

I don't like to dawdle and the piazza is getting crowded. it's just an hour or so until tourists with their McDonald's takeouts, pre-wrapped sandwiches and sodas encamp themselves on the shallow steps that lead up to the fountain. I head off the piazza, on Via Giustiniani alongside the palazzo of the same name. It's a building I once knew well as I would get lost in its labyrinth of corridors looking for my students' offices.

Every Wednesday morning at 10 am I would head up to Doctor (Dottore) Lanzi's office. He was a slim, elegant man, well-turned out. He looked as if he could have have been cast as an oily mafia lawyer in a movie. He was well-mannered but there was a palpable sense of distress the day I arrived for the weekly lesson and it coincided with the British football team taking on the Brazilian one in a World Cup semi final. Didn't I want to watch my team play?, he inquired. I didn't. I stayed silent. Maybe I could teach him the relevant football vocabulary?, he suggested. I nodded. The next hour was spent comfortably seated on Dr. Lanzi's sofa, in front of his large TV screen watching the game. It also turned out he knew far more about football than I did.

On another occasion, I arrived and found him with his arm in a plaster cast. Gone was the smart expensive looking suit replaced by the type of knit wear a poorly sighted great aunt might have bought him. He was unshaven and distraught. Not only had he broken his arm on the annual skiing holiday by slipping on a patch of ice but his wife had broken her leg, actually skiing, and needed an operation on her knee. It somehow made him more approachable as a person. As a nice coda, years after I'd stopped working for the senate he phoned me. He needed a teacher for his teenage children. I was unavailable but passed him and his children on to a colleague.

I strode past the entrance to the building, thinking of the vast labyrinth of its corridors, stair wells and lifts which never seemed to end up in the right place. I saw its glass-fronted entrance-booth where I would leave my passport every time I entered the building, then pass under a metal detector while my bag was scanned. They don't muck about with security in a country which has had over the years many terrorist attacks, mostly of the homegrown variety.

I came out of the little alley onto the back of Palazzo Madama, yet another building that belongs to the Senate and in front of the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi which is noted for containing three Caravaggio's about the life of st. Matthew: The Calling of St. Matthew, The Inspiration of St. Matthew and The martyrdom of St. Matthew. To see  them in the darkened chapel at the back of the Church you must insert a coin into a box and a timed light flares up, like an old fashioned gas meter.

I know Caravaggio was supposed to be a dodgy chap, a murderer but I do like his work. Anyone wanting their fill of Caravaggio should head up to the Galleria Borghese after this. But that's not my destination.

I head down another narrow alley between the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi and Palazzo Madama and its entrance where once-upon-a-time I had an argument with one of the entrance lackeys. I'd presented him with a Belgian ID card (dual nationality possessor am I) but he refused it as a 'non-valid document.' I argued that I could travel abroad with it. He wasn't having any of it. He needed my passport. Eventually, he phoned my student, the head of a comission. From where I was standing all I could hear was an increasing chorus of chastened: ''Si, Dottore" ,"Certo, Dottore", "Si, Dottore." I was ushered into the quite phenomenal corridors of power. The lackey did have the last word:"next time bring a passport."

I walk on and out onto Corso Rinascimento. To my left rises the imposing facade of Palazzo Madama but I'm going on, across the road to Piazza Navona... (t.b.c)