Home alone in Rome

Alone for Christmas. Again. But being alone isn't the same as lonely. Besides, I do have company: my lovely dog, Ella, and my gorgeous asthmatic cat, Bud. They are perfect company. It's just the world outside my home that dictates Christmas is for family, Christmas is a time for sharing, it's a time for togetherness.
In Italy it is said that Christmas is for family, New Year is for friends.

This year, I got myself a tree, a small wooden beast from a popular Scandinavian home goods store. It's so small the cat isn't interested.
Then I have to figure what to eat. Leisure time is easily dealt with in the age of Netflix and a surplus of unread books weighing down my bedside table.
Italian Christmas dictates fish for the 24th and something heavier and richer for the 25th such as roast lamb.
I go fish wise for Christmas Eve, a smoked salmon mousse with pickled vegetables. Then spoil it, by adding a chicken parfait under an orange jelly with beetroot oatcakes. Parfait=perfection.

I have a pink bubbly, a gift from a neighbour, in this year of Christmas gift dearth - it would seem a belated punishment from close family for my absence at the yuletide table.
The 25th I opted for vegetarian, the parfait was a lapse, and made a pumpkin, garlic, leek pie with a walnut crust. The pink bubbly had run out so I opened a Valdobbiene dry prosecco. Prosecco goes with everything, right?

I then moved on to dessert. It was a first, a yule log :chocolate ganache, chestnut mascarpone cream filling on a cacao Swiss roll. Each step had been a culinary pitfall: mix the beaten eggs softly into their yolks, roll the sponge while hot without splitting it, whip the cream to the right spreadable consistency, then there was the ganache. It was at first too runny, a lack of double cream was the culprit, but mixing the runny cream to some mascarpone saved the day. The ganache lay on top of its log and let funnels be traced in it to mimic bark. It turned out a beauty. It was a shame not to have any one to share it with.

The day after, Santo Stefano here, is a national holiday. The weather was clement so it was as good a day as any to walk the dog. New Year is just around the corner. What can I make? I'll still be alone but a belated gift has lifted my spirits.

Discoveries

There is always a simple pleasure in coming across new things. I've been in Rome for twenty years now. The area I live in, beyond the city walls and on the unfashionable side of the Cristoforo Colombo road, is well-trodden. I've explored the streets, the nature reserve, the area around the Appia Antica and the Ardeatina. I know where all the carabinieri check points are. I've explored it to such an extent that I've lost the effect of wonder or enchantment at coming across something undiscovered or unusual. That was until my last jaunt in the Caffarella, the large park that extends between the Appia Antica, the ancient city walls and the district called Appia Latino after the ancient Via Latina that crosses it.

As I and the dog climbed down into the valley of the Caffarella on this sparkling clear blue morning we looked out for the flock of sheep that usually grazed there. They were absent. Once in the valley I paused, I gazed upwards at the bank of appartment blocks that looked down onto this part of the park. To my right, I knew was the farm, then the source of the river Almone, but to my left?

The map on my phone indicated it would lead up to the city walls. I hesitated. Then turned left, over a stream and up a hillock where I stopped to look at a rabbit nibbling on some grass without a care in the world. It didn't even seem worried about the dog. I continued my ascent past some cultivated land where cabbages were growing and then dipped down onto some rough untended land rather than heading for the streets higher up. 

The path ran alongside some allotments, the first time I'd ever come across such a thing in Rome, they appeared to be well-tended if deserted. The fence was made up of all manner of broken pieces of wood, some obviously derived from old furniture: bookcases, bedrests, tables, chairs….. Probably a better use for the old furniture than cluttering up bins and landfills or, this being Rome, the city pavements. I rounded the allotments and climbed up towards a small glade. There were people with their dogs. A sign pointed towards an ancient cistern. The ground rumbled as a train passed on the nearby tracks. I decided to find the cistern. The first attempt led to a padlocked gate. Maybe it wasn't accessible? But following the trail which double-backed downwards I found myself in front of a massive stone structure. Who would have thought that in this forgotten corner of the park, a park I'd been to thousand of times, there was such a massive and well preserved ancient Roman ruin?

A table had been set up outside the structure. Voices echoed from inside the cistern where a visit was in progress. I walked closer peered inside as the guide and her company came out. I trod over some wild mushrooms and half listened to her explanations while walking around as much of the structure as was accessible. I learnt that this was one of the best preserved giant storage cisterns in the park but sadly forgotten. Few people came this way. A visitor suggested better sign-posting. This it seemed was not possible, there were rules, there was a cost. Same old, same old, I thought. The dog and I moved on from what I later discovered was one of the best maintained cisterns of its type in Rome - 8 metres high, 12 metres long - due to a recent restoration project. It had been opened to the public in 2017 and had once served a grandiose Republican Rome era villa in the area. 

Back among the trees I followed the trail to the train tracks. A graffitti-covered multi-coloured local train flashed by. I could leave the park or turn towards a piece of scrub land. I wasn't sure it connected with anything I knew and a man struggling to hold back his two large barking and baying dogs decided me to head for the road. The area was barren apart for the dying grass. I edged past a padlocked gate and climbed up a small verge onto a parking lot alongside some well-graffitied buildings. I crossed a small bridge over the tracks and paused at an ancient looking church.
I went on in search of the city walls, the Mure Latine which I could then follow to the Appia Antica. The remains of the antonine aqueduct proved disappointing small piles of bricks roped off behind fences. I followed the road and took a left onto Via Talmone. The walls reared ahead tall imposing, slightly slanted, a veritable barricade to any invader. A papal crest was affixed high up above some slits which pigeons had taken over. 

I followed the walls tothe Porta San Sebastiano where there was the museum of the walls, one on my list of museums to visit but without the dog.I'd read that it was possible to walk along the top of the walls and inside them. 
At Porta San Sebastiano a police car was parked and a vigilessa was stopping cars from turning onto the Appia Antica which is pedestrianised on Sundays. I slunk past the car and the fountain of San Sebastiano.Thesound of hooves striking stone Drew my attention and I was overtaken by a long column of horses and their riders out for a Sunday stroll. The leader of the column was quite frisky and seemed to be dancing on the cobbles as his rider reined him in. Others were more dozy, but many were slipping as their hooves found it diicult to find a purchase on the cobbles. Cyclists and joggers also passed. As for the dog and I, we were approaching the end of our long discovery-filled walk. 

It was a perfect setting for a walk. Soon we reached the bike rental shop near the Church of Quo Vadis we climbed behind the shop and into Parco Scott. The dog perked up. Even if I was bushed she wanted to play with her pals in the dog park. Should I let her?

Autumn in the city

Rome in the autumn is magical. For many people this is the best season to visit the city. The stifling heat of the summer is replaced by milder more bearable temperatures with only the first chilly notes creeping in in early November. There are also less tourists so it's easier to visit the sites without jostling elbows with sweaty neighbours.

 The trees of which there are thousands, not all are evergreens like the distinctive umbrella pines, change colour to rich auburns, reds, light browns and yellows before their leaves flutter down ready for the winter. The parks lose their summer parched yellow look and turn green again. Starlings come to Rome to winter and flock in large, impressive formations known as starling murmurations. These are truly beautiful dances in the sky, thousands of birds swirling back and forth, round and round at what seem to be incredible speeds and without colliding into each other. They are breath-taking to watch. However, should you ever find yourself caught under a murmuration, an umbrella might be handy.
For food lovers this is the season of the porcini mushrooms, pumpkins, chestnuts, artichokes, novello wines…. There are food fairs (sagre) aplenty, some in the city some in the outlying regions such as the wine harvest celebration in Marino where wine pours from the towns central fountain, the castagnata in Anzio, the porcini mushroom fair in Lariano or the polenta feast in Nerola. Autumn plenty is amply celebrated. 

However, the autumn also brings its fair share of problems. The end-of-summer storms or beginning-of-autumn storms, when warm air clashes often violently with cooler air wreak havoc all over the capital. Water pouring down from torrential rainstorms flood the streets and the underground as the gutters are too clogged up with fallen leaves to provide effective drainage. The city sweeping system already inadequate can't deal with the added load. Roads turn to streams and  underpasses can trap unwary motorists in their rising waters.
This autumn has been blighted by high winds, gusts of over a hundred kilometres an hour, which  have brought down trees.

The city administration yet again has come under fire for lack of preparedness. Public schools were closed down for 2 days in early November,so as to minimise the amount of people out on the roads in perilous conditions.
The rain and the guano left by the starlings made the roads so slippery and dangerous that some such as  Lungotevere Cenci had to be closed down. City authorities drafted in the help of animal experts who suggested releasing falcons, a natural predator of the starlings, over Rome to encourage the starlings to move on and find new wintering ground. The suggestion was controversial as it went against a ruling that forbids the introduction of wild animals into the urban area. Not that Rome lacks wild animals.
The forever overflowing dumpsters have allowed gulls to make their homes on the monuments and the roofs of buildings even though the sea is 30 kilometres away. On the outlying hills of Rome such as Monte Mario and the area near the Gemelli hospital families of wild boar foraging in the rubbish have been seen. The park of Villa Pamphili is home to  foxes. And of course there are hundreds of thousands of rats, too many for the city cats to deal with.

This autumn has also seen a referendum which had it been successful might have seen the city's public transport system fall out of the mismanaging hands of ATAC. Sadly, not enough people voted so the referendum was null. The saga of late or non existent buses as well as exploding ones is set to go on for the forseeable future. As is that of the uncollected refuse!

But enough griping, there is much to enjoy. The rainy days won't go on for much longer and will be followed by cooler, sunnier days. Christmas decorations will start going up for the extended Italian Christmas season, from the 8th of December, the feast of the Immacolata to the 6th of January, the feast of the Befana - a transition period from which the city will slip out of the autumn into the winter.

Notes from inside the scaffolding

Once, a very long time ago, I was invited to a dinner party in an apartment in the San Giovanni district of Rome. I was disconcerted by my hostess' insistence we remove our shoes (she had lived in Japan) which made me wish my not-quite-as-white-as-they-were-supposed-to-be socks didn't have a big-toe-sized hole in them. Indeed, had someone let slip about this pecadillo I'd have worn appropriate feet-covering hole-less apparel. So I tucked myself around the very low coffee table, and slipped my feet out of sight while the guests discussed the relative merits of the word 'pussy.' A ginormous platter of fried stuff with nachos and gooey melted cheese on top appeared and my hostess invited us to dig in with our fingers. It was a communal platter. Could things get any worse? I looked up towards the window hoping for a glimpse of blue sky or a ray of sun.  All I got were the billowing linen curtains and a white dusty net. Then I saw metal, lots of metal: poles, planks, shafts, nuts and bolts. I noted that some of it was rusty. I realised we were under a shroud and wrapped in scaffolding. There was nothing to see. There was no view. Fortunately, as it was a Sunday there was no sound from the scaffolding. "how does she put up with it?" I wondered as I walked away from the flat later that afternoon.

Roll on years and years and years, after persistent rumours of imminent work on the condo balconies, they'd become almost an urban myth,somehow, the condominium committee after years of trying, managed to get the work underway.
Notification to all tenants was brief, ten days before start of work, and rather vague. We were told to clear our balconies of all plants, furniture etc... within 'useful time,' (in tempo utile). This was then followed by a list of prices the company doing the work was charging to remove attached items such as window shades, air conditioning units and satellite disks which might get in the way of the largely unexplained and undefined work.

The day the work started, actually a few days after they were supposed to have started, I gazed four floors down to see the workman carry large metal planks  and poles onto the ground floor terraces. By the end of the day the first tier of what would turn out to be a massive structure was up.

I pondered upon the words 'within useful time' and decided to move my plants away from the edge of the balcony. A needless action as it took another two weeks for the scaffolding to reach my floor, by which time some plants had been moved inside and others onto the roof of the building where they would face some of the worst autumn storms in recent years.

Trying to find out what the work was going to be or in what order it would proceed proved impossible. There were different versions according to who I asked. The only thing everyone acknowledged was that each balcony would have a new marble rim like other buildings in the complex. No one seemed too sure what was the use of the marble rim. It was hypothesised that it would prevent leaks onto lower balconies. However, most people seemed clear that the balconies needed the rims. All the other buildings had them, we couldn't be the only building that didn't?

A lone protester pinned a notice in the foyer, he didn't sign his protest, just argued that there hadn't been enough notice. He was sure he spoke for everyone else. He was barking in the wind, no one took any notice and the scaffolding monster grew unperturbed.
As the scaffolding reached my floor, the old rusty metal rim , whose existence I'd ignored till then,was prised off. I thought the scaffolding had reached full maturity and work on the balconies was imminent but no. Another tier was added and a platform was built that led up onto the roof of the building.

At night the monster was lit. It was to prevent would-be thieves. Though I was assured by a neighbour that when the same work had gone on in her building the flat next to hers had been burgled. In fact, scaffolding represented a great new window of opportunity for burglars. All those floors that had hitherto been inaccessible now had steps leading straight up to them. This was not reassuring talk.

Work on the balconies, I discovered,started early. This also meant it finished early. The workers arrived at 7.30 and the power tools began at 8am. Swiftly, the tiles along the edge of the balconies were removed in a perfect line. Owners were given the option of having their whole balconies retiled. The new Tiles, there were four colours to choose from, were less attractive than the originals.
The workers drilled and scraped on the ceilings  of the balconies to reveal metal rods embedded in the cement. These were just as quickly covered in cement again. iI wasn't clear why this was being done.

A chance encounter with the owner of my flat left me perplexed, he told me there was no painting work planned. I'd been informed by others that the ceilings were to be repainted. From what I could see they needed to be painted over otherwise there would be ugly grey slashes of cement left visible.
The next day earlier than ever, a worker jumped onto my balcony, and began painting over the ugly dark streaks of cement. The previously white ceiling was now a rather ominous dark grey. My dog raised her head from her position asleep on the bed then lay down again. She couldn't even be bothered to bark.

In the meantime the bad weather was raging. The Veneto was flooded, the stradivarius forest (a red wood pine forest) in the Dolomites was destroyed, the tourist village of Portofino on the Ligurian coast was isolated as its one access road was swept away and in Rome trees came crashing down, uprooted by the strong gusts that whipped the capital. The ominous weather system moved South where it continued its destructive and murderous path.
For the most part. work on the scaffolding continued undisturbed. The workers clocked off early on the windiest day and took cover when the rain lashing down became too heavy. Balconies where the floor tiles had been removed for a total refurbishment flooded onto the dirty granite, leaving unattractive large puddles which would have to dry out before work could proceed.

I came back from work one day to find the marble rim in place. It did dress up the balcony, gave it a touch of elegance. I still wasn't convinced it was necessary. That same night I was startled by a sound out on the scaffolding. I switched on a light and looked out at a young man. "I'm with the company," he said, backed off and went down the hatch. As he made his way down I heard him repeat his mantra. I wasn't the only one alarmed by a night apparition on the monster. 
Now my outdoor plants indoors are dying, my rooftop plants are drowning and the work is going on. For how long? Six months, they say. 

Stocking up for the long hard Winter that never comes

Nordic cuisine involves complex smoking processes, canning and preserving - all ways of saving food through the rigorous often food less winters. Not everyone is a fisherman who can carve a hole through the ice to get some fresh fish, or a hunter stalking through large snow capped coniferous forests in the hopes of an elusive creature to skin and cook.

The Italian climate is a lot kinder to nature. Each season provides its bounty: beautiful mushrooms and chestnuts in the autumn, citrus fruit in the winter, greens for the Spring and masses of tomatoes in the summer. Not to mention the plentiful grapes and olives that grow all over the peninsula. Yet each region of Italy will be busy pickling and preserving at various stages of the year.

This is the moment for bottling the last of the summer tomatoes. Various cookery magazines give their tips and advice on the best ways to go about this. Do you want a rough sauce or a silky smooth sauce? How is it best to crush your tomatoes: in a processor in an old fashioned hand-cranked mouli? - which then adds the question of which size holes should the tomatoes be moulied through? 

Do you want added flavours such as a hint of garlic, some basil or something more herbaceous with some flat parsley? Should you use a jar, a bottle and of course what is the best method of sterilising your chosen container? For this last most seem to opt for boiling the filled container.

The question of preserving tomatoes in the shape of 'passatas' (tomato sauces which can be smooth or chunky) or whole in oil or sun-dried seems a tad overdone in a country where you can buy them ready made and of premium quality. Why go to the trouble?
Because the final result is always better than the factory produced alternative considering that most of the produce has not been force mass-produced in a greenhouse under artificial conditions. There are no additives, just genuine freshness and flavour. There are also different types of tomatoes to choose from: pomodorini, torpedini, a grappolo etc... an endless well of freshness and taste.

It's also pesto season. The leaves on the basil are wilting, the plants are producing their little white flowers, it's time to harvest. On the town markets basil is sold in large one euro bunches, and while Roman basil will not be the same as that grown in Liguria, lacking its original 'terroir', it is still good enough to make an optimal pesto or if you omit the nuts, a provençal pistou.

Then there are the jams, the marmellate, which food magazines encourage readers to make. Thus, they can take advantage of the soft velvety flavours of summer peaches and apricots as well as the early autumn plums. It's as if the new growing season were months and months away at the end of a long and difficult winter à la Helsinki. It isn't. 
In the Northern, Alpine regions, the winters may be suitably wintery but in Rome the temperatures barely dip down to zero, in February. Balcony herbs are unaffected and plants, unless they encounter snow, grow on as usual. There is no dearth of fresh produce ever.

Reading in Italian

The first book I read in Italian was 'Il giorno della civetta, " by Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia. I chose it because it was a slim 120 pages and was about the Sicilian mafia. I don't think I understood much. I' d only been in Italy a year. Likewise, my first cinema experience in Italian, at roughly the same time, 'The Sixth Sense,' an American film, as I correctly surmised the dialogue wouldn't be as logorrheic as an Italian one.

Learning a foreign language is fundamental when moving and settling down in a foreign country. While I have met some people who resolutely refuse to adopt the language of their new country, I wouldn't recommend doing so. It took me three years to be fluent and comfortable speaking Italian. I understood it far earlier. Acquiring a TV, and leaving it on as background noise whilst I cooked and tidied my very small apartment helped. And so did reading. 
I quickly realised as I read that pausing to look up words in continuation,wouldn't work. It halted the flow and it made reading irritating. So despite often not understanding much I would persevere, I would try to figure it out from context. I remember from the second book I read in Italian "Se il sole muore" by the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, the same unusual and incomprehensible word kept coming up so often that once I reached the end of my alloted number of pages for the day, I looked it up. In those early reading days I started with a target of 10 pages a day, if I was gripped by the story, I would continue. Nowadays I read as many pages as I feel like.

One big frustration was the speed at which I read. Ten pages seemed to go on for ever and ever and ever. Getting used to convoluted structures could be a headache too, as well as the long sentences, though to be fair, rarely Proustian in length. French and Italian writing excels in going on for a long time without actually saying very much or having much of a point. Undoubtedly for natives there must be some kind of beauty in this style of prose but for newcomers to the language wading through paragraph after paragraph and chapter after chapter to get no where and say not very much can get irritating and frustrating.

However there have been some memorable books in Italian: Alessandro Baricco's Novecento, a monologue; Stefano Benni's Il Bar sotto il Mare; Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Ragazzi di Vita'... This last was made all the more memorable by discovering that I lived 500metres up the hill from where the characters in the book, based on real people, had lived. Pasolini himself had lived in Monteverde on Via Fonteiana before his violent death on the Lungomare in Ostia.

Then came the first un-put-downable book, Fabio Volo's Il Giorno in più, which I made the mistake of telling an Italian friend of mine I had read. She sneered. Volo was hardly a serious writer. Maybe not. He was at the time an ex-MTV VJ and aspiring actor. He may still in those days have had a show on TV. These were definitely not the credentials of a serious writer. But what he wrote was engaging and flowed. He wrote about people, his books were set in Milan, and he wrote about relationships. I read a few more of his books until I noticed a pattern emerging.
Reading 'La Solitudine dei Numeri Primi' by Paolo Giordano, his first book, a prize winner, gave me more kudos. The subsequent film was a bit of a let down. Umberto Eco in the original made me feel great until I was told that the book I'd read 'La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana' wasn't his most complicated so not that big an achievement. It probably wasn't. I had abandoned Foucault's Pendulum which I tried to read in English translation. I hadn't got past the first chapter! 

Over the years, I've become less systematic and more relaxed about reading in Italian. Nowadays, it's more a case of if I feel like it. And inevitably I tend to read in English because even after 20 years in Italy it's easier and faster. 
Having said that, this summer I finished Elena Ferrante's magnificent quadrilogy which starts with 'My Brilliant Friend' and concludes with 'The Story of the Lost Child'. It has taken me four years, a book a year. But the sense of achievement isthere. I'd never even considered reading it in translation!

As for that very first book, 'Il giorno della Civetta' I read it again a few years later and discovered a different story. And then again in 2014, when I uncovered new details that I'd failed to pick up on in the previous two readings. That, of course, is one of the pleasures of unveiling a book in a foreign language, the words that escaped me in a first reading. the gaps I'd stabbed a guess at, the passages of opaque grammar and wordiness suddenly flow smooth as a river with still the occasional rock which means I can read that book again and again with a renewed sense of discovery.

Starting up again

All good things must come to an end. The holiday month is over. Each year I have a list of things to do. There's the: I really should do that now that I have the time, and the: it would be a good idea to do that, now that I have the time. Of course, as always, I manage to do neither.

I got back from my brief break abroad in the usual deflated mood. While away I imagine things will be different when I get back, that some miracle will have taken place: the city will be tidy, the government will know what it's doing, customer service will magically come into existence, people will be civil. and stop shouting... The list can run on and on and on. Safe to say nothing has changed.
Once back in Italy, it's a clear run to that week, the week of weeks, the week everything grinds to a halt: the week of ferragosto. The day before the holiday day, a bridge collapses in the North. Not a small country bridge, one of the many that have collapsed in the past ten years, but a vast suspension bridge part of the motorway network, and the day before a National Holiday, it was busy. It's a too sad, too tragic illustration of what doesn't work in Italy. That it shouldn't have happened is evident. Concerns had been voiced  about safety prior to the tragedy and ignored as 'fairy tales', only to be twitter-deleted after the fact. Fingers have since been pointed: the company that manages the motorways, the lack of adequate maintenance for such an important structure, the deceased architect's prowess and competence.

Yet again the lack of a meritocracy was nano-secondly under a micro-spotlight. It isn't how good you are but who you know that gets you the job. Hence, most major projects are led by well-connected people who may ,or not, have the competences required. I'm forever reminded of this as I step out onto my downwards slanted balcony. Drop an olive, drop a stone, overfill a pot, accidentally knock over a cup of coffee and it, or its contents, will roll over the edge onto the balconies or awnings of the lower floors. It's a masterclass in how not to get on with the neighbours. I can picture the scene, back in the sixties when my building was built. 
 "My nephew has just graduated from University. Yes, I know he wasn't top of his class. He just needs a little EXPERIENCE, who doesn't when they start." This would be followed by chuckles and back-slapping. It can't be for nothing that my building is the only one in the complex with downwards slanting balconies.

Nowadays, most young educated Italians want to flee their country of birth unless a parent, or an other member of familt, has a business. I am reminded of this as I help a young physicist prepare her IELTS so that she can do a PhD at Nottingham University. Her sister wants to work in China after her graduation. The other sister is working in Portugal for a few months. They love their home country but are only too aware it can't offer them the opportunities they need to reach their goals. The further South you go, the more this is true.

So what did I manage to do? I got my museum card. I ate too much. I drank too much. I read a lot, in this day and age, you can't read too much. I netflixed. I made hot sauce and pickled beetroots. I went to the various markets around the city. I walked my dog all over the place and caught up with the handful of friends who hadn't fled the heat.

And then I was onto the final furlow. How did that happen? I haven't re-painted the kitchen. Again. I haven't done the big spring clean I'd intended to. I haven't dealt with bureaucracy nor paid any bills.
The neighbours are returning now. The sounds of the condominium are back in flow: music floats out of open windows, the Indian family's children are making noise on their balcony, dogs are barking on the pavement, an argument is in progress. On the street the rush of passing cars is audible again and the car parking spaces are filling up. The workmen are back too, the gas works have cordoned off the lower part of the road and their jack-hammers are pounding into the tarmac The persistent whirr of a drill lets me know that my neighbour below is also back from his summer break and doing some heavy duty housework.

Then on the 30th August there was another collapse. A church, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami, in the centre of Rome, metres away from the mayor's office, caved in. That no one died was pure fluke. The Church happened to be closed when the elaborate wooden and gold ceiling came down. The patron saint, St John of the Carpenters must have been out to lunch too. The fingers are being pointed again, this time at the numerous refurbishments over the years. One thing is clear, here as for the Northern bridge, what has been lost can no longer be replaced, whether it be the human lives that were cut short on a rainy August morning, or the inestimable works of art that have turned to dust on a bright late August afternoon. The country is sick. It needs to be mended. It needs to be well-run and brought back to health, if that is even possible now.

I woke up last night. The hot weather had led to one of these cataclysmic storms, the thunder was so loud it shook the window panes and set off the alarms as bright forks of lightning struck down. It was the first of the end of summer storms, there will be more. Soon it'll be time to go back to work, back to reality.

The second best museum in Rome

It's a relief to get out of the stark summer heat into the cool dark entrance of this museum. It's not my first visit nor will it be my last. This gem lies off the usual tourist beat in a semi-deserted waste land of abandoned and demolished dwellings on the Via Ostiense between Piramide and the basilica of San Paolo outside the walls. To be fair, it is better signposted than it used to be, large fanions mark the entrance with the distinctive burgundy Roma colours.

I've walked over from Garbatella past the new bridge and the vast area that is all that remains of the Mercati Generali, once a lively bustling wholesale food market which has now been moved out of the city.
Centrale Montemartini is a disused thermoelectric plant. In fact, it was Rome's first thermoelectric plant. It was named after Giovanni Montemartini, the city council's 'technology assessor'. He died a year after its inauguration in 1912 during a council session

The plant ceased to function in 1963 and fell into disrepair  It was abandoned for 20 years until ACEA, the owner, decided to restore the building and gather there some pieces of machinery such as a steam turbine dating to 1917and a thirties diesel engine to safe keep what they qualified was the city's industrial archaeology. It took a few more years for someone to come up with the idea of using the space for other than just industrial machinery.

In 1997, the Capitoline museums were undergoing refurbishment and a selection of art works were moved to the Centrale. They were displayed in a temporary exhibition entitle 'God's and Machines'.

What was temporary in 1997, due to its success became permanent in 2011. Over the years, the collection has been expanded, modified and, to date, comprises around 400 works of ancient Roman art. In 2013, the second boiler room was opened to the public to comprise Pope Pius IX's train.
Once past the ticket office I turn left into a small space with a staircase. There are various bits of machinery: pistons, wheels, spanners in front of which are exhibited stone sarcophagi bearing ornate reliefs of daily or imagined Roman scenes from the deceased's life: hunts, children playing in a farmyard, battles, family life...
I head up the stairs to the Engine Room. It contains two huge Tosi 7500 Hp diesel engines from 1930 as well as a 3000 kW turbine. Even though everything is well labeled in the museum I know this last information because it is in the brochure. Come on, I'd never be able to remember it. Grab a free brochure at the ticket desk, it contains small nuggets of information as well as a map of the museum.

Antinous, Hadrian's favourite. He drowned in the Nile.

Agrippina, fourth wife and niece of Claudius.

What I do remember are statues of the goddess Athena; various muses, some of which are gigantic; the busts of Roman gentry, hairstyles for the matrons attesting to period, mostly Repubblican; the Emperor Claudius (later deified), Caracalla, Severus and others as well as Hadrian's favourite Antinous; a black statue of Claudius fourth wife, the murderous (she killed  him) and murdered (her son, Nero, got her) Agrippina. At the back of the room is a pediment of the temple of Apollo Sosianus with a well-photographed classical butt (you'll recognise it when you see it) as well as some eye-catching giant pieces of statuary from the Sacred area of Largo Argentina.

I turn out of the room into Boiler Room 1 (1950s issue) dedicated to the large suburban residences of the wealthy, known as horti. The central mosaics and the large dark boiler dominate the space. Everything is exhibited against a turquoise background. TI'm not sure about the choice of colour. Is it supposed to be appeasing? he room is quiet all I can hear is the hum of the air conditioning system, a lone teenager wanders in and a museum guard is sitting on a chair next to a phone. Two elderly women break the silence and loudly enter the room. They seem to be looking for something. It isn't here. They go.

I go back to the ground floor to the Room of the Columns a significant part of the collection is dedicated to funerary urns, statues and sarcophagi. The hairstyle of one matron sets her in the Republican age, her tresses imitate the hairstyles of the nobility, her husband a freedman stands stern beside her.   A sarcophagus lid shows three brothers, side by side.  One middle-aged man chose to have a statue of himself holding his father and grandfather's heads in his arms. If anyone doubts that baldness is hereditary this should settle their doubts. Other items on display refer to military triumphs and the introduction of luxury items into private residences.

I can hear a voice, rather a drone of a voice. It's rather annoying. It breaks the tranquillity of the museum. A father and his son appear, they start calling for, "mum." I enter a large high-ceilinged room to find myself starring at three train carriages. A video is playing on a loop, I identify the annoying voice. I'm perplexed  What is this doing here? It's Pope Pius IX special train from 1858. There is no explanation as to why it is in this museum in Boiler Room 2, though as I read the information, I realise that the train has been passed from museum to museum. Maybe no one knows what to do with it? It's dark and forbidding and takes up a lot of room. I can imagine the curators of the various museums thinking "what are we meant to do with this one?" - a gift from the Vatican to Rome.The father and son combo have found mum and are pouring into the room, mum decides this is as good a place as any to make a phone call.

I make my way back to the entrance by way of a temporary Etruscan Egyptian exhibition which from my cursory glance seems to have lots of explanatory panels and models and few actual exhibits. The one exhibit that does catch my eye, the Queen Nefertiti, is a copy. Not very interesting this, just trying to fill some space, it looks appropriate for a school trip and a bunch of kids on a fact finding mission. But anyway, don't they find all that information on their phones?
I leave the building into the sweltering hot sun of an August afternoon. Opposite the entrance is a small memorial to employees of the plant who died in the two world wars.

The Centrale Montemartini is an original museum marrying classical works from ancient Rome with 20th century thermoelectric machinery. The stark darkness of the machinery offsets the white statues. It is perfect.