Roman holiday

Holiday is one of the most delightful films produced by Hollywood in the 1950s; an ethereal Audrey Hepburn and a dashing Gregory Peck as the princess and the reporter with his paparazzo sidekick!

Those were the days when the Dolce Vita of Via Veneto attracted celebrities and wannabees like flypaper and when Rome was still relatively villagey. A time when one found trattorias by the score in Via Nazionale and they catered for the locals; I will never forget one of our family favourites, Annibale, where slightly rickety tables were covered in real gingham and where at lunchtime portly Roman civil servants sat at their favourite tables with huge napkins swathed around their necks and mountains of pasta in front of them; the days when one had gnocchi alla Romana only on Thursdays and nuns and priests went around dressed as nuns and priests; a constant reminder that this was a papal city par excellence. A Rome of heavy frenetic traffic, full of topolini and vespas heaving and honking like hornets and bees directed by the intrepid policeman marooned in the middle of Piazza Venezia on his little round box conducting traffic like Herbert von Karajan.

In those days the Centro Storico was almost exclusively residential and the shops were of the type where one bought one's daily needs; no boutiques and department stores while the "great names" were either those of the Black Nobility or still a twinkle in their creators' eyes. Today's exclusive brands were gifted artisans in tiny backstreets catering for exclusive clientele and definitely not hordes of tourists.

Yes Rome has changed enormously. The only sound which was irritatingly familiar was the police siren going off every five minutes. The Roman Carabinieri have passed on their penchant for making a terrific din whenever they have to get anywhere. That has remained unchanged since my childhood and must be a prerequisite of the job.

I was there between the funeral of one Pope and the election of another. Rome was strangely subdued. Ladies in Chanel and Givenchy discussed the merits and demerits of the various cardinals over restaurant tables. One cannot forget that the Pontiff is also Bishop of Rome and that the worldwide attraction the Vatican holds determines the prosperity of the city's tourist industry.

In the short interregnum there were mercifully no signs of the hordes of pilgrims that converged for the funeral and the conclave and Rome was its old self, full of well dressed people marching purposefully up and down Via Condotti with their telefonini permanently glued to their ears. The designer shops of the golden grid from Piazza Venezia to the Corso were doing a roaring trade as usual while the Spanish Steps were carpeted with a plethora of young people sitting in the sun. The ecclesiastical conundrums and panoplies could not have been less evident. From my tiny garret room in Via Pallacorda with its pretty terrace, I could see the rooftops of Old Rome, punctuated by a variety of domes and lush roof gardens while seagulls wheeled and cried overhead.

Two magnificent exhibitions; a Canaletto one at Palazzo Giustiniani and a Guttuso one at the Chiostro del Bramante, kept me pleasantly occupied for a couple of mornings, away from the allures of Via Frattina and Via Coronari, while de rigueur visits to San Luigi dei Francesi and its astounding Caravaggios and Palazzo Doria Pamphilj were as wondrous as ever. One cannot imagine the wealth and power of the great papal families without a visit to this sprawling palace on the Corso where one is greeted and guided by Jonathan Doria Pamphilj on a sort of telephone that one is given free. This avoids the annoyance of guides trying to make themselves heard above the susurrations of the visitors.

We had the same device at the Canaletto exhibition where, at a touch of a button, which even I couldn't muck up, one was given all the necessary information about all the paintings on show. The personalised spiel by the heir to the papal Pamphilj Roman principality and the naval Doria Genoese one was given in true blue public school English which is hardly surprising when one realises that the family have, in the last 100 years, assimilated more English blood than the British Royals will for another three generations!

Full length portraits of formidable Pamphilj popes hung cheek by jowl with contemporary copies of Caravaggios and Correggios with genuine Breughels as sottoquadri and wonderful Claude Lorrains just as the princes collected them and placed them, higgledy-piggledy, in their splendid gallery. Generations of discerning collectors and patrons of the arts with money to spare and more created a monument which today is being kept alive by people like us who visit it; sic transit gloria mundi.

From the baroque splendour of the Dorias to the austere mannerism of Bramante's cloister and the intriguing Renato Guttuso exhibition; the personal collection of the Sicilian artist's Lombard patron and lifelong friend Francesco Pellin. As a Maltese artist I could identify so well with the intense colour and subject matter of the 60 odd paintings on exhibition. Guttuso's still lifes, with their ubiquitous lemons, his busty Prostitute teetering on high heels and the huge complex canvas Spes contra Spem with its recreation of the mostri of the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria were an intellectual delight.

Canaletto's views of 18th century Venice have been so avidly reproduced that they run the risk of being over-familiar but nothing can possibly prepare you for the sheer rapture of viewing a galaxy of them, collected from the four corners of the earth under one roof!

I will dwell on just two from The Queen's collection at Windsor Castle; views of Rome that are rarely seen or reproduced. The ruins of the forum with the Campidoglio in the background with aristocratic cognoscenti discussing the columns and the great stones captures the warm Roman colours in a way that one would not expect from an artist who worked almost exclusively in the much colder, whiter light of his native floating city.

The Pantheon is almost unchanged except for the two little belfries that were removed in the 19th century. The golden coach racing into the piazza with its rearing white horses could be carrying a Pamphilj or a Colonna to some conversazione or a papal audience. As I sat in the actual piazza several hours later having lunch under an umbrella huddled near those miraculous gas heaters on poles because of the pouring rain, I contemplated the miraculously preserved façade of the great building created by Marcus Agrippa as a place of worship for the pagan gods of Rome and which was transformed into a Christian basilica which today houses the mortal remains of the Kings of Italy.

The Pantheon epitomises The Eternal City in a way that not even the Vatican can. Despite the fact that its bronze was removed by the Barberini to create the barley-sugared baldachin in St Peter's it remains as a tangible symbol of the fateful fusion of Christianity and the Roman Empire; a marriage of cultures that pervades every nook and cranny of the unique city and which makes it nothing short of magical.

kzt@onvol.net