2003: La Dolce Vita Loca.

by Carl Russo


III.


Daybreak at the Campo de' Fiori, where none of the fruit bears a SKU sticker.



I felt an embarrassing flush of joy as I stepped out of the big doors and onto the sun-splashed cobbles leading to the Campo, a busy Technicolor produce market of shaded booths offering fruit, meat, a whole swordfish. It was too perfect. I took my coffee and pastry standing at the bar like a pro, then began Day One of my quest to cover every inch of this beautiful city. Since I'd seen the greatest hits back in '99 (the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Imperial shithouses) I was free to roam Rome alone, roma loma loma ding dang.

The sublime traditions, accouterments and abominations of Roman Catholicism will forever seem exotic to this non-believer. Yet I planned each day around the opening and closing hours of every church, cathedral and basilica on the map. My spirituality amounts to simple sensory thrills like scented votive candles before a lovely shrine; a shaft of tinted sunlight exposing a forgotten Virgin-with-Bambino canvas through the dusty patina; fresh roses left under a courtyard wall hung with dozens of tiny, silver body parts, many with desperate notes attached; a Gregorian chant piped through Bose speakers.

I was touched (not in the Jesuit sense) by Bernini. His marble Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, in the Church of San Francisco a Ripa, seems to be enjoying an ecstatic if not orgasmic death. And the sheer whiteness of his ingenious circular Church of Sant'Ivo stands in stunning contrast to all the others in gilded lilydom.

But like so many tourists, I also go for the funhouse sensations of seventeenth-century baroque psychedelia, with swirling mantels of marble gingerbread guarding an old bishop's bones, or cloisters surrounded by fantastically twisting pillars encrusted with gems. Borromini's gimmicky forced-perspective hallway was a treat. This patio annex to the Palazzo Spada looks like a typical arched corridor until the museum keeper walks its length to reveal that the giant statue at the far end is only knee high.

And I couldn't resist the audio-guide soundtrack at the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, recorded by a modern member of the Renaissance family who, in stuffy English accent, tells of the havoc his roller-skates wreaked on the parquet floors as a youngster in the seventies. And the tune you hear while looking at one of the family's Caravaggios, which is clearly readable from the sheet music in the painting. Did I mention my plan to see every Caravaggio painting in the city?



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