Roma - Back in the glue pot again!

Towers of Silence.....

I am watching Trust, a sprawling dramatisation of the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III in 1973.  It takes me back, sort of, to Rome in the 70s.  Getty was expelled from St George's English School a little before I taught there, and the whole affair was over a couple of years before I arrived.... but I claim a remote connection, and, in the midst of the herds of tourists on my recent visit, I feel a sense of belonging.... 

{er...To the city, not the tourists, y'unnerstan?} 

This was my street, in Trastevere, where I lived on the second floor of 169 Via di San Francesco a Ripa....

They were exciting times, for many reasons.  Kidnapping was one thing.....  The deaths of three of my transvestite neighbours, found shot and dumped on the periphery of the city after some drug deals went wrong, added to the spice of life.....  In the Caffè di Marzio, in Piazza Santa Maria di Trastevere, a hundred metres from our door, my flatmate was stabbed in the stomach, in exactly the spot from which I took this photograph....

Unsurprisingly, things have transmuted. Trastevere is now trendy, in a Montmartyrdom sort of way, with lots of bright young things and laughter and spritzers and chips....  Despite defacement, the sign on this Caffè hasn't changed....

But its interior and nature has....  You would never have got a beer here in the seventies.  It was coffee or milk, and a digestivo, and that was about it.

But not everything e cambiato.  Santa Cecilia still rests her marble head under the altar in her church....

And round the corner the finest fifteenth century cloister in Rome, if not the world, that of the Pia Società di S. Giovanni dei Genovesi, is still fairly difficult to access....

But despite the trends some of the narrow lanes and alleys in this part of town, where Genoese sailors stopped over while their ships were unloaded on the Ripa Grande, are still quiet and atmospheric....

And some, at least, of the restaurants maintain the post war charm that Fellini and co - and Peck and Hepburn - celebrated.... 

Across the river, in Roma propria, between Largo Argentina and Piazza Paganica, I pause at the doorway of via Sant'Elena, 8, known to have been home to one of the covi (hideouts) of the Brigate Rosse in the '70s,  possibly even the place in which Aldo Moro passed his last hours on the night of May 8th/9th 1978, and where he was shot in the back seat of the red Renault 4, in the garage of what now claims to be a fish shop.

I look up at the shuttered windows, not unlike my own flat across the river, and wonder what secrets they could tell....

And I look round the back, at the dingy, narrow Vicolo dei Falegnami, down which Moro may have been hustled and into the back door of via Sant'Elena, 8,

Before being killed, stuffed into the boot, and driven to be 'discovered' in Via Caetani, right outside one of the stations of the Fiamme Gialle, the Guardia di Finanza, Cossiga's Teste di Cuoio, a branch of Italian Military Police whose role, amongst others, is to be anti-terrorist.  They also have a pleasant beach resort at Fregene, where Aldo Moro is thought to have been held for a while before being brought into the city to be murdered..... from where he got sand in his trouser turn ups.....

Beware of the Griffons, I say!

Yes, Rome is full of secrets.  Mutterings in huddles of bandsmen,  

Quiet phone calls from men in suits,

Whispers in the darkness of churches,

Or painful sighs behind closed blinds in secret service offices,

Rome has always been like this.  In the middle ages, powerful families sealed themselves inside towers like this, La Torre dei Capocci,

Or like this one, the Torre dei Conti, built at the beginning of the thirteenth century by Pope Innocent III, mentioned by Petrarch, and then partially destroyed in the earthquake of 1348....

Then there's the granddaddy of them all, the massive Torre delle Milizie, also from the thirteenth century, but leaning perilously above the ruins of Trajan's Forum, and reputedly the site where Nero fiddled when Rome burned....

Towers of silence.  As Dylan sang, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble, ancient footprints are everywhere....

But light still shines on the tourists in the city, mostly happy and oblivious to the darker side of history.  They take their selfies by the Fontana di Trevi,

Relax awhile in the Piazza di Spagna,  where Little Pauly dances alone in Danny Boyle's Trust.  Climb the steps to the church of Trinità dei Monti (hard by the Hassler Hotel where Tony Soprano ate his last pound of Foie Gras)....

Gape at the columns and the ruins of the Imperial Forum,

And wander aimlessly on the unnaturally white Carrara marble of the Wedding Cake, the Altare della Patria, in saluting distance of Mussolini's office in the Palazzo Venezia....

Me, I'll sip a beer and read my book, 

And peer down at the dark street below, secretly wishing it were yesterday,

Then in the morning,

Is that really the time?

I must pick up my bed,

And walk....

And get back to sniffing at secrets in this dog-forsaken city....

And, trust me, a dog will have its day,

Or maybe it is the wolf, the wolf that suckled Rome and made it what it is....

Free to Roam

(You are, secretly, being watched)

Trust me....

Roma - The Fiddler's Elbow - 40 Years On

Through a glass, darkly.....

Once upon a time, perhaps, we thought we would live for ever.....

Once upon a time, democracy seemed a reasonable idea.  The world made sense, especially when the leader of the Italian Communist Party went to his funeral, accompanied by two million people, in a Catholic Church....

Humdrum office work was not satisfying for some.  The old ways, the world where an aged gentleman would kneel to kiss the hand of a young boy in Aversa, thanking the boy for his grandfather's personal sacrifice, was giving way to a world of business opportunities built not on privilege and patronage but on initiative and creativity.

Music was the food of love, whether bluegrass, 

Or traditional greengrass Irish, as performed by Róisín Dubh....

At first, The Fiddler's Elbow,

Was to be found half way down a nondescript side street, the Via Sforza, which led steeply up from the Via Cavour,

But after a couple of years it had outgrown the premises, its tiny bar being filled late at night by musical priests from the Irish College, encouraged by our Mother Superior, Gino's Irish wife, Mary.  And then there were miscellaneous strays, like me, or Heinz, to name but two.....  

So it moved to more spacious rooms in Via Dell'Olmata, 

adjacent to the Polizia Tributaria, now La Guardia di Finanza (they tried to arrest me once for driving my Triumph Trident the wrong way up the street, but that's another story), and close to the bells of Santa Maria Maggiore....

We were perhaps a motley crew. Some of us looked a bit shady:

And some of us may have slept in cars, or wherever, both by night and by day:

Of course, the majority of the Fiddler's patrons were clean-living young things whose preference was for party hats, candles and holding hands.....

Though some of these may have changed their ways (if not their looks)....

The venture flourished, though Antonio

Took a separate path..... However the Fiddler's was replicated in Venice and Florence; Gino's brother, Tonino, joined in with the Druid's Den, and several other venues followed (though one, The Stables -  in which I had a share - was not so successful, possibly because Remo served burgers with the plastic still attached, or, more likely, because foolishly I served a member of the Brigate Rosse in the presence of Commissario Manari and his squadra mobile.....)

Anyway, that's all behind us, and we have made our ways through this vale of beers, with all the excitement that comes with children and chocolate....

There has just been a week of celebration for the 40th anniversary of the Fiddler's Elbow, Rome. Now there are more Irish Bars all over Italy than you can shake a shillelagh at, but once there was only one, and that pioneering spirit deserves applause.

Grazie a Dio, the team are still together, and Antonio still plays his mandolin in Genazzano, when he's not involved in literary or horticultural pursuits...

While Orazio divides his time between the financial side of the business and his daughters,

Tonino cultivates his beard, and Richard appears at ease,

The celebrations involved music, music, music (and the occasional drink):

Music fills the back room; stentorian Roman voices shake the entrance like an earthquake, while dogs and drinkers gently fill the spaces in between, carrying on the sleepy traditions of millions (literally) of passers-through over the years.

I reminisce with Big John; we used to sip a few here in the late evening, then, at closing time, some time after midnight, we would mosey on down to the Falcon, a bar that never saw daylight, nor breathed fresh air, until that closed at two a.m.  

From there it was a brief stumble across Piazza Barberini to the Little Bar, where, if you were lucky, the piano was in tune and the toilets were free.... For me, very often, the exquisite barman would shake a cocktail and then the lights would go out for a while, until, when woken, I would traverse the cobbled sidestreets to find a bakery with hot cornetti, before wandering home as the dawn broke, beneath the biggest, yellowest moons you ever saw.... 

And sometimes there would be two....

But for now it is over. The next one, if there is one, will be the fiftieth, when democracy may indeed seem like a good idea.....  

Who knows? The world may soon be ruled by referenda controlled by an octogenarian Donald Trump..... (supported of course by the loyal wife Ivana, sorry Maria, NO! Melania.....)

Though not if Gino has anything to do with it.....

Nor, if the firm continues, with Connor at the helm of the next generation:

Forty years on, growing older and older,

Shorter in wind, as in memory long,

Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,

What will it help you that once you were strong?

God give us bases to guard or beleaguer,

Games to play out, whether earnest or fun;

Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,

Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!

What a great way to celebrate forty years of living!  So good to see friends and to meet forgotten faces.....

Grazie Gino, and Mary (and family) and Cin Cin! to all the others who have made this a safe haven of friendship: Antonio, Orazio, Richard, Tonino, Donna, Heinz, Sylvia, John, and Colm et alios. 

Saluti!  And here's to the next time - whenever: wherever.....

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.....

1 Corinthians 13:12

[And none of us have changed a bit!]