The wrong side of the river

Last Wedesday (9th) I crossed the river to go to The Vatican.

I don't like that side of the Tiber. The last time I was there, I dreamt of marble Popes pursuing me down corridors for nights afterwards. But I'm with a friend who wants to see the Saint Peters.

We walk over the Ponte Sant'Angelo with its tormented angels and up through a Calvary of wall-to-wall improvised stalls selling imitation designer bags (all the same model in various colours with the labels Prada, Fendi or D&G applied according to the seller's whim).

The street sellers are only allowed to do business up to the beginning of the Via della Conciliazione approaching Vatican City where the Polizia keep a constant vigil up and down in their little blue cars.

There's a group of 3 African-Italians with braided hair, their arms threaded with designer knock-offs from wrist to shoulder. As we walk up the street, they scuttle, knees bent, from car to car, dodging the gaze of the Carbinieri, in a corageous bid to get up to the Vatican itself where tourists and pilgrims, weakened by religious experience, will presumably fall upon the merchandise.

When we reach Saint Peters, we find that the Pope is inconsiderately using the place for some kind of religious ceremony.

We cannot go in as I am incorrectly dressed on two counts, shorts being forbidden, along with women's clothing which does not reach the knee. Fortunately, as I am wearing skirt-like black flannel shorts with with thick black woolen tights, I do not look so much like a floozy as a nun whose habit has shrunk in the wash.

However, my shorts must have activated some kind of bad karma, which followed us for the rest of the day.

We sit a while and listen to the Pope. He is a small white blob in the distance between two red blobs of cardinals. They are sitting on a temporary wooden scaffold, rather like that erected in the Piazza del Cinque Lune for last week's political rallies and they are similarly rendered larger on two television screens. Despite the large number of foreign pilgrims, I can see no subtitles in any language.

Apparently they are is talking about the dignity of women.

Excluding those who wear shorts, of course.

We decide to walk to the Janiculum hill, a beautiful park by the Vatican. We know it is beautiful as, through the white stone-dust of St Peters Square, we can see a blue-shadowed hillside and marshmallow-on-a-stick Roman pines waving over the top of the highest buildings.

I read the map provided in the small edition of the Rough Guide to Rome. It seems to indicate that we follow the road accross the fold in the page round Saint Peters and towards the Via di Porta Cavaleggeri.

I find it refreshing how quickly Rome changes from Vatican purity to workaday apartment blocks, garages, cafes, supermarkets.

We cross under a metro flyover.

Are you sure this is the right way.

Look at the map. See that patch of green. That's what we're heading for. We turn left by the ugly modern church. It joins onto the Janiculum hill on the other side of the page, see?

Joanna.

What?

Those are two different maps.

I look. I look again. I hold the map at arms length. I peer closely at the join between the two pages. I turn the book upside down, then the right way up again. I begin to think he's right.

I think it better not to say anything. We retrace our steps at double speed back past the quick-stop garage's dismantled cars, the garbage collection point, and the green scrubby area with dumped shopping trolleys. We find a wall which is definitely the wall of the park. Through the traffic fumes, we can see the pines waving over the top.

The wall is about 20 feet high. We follow it up a steep hill, round a winding, deserted road. The height of the wall rises to 30 feet. Occasionally we see doors or gates leading into the back of the park. They are all locked.

After some time, by mutual consent, we walk back to Saint Peters where the Pope is still speaking. As a woman, I do not feel dignified.

On this side of the river, nothing can go right.

We cross to the correct side of the Tiber.

Later we try to get a bus which will take us directly to the Janiculum hill from the Piazza del Popolo, which is on the right side of the Tiber. We hope to sneak in by public transport thus avoiding our curse, and a lot of walking. We find we are at the wrong end of the Via del Corso for the bus stop we need. It doesn't look too far to the right end so we set off down the narrow pavement, cutting a wavering path between the encroaching traffic, Italian teenagers buying nylon lace leggings in fluo colours, and a mad, bearded man with a crutch who limps along at an alarming speed, laughing manically and engaging strangers in random arguments.

After about half an hour spent trying not to fall off the narrow pavement into the path of cars, we realise that Via del Corso is longer that we thought.

We reach Piazza Venezia and are dazzled by the range of bus stops and the difficulty of crossing the road from one to another. We turn for home.

We never get over to the other side of the river.

There's a little museum in Rome, just off the Campo dei Fiori; an old palazzo hidden down a side street which contains a special feature. The owner commissioned a corridor off the main interior courtyard which houses a very Roman kind of joke. You stand at the end of what seems to be a long, tiled passage, at the end of which is a classical statue. As you walk towards it, you feel yourself growing surreally taller and wider. Your head comes close to hitting the ceiling. When you reach the courtyard at the end, you have become a giant; the statue a baby's toy. The corridor is a mathematical joke. The architect is playing with your visual perceptions; what seems far away is in fact, close.

In Rome, a city which loves to dazzle you with views and dismay you with false perspectives, this can sometimes happen the other way round.

Yesterday the Pope was in the US and I was free to wear shorts in St Peter's Square again.

...

More from Rome next week, including sketches.

Comments

[La Belette Rouge]

Bad karma shorts! LOL! Merci for sharing your lovely Roman holiday with us. And, uh, more food talk please. If I can't see your images I need to at least hear about the gelato. ;-)

[La Belette Rouge]

Bad karma shorts! LOL! Merci for sharing your lovely Roman holiday with us. And, uh, more food talk please. If I can't see your images I need to at least hear about the gelato. ;-)

[La Belette Rouge]

Ugh, sorry for the technical difficulties. Can you delete the duplicated post?

[badaude]

Don't think so, but if a thing's worth saying, why not say it twice?
xb