In two days you can visit every piazza worth having,
including the Piazza di Spagna, where there is a fountain
in the form of a marble galley in which you can embark
for any fairyland you like, through the Via del Babuino
and the Piazza del Popolo. Come to think of it,
I am not so sure but I would as soon have the Piazza
del Popolo as the Piazza Navona. If the fountains
are not so fine, they are still very fine, and the
Pincian Hill overtops one side of the place, with
foliaged drives and gardened walks descending into
it.
Everything of importance that did not happen elsewhere
in Rome seems to have happened in the Piazza del Popolo,
and I may name as a few of its attractions for investors
the facts that it was here Sulla’s funeral pyre
was kindled; that Nero was buried on the left side
of it, and out of his tomb grew a huge walnut-tree,
the haunt of demoniacal crows till the Madonna appeared
to Paschal II. and bade him cut it down; that the
arch-heretic Luther sojourned in the Augustinian convent
here while in Rome; that the dignitaries of Church
and State received Christina of Sweden here when,
after her conversion, she visited the city; that Lucrezia
Borgia celebrated her betrothal in one of the churches;
that it used to be a favorite place for executing
brigands, whose wives then became artists’ models,
and whose sons, if they were like Cardinal Antonelli,
became princes of the Church. So I learn from
Hare in his Walks in Rome, and, if he enables
me to boast the rivalry of the Piazza Navona in no
such array of merits, still I will not deny my love
for it. Certainly it was not a favorite place
for executing brigands, but the miracle which saved
St. Agnes from, cruel shame was wrought in the vaulted
chambers under the church of her name there, and that
is something beyond all the wonders of the Piazza
del Popolo for its pathos and for its poetry.
But, if the Piazza Navona had no other claim on me,
I should find a peculiar pleasure in the old custom
of stopping the escapes from its fountains and flooding
with water the place I saw flooded with sun, for the
patricians to wade and drive about in during the very
hot weather and eat ices and drink coffee, while the
plebeians looked sumptuously down on them from the
galleries built around the lake.
XI
IN AND ABOUT THE VATICAN
It would be a very bold or very incompetent observer
of the Roman situation who should venture upon a decided
opinion of the relations of the monarchy and the papacy.
You hear it said with intimations of special authority
in the matter, that both king and pope are well content
with the situation, and it is clearly explained how
and why they are so; but I did not understand how
or why at the moment of the explanation, or else I
have now forgotten whatever was clear in it. I
believe, however, it was to the effect that the pope
willingly remained self-prisoned in the Vatican because,
Copyrights
Roman Holidays, and Others from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
