J L-M’s Roman Mornings kicks off with an ancient Roman masterpiece, the Pantheon. If you have been to Rome you will have seen it so we don’t need to revisit it this trip.
However, it does provide an excuse to introduce you to Sebastiano Serlio, a self-appointed authority on architecture writing in the first half of the 16th century. “Among all the buildings to be seen in Rome, I am of the opinion that the Pantheon (for one piece of work alone) is the fairest, wholest and best to be understood: and it is so much the more wonderful than the rest, because it hath so many members, which are all so correspondent one to the other.” I wonder if my exploration this week will confirm his opinion.
The next building on the J L-M list is the early Christian mausoleum of Santa Costanza. This has to be seen in conjunction with the adjacent Basilica of Sant’ Agnese fuori le Mura. St Agnes was not a tart and chose martyrdom to prove the point. She was beheaded for her chastity in 304 AD in a brothel, now the site of the church of St Agnese in Agone, in the Piazza Navona and her head is supposed to be buried in the church. I don’t know if it is or why she went to a brothel. Her body is buried in Sant’ Agnese, outside the city walls, and became a place of pilgrimage only a few years after her death.
Costanza, a relation of the emperor Constantine (daughter?), built the basilica over her tomb and was herself buried in Santa Costanza. Go first to the Agnes church and enter through the catacombs. This is where early Christians were buried in an underground labyrinth; a somewhat gruesome start to the day. Then walk over to the circular church built around Costanza’s tomb in 325 AD. This is probably the earliest Christian church that has survived much as it was when it was built. No template for a church had been devised so it looks more like a pagan temple. The exterior (above) is now plain Roman brickwork having been stripped of any decoration it may have once had. Inside, the central dome is supported by a circle of twelve columns topped by marble capitals carved with acanthus foliage that J L-M likens to parsley leaves. But the eye-catchers are the mosaics on the outer vaulted ceiling, more pagan than Christian. The most elaborate depicts oxen dragging a wagon laden with grapes; men wearing loin cloths tread the grapes exuberantly, one eating from a bunch as he does so. You will not see any finer mosaics in Rome.
For a complete contrast, not on the J L-M itinerary, walk back towards the centre of Rome for fifteen minutes to the Villa Torlonia, built in the early 19th century by the Torlonias. Mussolini appropriated it from the family and lived here from 1925 until 1943. He paid Prince Torlonia a token rent of one lira a year. The villa then passed into the hands of the American army and was apparently trashed. It became public property in 1978 and has been comprehensively restored. The villa houses some statuary and a good collection of Italian art from the first half of the 20th century and is worth seeing for its architecture.
In the grounds, hidden behind an ornamental mound, is the Casa delle Civette (House of Owls), so called because of the extravagant use of owls to decorate the exterior. It is a fantasy house that looks like something out of a fairytale; a complete contrast to the early Christian architecture we began with.
If you continue back to the centre through the Porta Pia you will see this astonishingly ugly building. It reminds me of Communist architecture and is Brutalism at its most brutal. It is the British Embassy designed by Basil Spence and opened in 1971.
British ambassadors only work here. At the end of the day they go home to the Villa Wolkonsky, one of the finest British ambassadorial residences.
